School trip policies on overnight accommodation for trans children

[foodfiend]

Short version:
School's policy appears to be something long the lines that trans girls can share with girls if the girls are OK with it. Dd (14) is proposing sharing a room with trans girl friend and another girl. We have said we're not happy about this. Dd says that's transphobic.

Long time lurker here - would welcome any relevant experience, especially from any secondary teachers. School trip is this spring, planned since Oct - they've now been asked to submit room share preferences - rooms of 3. Dd is friendly with a trans girl - (since before name change ~ 2 years ago). Dd says A told her that the teacher had told A that they could share with whoever they want 'as long as everyone was OK with it'. (I have now checked with the teacher, and this appears to be correct.) Dd and another girl have agreed to share with A.

DH and I both said, hang on, A is male. It is not appropriate for you to be sleeping in mixed sex bedrooms. Dd says A is not male and we are transphobic.

To be clear - the kid seems perfectly nice and I think this scenario would probably be fine. (No idea what the other girl or her parents think.) But a policy of 'yeah, sure, mixed sex sleeping arrangements are fine if everyone agrees to it' sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. And it's unclear whether I'd even know it was happening if I didn't happen to already know that A is trans.

I'm pissed off at being put in this position of having to be the one to point out that this is inappropriate and put a target on my head as 'hateful', or seeming to specifically reject A/A's identity. While Dd professes to be happy/keen on this, it's clear that it would be extremely difficult for a girl in a similar position to say that she wouldn't be happy to share - she'd be terrified of being accused of transphobia. And it seems pretty crummy for A as well to be asked to go round her friends and put them on the spot like this.

It seems like the school is relying on the kids to somehow work it out for them. And that no-one seems to have spotted the obvious risks of setting such a precedent. Will they be equally happy for a trans boy to go in with two boys next time around? Or other male and female students to choose to share mixed bedrooms?

Are any other parents and teachers able to share policies or approaches from their schools?

@ThatsWhenTheCannibalismStarted

My mind is boggled that some here are so incredibly keen to have boys and girls in together

Now take it to the next step.

Who benefits from breaking this boundary out of the way?

It isn't the female children. It actually doesn't protect the male child either; as a pp says, that child is left completely vulnerable if any female child then claims they were assaulted.

This is absolutely not coming from any place that cares about the best interests of children, or about responsible caretaking. This political agenda is as cold as bloody ice.

And all the people arguing for this.. why the need to have access to girls? Why this urgent need to make sure young girls learn it’s ok for boys and men to be in their spaces?

Who benefits from this? Not the girls. They are learning they should not say no to boys or men as long as he feels a certain way.

This is about removing safeguarding so that any and all men can access young girls and women. This benefits these girls in absolutely no way at all.

Men must be having a field day! Running their paws together waiting for the day they can walk into a room with young girls and demand to go sleep. Or teen boys demand to co sleep with teen girls.

A perverts utopia!

Is school required to do this though? I know they are being told by 'groups' that they have to abide by Gender Reassignment as a protected characteristic, but this is being stretched to enable children self ID'ing. But surely, unless that bit has a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and is taking medical steps to 'transition', then it's moot, and sex as a protected characteristic should be of primary importance, and sex-segragated spaces - sleeping arrangements - should be upheld and that should take precedence, legally?

*boy, not bit

Let's just look at this case by case thing. So that would mean you'd say yes to child A and say no to child B. What exactly about child B would cause you to say no? What is child B going to take from that? What are you going to /say/ to child B? Sorry B we don't trust you, A has better friendships than you do? You'd destroy the poor kid.

Nice clean universal policy. No mixed sex accommodation. It's the only way.

@Artichokeleaves

Safeguarding:

'case by case' - how do they propose to deal with a situation where they have female children who are keen to have their male friend in their room, and other female children who will not be able to come on the trip if the sleeping accommodation is mixed sex?

What will they do when a clearly unsafe, unsuitable male child wishes to use the precedent already set? Because it will be nearly impossible to say no without it being personal and discriminatory.

How exactly do they intend to justify that this male child is different to the other male children that are absolutely not allowed under any circumstances to sleep with female children? Because when they have a female child who has been harmed by this, they'd better have a watertight reason.

Policy by Stonewall is, frankly, that no one and nothing matters but the child of interest to Stonewall. Stonewall et al merely shrug when women are harmed in the pursuit of providing male people with access to female spaces, they do not care . And that tells you everything you need to know about how subhuman and inferior they regard females of all ages. These policies are not balanced, they are not responsible, they are oblivious to the realities of safeguarding or duty of care equally to all children, and are incompatible with law as has been pointed out many times.

The school are insane if they do not envisage what could go wrong and what will happen when it does. And if it is not in them to care about the children, then perhaps they may care about their own careers and imagine themselves at the wrong end of a serious case review and the national press.

Although again, parents should be aware, from bitter experience, it is likely that much effort and pressure will go into concealing anything that does go wrong. This political lobby is not responsible about that either. They are not a body to place trust in.

Incredible post.

@Whatwouldscullydo

You cant rely on them all getting om and being friends though.

Statistically when sexual assults happen it's someone they know. Someone they trust. Friends , family, people they have known their whole lives etc.

Risk actually goes up not down .

Yes. The child in London County who was raped by a transgender in the school bathroom was friends with her rapist.

Sorry, Loudoun County not London County.

Even though threads like this bring sunshine, as it makes it oh so very clear that the end game here is erasure of all boundaries for women and girls. i cant help but feel the rage. The wheedling arguments so beautifully displayed by suggestions

"its complicated"
No its not. Single sex sleeping arrangements
"they will have sex if they want to"
Safeguarding can never eliminate risk, it is designed to identify and minimise known risk.
"let the girls choose who they room with, they will be happier that way"

Putting these decisions into the hands of CHILDREN is the seediest bit of this. This inexorable drive to convince the world that children are totally capable of making these decisions. That the adults should butt out and leave them to it. Let them sleep with whom they want when they, let them take experimental drugs with naff all evidence base, let young girls remove healthy body parts and render themselves infertile and celebrate whilst they do it.

Anyone, ANYONE, for whatever reason, who argues against clear safeguarding for children is a risk to children, regardless of their intentions.

The perspective and focus is misplaced here; to view the sex of a child as a bigger potential indicator of harm over and above all the other rich information that will be available

Picking out this particular bit of the bollocks to note the game that's being played here.

It doesn't matter whether it's "bigger", as this isn't an either/or thing. It is one factor being dealt with.

suggestionsplease1 is apparently suggesting that people you don't know are more of a risk - which is interesting because a more common TRA argument is that people you do know are more of a risk.

But either way the game being played is "look at this risk factor, not that one".

But there's no reason to choose. You can look at all risk factors.

It probably is true that people are most often sexually assaulted by people they know.

And it's also true that it's most often males.

The two risk factors combine - it's most often males assaulting females they know - and you can attempt to deal with both.

We deal with the "male" factor because it's a huge and its very easy to deal with. Male/female separation is trivial and has in the places we choose to do it we do so because it has huge risk benefits. To not do it would be, frankly, negligent.

Whether or not we deal with any other factor has no bearing on that.

Now, I grant, if you could find some other mechanism for figuring out how to eliminate the male risk, we could consider it.

But "stay in rooms with friends they feel confident, comfortable and happy around" is laughable.

How could a girl ever be assaulted or got pregnant by someone meeting that description?

Anyway, to be clear, suggestionsplease1 - you do disagree with the school's policy, right? You reckon they shouldn't be keeping boys and girls apart generally, not having this be a trans-specific exemption? If so, that is at least a self-consistent argument/proposal, which we can debate.

female bodies must go into rooms with other female bodies they don't know / are not friends with - they will be safer after all that way, right?

Right! Precisely this. Not sure why you think this is a "gotcha" moment. It's exactly what we are advocating for.

To focus on the sex on a trip like this is like taking a road trip whilst focusing your risk analysis on whether you are going to drive in a Ford or a Renault, whilst discounting the safety record of the driver, the state of the car, whether people wear seatbelts or not, how well you know the other passengers, if you get on well with them or not, what terrain the car is going over etc.

I think this might be the crappest analogy I have ever seen.

If 98% of crashes happened in Fords and only 2% in Renaults, which car would you rather travel in?

Would you use this same logic when deciding whether someone who is going to work with kids needs a DBS check or not?

they are all friends anyway and supported her thru her transition and coming out at school. Parents know the teen group well - it's a non-issue really.

So it's a non-issue because they are all friends who supported her and the parents know her? No 14 year old friends ever did a bit of sexual exploration together on the quiet? Especially not if their parents knew each other too? She still has a fully functioning penis, and teenagers are teenagers whatever gender they think they are. You do know that there are trans girls who beileve they don't need contraception and can't get a girl pregnant because they aren't really boys, and girls who believe the same?

Of course they don't all believe that and not all teenagers are sexually active. But the parents, school and other children have no idea who does and who doesn't, who is and who isn't, so a school would be very foolish to take that risk.

It makes me extremely sad to realise, yet again, we now live in a country and a time where it is necessary to teach our children:

• adults that you trust at school may lie to you and tell you x and this is because of their politics
• it is not true, whatever they say, but you must not tell them that you know it is not true or you may get into trouble
• other children may not have grown ups in their lives to tell them that adults may lie to them and you must be extremely careful not to be seen or heard telling them that really things are another way because you may get into trouble
• in public places we may have to pretend to lie too to be safe but we can talk at home honestly about what is real and what isn't.

That no one who thinks this is a jolly good thing is capable of understanding the historical parallels here and what inevitably follows in a society being as truly stupid as we are? It's even more scary. This is not the right side of history, this is a dystopian bloody nightmare.

And I'll add another major one to that list of things to prepared your young teen for:

• things may go badly wrong and your friend who doesn't know it was a lie may find out that it was a lie by being hurt. As parents we may have to make decisions that you cannot do things you would like to because while we cannot protect your friend from discovering reality and adults' breach of trust in a very painful way, we can and will protect you. Which we will probably have to do by lying. So that we can protect you without getting into trouble.

It’s also not about this one child.

It’s about a policy that has to work for everybody.

You can’t make an exception for a nice kid or a kid who the others have known forever or a sad, lonely kid or a kid who’s parents will make the biggest stink or the child of some big cheese in the local community or any other reason. You keep rooms single sex full stop.

The child in question isn’t being barred from going on the residential, they’re not being forced into an unsafe situation- the option of a single room for them is there. It’s NOT a human rights issue to sleep in a bedroom with girls.

And no one has been able to explain how a 14 year old (who is, what? Socially transitioned only? No surgery due to age. No alterations to their physical body) is any different from the other boys. Who all will have the same male anatomy. The same anatomy as this child. Or any other transgirl.

Surely, given that the majority of transphobic assaults come from men, shouldn’t schools (as part of inclusivity education) be teaching boys it’s ok to accept males who present as females? If we want a generation of men who don’t fear and persecute trans people shouldn’t that start with the boys?

I am quite astounded that there are posters on this thread who believe that the 14 year old is to be praised because they are ‘nice’ and ‘thoughtful’. And so much so than the parent wanting to make sure their child has privacy, dignity and safety and is vilified for wrong think.

If you fully believe your 14 year old is fully capable of carefully considering every scenario that can go wrong in that situation and making the wisest decision then your 14 year old must defy all science which is clear that children may understand many issues, but hopefully will not have the experience to consider all the issues. That is why they are children and not adults.

That is why adults take responsibility for safeguarding.

And those parents saying ‘they will have sex anyway’. And no, I am not saying this is the OPs situation all, but other posters have mentioned it.

What if they feel pressure to have sex and allowing them to share a room means they feel they a) cannot say no to sharing the room if they change their mind and b) cannot then say no to sex.

What happens if the sex turns into something non-consensual? Your 14 year old child is in a situation where they cannot leave! They also feel like they have ‘chosen’ to share that room, what part does that play.

Just astounding putting the responsibility on the 14 year olds like that. Even 16 year olds need to have some where to go if they need to and choose to.

Personally, I cannot say what I think of that type of thinking. I think I would be deleted.

Deeply worrying how some people only want the girls to #bekind and not the boys.

Just astounding putting the responsibility on the 14 year olds like that.

Exactly. It’s a total abdication of responsibility.

Believing that a FOURTEEN year old will feel able to stand up and say, actually no I don’t feel comfortable sharing when there are swathes of grown women too scared to say anything that could remotely be construed as “transphobic” for fear of losing jobs, friends etc. is risible.

My 15 year old told me last week that they really didn’t like some of the decisions they made last year.

And they have the emotional maturity to look back and admit it.

It's like all the adults left the building. It's a hard no and it doesn't matter if that makes you the bad guy. What are we paying these teachers for?

The reason that women and girls are usually sexually assaulted by men and boys that they know well is because it's men and boys they know well that are the ones with almost all the opportunity.

Because of safeguarding.

This is why, when single-sex spaces become mixed-sex spaces, women and girls get sexually assaulted a lot more, because more men and boys have the opportunity to prey on women/girls in a state of vulnerability, like being undressed, or being asleep.

Why are we giving males more opportunity, when we know that there are so many males who will capitalise on that?

And it's not just rape and pregnancy - that's the extreme (though not actually rare) end of the spectrum: it's the other things along the sexual continuum, from minor sexual comments or just being subjected to the male gaze while getting changed or in your pyjama vest - that in itself is what we need to be doing our best to safeguard girls from.

@Sexnotgender

Just astounding putting the responsibility on the 14 year olds like that.

Exactly. It’s a total abdication of responsibility.

Believing that a FOURTEEN year old will feel able to stand up and say, actually no I don’t feel comfortable sharing when there are swathes of grown women too scared to say anything that could remotely be construed as “transphobic” for fear of losing jobs, friends etc. is risible.

They are putting it on a 14 year old because they are too scared to say it.

@suggestionsplease1
OK, lets take the UK government definition of safeguarding:

‘The process of protecting children from abuse or neglect, preventing impairment of their health and development, and ensuring they are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care that enables children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully'

I'd say getting pregnant when they're not physically or mentally mature enough to deal with the ramifications of that counts as an "impairment of their health and development", so sex segregated sleeping accommodation does count as a safeguarding measure.