Christian parents sue government over school's transgender policies

[ArtemesiaK]

Just wondered if anyone else had seen this?...

@NellWilsonsWhiteHair

Yeah, this is the religious right I don't align my feminism with. Definitely no objection to boys in dresses, definitely happy when schools accept children as they are.

This is completely unfair. It wasn't just a matter of a boy wearing a dress, it was a boy wearing a dress and "becoming" a girl.

Do you not think religious people in general should have to accept their kids being indoctrinated in school, or just Christians? If it's ok to teach religious people's kids things like this, why not your kids?

@Coyoacan

Dear god, do they also believe in the tooth fairy and santa?

Maybe they would if people risked being charged with a hate crime, ostracised by their friends or losing their jobs for saying that Santa doesn't exist

Indeed

@sharksarecool

I think there is some really disappointing hypocrisy from some people on this thread.

TRAs dismiss the GC viewpoint without even listening, call people bigoted for disagreeing with them, refuse to share podiums, suggest that certain opinions are too awful to be allowed. Can people not see their own hypocrisy in doing exactly the same thing to this Christan couple?

Everything they have said alligns entirely with the standard GC position as regularly expressed on this board. And yet, because you disagree with them about the nature of God, you dismiss them as bigots and exclude them from your feminism.

They have the same protected characteristic as Maya Forstater. Either we respect other people's right to belief or we dont. Which is it?

Exactly. Very good post. I am not religious. But religious beliefs are protected under the equality act.

I wish people would stop with the whole cervix thing. I don't have a cervix, I am a woman. It seems such a strange thing to have picked on as the definition of being a woman. I would think a higher percentage of women have a vagina, a vulva, a clitoris although I still don't think that should be the be all and end all of being a woman.

@ancientgran

I wish people would stop with the whole cervix thing. I don't have a cervix, I am a woman. It seems such a strange thing to have picked on as the definition of being a woman. I would think a higher percentage of women have a vagina, a vulva, a clitoris although I still don't think that should be the be all and end all of being a woman.

I think you've missed the point. No one is saying you must have a cervix to be a woman. The gender critical position is only women have or started life with cervices but clearly there are women who have had hysterectomies. No one is saying such women stop being women.

@HipTightOnions

Was it possible to convince them that they had been mislead? Did they say where they'd got the information from? Is the critical evaluation of media not taught in the UK?

Yes and no. Half of them were relieved to hear clearly-articulated truths which actually made sense - and the other half struggled to reconcile them with what they thought they knew.

Unfortunately they have been taught in school:

• your gender identity is the “true you”
• you can take cross-sex “pills”
• you can have sex reassignment surgery

and have unsurprisingly put 2 and 2 together.

Who taught them this? The other PSHE teachers? The biology teachers? Or was it a visit from Stonewall or Mermaids?

It's obviously hard to undo when you have other teachers in the same school who are teaching them nonsense about changing sex. How are they supposed to know which teachers to believe?

In a recent Year 9 PHSE lesson at my school, we discovered that every single pupil believed men could change sex to the extent that they would be able to have babies. They were shocked to learn that was not the case.

Fucking hell.

Who taught them this? The other PSHE teachers? The biology teachers? Or was it a visit from Stonewall or Mermaids?

Non-specialist teachers who were just given a ppt downloaded from the internet and told to teach it. I challenged it and this went down very badly.

Getting somewhere now though, but it hasn’t been fun.

@ancientgran

I wish people would stop with the whole cervix thing. I don't have a cervix, I am a woman. It seems such a strange thing to have picked on as the definition of being a woman. I would think a higher percentage of women have a vagina, a vulva, a clitoris although I still don't think that should be the be all and end all of being a woman.

It's not the definition of being a woman. You've made that claim before and we've explained before that the problem with refusing to state clearly that women have a cervix, is that obfuscating the language around female biology has an impact, here specifically on the uptake of invitations to cervical cancer screening.

There are several large hard-to-reach groups of women who do not understand that "cervix-haver" or "anyone with a cervix" includes them. If this language is used, instead of the much simpler "all women aged between 25 and 64 are invited...", these women will therefore not respond to their invitation letters and definitely not to health campaigns designed to improve the uptake of invitations to cervical cancer screening, which has been falling for over ten years.

Arguably it has been falling since the language used on invitation letters changed from the easily understood "smear test" to "cervical cancer screening". There is, of course, a perfectly logical reason for that change, in that it is no longer an actual "smear" test but a different kind of test, so the change wasn't arbitrary. Still, the health communicators should have advised the NHS to keep the wording.)

We have good data on uptake, and lots of research about the reasons why women are not attending their appointments. Literacy, language skills and education levels play an important role in that. In Scotland for instance, uptake in the most deprived areas is 65% and in the least deprived 75%. (75% is still not great btw.) That's on average. In some local authorities with greater areas of deprivation, uptake can be worse.

Even lower is uptake in the youngest age group (25 to 29), which is 58%.

So we object to politicians and others claiming that it shouldn't be said that "only women have a cervix" not only because it is the patriarchy on steroids to forbid women from talking about themselves and their bodies as they want and need to, but also because it increases the risk of cervical cancer for large groups of women if we do not use clear language.

And while politicians dither over unkind language, cervical cancer will go on to kill some of these hard-to-reach women because we are simply not speaking to them when we use nonsense language like "anyone with a cervix".

I found a study on health literacy and its impact on health earlier. As anyone would tell you, poor health literacy seems to be linked with

poor health.

Abstract Extract

Health literacy concerns the capacities of people to meet the complex demands of health in modern society. In spite of the growing attention for the concept among European health policymakers, researchers and practitioners, information about the status of health literacy in Europe remains scarce. This article presents selected findings from the first European comparative survey on health literacy in populations.

extract from paper
Health literacy concerns the capacities of people to meet the complex demands of health in modern society. In spite of the growing attention for the concept among European health policymakers, researchers and practitioners, information about the status of health literacy in Europe remains scarce. This article presents selected findings from the first European comparative survey on health literacy in populations.

(continues)
In conclusion, the HLS-EU survey has extended the evidence base on health literacy by measuring health literacy in eight EU member states. Limited health literacy and a social gradient in health literacy represent important challenges for health policies and practices in the EU, but to a different degree for participating member states. This health literacy deficit and inequality needs to be addressed by European and national health planners and policymakers who are dealing with the social determinants of health and health inequalities, and developing appropriate public health and health promotion strategies.

(continues)

To that effect, a two-sided approach must be pursued, as recommended by Parker and Ratzan: (i) strengthen citizens’ and patients’ personal knowledge, motivation and competences to take well-informed health decisions; and (ii) decrease the complexity of society as a whole, and of the health care system in particular, 14so as to better guide, facilitate and empower citizens to sustainably manage their health.4,5,16Efforts must be made to strengthen citizens’ health literacy by redesigning user-friendly and user-involving systems,19adjusting curricula and training health professionals to better meet the challenge of the health literacy deficit, and increasing patients’ expectations of being active partners in their care. Due to the considerable differences in health literacy status between the countries, such measures need to be tailored towards a country’s specific social, economic, cultural and educational situation. At the EU level, this data provides possibilities for comparison, exchanging, benchmarking and learning from best practices. [bold mine]

(continues)

As shown inTable 2, there are specific subgroups where the proportion of people with limited health literacy considerably exceeds the average (47.6%) observed for the overall sample. This holds true for people with poor health status, high use of health care services, low socio-economic status, lower education and older age. The highest proportion of limited health literacy was observed for people who reported a self-assessed health status of ‘very bad’ (78.1%) or ‘bad’ (71.8%), for those with more than one long-term illness (61%) and for those reporting six or more doctor visits in the last 12 months (58.9%). Therefore, worse health and thus higher demands for health services seems to be accompanied by lower levels of health literacy. [bold mine]

You can read the full thing and look at the pretty tables here academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/25/6/1053/2467145

I don't think referring to women as people with cervixes, cervix havers, vulva owners, vulva people, people with vulvas, vagina havers, people with vaginas, menstruators, people who menstruate and so on, is going to further these aims.

Also, can we please reach a consensus on how we are pluralising cervix? Because some people are using the authentic Latin plural (cervices), and others are going for full anglicisation and just adding -es. My opinion is that we should treat it as an English word and add -es to standardise it, but we need consistency.

P.S. the uptake for screening amongst women with leatning disabilities is 31%.

But who cares about disabled women, eh?

Women with a learning disability in England have an average life expectancy of 65, GP data from NHS Digital have shown—18 years lower than those without.1

The inequality is greater in women than men. Men with a learning disability had an average life expectancy of 66 in 2017-18, compared with 80 in men without a recorded disability.

Patients with learning disabilities also had lower rates of cancer screening, most notably in cervical screening for women: only 31% had smear tests, compared with 73.2% of those without a learning disability.

www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l404

But the Christian parents weren’t just objecting to a boy wearing a skirt. The BBC states very clearly that their six-year-old son had come home from school confused that a boy in his class had started wearing a dress and identifying as a girl, and their eldest son had faced a similar issue two years previously at the same school.

identifying as a girl. All those children were being taught that children can change sex. That is very different from allowing children to dress as they like.

Thank you for posting that study PurgatoryOfPotholes. We cannot be clear enough about this - this language is not inclusive, because it leads to the exclusion of women who we should be most concerned about reaching.

I miss the Plain English Campaign. I wonder what they make of all this given that in their leaflet on medical information they state to "use everyday words" to communicate clearly. As well as "think of your audience, not yourself". (Both of these principles are increasingly ignored again.)

Brilliant! I really hope they win the case and schools stop being pressured into buying into this idiocy.

This is REALLY interesting.

I can think of a few recent high profile court cases of this... Type?

Please correct me if wrong and sorry not RTFT. But I don't remember court cases of this particular flavour, as it were. Against the top rather than locally. Happening much at all.

IMO and it is only opinion based on reading this that here and there. Having a think.

I think this uptick in cases of this general... Feeling... Type... Is tactics from USA being imported.

And I know that tactical cases have and are being brought here as well which is new, or at least didn't used to be much of a thing.

This costs ££££. They are being 'supported' by some Christian orgs. Will check article again for who.

This screams USA style.

Groups who want to push/ get attention on/ make noise about specific things. Find poster pic people who have the issue and come across well etc. Pay for the legal stuff. Publicity may shift some public views. Garner sympathy. Etc.

Tactical.

Very interesting.

Christian legal centre

'We’re perhaps best known for some high profile legal cases that have arisen from our work in helping Christians who suffer in the workplace because of their faith but we also provide assistance and advice to many others. So if you need help, please get in touch.'

Oho. Well then.

Google has loads.

UK based evangelical org against lots of stuff. Really interesting.

Just skimmed thread.

Oh yay!

Is this another thread where women are encouraged to feel guilt and shame and REPENT because some people somewhere who are BAD are doing something somewhere for totally different reasons and you don't want to be like THEM do you?

I mean FGS.

I know it is hard for some to get their heads round.

But women are grown ups. Adults with brains. Who can think for themselves. And understand ooh. All sorts of things!

It's so utterly patronising. And silly. And that anyone think ha yes this will make them think again! Has a view of women that is insulting.

It's interesting thank you OP. Fascinating in fact. For the things I just wrote.

Apart from concern about the increasing use of sympathetic types in strategic court cases here.

I have little interest. Only in the concern these cases might move opinion.

They are nothing to do with me. What they think believe etc is nothing to do with me. Evangelical Christians at least round here are known for being... Well. far from most people's cup of tea.

So. Is there any point to this thread apart from telling women off?

Because I think this move and the funding is interesting. And there have been a few like this on different issues recently.

I agree with other posters that the Christian right doesn't exist here the same way as it does in the US. Christian conservatism (which shares many values with the US Christian right) does, and the Christian Legal Centre and Christian Concern are part of that.

I would have assumed that a board where Stonewall is often called homophobic would have posters objecting to the CLC/CC. Christian Concern speaks openly in support of conversion therapy, and against gay marriage. The Christian Legal Centre has taken cases for people wishing to prevent gay marriage, to prevent same-sex couples adopting, for people who have made homophobic comments to colleagues, etc.

Have whatever views you want on gender. But next time you want to claim that being GC helps LGB people, maybe have a think about whether you actually care about LGB people, or whether we're just a convenient prop for your cause.

And abortion.

I just objected to them massively!

On the one hand.

Homosexuality is redefined as nothing to do with bodies. By a major org that used to be all about advocating for rights acceptance of anyone who was same sex attracted.

The term homosexual is described as outdated and iirc medical or something.
Gay men and lesbians have same sex people insisting on access to the clubs, bars etc etc that were created by and for them.
Same sex sexual preference / rather than internal gender is described as genital fetishism etc.
Lesbians in particular are being pressed to (pretend) that heterosexual men are lesbians.
Get with the dick.

On the other hand.

Much more straightforwardly.
Anything not conforming to man woman strict roles.
Is bad.
...
...
Get with the opposite sex and shut up....

It's not a huge difference that I can see.

@HipTightOnions

I think I agree with the idea that isn’t fair or a good thing to let children believe they can change sex

In a recent Year 9 PHSE lesson at my school, we discovered that every single pupil believed men could change sex to the extent that they would be able to have babies. They were shocked to learn that was not the case.

What age is Year 9?

@Siepie

I didn’t know there were actual court cases for these things in the U.K. The US, yes. But I don’t compare the U.K. to the US as culturally we are very different. I imagine I’m not alone in this.

I understand you’re cross, however, I believe the average GC woman does care about LGB people. Especially the gaslighting of predominantly young lesbians to accept dick. It is the TRA’s, who think women are props and human shields.

@KimikosNightmare

Yr 9s are 13/14 years old.