https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/12/27/transgender-school-education-gender-recognition-terf/
Full article;
‘Terf island’ took on trans ideology in schools – and won.
Schools guidance on trans-identified pupils is a significant step forward. But the campaign isn't over yet
Five years after having promised it, and following months of internal struggle over wording, the UK Government published guidance this week for teachers on how to approach pupils who seek to change their gender in schools.
The general principles that frame the UK schools guidance are broadly sensible in their acknowledgement of the need to balance safeguarding, pupil welfare, and biological reality. The document emphasises that safeguarding is a statutory duty for all schools, and that bullying should never be tolerated. But safeguarding does not extend to compelled lies about sex, or withholding information from parents. The document emphasises that parents must not be excluded from decisions about their children, that schools have specific duties related to children’s biological sex, and that there is no general duty to permit “social transition”.
The trans activist lobby group Stonewall promptly denounced the guidance as “legally unworkable” and “contrary to existing equality law”. From the biology-denialist perspective, the mere fact that the guidance is premised on the reality and developmental importance of sex dimorphism makes it “not fit for purpose”. Sex-realist campaign group Sex Matters, on the other hand, cautiously welcomed the document, calling it “imperfect” but nonetheless a “global standard for uprooting trans ideology from schools”.
The guidance has been criticised, including by the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, for leaving too much to the discretion of schools. Legislation will be needed, she declared, to prohibit “social transition” unambiguously in a school environment. Even so, as both a sex-realist feminist and a mother, the guidance seems to me a significant positive step forward. Though there are evident loopholes that will doubtless be exploited by trans-activist school leadership, the document affords schools and parents alike measured grounds for resisting the institutionalisation of gender ideology in education. I will be making good use of it as an engaged parent.
And for all its weaknesses, by American standards the British schools guidance on gender is a beacon of sanity. In states such as California where gender ideology dominates, schools are obliged by law to propagate gender ideology in teaching materials and school policies. Recently, one California school suspended a pupil for five days for refusing to lie about a fellow-pupil’s sex. California also broadly prioritises gender ideology over parents’ rights: Sen. Newsom recently passed a “sanctuary state” bill granting authorities “temporary emergency jurisdiction” of any minor over 12 seeking “gender-affirming care” against his or her parents’ wishes.
America is already a global outlier on gender ideology. But it is striking to see the USA and UK now diverging so markedly, on a question so fundamental as whether inner identity takes precedence over material reality. Will the British or the American vision prevail? Much depends on the outcome of the 2024 election cycle: the Biden White House centered gender ideology in policy-making, but published policy proposals suggest an incoming Republican administration would seek to re-ground US domestic and foreign policy in biological reality.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the guidance remains in draft form. It will doubtless be the subject of intense campaigning for the next few months by gender ideology activists and sex realists alike. And polls suggest its sex-realist Conservative Party champions face wipeout at the next election. Those with gender critical views are right to welcome this document as a long-awaited step forward; but also to acknowledge that this is only the latest skirmish in a battle with no immediate prospect of definitive victory.