Residential trips

[JustFuckOffPlease]

Name changed for this.
I knew it was only a matter of time.

I teach in a secondary school and we've so far not experienced too many challenges to our single sex provisions despite having increasing numbers of teens (mostly girls) that socially transition for a short period.

I'm running a week's residential course (tied to my subject) for 14 yr olds and one biological male who identifies as a girl has requested that they share with their friends. Girls. I responded before half term to this request and said that they must share with friends of the same biological sex. It went very quiet for weeks, but yesterday afternoon, parents have emailed me, cc'ing the Head to express their dissatisfaction that their child can't share with their female friends.

The accommodation we use are dormitories - minimum of 4 sharing, maximum of 8. I've emailed the hostel (who frequently run school trips) to see what their policy is on these matters so I'll hopefully hear on Monday.

We have quite a strong LGBT staff body and an SLT that will tick all the boxes to be seen to be doing the 'right thing'.

I'm anticipating being told that I need to listen to these parents who are insisting that I let their DC share and to not be discriminated against.

What are my options here? There's 4 staff attending this trip, 2 male 2 female. I organise it and I do NOT agree with biological males sharing a bedroom and changing rooms with biological females, no matter what feelings they have.

It was in a hobby setting, not a school setting, but a trip away was organised, the transgirl was accepted into a female room, all parents happy, all girls supposedly happy, he was caught in the act of sex with one of the girls, when another girl in the room got frightened and went to get a member of staff, both children were immediately sent home, and the girl later had an abortion.

Major upset for everybody, and the club has now said no more trips away, ever, and this club had been arranging residential trips away for decades.

@Nimbostratus100 so one poor decision ruined it for generations of children, and let to one child having to go through something they will carry for the rest of their life. That poor girl should have been protected.

So not only had this boy said he was a girl, and had sex with a girl in their shared dormitory, but he was doing it while another girl was present??
And we are accused of saying trans children are predators. FFS.

That's how mad the world has become.

AND:
If you express this in RL, you and your family would be =
cancelled/ boycotted by everyone around + (receiving life threats - police support).

There are genuine trans-people who are most vulnerable in the society. But the solution is not to throw children/women's rights under the bus.

And what's happening at the moment makes a lot people less sympathetic to trans than otherwise. I would love they have their own rights, but what's been pushed so hard by all those lobbying group and the local authorities are just so wrong.

What makes any trans-person more vulnerable than disabled people, elderly people or children?

How can any trans people possibly be most vulnerable in society?

"There are genuine trans-people who are most vulnerable in the society."

*citation needed

There are genuine trans-people who are most vulnerable in the society

This is completely untrue. They are the most protected class in the UK. More rights than everyone else because of the magic word trans.

If you think about it @Return2thebasic trans people have the same rights as the rest of society. What they want is additional rights - the right to remove single sex rights from others. The right to force society to change our language, facts and science to comply with their personal beliefs.

There is a vulnerable group - and that's all the children who have been groomed to believe their growing bodies are wrong and need fixing with drugs and surgery. They are the ones who need our attention.

Haven't RTFT but wanted to agree strongly. There is nothing at all preventing this child from sharing with others of the same sex except preference. Privacy and dignity are not an issue as they all have the same type of body and this child has not had any surgery.

Good on you for not backing down, OP. (Or not so far, at least! Still got several pages of comments to read...)

The phrase that is needed for discrimination against people with a protected characteristic is "proportionate means to a legitimate aim".
So, saying that girls and boys must have separate sleeping accommodation is treating them differently, and is a proportionate means (they have accommodation of equal quality, so there is no real difference except that they may prefer the other bedroom) to a legitimate aim (safeguarding).
The boy who identifies as trans and is given a separate room does have the characteristic of gender reassignment and is being treated differently to the other boys but that's in some ways his choice. He may prefer to share with other children but treating him differently is easily shown to be proportionate (he still gets to go on the trip) and has a legitimate aim (privacy and safeguarding of the girls, which was the original aim of single sex accommodation anyway).
The boy is free to have the same treatment as other boys of course.

So, boys ARE treated differently to girls which could be seen as sex discrimination but the means and the aim are both fine so it's OK.

You're forgetting that tHeY jUsT wAnT tO pEe!

Question. If a girl got pregnant and had shared a dormitory with a post-pubescent male who identified as a trans girl, how would anyone prove that the pregnancy was a result of the sex that was had on the residential? Surely if they had sex on the residential, they could have had it before or after the residential (unless we are talking about rape)Can you imagine the court case and questioning that any poor girl would have to go through if a parent tried to ‘sue’ a school for putting their child in that situation?

Obviously a DNA test could prove/disprove paternity but then the girl who was made pregnant would need to prove that this was the first and only time that they and the other trans girl had had sex - that’s if anyone wanted to claim that the school was negligent for creating the opportunity by allowing mixed-sex dormitories.

The mind boggles. Just keep residentials single sex FFS. Good luck OP.

Re lying to children about the possibility of sex change... Before I became aware of this issue and aware of the media's gaslighting stance, I used to notice occasional click bait articles about "men" giving birth. Every time I'd click, wondering "oh has medical science managed something amazing now?" and every time I'd find out that it was of course a woman. I am masters educated (obviously not in the sciences!!!) and yet still gave the headlines the benefit of the doubt each time! Now imagine how primary school children think after they've received training from gender ideologists.

Well, if we all agreed in previous posts that this transgirl might be subject to bullying if being put together with other boys, why the vulnerability isn't real? If that's a concern at primary school level, how could you be sure this potential threat to them wouldn't be ten folds bigger in the teen years and in an adult world?

Yes, at a society level, we recognise their existence and respect their genuine choice (if not being coerced) and we put law in place to help them blend in the society as how they want to live their life. But at individual level, lots of people feel uncomfortable with them (less so for gay and lesbian), probably mostly due to the chances of physical threats when actually their body is of much stronger built and have different physical drive. And I'm sure there are people out there want to hurt them just because what they claim to be (like gays decades ago?). I do believe in day to day life, they suffer more than normal people and desperate want be accepted.

I know I might be gaslighted for saying this, but we do need to recognise this , and find a solution to accept and support them BUT without compromising women/girl's right+ children's physical development, like how it's be pushed right now.

Isn't there a case just being reported this week about a pot lady had to proved she was actually raped by a trans in hospital all female ward??? The hospital was in denial there was non female patient per guidelines as "trans=women"???

Like stories from a different planet. Just unreal!

“a poor lady" not "a pot lady"...

@Return2thebasic You stated that trans people are in a position of unique vulnerability, and I disagree that there is any evidence at all to support this, and I note in your response that you have not provided anything to back up your claim. A complete deflection.

This particular child has the theoretical potential to be bullied for identifying as the opposite sex, but the sleeping arrangements don't affect this one way or the other. Indeed, who is to say that the girls wouldn't equally bully the child? Unless your concern is that the other boys will commit corrective rape against the trans identifying boy, in which case the child is as vulnerable as any other boy.

As we've seen on this thread and in the news, girls are in fact uniquely vulnerable as a group to the effects of male behaviour which is why single sex spaces exist in the first place.

It isn't right to try to emotionally manipulate the argument by pretending trans identifying people are more vulnerable, when the opposite is true in our current society.

@GottoHandit
You can only assume that the parents would be up in arms giving it - we would never allow them to be in the bedroom alone.

And it would never go to court unless it was in an attempt to prove rape

As the leader of the group, you will be responsible if anything goes wrong. Given the obvious safeguarding problems here, if I were you, I'd cancel.

I don't understand why can't the girls be vulnerable and the trans in general are vulnerable too? Minorities are always at risk of unfair treatment, unless you have power - that's what the lobbying groups are pushing for.

You can say I'm manipulating as it's your right of free speech, but it doesn't make your judgement right.

I don't want to provide any data, because I'm not interested in digging into it - it hurts my mental health. And there are things called common sense. But obviously you can deny it and hold your one sided opinions firmly. I can't change that either.

Nothing like what we say here would make either you more right or me more right. No need to attack each other using words like "manipulation", because I have no interest in doing that.

Because you didnt say trans people are vulnerable you said that trans people are "the most vulnerable" as in more vulnerable than anyone else, you need to back this up.

No one is arguing that trans people have no vulnerabilities, but we do dispute the evidence free claim that they are worse off than anyone else.

Sorry, that's really just a general deduction with no evidence. Personal opinion if you want to see it that way. I don't deny it.

I just think I don't want any of my loved ones be in their position which can tell some basic information.

Even gays and lesbian are not as discriminated as now than like decades ago. But the memory as a society is still fresh.

The no. of trans is even less in a society (very rare even 10 years ago?). Their situation is even more radical opposing to what's perceived as "natural". It's only normal for hostility to exist against them.

Just that really.

Why are we thinking of giving these children the power here? Personally I have every sympathy for those struggling with any problems or issues, but I really don’t think we should be talking about trans children, as I really don’t think there is such a thing and we should be clear that while they should feel comfortable in expressing themselves, it should not be at the expense of others discomfort. If only children with disabilities had the power to make the environment around them more comfortable.

Safeguarding is not 'hostility', and its wrong to refer to it as such.