I would like clarification on various parts of that.
Second, in 2019, there were 697,989 pupils in Scotlands public schools. It is known that around 200 young people per year receive support from the NHS Scotland Young Persons Gender Service with theirtransition. This a tiny number of people working through a different gender identity than they were assigned at birth with professional help. Not as the media would have you believe hordes of fashionable internet influenced adolescents.
What number are on the waiting list for support, but who do not receive support? What number might there be of adolescents in Scottish schools who think they have a gender identity which they think is incongruent with their bodies who are
a) not being seen by a Young Persons' Gender Service, but
b) have spoken about this to pastoral staff at school?
As I know secondary school teaching staff, I am prepared to wager it is quite a number.
“If a young person wants the school to record the change of name and/or change of recorded sex formally, they (with their parents or carers if under 16) should write to the school to instruct this.”
So their parents must be involved to change the records formally.
And what about off-the-formal-record namechanges, then? Like staff informing other members of staff that Sarah wants to be known as Sam from now on without consulting parents, because they think it's the right thing to do for the child?
I'd also like to address this idea of "moral panic".
The parallels they want to insinuate here aren't as clear a parallel as they think. The old moral panic which I think is being hinted at here was the generalisation that all gay men were child predators who shouldn't be allowed to work in Scouts, citing one newspaper article about such a man.
But we're not saying that. We are citing articles to disprove a generalisation that no-one can identify as transgender and be a predator. We wouldn't be doing this if some quarters didn't keep claiming that it couldn't be true, and trying to create special exceptions to safeguarding rules for people who identify as transgender
I never claimed gay males couldn't be child predators- they can, just as straight men can. I just wanted them treated the same way straight males were.
Which is, funnily enough, what I want for males who identify as transgender now.
Males, regardless of gender identity, should not be in the same changing areas as females. According to recently compiled data, 99% of sexual offenders are male. 88% of those offended against are female.
I am constantly being told that transwomen are some of the most vulnerable in society and that they are oppressed by women. If that's so, they shouldn't be with females for their own protection. When performing intimate examinations on female patients, male healthcare staff ask for a chaperone for their own protection, as well as the female patient's, in case of a genuine misunderstanding leading to an official complaint or a female patient making a malicious allegation later.
I am surprised that no-one wishes to safeguard transgirls against such eventualities. If either is a risk for healthcare staff from adult patients who have deliberately sought medical treatment, surely each is a much higher risk in the tempestuous social environment of a secondary school?
Transgirls should be given private space of their own for changing and sleeping, as a matter of routine.
The same applies to transboys, even if they think they are safe in male facilities. Teenagers commonly underestimate risk.