Excellent article from Miriam Cates MP on the forthcoming schools guidance

[LurkingInTheAtrium]

"The need for guidance is indisputable, but anything other than a total ban on schools socially transitioning children will exacerbate these tensions. Not only is a ban the right ethical solution, it is also the only way to protect head teachers from being forced to make high stakes decisions for which they are unqualified."

Hear hear!

https://thecritic.co.uk/saying-no-to-school-transition/

Great article. Very clear about the risks to all children of this social experiment on children.

Psychological interventions should only be made by qualified clinicians, and then only when there is good evidence that the intervention will be beneficial. This is particularly the case when so many of the children presenting with gender distress are autistic, same-sex attracteded, or suffering from mental health conditions in addition to dysphoria. There is no clinical evidence that social transition improves the mental health of gender distressed children and studies suggest 80% of children with these feelings grow out of themem. There is no way of knowing which children may emerge as the other 20% so it’s hard to see how transitioning any child can be justified. Social transistion ia therefore an experimental intervention and we do not allow experiments on children except by qualified clinicians within the strict regulations of scientific studies. Obviously schools do not meet these requirements.

This is such an important point.

Hopefully with the new GIDS guidance moving away from the affirmation model (which essentially allows for self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria by the children themselves), the government will see fit to let sensible medical practitioners lead the way instead of letting children do it.

And of course, as the article mentions, it's not just about the psychological impact of social transition on the child in question, but about the impact of the children around them who must facilitate that social transition for that child (as the very nature of social transition is that it necessarily relies on everyone else's compliance).

It's no good for a child psychologist to say "yes, it's in Johnny's best interests to be known as Jane" if it's actually to the psychological detriment of the other 32 kids in the class.

Miriam should be the Education Secretary. Something would get done then. If you think 'men in prisons' galvanised Scottish voters against SNP/Green genderwoo, then I think parents across the UK are going to be very angry about children identifying as cats etc. It is so ridiculous, it is hard to believe.
All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good men/women to do nothing.
It seems this is what has happened in the name of 'equality, diversity and inclusion'.
I think an overdue backlash is coming but electing Starmer won't help any.

'men in women's prisons'

I think parents across the UK are going to be very angry about children identifying as cats etc

Honestly, I suspect many trans people are probably pretty insulted about the conflation of their gender dysphoria struggles with children rolling around on the floor pretending to be cats too.

But it is the Stonewall 'lobby group experts' who have gone into schools and claimed there are 72+ different genders from which children can choose. As happened in the CBeebies kids video.

I don’t care that Miriam is a Tory MP; she’s spectacular on this issue. It’s excellent that she’s speaking out so clearly.

There are people who are pissed off about having to call a boy a girl, and vice versa. They don’t want to be coerced into going along with other people’s delusions.

Looking below the line under press articles - parents are incandescent in a way I've not seen before. And of course have been asking their children and discovering (to their horror) that yes there is a species identifying child at the school who the adults are pandering to.

The parent of a child in an independent Norfolk school described on another thread how a 16 year old who has adopted the name Kitten is allowed to behave : "She wears a tail, ears, a collar and lead and drinks out of a bowl rather than a water bottle, which she did at the welcome evening for new pupils to meet current pupils recently"

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4831826-heads-should-stop-teachers-allowing-children-to-identify-as-cats-says-no-10?page=3&reply=127078338

Oh, I know, FrancescaContini, I'm one of them.

I just find those schools' handling of the catgender issue is such a spectacularly revealing admission of "we have no idea what gender is or what it actually means other than what we've been told by political activists, so we're completely clueless as to what we're even trying to achieve here".

I also think it will bring the division between newfangled gender ideology and old-school transsexualism to the forefront, which I think can sometimes be a helpful distinction.

At long last, someone making it very clear that social transition is not a neutral act. So many people seem to think 'oh what's the harm'. Cates genuinely understands how teenagers work. I'm astounded how many parents think going along with social transition, despite their misgivings, is in their child's best interests. It's really not.

Damn right. A Tory I admire, who'd have thunk it?

Fantastic article. I'd love to share it with my slt but they'd bo doubt dismiss it as 'right wing'.

And that's the issue for many schools - full of authoritarian left types. Automatically dismiss anything by a Tory as right wing.

I'm no fan of the tories - they're as culpable as many lgbt charities in this. But some are speaking out really well on this issue.

That is excellent but there is a problem: she is saying only qualified medical or psychological professionals should be able to say a child should socially transition and school.

Unfortunately she probably hasn’t heard of the new GenderPlus clinics being set up by ex Tavistock people. And perhaps Mermaids would count as professionals too.

Both these would probably readily supply gender-change affirmation prescriptions to school children.

LonginesPrime · Yesterday 14:57

I think parents across the UK are going to be very angry about children identifying as cats etc

Honestly, I suspect many trans people are probably pretty insulted about the conflation of their gender dysphoria struggles with children rolling around on the floor pretending to be cats too.

I think you may be mistaken in separating gender identity and animal identity as coming from different motivations.

The animal identity syndrome in a young child or adolescent could well also be associated with autism, or a fear of growing up. (Autistic people are often able to feel great affinity with animals).

It is no more possible for a child to be the opposite sex than it is for them to be an animal.

They could adapt an opposite-to-sex gender role, or, with greater difficulty, an alternative-to-human animal. Both approaches are probably imaginative escapes.