REally useful article if you are talking to your child's school on gender

[ChristinaXYZ]

Article in the TES (education newspaper) 'Trans students: the legal risks for schools'

www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/trans-students-legal-risks-schools

"For schools, this means that wherever sex matters, children should be treated equally with their same-sex peers. This is not discriminatory; in fact, treating a trans-identified child differently from other children of their sex could be discriminatory on grounds of gender reassignment.

Excluding trans-identified boys (“trans girls”) from boys’ spaces, or a boys’ school, would be a textbook example of discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment. The same would be true of excluding trans-identified girls (“trans boys”) from girls’ spaces and activities.

Providing trans-identifying girls with breast binders, or failing to tell parents of this safeguarding concern, might also constitute less favourable treatment.

Permitting trans-identified boys to compete in girls’ sports would also be legally problematic, at least once children have reached puberty. It is arguably indirect sex discrimination against girls, since boys are on average much bigger, stronger and faster. Their inclusion puts girls at a disadvantage in a way that allowing girls into boys’ sports would not disadvantage boys.

Enabling trans-identified children to use toilets and changing rooms for the opposite sex is possibly also indirect discrimination against other children, this time on grounds of “religion or belief”, another of the nine protected characteristics.

That is because it would disadvantage children from religions that mandate sex separation in intimate spaces, such as Orthodox Judaism and some strands of Islam, or indeed those with “gender-critical” beliefs (the belief that sex is binary, immutable and important). It also breaches school regulations that require single-sex toilets and changing rooms for all pupils aged 8 and over.

And finally, keeping secrets about sex - whether from parents, students or some staff - runs counter to safeguarding principles and makes proper risk assessment impossible.

As if all this wasn’t enough for schools to consider, there is also the issue of social contagion.

In her interim report published in February, Dr Hilary Cass, the eminent paediatrician currently reviewing child gender medicine in the NHS for the Department of Health and Social Care, cited worries about the role of social media in the recent steep rise in childhood trans identification.
She also cautioned that social transition is “not a neutral act” but a significant psychological intervention that may make gender distress less likely to resolve on its own."

The above written by a lawyer. More in the article link above.

This article and also this written by a teacher on Transgender Trend may be useful documents to take with you for discussion if you are raising concerns

www.transgendertrend.com/school-lgbt-club/

There is a boy in my sons year 3 class who is now going by the female version of their name and must be referred to as she or her.

The other week the class got split into boys and girls and the boys did a football activity and the girls did dancing. This boy was allowed without question to do the dancing class but my son had to do the football even though he wanted to do dancing and doesn't like football. Some of the girls wanted to do football too apparently but weren't allowed.

It's all fucked up.

That's not fair at all - why do boys do football and girls do dancing???

I'd be questioning the school re why do football = boys and dance = girls. Incredibly sexist

Exactly 99problems. What you have described is an example of the stereotyping and inequality that is the root of a lot of problems. The trans ideology solution is to change the child to fit the stereotypes. The gender critical solution would be to challenge the stereotypes and end the inequality. Dancing and football for all. Thus making things better for all children, not just the ones whose parents are ideologically driven/ think they're super special.

It's a great article OP. It addresses the fact that a lot of what lobby groups are pushing for in schools is most harmful to the very children they claim to want to protect.

My son actually wears dresses sometimes. He finds them comfortable and is Autistic and part of that for him means that he doesn't care what others think about him and so dresses however he wants to.

He is a boy though and he knows he is a boy. He knows clothes are just bits of material sewn in different ways and have no bearing on your sex or gender.

So the only thing separating him from this other child is the fact we don't call him a girl. Because he isn't one.

Yet he can't do dancing.

So he's learning that in order to do dancing he has to call himself a girl. Which is just wrong.

Mine changed schools partly as a result of that sort of tosh.

At School 1, he had indeed been 'questioning whether he was a boy'.
School 2 had plenty of boys in the choir and knitting club, and although only three boys and 20 girls in the dance club, at least it wasn't just him.

I think we were lucky that he was 11 nearly 10 years ago. With a little more push from his peers and teachers, he could easily have been convinced he was 'really a girl'. And we would have had all the family photos of him in a pink dress, wearing sparkly hair clips, playing with dolls etc etc that get trotted out. He'd even had a girl's name he used at nursery, and he wrote 'first person' stories based on being a girl - because he was an imaginative little thing.

Yes my son had a phase around the age of 4-5 where he said he is a girl. We talked to him about it and it turned out most of these thoughts started at nursery and reception when he started to be told things are for girls and other things are for boys.

Keep telling boys that long hair is for girls. Pink is for girls. Boys do football etc and yea a 5 year old brain is going to think "hmmm maybe I'm a girl then"

It's actually very interesting watching this other child and our son growing up together. They started off very similar with similar none gender conforming likes. We took the approach of telling our son that boys can like pink and can have long hair and can wear a dress if it's more comfortable but they're still a boy. Whereas the other parents started to call their son a girl and changed his name 🙃

After we reassured him that boys can be different and it's ok and letting him just be himself he never mentioned being a girl again.

The trans ideology solution is to change the child to fit the stereotypes. The gender critical solution would be to challenge the stereotypes and end the inequality.

That's such a great way of expressing it, thank you.

Exactly! In one of the BBC trans children features, a trans girl whose age was still single digits said they liked being a girl because they “didn’t have to do boy things now”. All I could think was what kind of atmosphere they’d grown up in that made them think that they had to be a girl in order to avoid activities wrongly stereotyped as ‘for boys’.

It’s desperately sad. We’ve gone backwards.

Bloomin'eck that TES article is a refreshing change from the bullshit 'guidance' that schools have been receiving up to now!