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?

@Wreath21

I wonder if some of you are incapable of teaching your teenagers manners if you believe that all teenage boys are dangerous. Some are (as some members of any group or category one cares to name can be dangerous) but lots of teenage boys and young men, let alone trans teenagers of any gender, are sweet, shy, goodhearted and would never harass their friends. Sadly the insistence that trans people are a menace is copying the exact pattern of the homophobia of the past - they're all predatory, all evil, all abnormal waaaa!

This is a very stupid position

Are we still waiting for the answer as to how this male child has changed so that for safeguarding purposes they are no longer to be treated as male?

I guess the lack of answer is always just as telling as the answer.

I was going to go with ‘it just is’ or ‘they are not male’. But it could have been some interesting new evidence that has convinced pp to post such a lovely utopian view. I do live in hope.

Or it could be yet another poster admonishing the mean mummies who don’t believe in the constructed fantasy world that these posters live in actually exists. We instead live in the real world.

My intelligent teenager appears to genuinely think that you CAN change sex through operations and hormones (Thanks school. My daughter now apparently knows less about sex and reproduction than she did when she was six.)

Of course A hasn't actually had any operations or hormones anyway.

Our school has a similar policy, it seems to work on the handful of occasions it’s been used.

Just because nothing happened on that occasion, as far as you know, it not a reason to smash up the principles of safeguarding. If your school did this, then your school failed in their safeguarding duties. This is not something to celebrate.

There’s no question of a trans pupil going in a dorm type accommodation but in a situation where they can be accommodated with one or two friends then they will be, as long as their friends and the parents are in agreement about it.

The children dont risk assess this. This is what the adults do on their behalf. In this case the parents don't agree with it. And the school are breaking the safeguarding rules by conflating sex and gender, when the accommodation needs to be segregated by sex and NOT by gender.

The reality is that students don’t see their trans friend as either a predator or someone to be preyed upon in a situation where they’re on a trip together, but rather just as their friend who they’re happy to spend time with and share a space with

And this is why adults safeguard children. And why it is their responsibility to do so. Because children aren't able to measure these risks. And nor should they have to.

And herein lies the problem with referring to some boys as a kind of girl
Girls (and boys) deserve privacy
Girls are uniquely vulnerable to males
Separate sex facilities are in place to maintain safeguarding
Stop fucking about with our daughters' boundaries

@Theeyeballsinthesky

It’s interesting the number of visitors this thread is attracting….,

OP I’d be going pretty nuclear on the school now & taking it to the governors. First of all they offload their statutory safeguarding duties onto 14 year olds Abd then when you point out the massive problem in them doing this, they shift the ‘Blame’ on to you

Is the actual school run by 14 year old as well

👍🏼

I wonder if some of you are incapable of teaching your teenagers manners if you believe that all teenage boys are dangerous. Some are (as some members of any group or category one cares to name can be dangerous) but lots of teenage boys and young men, let alone trans teenagers of any gender, are sweet, shy, goodhearted and would never harass their friends.

Maybe some of you should teach your children, if you actually have any, that it's extremely bad manners to demand that girls drop their boundaries so that males can share their sex segregated spaces with them. The height of rudeness I would say.

Sadly the insistence that trans people are a menace is copying the exact pattern of the homophobia of the past - they're all predatory, all evil, all abnormal waaaa!

Actually it's nothing like it at all. Gay rights never sought to destroy the rights of other groups. They just wanted to live in peace and have the same rights as anyone else.

Trans rights on the other hand have their own rights, plus they want women's rights. Effectively destroying women's safeguards. Gay rights never smashed up other people's rights and safeguards. So stop with the tropes from the TRA checklist. You clearly know nothing about it.

I think it’s clear from the plopper contributions to this thread that if you cannot say anything about safeguarding before anything happens, you sure as hell won’t be able to say anything after something happens. You’ll hit the cover ups, the victim blaming, the ‘wasn’t really trans’ and ‘don’t cause a fuss that might harm real trans” etc.

The females are carrying all of the risk for none of the rewards.

Sorry OP.

@Isaw3ships

Our school has a similar policy, it seems to work on the handful of occasions it’s been used. There’s no question of a trans pupil going in a dorm type accommodation but in a situation where they can be accommodated with one or two friends then they will be, as long as their friends and the parents are in agreement about it. The reality is that students don’t see their trans friend as either a predator or someone to be preyed upon in a situation where they’re on a trip together, but rather just as their friend who they’re happy to spend time with and share a space with.

Are you a teacher? How would YOU know if it worked? And considering how females, or actually any child, often doesn't understand what has gone 'wrong' until much later, are you fully confident that one of those females will not say in a few years time that they were put into an abusive situation?

Are you fully confident ships or are you not even in the loop and like to believe that it all worked out fine.

And while you are here, please tell us just how many female students are acceptable collateral damage for you? Just one. two? ten? Just how many young female's lives are you happy to have changed forever to progress the supposed needs of a male child?

You are either remarkably ignorant of safeguarding protocols, and the need for them. Or you are a disingenuous poster who is determined to push their agenda despite the potential harm for girls.

You know that there are trans people who fully support robust safeguarding measures being in place? So, just who are you posting in aid of?

A question for those who think it's absolutely fine for a 14 year old trans girl to share with two female friends.

If a girl and boy pupil of that age wanted to share because they were girlfriend and boyfriend, do you think the school should allow it?

If not, why not?

I think ships might be a pupil.

Interesting that none of the ploppers are contributing to the thread about Lia Thomas exposing their penis in the girls' changing room. Maybe Thomas is the wrong sort of transwomen?

I'm sure the transgirl in question is lovely, and nothing will happen. But can anyone 100% guarantee that:

• None of the teens in that room will feel remotely embarrassed or uncomfortable dressing, undressing, showering, using the toilet etc.?
• None of the girls will ever make any sort of allegation against the transgirl?
• When other girls are put into this situation in the future, all will be well in every single circumstance, they will all feel fine about sharing with a male-bodied person? And if they don't feel fine about it, have no right to speak up because "it seemed to work before"?

Unless and until you can be sure of these things, and can confidently speak for every female ever put into a similar situation in the future, safeguarding has to take precedence over feelings.

The reality is that students don’t see their trans friend as either a predator or someone to be preyed upon in a situation where they’re on a trip together

No, you're missing the point. I'm sure the female students don't see their male friends as predators either, and would be equally happy. My closest friends at school were male, I wouldn't have hesitated at 14 to share sleeping quarters with them. Because I was 14. It would not have been appropriate, responsible adults needed to decide that, and mostly because safeguarding is not a case by case, how do we all feel thing, it is a blanket policy .

This is the issue.

It is not a trans issue - because female children who identify as trans or NB can be in female sleeping quarters without the slightest hesitation. The two important things:

• biological sex cannot be disappeared or cease to be relevant because other people have needs too

• facts create reality, not feelings. Policy must be based on fact and common sense and blanket policy, not feelings.

And I'd be so much more prepared to listen to political activist thinking on this if I'd seen any evidence at all that this lobby has the slightest capacity for caring about females of any age and what happens to them. The fact is that they don't. When women have been harmed, assaulted, raped, in the course of trying an experiment of 'some males have feelings that mean they should be inflicted on female people regardless of safeguarding and consent and shouldn't be thought of as predators - even after they have been convicted of being a sex offender' ......? The political lobby's response is to shrug, say basically it doesn't matter/was only one/was only a female/the TQ+ person involved is all that matters.

This is not a balanced perspective, this does not show capacity for rational and equal and unprejudiced awareness of the situation, and this does show an alarming prejudice and bias against biological females in pursuit of benefitting males. How interesting this should be a wholly sex based perspective while at the same time claiming that sex is a fluid and changeable or irrelevant thing. But it confirms, all over again, those serving this political agenda should never be advising on safeguarding. Their political alliance prevents it. This is a huge, huge problem, and because of it a major safeguarding disaster is inevitable. It will come. Watch this space.

On other MN threads when people ask if it’s ok for a teenage boy to share a bedroom with his sister on holiday etc we are told that teenage boys wake up with erections and so it would be very embarrassing for the boy. So what happens with trans girls? Suddenly they don’t get erections?

also as @ClawedButler points out there is risk of harm to the trans child as well

'* None of the girls will ever make any sort of allegation against the transgirl?'

14 year old girls fall out with each other A LOT. What happens if the the dd and her friend get pissed off with transgirl and decide it would be a 'laugh' to say she flashed at them during school trip. Maybe six months later.

Cue massive shit storm engulfing the kids and the school. If the girls stick to their guns the transchild could get put on self offenders register.

That is a not a fair risk either.

Please don't use your daughter's trip to make your point.

Yes, I would like to know if ships has a rough idea on how many female students are going to react to being 'exposed' to penises in their room where they thought they were in a 'single sex space'. Because they have been told that the male in that room with them has 'changed sex'.

They are 14 year old girls. Do they understand that penises may have a habit of being erect in the morning during puberty? What happens if the male masturbates during the night? Should those girls be exposed to that?

Or if one of the girls gets their period and it is heavy and they stain the sheets? Still ok? The girl doesn't deserve to have privacy away from a male who has no fucking idea what she is experiencing?

So, where does the male change their clothes? In the room with the girls?

If ships is a teacher, they must have some answers to these questions.

If ships knows anything about teenage boys from living with any male over the age of puberty starting, they should have some answers to these questions.

I hope they answer. And I hope they have some evidence to back up what they say. Because that could be a safeguarding gamechanger. And we should then petition the education department to make those changers.

@HeyMoana

Please don't use your daughter's trip to make your point.

Please don't abolish girls' rights to make your point.

Fixed it for you.

I'm not using my daughter's trip to make a point. I want children to be safe, including trans children, as has been pointed out above. It is very easy to envisage scenarios under this policy with very bad outcomes for males as well as females and trans children as well as others. This is a policy which normalises the sharing of sleeping accommodation for bodies which can potentially be impregnated and bodies which can potentially impregnate. This is not safe for children, and not something children should be able to opt into. Declarations of identity, however sincere, do not change those physical realities.

To be honest, the fact that it's a small room, with children who know each other well doesn't reassure me at all. At least a dormitory is easier to oversee, with lots of people present.

@HeyMoana

Please don't use your daughter's trip to make your point.

Ummm. Her daughter’s trip IS the point. This is a real life situation where fantasy thinking simply doesn’t work with safeguarding.

If ships knows anything about teenage boys from living with any male over the age of puberty starting, they should have some answers to these questions.

As someone who has been a 14-year-old male, the staggering naivety of some women never ceases to astound me, tbh.

But at least when I see women supporting this sort of thing, I know it's naivety. I have much darker thoughts about the men.

Ummm. Her daughter’s trip IS the point. This is a real life situation where fantasy thinking simply doesn’t work with safeguarding.

This is getting to be a slightly tired tactic already (and they've not been trying it that long). Every single bad policy outcome is just a "dogwhistle", a "wedge issue" or "just being used as a pretext to hurt trans people".

You can't address the problems because to do so would be feeding a narrative or something. I think we're finally approaching the bottom of the narcissist's prayer.

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

Blimey, women get it in the neck every which way, don't they?

We get told off for foreseeing events because it might never happen even though the risks are flashing in red neon signs to anyone who isn't working flat out not to look at them.

We get told we're not supposed to notice or comment until it does happen.

And then when it does happen, we get scolded for weaponising it/ drawing negative attention/ other ways of frantically trying to make female people just give up their rights to male people quietly, without fuss or making male people feel bad about it.

No. This is ridiculous, stop it. It's the abuser's 'don't upset me with your crying while I'm beating you' that Lundy Bancroft wrote a series of books about, women know when someone is pulling this crap on them. This is MN, we have entire boards about relational abuse.

Cross post with Necessary who said it much better.

Yes, that ^^

Actually, I quite liked yours, Artichokeleaves :)