Dr Debbie Hayton interview

[ChristinaXYZ]

In case you haven't seen it.

“I worry that trans people are being used in a political campaign to compromise women’s spaces”

Didn’t notice anything in the guidance on how to support properly the wives (most always) or children of people who transition. Like other posters, I would much rather hear from Dr Stephanie Hayton.

There is a section in the guidance about supporting children whose fathers announce they are 'transitioning'. It would benefit from the input of mothers with experience and insight.

There is a section in the guidance about supporting children whose fathers announce they are 'transitioning'.

My view of that section is that it would leave any child who wasn't overjoyed about their parent's transition feeling very isolated as it emphasises educating all of their peers into acceptance. It also IIRC says everything will stay the same at home - which puts extra pressure on Mum to be accepting.

As usual the needs of the transitioner are put first.

Yes I'm completely understanding if someone changes their mind. I don't want this to be a personal attack, I am empathetic to Dr Hayton's struggles. It just would be cognitive dissonance for me to campaign for the protection of women's rights but allow access to males that stick up for us. If Dr Hayton is happy to use male spaces and encourage others to do the same I would be happy to see them as a role model and welcome voice.

Readers of the thread may be interested in the Schools Guidance that I wrote for the TES in 2019:
debbiehayton.com/2019/06/19/supporting-transgender-students-what-you-need-to-know/
I reviewed the other guidance and came to the conclusion that,
"In short, school leaders who wish to be fully informed and stay within the law and best practice may wish to consider the Transgender Trend guide when formulating local policy."

I still think that, two years later.
Debbie Hayton

Yes I'm completely understanding if someone changes their mind. I don't want this to be a personal attack, I am empathetic to Dr Hayton's struggles.

For Dr Stephanie Hayton's struggles:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4053058-Debbie-and-Stephanie-Hayton-interview-transcript

@DebbieInBirmingham

Readers of the thread may be interested in the Schools Guidance that I wrote for the TES in 2019: debbiehayton.com/2019/06/19/supporting-transgender-students-what-you-need-to-know/ I reviewed the other guidance and came to the conclusion that, "In short, school leaders who wish to be fully informed and stay within the law and best practice may wish to consider the Transgender Trend guide when formulating local policy."

I still think that, two years later.
Debbie Hayton

From memory in that article you also specifically recommended the NASUWT School guidance for the part concerning supporting children whose father's 'transition. Is the full article available for people to read for themselves?

Apologies I see there is a link provided to TES.

(extract)
"Meanwhile, the two largest teaching unions have both produced guidance for schools and colleges. The NEU’s advice is focused on how to support trans and gender-questioning students (3), while the NASUWT has issued a more comprehensive document covering transgender staff as well as children (4).

The NASUWT has also discussed how to support children whose parent or other family member transitions. Families can easily be overlooked." (continues)

I wish my "struggles" consisted of being supported and platformed by feminist groups and having a regular column in the Spectator.

I reviewed the other guidance and came to the conclusion that,
"In short, school leaders who wish to be fully informed and stay within the law and best practice may wish to consider the Transgender Trend guide when formulating local policy."

NB The context of this comment follows a comparison between Transgender Trend and Allsorts' guides which are specifically concerned with how schools should support children identified as 'transgender'.

The NASUWT guide is primarily focussed on advising schools as to how they should respond to a member of staff who announces they wish to 'transition'.

@TinselAngel

I wish my "struggles" consisted of being supported and platformed by feminist groups and having a regular column in the Spectator.

I'm sure your insights would be interesting and illuminating to a lot of readers of mainstream media.

I'm sure your insights would be interesting and illuminating to a lot of readers of mainstream media.

A recent collaboration between Trans Widows’ Voices and Donovan Cleckley for 'Women are Human' is really worth reading:

'These Chains That Have No Name: Interview with Trans Widows Voices'
(extract)
So often when husbands are trumpeting, one wonders what the silent wife is really thinking. – Germaine Greer, “Review of Conundrum by Jan Morris” (1974), The Madwoman’s Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings (1986)

You lose your partner and your access to his memories. One day he comes to you in different clothes, with different hair, and in a travesty of his voice he tells you that his name is something other than the one you have always known him by. He tells you that he has been posing as your partner, a fictitious character of his own and perhaps your invention throughout your relationship. Tells you every memory you’ve stored needs to be rewritten. This person, the one standing before you now, who looks and sounds and moves in a manner that strikes you as being just about as authentic as a child playing dress-up, tells you: I’m real. The man you knew was not. It’s like losing a part of one’s mind. – Christine Benvenuto, Sex Changes: A Memoir of Marriage, Gender, and Moving On (2012)

The wife’s role in relation to the hero is to be a handmaiden, not a critic or an obstacle. – Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (2014)

Trans Widows Voices is a website that works to support the former partners of males who have socially and medically transitioned, and to amplify the voices of women, those who are most forgotten in the narratives of men’s heroic journeys to conquer ‘womanhood’ as theirs. Under the “Our Voices” heading of the site, we see a selection of stories from women. Despite charges that these women make their male partners into monsters, these narratives show us new dimensions in the subjection of women. Most relationships in these cases involve married heterosexual males, many of whom have fathered children, ‘coming out’ as ‘women’ after many years of crossdressing behind closed doors. “It is their wives who suffer,” Andrea Dworkin wrote in a review of Amy Bloom’s book Normal in 2003. To voice their experiences, these women write under pseudonyms, staying anonymous, primarily because of how relentlessly their former husbands would pursue them to punish them for speaking. The case of Christine Benvenuto, author of the 2012 memoir Sex Changes, exemplifies this sort of situation, where the husband’s identity appears to matter more than his wife’s humanity. Men seek to silence women for speaking the truth of gender as a reality in which men possess women. As Dworkin said in 1995: “Gender itself—what men are, what women are—is based on the forced silence of women; and beliefs about community—what a community is, what a community should be – are based on this silence.”

Women Are Human presents for our readers an exchange with the founder of Trans Widows Voices. And, as Dworkin would tell us today, in our time: remember, resist, do not comply." (continues)

www.womenarehuman.com/these-chains-that-have-no-name-interview-with-trans-widows-voices/

This seems like a good time to share a link to www.transwidowsvoices.org/. It’s an excellent site.

God I love mumsnet

And also to childrenoftransitioners.org/

@TinselAngel

There is a section in the guidance about supporting children whose fathers announce they are 'transitioning'.

My view of that section is that it would leave any child who wasn't overjoyed about their parent's transition feeling very isolated as it emphasises educating all of their peers into acceptance. It also IIRC says everything will stay the same at home - which puts extra pressure on Mum to be accepting.

As usual the needs of the transitioner are put first.

This looks like a much better resource for supporting children whose parents transition, written by someone who’s been through it.

childrenoftransitioners.org/2021/02/27/how-to-help-children-of-transitioners/

‘We have noticed people are starting to realise the public narrative by male transitioners of the impact on their children is often inaccurate. At worst, it leaves children of transitioners (daughters especially) subject to domestic and sexual abuse and coercive control from abusive fathers. The ‘whitewashing’ of our lives has no relationship with reality.

In our experience children are only given child protection/ social workers if our father is arrested for assault or crimes such as voyeurism, and sometimes even then family courts enforce continued contact. For some families, children are left without support. We love our fathers, and want to support them, and this makes it even harder to access help, or express our distress, especially if the adults around us state our fathers are ‘brave and stunning’ and we know different. Recent police hate crime enforcement suggesting it is a crime to believe in reality and not gender ideology has caused a lot of fear and made it even harder for children of transitioners to speak up about abuse.

We hope the children of transitioners you know are the fortunate ones and their fathers (it is nearly always fathers) are kind and respecting of their children’s boundaries. If you are a trusted adult – maybe a school welfare officer or the parent of a school friend, a grandparent, maybe a religious leader or youth worker – here are a few notes of what may help the children you support.’

Readers of the thread may be interested in the Schools Guidance that I wrote for the TES in 2019:
debbiehayton.com/2019/06/19/supporting-transgender-students-what-you-need-to-know/
I reviewed the other guidance and came to the conclusion that,
"In short, school leaders who wish to be fully informed and stay within the law and best practice may wish to consider the Transgender Trend guide when formulating local policy."

I still think that, two years later.
Debbie Hayton

I have to say I found this post somewhat disingenuous, Dr Hayton.

You were challenged on this thread on your role in creating the NASUWT guidance which applies to the treatment of teachers themselves - not to how teachers should treat children - and the fact that guidance still stands, and, as far as we know, you still stand by it.

To come on the thread and talk about how you support the TT “Schools Guidance” in the context of this challenge, as if the two sets of guidance were related, when they’re not, seems rather misleading to me.

As R0wantrees says, The NASUWT guide is primarily focussed on advising schools as to how they should respond to a member of staff who announces they wish to 'transition'.

That’s the guidance we’d be really interested to hear your current views on.

Any thoughts you’d care to share with us?

That’s an excellent point, Talking. I’m sure we’d all be interested.

@DebbieInBirmingham

Readers of the thread may be interested in the Schools Guidance that I wrote for the TES in 2019: debbiehayton.com/2019/06/19/supporting-transgender-students-what-you-need-to-know/ I reviewed the other guidance and came to the conclusion that, "In short, school leaders who wish to be fully informed and stay within the law and best practice may wish to consider the Transgender Trend guide when formulating local policy."

I still think that, two years later.
Debbie Hayton

Thank you @DebbieInBirmingham, I really liked your triggernometry interview. I thought that you spoke really well.

@DebbieInBirmingham others have raised good questions about the NASUWT Guide that I’d also be interested in.

In addition I couldn’t help noticing that it effectively states a trans teacher is to be treated as if self Id is law, even though it isn’t, except for pensions where it’s better to be a man so trans teacher can use birth sex as its advantageous do you think the guide is actually legally accurate?

Also sounds like catering for a trans teacher potentially incurs additional costs for ‘external consultants’ etc which is concerning when state school budgets are so tight.

It’s a lot of emphasis on how to ‘be kind’ to a minority of teachers and I don’t see the same effort put into measures to improve understanding for a pregnant teacher or a teacher suffering a miscarriage or menopausal teachers. All conditions that affect significantly more teachers.

It’s a lot of emphasis on how to ‘be kind’ to a minority of teachers and I don’t see the same effort put into measures to improve understanding for a pregnant teacher or a teacher suffering a miscarriage or menopausal teachers. All conditions that affect significantly more teachers.

Very good point. We never see that effort put into making life easier specifically for people who happen to be female, do we? No endless EDI trainings on everyday misogyny and how not to be a sexist knobhead, either.

Certainly no effort put into making things easier for the women who don’t want to have to share their toilets with a male colleague when he fancies cosplaying as a woman, as in the above “staff party” scenario.

I mean, WTF does it even mean to say a male teacher might want to attend a staff party as a woman? It doesn’t get much more offensive than that, does it? “Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be A Woman!”

Misogynistic shite. Fuck this. Really, fuck it.

We never see that effort put into making life easier specifically for people who happen to be female, do we? No endless EDI trainings on everyday misogyny and how not to be a sexist knobhead, either.

And worse... thread: I’m a teacher and apparently it’s my fault if I’m harassed. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4210877-I-m-a-teacher-and-apparently-it-s-my-fault-if-I-m-harassed

In addition I couldn’t help noticing that it effectively states a trans teacher is to be treated as if self Id is law, even though it isn’t, except for pensions where it’s better to be a man so trans teacher can use birth sex as its advantageous hmm do you think the guide is actually legally accurate?

Readers to this thread who are women working in schools might be interested in a meaningful response to specific issues raised about their workplace @DebbieInBirmingham.

A reminder that the NASUWT is majority 'WT' (women who are teachers)

Wiki:
In 1976 the NAS [National Association of Schoolmasters] merged with the Union of Women Teachers (UWT) and the Scottish Schoolmasters Association (SSA). The merger was largely a consequence of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which made it unlawful to exclude from membership on grounds of gender. (sic) It then became the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NAS/UWT). The 'slash' separating the two sections of the union was later dropped and the name usually appeared subtitled 'The Career Teachers Union' - a reference to the life long commitment of the 'career' classroom teacher.

Although from many years the union had officially registered its name with the Certification Office for Trade Unions and Employers Associations as the NASUWT, it is only since 2015 that the union has adopted its name in the short form using only the initials NASUWT and subtitled 'The Teachers' Union'. The change reflected that 84 per cent of its members were now women and it was effectively able to remove from its name the now archaic term 'schoolmasters'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASUWT

Extract from Daily Mail article in thread linked above:

"Female teachers worry about walking corridors alone, union leaders have said
NASUWT said many women staff have reported sex assaults & harassment
Female teachers have also been victims of unwanted advances and behaviour

Female teachers worry about walking corridors alone, union leaders warned as the schools sex scandal widened last night.

The NASUWT, which has 314,000 members in both private and state schools, said many women staff have reported sex assaults and harassment by male pupils.

Yesterday Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of NASUWT, said female teachers are suffering from the same 'sexist and misogynist behaviour' as girls have complained of and even have to constantly 'think about how they are dressed' to ward off attacks. One teacher told the union her face was superimposed onto porn and then shared online widely.

Others have been inappropriately touched or been the subject of sexist name-calling and 'derogatory language' in class as well as online, Dr Roach said.

He told the union's annual conference yesterday: 'Misogyny and sexism are all too real, all too apparent – whether it's on the streets... or in our schools. And [the question is] whether female teachers and female students can feel that they are safe to walk along the corridors without having to think about how they're dressed or whether they're walking alone and how they're going to be treated by pupils.

'No teacher should feel that, no student should feel that. And yet we do hear that teachers and students do.' He said the problem was related to the Everyone's Invited testimonies, with the abuse that female pupils suffer 'impacting' on teachers, and 'vice versa'.

He said: 'We are seeing... so-called banter, sexist name-calling, the use of derogatory terms – both in class and online – to talk about teachers, the posting of sexist comments on social media, the belittling of teachers because of their sex.' (continues)
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9435887/Women-teachers-scared-walk-school-corridors.html

I can't think of much that is more sexist than prioritising the wants/demands of a male teacher whether in 'dual role' or in a "mental health crisis" where they believe they are "some kind of woman" (as explained by Dr Hayton in Triggernometry Podcast) over the needs and legal rights of female teaching staff.

So, if the NASUWT have known for years about sexual harassment why have they been silent? and yet not silent on transition advice?

I am wondering what use Unions are for (also referencing the Batley debacle). Is it just jobs for reps? Answered my own question?

This is horrifying.