New Year New Judicial Review? CPS Hate Crime Guidance for schools

[Spero]

If you haven't seen this, I think you should.

www.faircop.org.uk/post/police-must-not-patrol-trans-discussion-in-schools

In brief, the CPS have published guidance about hate crimes in school - but won't let parents see the guidance. Its for teachers only. I've emailed for a copy and so have others. I have a child in the school system. I want to know how serious the risk is that she will be arrested and charged for discussing biology.

I think anyone else who is also worried should email the CPS and ask to see the guidance.

Teachers and schools can download the pack from this website. This is a resource for schools, so a password is required to download the pack. This can be requested by emailing [email protected].

It would seem that CPS is saying that, in essence, no one can say no to whatever a child identifying as trans desires.

Giving a child such enormous power over others, including the adults in their life, is how you create a narcissist.

This won’t end well for the child either — though tbf there’s a chance that child might end up enormously wealthy, since the contemporary economy skews toward benefiting narcissists. As do contemporary politics.

I'm actually staggered that whoever advised the CPS didn't consider the damage this potentially does to children who are trans.

I don't think the people behind this care at all about children who are trans, except as a pretext. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what I think they do care about.

Is the law actually being changed to make the definition of hate crime, in the context of trans people, subjective (so that all that matters is that the trans person feels for instance that they're being excluded or laughed at because they are trans, whether or not there is any evidence of that)? That seems extraordinary. The usual way of dealing with this kind of thing would be to ask what a reasonable onlooker would think is the reason behind the bad treatment, or at least what a reasonable trans person being treated that way would think (since the actual trans person in question may or may not be reasonable).
It's easy to imagine a sensitive person assuming that anything that happens (eg not being invited to a party) is because they are trans.

Thanks for this thread, spero. It's all so mindboggling.

It's all dreadful, but I think the thing that has made my blood boil the most is the claim that being bullied is "worse" if you're trans because you'd also 'worry that it might happen to someone else in your community (sic)'.

Aside from the fact that there's no fucking hierarchy of bullying, the sheer insult this is to any child bullied because they're black, disabled, fat, immigrant, gypsy, have special needs, etc. etc. gives me the rage.

Surely its paranoid people who most need protection because everybody's out to get them?

Is the law actually being changed to make the definition of hate crime, in the context of trans people, subjective (so that all that matters is that the trans person feels for instance that they're being excluded or laughed at because they are trans, whether or not there is any evidence of that)?

It already operates like that. It's based on the feelings/perception of the assumed victim. There has to be a criminal offence involved for it to be considered "hate crime". But in the pack they have a fairly broad interpretation of what constitutes a real crime, including specifically mentioning wearing T shirts (maybe could be applied to LGB Alliance/Adult Human Female?). Also a bystander can report it even though they weren't personally affected.

I'm actually staggered that whoever advised the CPS didn't consider the damage this potentially does to children who are trans. This implication of disproportionate power, of heaven help anyone who displeases them - this actively works against equality and good feeling, it's going to make people afraid.

Agree. It already applies to a lot of older TRAs.

They also mention "outing a trans person" as potentially a crime or "hate".

Which as pp have said means that you can't say that there is a male in the ladies.

Bullying is horrible, but it it really much more horrible to be bullied for your trans identity than for your height or hair colour?

So being bullied for your race or sexuality or religion is no different to being bullied for your height or hair colour then?

I wonder about this too. I've no doubt that gender non-conforming children get bullied more than others. But so do short kids, ginger kids, nerdy kids... anyone seen as "different". Bullying is horrible, but it it really much more horrible to be bullied for your trans identity than for your height or hair colour?

Though what causes kids to be targets of serious bullying IME is ofetn difficult to pinpoint. Because kids that have any of these characteristics may in other cases be considered cool and be quite popular. I remember kids at my school who were very short, or who were non-white, or lots who were GNC who were at the top of the heap. There was one kid who was fat and another who had no hair anywhere on his body so he was kind of odd looking. All were more popular and cooler than I was.

Yet others are bullied, seemingly for less. Sometimes there are personality issues that make them a target, but in other cases they just happen to catch the eye of some jerk.

It sucks to be left out or unpopular, and being bullied regularly can be really bad. Mean girl stuff made parts of my middle and high school years really really lonely. But I don't know that forcing friendly inclusion is all that effective either.

Bullying is bullying - bully kids will bully for any reason (real or otherwise)

So being bullied for your race or sexuality or religion is no different to being bullied for your height or hair colour then?

For the person being bullied, not necessarily, I can't see that one feels worse than the other. All are out of your control.

For the person doing the bullying, it may depend more, depending on why they are acting that way.

Bullying of anyone is abhorrent - and it's not well dealt with nationally, it isn't something any child should experience in school. But surely the answer is to sort out school bullying, with CPS for the cases such as I've heard of locally where several teenagers, particularly a couple of gay kids who got it by far the worst, were viciously assaulted, stalked and terrorised over months. Why separate it out by category so some kids being bullied re a particular characteristic get better protection than others? How does that help anything?

So being bullied for your race or sexuality or religion is no different to being bullied for your height or hair colour then?

Why wouldn't it be? A child can't help being short or ginger any more than they can help being black or gay. Its true there are wider societal impacts around race and sexuality than there are around height and hair colour, but that's no consolation for the child being bullied.

So being bullied for your race or sexuality or religion is no different to being bullied for your height or hair colour then?

The word "for" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. (I think this every time I see a news report e.g. "attacked for being black", btw, not just in this post).
The victim's race etc didn't cause the bullying. The bullying may be triggered by the person's race, but that did not cause the bully to bully.

To think someone is bullied "for" something is to believe the bully, who can give any reason they want for bullying, because it is not something you can actually justify. The reasons someone chooses to bully are hugely complex and I would expect in many cases it's down to generations-old prejudice.

That is what they seem to be missing when creating this hierarchy of privilege. That we are targeted by bullies not for anything we did or did not do. My cousin was called fatty and I was four eyes to the bullies.
Karen Carpenter was bullied into believing she was fat and became anorexic. Bullying is a powerful tool in the hands of the powerless, aka children.

I don’t think any though has gone into how this coexists with existing school policies. So no guidance about how of how this feeds into existing school policies about well being, bullying, inclusion etc etc. The direct result of that is creating a group which sits above all other groups as it has its own set of rules.

Then same thing but government laws, policies etc.

I do think that bullying is far more about the bully, who likely has relational problems of some sort, than about the victim. A more radical action could focus far more on the lives of those doing the bullying than on the attributes of those on the receiving end.

That said, some types of bullying I see as barometers, telling us what the prevailing attitudes are in a child's home, school or wider culture. What I am seeing a lot of in primary schools at the moment (work & personal) is a kind of policing of children who step outside of rigid gender stereotypes. Ranging from smaller comments to outright meanness. I see this as sexism and probably latent homophobia. But for most of the children making the comments, doing the policing, I think it's more a reflection of the wider culture they find themselves in than it is of having problems at home.

I don’t think any though has gone into how this coexists with existing school policies.

It doesn't fit into the bullying framework used here in Scotland. At all. Which focuses on reconciliation, not punishment.

(Yes, very serious violent incidents are passed on to the appropriate authorities, but Scotland doesn't tend to criminalise children anyway. Our age of criminal responsibility is now 12 and instead of using the courts, we have Children's Panels where a team of experts dedicated to supporting children work on solutions to bring a child onto the right path. This entire guidance seems to be at odds with that approach, but I don't know whether it even applies here.)

Yeah, misogyny is not counted as a 'hate crime'. That tells us everything.

stillathing

I do think that bullying is far more about the bully, who likely has relational problems of some sort, than about the victim. A more radical action could focus far more on the lives of those doing the bullying than on the attributes of those on the receiving end.

I've been thinking about this for days now. My middle one was bullied badly in S1, and my oldest on and off. I experienced it at school, too. I have had many conversations about bullying with friends and family members whose children were badly bullied (to the point of leaving school).

What that's taught me, is that any bullying policy that doesn't look into the bully is doomed to failure. And because we are social animals, hierarchical struggles (of which bullying is an extreme example in my view) will continue. I would not be surprised if this new policy backfired, precisely because it ignores everything we know about child psychology, development and bullying.

If you look at some LA work dealing with bullying (or at least as it was ten years ago when LAs still had funding) there were teams working with the police who were addressing both victims and victim groups working on reducing vulnerabilities (often addressing underlying needs: special needs, mental health, self image, body image in the process) and working with the aggressors, singly or in groups, on much the same list but alongside behavioural work.

It's already known the massive comorbidities going on with children presenting with gender identity issues, pretty much the same comorbidities coming up over and over again for other vulnerable kids. Treating one group as more privileged and better served than others is going to create resentment, particularly at a time when mental health care and SEND provision is dire and many families are angry and struggling. It will do nothing to meet the Code of Practice or Equality Act's requirement to promote good relationships between groups: this will actively damage it. It does nothing to address the root problems underlying why children are becoming confused and distressed about their identities and bodies. It's also inevitably going to incentivise transitioning. And that's on top of the always there, bald insensitivity and rejection of female kids with history of abuse and sexual trauma, female kids whose religions don't allow for going along with personal choice of sex over reality, female kids whose disabilities won't bend in that direction, etc etc.

It appears to be mostly based on the wishlist of adults without knowledge of education or policy, creating a perfect situation of what they would like in a school. Other people aren't on their radar save as obstacles to be quashed and controlled.

Has anyone got a copy/ link to the guidance they can share?

I said I would post guidance tomorrow but i have been asked to hold off until Saturday.