Captured CS department gently breaking free!

[PonyPatter44]

I have just finished a spell of civil service training where the 9 protected characteristics were correctly identified, where 'woman' was used to describe adult human females, and where there was a robust debate about sex offenders identifying as trans in prison, and then detransitioning as they walked out of the gate.

My department used to be very much captured by Stonewall ideology. Historically, its been a welcoming place for lesbians to work (less so for gay men) ,and this has continued. It is starting to look as if we are turning back to normality.

Congratulations, Pony! Let's hope it's part of a quiet and widespread movement back to sanity.

Mine's still trumpeting the trans is the best thing ever line and how helpful stuff from Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence is.

I fight back slowly by constantly reminding people of the other protected characteristics by referencing myself as and old disabled woman, and ensuring the take my three main PCs into account as well.

They used gender for sex and I challenged it, they said they'd check and come back to me and of course they didn't, but next update they quoted it correctly.

Good to hear, OP. Thanks to everyone sticking up and speaking out.

This is excellent news.

Great. Well done to everyone who's challenged this.

Interested in who delivered the training. Was it internal? Most of my colleagues have their pronouns in signatures. There must be GC staff but I haven't found any.

Its part of the MoJ.

Yes it was internal training, nothing directly to do with diversity per se, but all our training takes account of it and the nature of this work means diversity awareness has to be built in.

Interestingly, we also have a womens group at work,and it was made very clear (by SLT) that all women were welcome but it was NOT for men.

If you want to reply to the man asking why is nothing done for men, International Men’s Day is 19th November. The comedian Richard Herring does a great job every International Women's Day of pointing that out to people making the same complaint.

Also, for men asking for help to be educated about VAWG, you can remind them that is not the oppressed’s job to educate their oppressors, as it creates an additional burden on the oppressed. People should educate themselves.

(Unfortunately, we know that most won’t educate themselves so we have to speak out, but the principle is there).

Good to hear, Pony. I'm told by several secondary school teachers that their school is over it, now. They say that the brighter, older children never believed in it anyway and that everyone, students and teachers alike, quickly cottoned onto the way in which it allowed the narcissists and attention-seekers to thrive and control. There are still a couple of TWAW people in the staff room but everyone's tired of them and they tend to get talked over. I'm hoping this is true of lots of schools.

From what I hear some pupils are using 'gender-diverse' identities for leverage and/or piss-taking. That was always going to happen. So once it's seen as a way for kids to misbehave and manipulate teachers I expect most experienced teachers will see it for what it is and work out ways to neutralise this behaviour. Well, if they don't they're going to be causing enormous problems for themselves.

When I worked in schools it was during the period where adults/staff were strictly forbidden from ever touching pupils - not even to stop them from hurting each other or themselves - and this very quickly became untenable.

Kids would destroy classrooms and injure other pupils while teachers stood back and shouted approved phrases 'I need you to stop pounding Geoffrey now' 'This is your final warning, Lucas, put the desk down', etc.

Shortly after this new guidelines were brought in with appropriate times/ways to restrain pupils, I believe.