Hang on. Relistened to this. This obfuscation is amazing.
Dr Anna Carlile - I'm going to throw that disingenuous label at you again. A not word-for-word transcript:-
AC: So heteronormativity isn't just about whether you're gay or not.
It's actually about understanding there are other roles for little girls and little boys beyond stereotypes. So really it's about challenging stereotypes ideas. I've got a colleague at Goldsmiths who works on girls and sports, and she finds that girls who love football and play football at primary school usually stop when they go to secondary school because of gender pressure, and that's all about heteronormativity as well. So when you're working on this stuff at an age appropriate way, that's the sort of thing you'd be talking about.
AD:I think we'd all agree that breaking down stereotypes for kids is a good thing.
I suppose my problem is that some of the messages that have been sent, like gender is assigned as birth,...which is one of things that has come up in this discussion. Well, that's something the majority of adults in this country do not believe, is it? Why are we teaching to children as fact, that hasn't been settled?
AC: That gender is assigned at birth?
AD: Yes, most people would say that biological sex is recorded at birth, not gender is assinged at birth, this is a very politicised thing to be teaching to children.
AC: So this is about the idea that sex and gender are a social construct isn't it. It's come from the idea that there are as many people with intersex characteristics as there are people with red hair for example. So it's not reasonable to say that all people who are born with particular kinds of genitals are fully going to feel like girls.
But I don't really know what you're referring to as to what's taught in schools.
AD: My point is that the book that was written No Outsiders by Andrew Moffat's, upon which much of this is based on that gender is a social construct, but that idea, there is no consensus on that. That is very hotly contested. My worry is why are we teaching things to children something which hasn't been settled before we have the debate?
AC: Well I mean the programmes I've been involved with aren't the same programmes as Andrew Moffat's programme,
I've done a lot of research with the charity called Educate and Celebrate which is run by CEO Elly Barnes, and the way they work is very much from the Equality Act point of view so they don't just talk about usualising LGBT people across the curriculum they talk about usualising people with all the protected characteriistics in the Equality Act across the curriculum so it's not really explicitly about dismantling heteronormativity it's more actually just about saying to children look all these different kinds of people exist and that's OK.
AD: Do you not worry about this is a form of indoctrination in of itself, all it's doing is taking an old idelogy and substituting it for a new fashionable one.
AC: I think it's useful for children to be raised to be critical thinkers. And if that's what it takes, then yeah.
From Educate and Celebrate's website:
www.educateandcelebrate.org/about/
Throughout the development, Elly formed a close partnership with Goldsmiths University of London and together with Dr Anna Carlile wrote a book of all the research from the Educate & Celebrate Programme released in March 2018
Swerves answers. Throws big words and incorrect facts into the debate.
And re the football playing girls. 'gender pressure'? It's fucking sexism.
Thank the fuck I did raise a child to be a critical thinker.