Trans Changing Room issue at mid Wales school

[fromorbit]

Ruth Hill reports on Twitter "I have been approached by parents from a local high school (In Mid Wales). They have received multiple letters about children in their child's class transitioning since the return after Covid.

Parents have asked the school if male bodied teens are now changing with the teenage girls for PE and this has been confirmed to be the case. Consequently if the parents object, their daughters are removed from PE and "exempted".

More details through link:
twitter.com/Tantrumfly/status/1623619845215465472

So if girls object to being watched undress they lose rights to PE lessons. What!

This is before the Welsh LGBT gov action plan gets implemented.

There is a wide spread issue with sexual harassment in Welsh schools going unaddressed as well.:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57428624

The parents should go to the media. Cover ups of this kind of thing only lead to more trouble we saw what happened in America.

@fromorbit
This might be tackled by a section 23 Order, which is a statutory power that the EHRC has to enforce compliance with equality law. This sounds like both direct and indirect discrimination to me. Have a look on their website. The advantage is that they, not you, take on the organisation and you the individual don't have to take them to court. IANAL and I have no direct experience of how these orders work, but I think it's an avenue worth pursuing. And they are a prescribed whistle blowing organisation as well.

Extract from Keeping Children Safe in Education:
"Child-on-child abuse is most likely to include, but may not be limited to:

para 35, bullet point 6, .... causing someone to engage in sexual activity without consent, such as forcing someone to strip.....,"

Not sure if this applies to Welsh schools but I suspect a parent / unconsenting girl would have a legitimate complaint if she was compelled by a teacher to undress for swimming in front to boys. It would be a charge under the Sexual Offences At 2003.

This is why I’m sending my youngest to a girls school next September.

There aren't any 'girls schools' in mid-Wales. What are we supposed to do?

This is so depressing.

Am going to bed now but will send to local papers in the morning in case they haven't picked it up (am local).

This

Perfectly worded by @nilsmousehammer

I despair for what young girls and women are expected to endure

Requiring girls to take their clothes off in front of males for the "benefit" of the males will end up in some major safeguarding disasters.
We must speak out, challenge and organise. Our children need us to protect them.

I look back 50 years (I think) and hating having to have showers after PE, watched by the mistress who kept a register. She would call our name and we would have to answer "Yes" or "Usual reason, wash". Do schools still do that monitoring of girl's cycles? Bad enough getting naked in front of other girls, but that information getting public wasn't nice. With a male about, it doesn't bear thinking about.

I thought the thread was about girls being made to undress in front of a boy (which strikes me as pornographic) and that therefore cultural and social norms about undressing were distinctly pertinent. My DH says that young people now strip off in public e.g. on the beach without any difficulty, but I find this transgressive myself - peer group pressure to be cool and not mind strangers seeing you naked. I have NEVER stripped off to shower in a swimming bath women's changing room and I have NEVER seen another woman do so (young or old) so I think doing this is not a social norm in the UK and therefore saying that girls must undress in front of a boy is deeply transgressive of their privacy and dignity and violating local social norms.

My local gym has a single cubicle for changing privately and a large open area with benches and racks where women strip off without apparent concern. I use the cubicle when I can. I'm older and fatter than most of the other users.

The same at the two local swimming pools. Some family changing rooms, where parents can dry and change children, and a couple of disabled changing rooms, then a women's changing area with a couple of private cubicles but the majority of women changing and drying at the central benches. You would have a private option, if you were prepared to queue for it, in both my gym and swimming pools.

But this is a derail because we are talking on this thread about a specific circumstance of girls (children) being required to compromise their privacy and dignity to a male child and being punished for it if they won't acquiesce. That's quite different from a personal preference expressed by adults.

Actually it is not for the one inexorably leads to the other. How will women in the gym's changing room react to male bodied people in the open area where they are e.g. changing themselves or helping children to change?

You can turn this into a general thread about nudity if you want. We've had loads of changing room threads over the years.

I live in Wales, I'm actively challenging gender ideology and its effects in schools in Wales and I'd prefer to stay focused on that, because I think protecting girls is the important thing.

This is outrageous. Parents should stand to it & boycott this sort of mindless policy.

There's a very good article in today's Times by Janice Turner detailing how those with predatory values (girls have no right to say no to males requiring them to undress in front of them, adults in schools should keep secrets from parents etc) appear to still be in charge:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f00593d6-a97a-11ed-9c9e-78cbfe4237a1?shareToken=ef783ba62767f2a132df5ed5b1d21092

Please use some sanity in the UK. I hate what has happened in the USA. Don't let it take hold. They are the anomally not females - we need to protect ourselves and our children.