Suella Braverman expected to make a speech on Wednesday

[achillestoes]

In which she will say (in advance of DfE guidance to be issued in September - apparently) that schools are not legally obligated to facilitate childhood transition through the use of opposite sex or neo-pronouns (non-binary etc), allowing children to use the toilets of the opposite sex (arrangements should be made for children to use a third space if needed), or the uniform of the opposite sex.

For some reason this has provoked an outpouring of accusations of Suella being ‘as thick as mince’. One charming person wished her dead. Someone else said we ‘don’t get to’ disagree with Suella on other things and then agree with her on this. Erm...

Anyway, this seems like a return to much-needed ordinary safeguarding practices to me.

I don’t care if boys wear skirts particularly. I do care about my daughters being bullied to pretend they are female.

I don't think it matters too much. Boys/girls can wear anything they like outside school. The only reason they want to wear opposite sex school uniforms is to signal their transition. Sticking to the same uniform undercuts that and the consequent pressure on classmates or teachers to affirm, iyswim.

Some schools have gendered uniforms. I agree they shouldn’t have them but they do. All this is saying is that the children should be treated the same as their peers.

Didn't address your point properly, sorry. Many schools have unisex uniforms/uniform options anyway, and most people don't think there's anything excessively conservative about having different uniforms for boys and girls.

Woah! Thank you, Suella! This is great news re spaces and transitioning.

Haven't got to the uniforms bit yet ...

It's actually going to be really helpful clarity for schools, I'd imagine, who have been given a right load of shite advice from various interested parties.

Interesting, she's referring to a speech she's about to give today in that article, to clarify things even further - hopefully it'll be reported what she says.

Turning tide is making for some serious frothing amongst the usual suspects, convinced they understand the Equality Act better than Attorney General. Their arrogance never ceases to surprise!

What Suella Braverman has said is brilliant but it needs enforcing - the problem is schools, police, etc all just ignore the government.

The other major issue is that as well as the recognition that teachers are not doctors, there needs to be the recognition that kids are not medically trained nor councillors either.

The LGB plus T groups need to be stopped. Often it is not the adults that are socially transitioning the kids it is the other kids.

In fact I am not overly sure about the the LGB clubs either. We don't have clubs for other dating groups, and the under 30s are so relaxed about homosexuality I have difficulty believing that they are really needed in the way they might have been 30 years ago. Yes some kids will still get bullied for being gay - but that should be dealt with under the school anti- bullying framework, the same as bullying gender non-conforming kids should be, or the bullying of kids from ethnic minorities, or disabled kids, or ginger kids, or fat kids. If the clubs are left but just renamed they will continue to socially transition other kids and actually add to the bullying in schools be raising the temperature around gender issues. They will also add to the huge number of sexualities (based on gender identity) in kids heads when they are already confused. And lastly they feed the wider identity politics beast which frankly needs showing the door in schools.

Great stuff Suella but follow it up, enforce it, find out from women's groups and parent groups what is actually happening on the ground, and keep going back to the problem.

@ChristinaXYZ

I agree, I think all that stuff is influential and quite dangerous, not simply supportive. I don’t particularly care if a kid thinks they might be gay, whether they turn out to be gay or not, but I think what’s happening in those clubs is more complex.

What on earth does he think it looks like when he is incandescent because girls can't be forced to call boys, girls.

Or girls can't be forced to call adult men, women.

Where is the safeguarding in deliberately preventing children from identifying the male sex? On pain of punishment.

It is not just that, boys in skirts is a flasher's charter. Seriously, the time schools waste on girls' skirt lengths, how much worse if it is boys. Do you want your daughter in a school with 15 or 16 or 17 or 18 year old exhibitionists with skirt wearing rights? Trousers are unisex and that's boys' lot I'm afraid. though they should have cooler options like shorts for summer.

Girls should have the choice because girls' physique varies hugely in waist/hip ratio and some girls struggle with one form of dress or the other. My DD could never get school trousers to fit because of very wide hips and tiny waist. Skater skirt styles got round that problem. Her Muslim friends preferred trousers.

Lastly most teachers are women - should they have to put up with it either or have to raise the issue with male students? Anyone supporting boys in skirts at school is not progressive - not one bit.

You can sign up to watch the speech here:

policyexchange.org.uk/pxevents/keynote-speech-by-rt-hon-suella-braverman-mp/

@Datun

Exactly. If it’s a ‘right’ to be called by your chosen pronouns, there has to be a punishment for children - little kids - who tell the truth. Screw that with knobs on.

Why do you need to look at it MNHQ?

It's a perfectly valid public link to watch the speech!

Apols, it was flagged for review - we've reinstated it now.

For those talking about toilets only being able to be used by the specified sex - I suspect the reason for the caveat in the reported article is simply to allow for use-cases such as a mother taking a small boy into the ladies toilet etc. It is fairly clear that Braverman is categorically saying that girls should be in girls toilets and boys in boys toilets - (boys and girls being simply and biologically defined by their sex).

Thank you.

It will also be on the PolicyExchangeUK YouTube channel.

I simply can’t imagine thinking the State should be able to compel a person’s speech in this way. They’re calling Braverman a fascist. They are only allowed to call her a fascist because she isn’t one. If you give away your children’s right to describe the world as they see it, you are betraying them in the most grotesque way, ushering in a world in which the institutions of the state can compel them to do or say anything.

Who would have thought the person standing on that line would be Suella Braverman? Yet here she is.

Furthermore, schools and teachers who socially transition a child without the knowledge or consent of parents or without medical advice increase their exposure to a negligence claim for breach of their duty of care to that child.

This will raise hell in schools. My own school (generally pretty good) has a couple of “non-binary” or “trans” children and has held the line on single sex spaces and already has a single uniform list rather than separate boys and girls. No child has ever been in any kind of trouble for “misgendering”. However, staff do use new names and preferred pronouns at parents’ request. If medical supervision is required to do this (and I agree it should be) it is going to be very difficult to backtrack.

I wonder what my union will say.

@ChristinaXYZ I can't remember the name of the person but there are video clips of a male student in the USA clearly enjoying the validation of wearing a short skirt which made his sex quite obvious. I think there were parent/pupil protests about his use of the girls changing room, it was a few years ago, and of course his rights won.

There was an article recently by a teacher who regretted running a school LGBT club.

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

I think we agree, @ChristinaXYZ. I wasn't supporting boys in skirts, just saying (in my two posts) that a) sex-segregated uniforms are not inherently conservative, b) lots of schools have unisex uniforms/options anyway and c) not allowing boys/girls to wear opposite sex uniforms undermines/limits social transition.

If schools are told to not support social transition without professional medical advice, that will be a major step forward.

What will happen to the kids that have already socially transitioned at school?

GIDS have previously said that the vast majority of their referrals have already socially transitioned before the first appointment so there must be thousands of kids in the country who have been sold a lie at school. How can all their peers and teachers back track?

This will be interesting come September. Dd is criticised by her friend regarding pronouns. Dd sometimes forgets and uses the correct pronouns so her friend says she's going to start saying Dd is him/he/his.
I'm struggling with the head fuck that comes with agreeing with tories 😩

relatively simple if schools have the guts to do it...

school assembly - we need to bring some clarity to certain things, some girls may feel that they are a bit more like boys / some boys feel that they are a bit more like girls, and that is great, you can be any shape of girl / boy you wish... however, underlying everything you are born with a biological sex as a girl or boy and that can't change. Whatever anyone tells you, a boy can never physically become a girl or vice versa. The government has recently confirmed this and the law, and a part of that is that in schools we must call you by the pronouns which are linked to how you are born - boy or girl. You might not like this, you might feel it is wrong, and every class will have a session with your teacher to discuss this - however, it is the rules of the country and it is based on biology which can't be changed, so it is now the school rule and from today it is what we will be doing.

This doesn't change how you might feel, and there will be boys who prefer to do things that society say are only done by girls, and girls who want to do things that society says are done by boys - that is okay, it is silly to think that only boys can play rugby / climb trees / play football - just look at how well the women's football team did recently. Equally society says that doing crafts, or knitting, etc. is a girly thing - what nonsense, it can be done by anyone.

So, we are going to remember that biology (whether you are a boy or girl) is something that is fixed and built in by how you are made, when the sperm meets the egg, you become a boy or a girl... but what kind of boy or girl you wish to be - that is up to you to be the best you can be in the shape you enjoy the most...

etc.

yes, there will be fallout and all sorts of uproar - but it is necessary to have some solid black and white return to normality and then deal with issues under the correct umbrellas of mental health etc.

we have to split biological sex and 'how you feel' the two should never be conflated, and the how you feel can be seen historically to vary - men in high heels - normal in regency society - pink the boys colour until the 1920s etc. society norms change - but biology never does.

Great thanks, couldn't find it.

If anyone wants to watch, it starts 12.30.

I don't think the law can be suggested to say that we MUST call people by sex based pronouns but simply that we MAY.
So children would need to be told that they can use sex-based pronouns and anyone caught criticising this will be dealt with.
If children call their friends "fae/faeself" I don't think anyone is going to come down on them legally, nor will the school be likely to discipline them.
I think the most important dynamics are:

1. Children to teachers. Children shouldn't be expected to use any pronouns that are not obvious (which for 99.9999% of cases will be sex based - there won't be many teachers who have had voice/face surgery) for teachers.


2. Teachers to children. Teachers should only use the pronouns that are a) approved by parents and b) confirmed by a medical practitioner.


3. Children bullying or otherwise ostracising other children (no ground should be given on "he won't call me "they" so he can't sit with me at lunch")