The Guardian writer has managed to completely confuse the issue by bringing in gender identity not as an internal sense of self but an externally imposed understanding of one's role in society. (I know where they're coming from on this, but it just goes to show that an issue as clear cut as this does not benefit from vague terminology.)
And this issue is not one my government is willing to address - in Scotland there's a great initiative run in partnership with the Scottish Parliament called Young Women Lead. It seeks to encourage young women to participate in politics, to make themselves heard. They spend one year working on a topic they have agreed on. Their first report, published in 2018, was on their experiences with sexual violence in school and that they would like to see this addressed and more importantly tackled by those in power. It was a lovely photo-op when these young women presented their report to our politicians. And that's all it was for the latter.
Because this problem was well known when the government published its new guidance on bullying in schools in 2017, called Respect for All: The National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People
You'll look in vain for any guidance on dealing with sexual violence in our schools though. This is how the Scottish government washed its hands of any responsibility to address the by now endemic sexual harassment, assault and rape in our schools:
Some behaviour can be perceived as or assumed to be bullying. However, certain incidents can often be more serious and, in fact, criminal in nature. Understanding the individual circumstances is important to ensure that there is a clear distinction between bullying and criminal offences such as hate crime, child sexual exploitation and gender-based violence such as domestic abuse and sexual assault. For instance, when someone is coerced or pressurised to do something sexual or is touched inappropriately, this is not bullying, this is sexual assault or abuse and a form of gender-based violence. There are laws to protect children and young people from this very serious type of behaviour.
And that's it. There are laws about sexual harassment and violence. Nothing to do with us.
Neither the report by the much-fêted young women's project nor any of the requests from women's rights campaigners have even been acknowledged in the ongoing reviews of this anti-bullying approach. Bullying in school is a problem, but not a crime, but it harms children, so the government seeks to address it. Sexual violence in school is a crime and it harms children, but it's not their problem.
And btw, if government types talk about the issue at all they often go out of their way to obscure the one-directional nature of this problem. They like to call it peer-on-peer harassment or violence.