Heads should stop teachers allowing children to identify as cats, says No 10

[IwantToRetire]

The spokesman said that teachers should not teach “contested opinions as facts” and called for headteachers to intervene in extreme cases.

“It would not be right to comment on the actions of a specific individual or a specific school without knowing the full details, but we understand why these reports will be concerning for parents,” the spokesman said.

“In broad terms, teachers have a responsibility to encourage their students to engage respectfully with those they disagree with.

“They should also not be teaching contested opinions as fact, shutting down valid discussions and debates.

“It’s important parents and carers are reassured that children aren’t being influenced by personal views of those teaching them. Any example that strays from this would be wrong and we would expect headteachers to act.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/20/rye-college-children-neo-pronouns-cats-moons-rishi-sunak/

Unlike the headline the article makes it clear that a "spokesman" (how old fashioned and sexist shouldn't that be spokesperson?!) has said this so Sunak may or may not have a public opinion about this ...

But the Telegraph seems to be keen to keep the issue of self identifying on their front pages.

When I first heard about children doing this I thought (hoped) that it was younger children making fun of the trans generation, but seems not.

NB article is behind a paywall but can be read at https://archive.ph by entering the Telegraph URL above into the box.

(The cat in picture below looks very cross. Probably feels the same way GC women feel - outraged at the notion that some young human could in any way know or speak with experience based knowledge about being a cat!)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/315587/Equality_Act_Advice_Final.pdf#page8

"3.4 Gender reassignment is defined in the Equality Act as applying to anyone who is undergoing, has undergone or is proposing to undergo a process (or part of a process) of reassigning their sex by changing physiological or other attributes. This definition means that in order to be protected under the Act, a pupil will not necessarily have to be undertaking a medical procedure to change their sex but must be taking steps to live in the opposite gender, or proposing to do so.

"3.6 It is relatively rare for pupils – particularly very young pupils – to want to undergo gender reassignment, but when a pupil does so a number of issues will arise which will need to be sensitively handled. There is evidence that the number of such cases is increasing and schools should aim to address any issues early on and in a proactive way. Further guidance is available from the GIRES website"

"For example, information from groups such as Stonewall or GIRES about the experience of gay or trans pupils in schools generally may help schools to understand how best to support their own LGBT pupils. Such information (or links to/extracts from it) may be included among a school’s published material, alongside information about any initiatives taken, or policies developed, to promote equality for particular groups (such as measures to address racist or homophobic bullying)."

The absolute assumption in the document is that schools will support the transition of children.

I think my dd actually did pretend to be a dog for a while at school 😂 she was in reception class though, so I think it’s acceptable! She never wanted to be the mummy or the child while playing in the home corner, only the dog or a PJ Mask character.

a number of issues will arise which will need to be sensitively handled.

As always, Noblegiraffe, the language is so vague it could be interpreted in all sorts of ways.

Ah, but then come the references to GIRES and Stonewall, of course.

I STILL think the DfE would try to wash their hands of any trouble and dump HTs right in it.

Mmmm...non-statutory guidance from 2014 which, by its own inference is now expired and should have been replaced in 2016...

Some of us have been complaining about that Equality Act guidance advertising self interested lobby groups for years. But the DfE have been hand in hand with Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, GIRES etc for years. Mermaids got dumped when their PR became too embarrassing for even the DfE to handle. The previous senior civil servant was very invested & successful in introducing Stonewall to schools and to date, nobody has had the guts to tell schools that political lobby groups with a political agenda should not have uncritical access to children.

I do wonder how this has appeared in this younger age group, ie whether it originated from something different to the more long running furry communities.

According to wikipedia, this old age group is predominantly male, into video games, etc..

So maybe there are 3 categories of furries. Children - via cartoons, children's tv? Young adults - Online games inspired furries and a third group that has corrupted the idea of furries into a sexual fetish - and I wonder how many of them are male and queer?

While looking for any actual research have come across this web site.

I think maybe a lot of us just aren't aware of what has been going on. Or is this another example of where researchers in a desperate effort to have something new to say are over exaggerating a very small minority.

Welcome to Furscience.
Furscience is the public face of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP), studying furries and their fandom and disseminating our evidence-based research to furries, the general public, scholars, and the media to increase understanding and decrease stigma.
https://furscience.com/

Last updated in 2018.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-advice-for-schools

Dfe apparently bad at version control, it hasn't expired.

I posted that becoming the opposite sex is as possible as becoming a cat, so I don’t understand why the cat one is more extreme.

@MNHQ I don’t understand why my
comment was deleted.

I should make it clear that the girl pretending she thought she was a dog was in a class of twelve year olds, and that they were apparently responding to the news item about cat children. It's Pride Month and that school seems to be fairly deep into the gender woo. There are several children there for whom I am told to use trans pronouns. The kids will not discuss gender - they are absolutely terrified of being called transphobic.

It was updated to add a link on "gender separation". There's no legal concept underpinning that. It's still non-statutory guidance. And the EHRC's is "under review"

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/technical-guidance-schools-england

Nice try but no

As always, Noblegiraffe, the language is so vague it could be interpreted in all sorts of ways.

Which is why headteachers and schools have been begging the DfE for the long-overdue specific trans guidance for schools.

I think that it's pretty clear that the assumption is that children can be trans, that they can transition and that this should be supported. I mean, that's the view of the NHS, they've got services for transgender children, have been diagnosing, prescribing puberty blockers and they're the medical experts.

Expecting schools to look at the Equality Act, look at the NHS information pages, look at the government recommended links and the statutory guidance that says schools must teach about gender identity and then say 'actually we're not going to do that' would certainly suggest the school was in breach of the Equality Act.

That's why the government trans input recently has not been around whether schools should transition kids at all, but about whether their parents should be informed or required to give permission. The Cass review, I believe, said that it should be with medical advice, not that it shouldn't happen.

I found this article quite interesting bylinetimes.com/2023/06/20/fake-cats-and-the-legitimisation-of-hate/

This came up in the staffroom today. Most of the teachers don't seem to have thought about the whole trans thing at all, which amazes me considering how many trans kids we have in school, and how many of them are ASD/ on child protection register

Nice try at what? Why are you linking to different guidance?

Nice try at attempting to put forward something that has legal weight. Obviously.

What, the Equality Act?

Wait till a clever kid finds the next loophole - transhuman.
"I'm a trans AI, miss" and just chatGPT's everything they say or write.
Gotta be one who'll try it. If this nonsense was infesting my kids school, and they were getting in trouble like this, for "disrespecting" identities, from idiot teachers, I'd advise them to do it.

You posted DfE guidance from 2014 which is non-statutory. It was an attempt to mislead people into thinking that transitioning had to be facilitated by schools.

Not only does it not, but there's evidence to show that doing so is harmful to children, especially those with trauma and abuse in their backgrounds, and those with autism.

The youngest one can apply for a GRC is 18, therefore exactly how far that non-statutory document applies to the broad age range of 4-18yos (seemingly relying on GIRES and Cornwall local guidance) in schools is questionable.

It makes claims like "Pupils undergoing gender reassignment should be allowed to attend the single sex class that accords with the gender role in which they identify." Again, that's questionable. Single sex exemptions apply.

Obviously if there's been a decision from the government that the document you link is actually what's right, then we shall see that in due course.

LGBT+Cat

Things I learnt at school and in education (and in the years since):

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

And

How much do you know or understand about the "just following orders" defence? One that doesn't stand up in court I might add.

Psychological research has found that people will knowingly and willingly inflict harm on others if they can psychologically disassociate using the concept of the "just following orders" defence.

I find it depressing the sheer lack of teachers who fail to understand these concepts and the importance of them.

You posted DfE guidance from 2014 which is non-statutory. It was an attempt to mislead people into thinking that transitioning had to be facilitated by schools.

It states that the Equality Act regarding the protected characteristic of gender reassignment applies to pupils. Have you got anything that shows that it doesn't?

The youngest one can apply for a GRC is 18, therefore exactly how far that non-statutory document applies to the broad age range of 4-18yos

You don't need a GRC to acquire the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, which, as is clear here, applies to children too.

Incidentally, if you're set on statutory guidance, the statutory government guidance for RSE says that pupils must be taught about gender identity, and it also refers readers to the Equality Act advice document that I linked to, so they do not consider it out of date. The RSE statutory guidance was written in 2021.

Stick to it if you want, let's see what remains in due course. Especially after Cass reports, and the public learn the true scale of what's been going on.

The 2021 document goes nowhere near as far as the 2014 one as regards gender reassignment. Almost like some light was shed, questions asked, and pressure put on politicians to evidence their decisions in the intervening years...

The 2021 document is about RSE teaching, the 2014 one is about schools' duties regarding the Equality Act. Why do you think they should be about the same thing, particularly when the later one refers you to the earlier one?

Stick to it if you want

Eh? A previous poster asked why schools were transing pupils, and my response was everything from the government up till now has suggested that this is reasonable, and even the new guidance appears to say that kids transitioning in schools is ok with parental approval.

I know what they're about. I know you switched topic through changing the documents pointed to.

The 2021 document does not "appear to say that kids transitioning in schools is ok with parental approval", does it? Isn't it about what to teach, rather than how to handle purported trans-identified minors?

What?

I pointed out that the statutory document says that schools must teach gender identity to children. It also refers to the Equality Act document that you said was out of date, meaning that the DfE, in 2021 did not consider it out of date even though you claimed it had expired.

The 2021 document does not "appear to say that kids transitioning in schools is ok with parental approval", does it?

No, that's what is being reported as being the as yet unreleased brand new guidance for schools.