Transgender child at DD’s school. Please help me write to the head?

[Comeymemo]

DD attends an independent co-Ed British international school. We are in a jurisdiction that provides for protection against sex discrimination, including in education. This country has no protection against discrimination on the basis of gender, and only recognises transgender persons when the person has undergone full reassignment surgery (including sterilisation). In other words, there is no right to self gender identification where we live.

The school is split in houses, all of which are either all boys or all girls. The school has a mix of boarders and non boarders.

We recently received a letter from the head, saying that a male pupil will be moving to a girl’s house after half term as the pupil is transgender. The letter states that the pupil will use the unisex accessible toilet including to undress (eg for sports). The letter does not state if the pupil is a boarder.

I want to write to the school outlining my concerns and would welcome any help.

The areas where I would like to get reassurance are:

• confirmation that the pupil will not be allowed to compete against girls or to be in girls’ teams for any sports
• confirmation that the pupil will not be allowed to play female parts in any dramatic productions (DD is into sports and drama and I don’t think it fair that female roles should be given to boys, as male parts are never available to girls)
• confirmation that the school will never allow the pupil to board in a girls’ house or to have access to girls’ boarding houses
• confirmation that girls will never be allowed or expected to share a bedroom with the pupil on any overnight trip
• confirmation that the school are not altering their records to reflect the pupil’s so-called self-ID, so that the pupil remains listed as male
• confirmation that the pupil is not taking the place of any girl on any awards or recognition list, such as for school prefect, scholarships or prizes that are only available to girls.
• would it be reasonable to request that DD is not in the same house as that pupil?

At this stage I don’t want to engage into a broader debate with the school over human rights, feminist theory or GC theory, so I’m trying to stay as down to earth as possible and seek clarification on practical areas.

Is there anything else you can think of that would be relevant in this context? Please feel free to direct me to other threads if this has been done before.

Many thanks 🙏

As for the request in regards to your daughter been in a different house ask them to move your daughter if this child is placed in the same house. She's going through enough without having to deal with adults like you.

Oh dear, I would rather assert that :

The young male with gender dysphoria's rights are NOT superior to the OPs daughter's rights (which kicking the girl out of the house to accommodate a male bodied child, clearly suggests).

The OP has EVERY RIGHT, to be concerned and to voice those concerns.

I share those concerns and would do exactly the same were I to find myself in a similar situation.

I feel a Bunbury intervention may be in order this morning.

The OP has EVERY RIGHT, to be concerned and to voice those concerns.

This ^

ivegonegrey Do you really believe that people can change sex? And that people can literally be 'born in the wrong body'?

This isn’t about the individual pupil, it’s about equal opportunities for girls (which this pupil isn’t).

But you didn't care enough about equal opportunities in drama to tackle the issue before this pupil came along. So don't try to use it now because (a) it will make you look petty and (b) it will reinforce sex divisions that say only boys can play male roles and girls female ones.

Amaryllis, I have noted your point about drama parts. There are many things the school does that I think are sexist - from boys being depicted as superheroes and girls as princesses in the first grade, to girls doing netball while boys do rugby, and the school using James Bond to teach in the primary school years 🤨. Thanks for highlighting the drama parts point, I get what you are saying and will think about raising it.

She would if she had remained male.

Humans can't change sex. We remain the sex we were born. All anyone can do is to try and present (whatever that means to them) and be treated as if they had been born in the opposite sex.

I can treat someone as the opposite sex. Doesn't mean I believe it though.

The school should not oblige/encourage/gaslight OP's daughter into believing the transgender child has actually changed sex. Unless they are about to issue a whole new biology curriculum.

I think you should only mention things that will adversely affect your DD and other girls, like being given girl parts in drama when your DD is not allowed boy parts.

Other things wont affect your Dd directly, like school records. So you have no right to ask that .

Also i think you need to ask about the school policy in these matters and not anything about that individual pupil, who is entitied to confidentiality and privacy , as long at it doesn't impact on other pupils .

I dont see why you would want your child in a different house, as long as they are not sharing same sex accommodation ( I’m assuming that houses are mailed sex but not mixed rooms ).

Id ask about the school policy on accommodation - is it seperate by biological sex ? If they say its by gender, I’d ask where they accommodate those who have no gender, are bi, multi gender, queer etc .

That will force them to say its by sex. Because no school has 15 boarding houses for 15 different genders and moves pupils around depending on whether they feel male on a Monday and two spirit on a Tuesday.

I hope the school are doing their best to help this troubled pupil, without pressurising girls to give up their boundaries .

Hi there all,

Thanks for all your reports about this thread. OP has been around for quite a while and we have no reason to suspect they are a troll.

Whilst the OP is rather off the mark, after much discussion we're going to let this thread stand as there is some good discussion going on, and OP is taking the points on board.

This post was edited by MNHQ

Thanks for that sensible intervention @AnyaMumsnet.

what about making sure they dont drink from the same water fountains while your at it

Ah, I see what you are doing here. You are trying to equate women wanting to keep male bodied trans women out of their spaces with white people segregating black people and having separate facilities.

The only problem with your little comparison is that we already do segregate males and females, we do segregate on the basis of sex. And no one has a problem with that.

So unless you dont believe in sex segregated spaces at all, and males and females should just share in all situations, then your analogy doesn't stand.

And personally I don't believe that the privacy, dignity and comfort of a female in a female only space should be dictated by how a male feels.

ivegonegrey Do you really believe that people can change sex? And that people can literally be 'born in the wrong body'?

I'm not ivegonegrey but I do believe that people can be born in the wrong body. I believe that they can undergo surgery and other medical procedures to enable them to have the body which matches, as closely as possible, that of the gender they genuinely believe themselves to be.

Many M to F people have no wish at all to tread on the rights of biological women (if you're male, can you really feel like a woman if you don't understand or acknowledge the difficulties women have encountered for centuries in patriarchal societies, but still insist that your rights trump theirs?).

However under self-ID and what with TRAs this is what's happening. and is what's happening in the OP's daughter's school. And it's completely unrealistic to deny that it causes issues of the type raised by the OP. As happens a lot in life, it's not the majority who are the problem, but a vocal and active minority who have succeeded in having the goalposts moved to the point where women's rights and freedoms are once again being pushed aside in favour of the wishes of men.

Born in the wrong body

Nauticant, forgive me if I am misreading this, but was this written with or without your tongue in your cheek?

Sure, it's exactly the same as a teenage girl being in overnight accommodation with another teenage girl who is gay.

A teenage boy, in the vast majority of instances, will have the physical strength to overcome a teenage girl should the teenage boy choose to do so. The teenage boy's superior physical strength can be used for sexual or other purposes.

Men's superior physical strength and size is one of the primary reasons why women have been victims of male violence historically, and why it is a bad idea for a male bodied child (once puberty hits) to share single sex spaces with a female bodied child.

My heart hurts for this poor kid, imagine having other people’s parents insisting you can’t win school awards.

my heart really feels for this poor kid, imagine having adults around you who lie to you horrifically and tell you that you can become the opposite sex.

Exactly river imagine being let down by adults who want to fan the flames of your confusion.

my heart hurts - you sound like Dr Webberley.

And look how well things went for her *vagina•

Christ, some of you really can’t handle opposing views can you 😂 Resorting to insults and sarcasm just because someone dares to be accepting of trans people on the feminism board. Typical mumsnet!

why do you assume that this child will want to overpower a girl?

BigGoat: yes, I was being sarcastic. But I'm happy to clarify.

Clearly the safeguarding issues involved in a male bodied teenager sharing overnight accommodation with a teenage girl are nothing like those of a teenage girl being in overnight accommodation with another teenage girl who is gay.

Many M to F people have no wish at all to tread on the rights of biological women.

And those people wouldn't refer to themselves as female or women, or use and facilities design exclusively for women and girls.

why do you assume that this child will want to overpower a girl?

Why do we segregate certain spaces by sex? When we do this, do we look at each individual male and decide if he is a threat, and if we don't think he is, then we let him in the female changing rooms? Or do we just segregate by sex?

confirmation that the pupil will not be allowed to play female parts in any dramatic productions

Why on earth?

Do you know anything about drama?