Year 8 trans child - in secret

[WoollyMammoth1]

The recent news article about the trans child at a primary school made me think of sharing a similar story at my DD school, big difference being is that's a secondary school.
DD is in year 8, there's a child in her year that identifies as a girl but is a boy. No one at school, besides staff knows, DD doesn't know either as whilst I feel bad withholding the information, I don't want her to keep this secret at school.

The child has a sibling at the school, who calls him by his girl name. They change in the disabled changing room and use the disabled toilet.

I found out through social media, the parent came up as a possible contact, their profile is open and there were many pictures of her children when younger making it very clear. Absolutely no doubt.

When I first found out, I researched and found there is little I can do. The child's rights seem to trump all others.

DD and the child started building a friendship last year, but this went sour. Which I am glad for considering the circumstances.

My issue here is the deceit and secrecy. Non of the year group know the child is a boy which is such an obvious safeguarding risk, and once they find out they'll feel betrayed. Any friendships are based on a lie. And I feel like I am condoning the situation by not saying anything, esp to DD.

The child lives further from school then most other kids, likely to try and ensure there were no other children at the school that might know them.

It feels wrong to keep things quiet, esp for my daughters, and other girls in her year's sake, so hoping that someone here may have some good ideas in where to go from here.

(Long term Mumsnetter, name changed for this post)

@timetofetgit & @dapsnotplimsolls

The school I worked in had a demand from parents that a 14 year old girl self identifying a boy must share sleeping accommodation with the boys on a residential school trip. The school decided this was unsafe - she was a new student and relationships with other students were unknown. Despite attempts to find a compromise, the parents got an adult trans lobby group to formally threaten the school with legal action. Staff then refused to go on the trip - they weren't prepared to compromise safeguarding - especially of this child. So the trip was cancelled.

There are so many casualties of all this - it's a massive social experiment that's never been carried out before with the potential outcomes for children being frightening. Which is why openness and transparency must happen - look where #nodebate got us.

It's good to see these tricky issues explored. These are discussions we must have in society. How do schools navigate this? How do we ensure all children's rights to privacy and safety from the opposite sex? And how do we create a society where facts, science and truth continue to be valued if we embed falsehoods in our institutions?

I would tell the school that unless they make every parent aware then I will be outing the child to everyone.

Rightly or wrongly all that will achieve is making things difficult for OPs DD. The school are hardly going to send out a round robin about the child being trans based on OPs threats, and the main consequences will be for the child in question and OPs own DD.

The school I worked in had a demand from parents that a 14 year old girl self identifying a boy must share sleeping accommodation with the boys on a residential school trip. The school decided this was unsafe - she was a new student and relationships with other students were unknown. Despite attempts to find a compromise, the parents got an adult trans lobby group to formally threaten the school with legal action. Staff then refused to go on the trip - they weren't prepared to compromise safeguarding - especially of this child. So the trip was cancelled.

This is nuts. The school was acting within the law, and whatever lobby group it was did not have a leg to stand on, legally speaking. The school should have been a bit more robust and told the parents to fuck off.

If the school had allowed a 14 year old girl to share sleeping accommodation with 14 year old boys then they would have been responsible if the girl had been sexually assaulted. It is just insane. What on earth is wrong with parents that they don't even want to protect their own teenage daughter?

If they use third person pronouns for this child they are sharing personal information - it's just a question of whether they're lying as they're doing so.

If they're using wrong sex i.e. gender based pronouns FOR THIS CHILD ALONE, they are lying to the other children.

It's really quite simple. They're redefining English language for one child and not the others, and not telling anyone. Hardly fair and it is lying if pronouns are used.

Also, sex is apparent at the very least from puberty and often sooner.

At which point the other children will know their teachers have been lying for years.

The only way to not share the 'personal information' of sex and/or gender is not to use third person pronouns at all.

Also, if they're using sex-based third person pronouns for all the other children then where's the consent that they're giving for their personal information being outed in this way? If they're keeping it secret for one child, why don't the others get to decide?

This is the core of gender ideology - take social norms (that everyone just can observe sex, and uses this in normal English language e.g. third person pronouns) and turn them on their head, but only for some people so that everyone else either is subordinated or lied to, or both.

It's so toxic.

If it's genuinely the case that the teachers feel to reveal the sex of a child is wrong then they cannot do that for ANY child using third person pronouns or the other children are being treated unfairly. If they genuinely believe in (batshit) gender ideology and are to be consistent, they cannot just assume the other children have a 'cis' gender identity and are happy to be outed as their birth sex the entire time. I guess under their ideology I'm agender (don't believe in gender) so shouldn't have gender based pronouns (not sure what you do in that situation but am happy for my pronouns to be bundle/ bundle).

It's completely illogical and actually society doesn't really function if you try and impose it for everyone fairly- any school that asked every child what their pronouns were would grind to a halt and no learning would take place.

Sorry for multiple posts but to add to this:

There are plenty of personal medical issues where secrecy is not possible e.g. if a child needs a medical device which the other children can see. Or has a condition that is visible.

It is quite unhealthy to model to children that you should keep fairly fundamental facts secret from friends. Friendship requires trust and if you're keeping such a fundamental fact from this child's friends (who will probably guess anyway because they have eyes and ears) you're making it impossible for them to have genuine friendships based on mutual respect and trust.

This idea that sex is a secret I think is fairly anti-safeguarding in itself and actually quite transphobic - if you believe being trans is fine, why would you hide a child's trans status? By doing so you're telling them they're 'wrong' to be trans? That there is something 'wrong' with having a different sex to gender identity?

I feel terribly sorry for any child who is being told they need to lie about who they are - that must be psychological torture.

@anyolddinosaur why do you feel you’d have a right to know that a child at the school has HIV even without knowing who they are? Since the child would be on medication to control the virus what risk do you feel this might pose?

Very much agree about this. My own DC had an invisible condition but one that affected his communication and behaviour and the other children needed to be told about it (in an age appropriate way) so they could know how to interact safely and happily. Technically this is confidential information so the school asked my permission and I agreed because I trusted the school to come down like a ton of bricks on any bullying and I could see it was in everyone's best interest.

If I hadn't agreed to be open to that minimal extent and the school could not manage the children's interactions safely as a result, then they might not have able been to keep my child in school and that would not have been disability discrimination.

If even if I had not agreed, the school would not have pretended my DC did not have this condition and they would not have punished a child just for mentioning it or asking about it.

This is no different.

I suspect that these schools have been mightily misadvised about the law.

btw Have you talked to Safer Schools Alliance? They have a lot of resources on their website including advice on how to talk to schools about safeguarding and some form letters on specific issues like as school trips. Though not specifically dealing with the effects of concealing a child's sex from other children in the class but that's something they'd take an interest in.

And it's worth reading the Safer Schools Alliance Letter to the Crown Prosecution Service about the CPS LGBT Bullying and Hate Crime guidance. The guidance was withdrawn but the letter is still there for reference and it contains relevant points.

It looks as if some schools are still very confused.

It is insane. The letter from the trans group was suitably threatening along with offers to come in to the school to "educate" staff out of our responsibility to safeguard all children. It was breathtaking in its ignorance. The lead member of staff decided they would no longer lead and the school fully supported them. So the trip was cancelled to the detriment of the other children.
It was one of the things that showed me just how the undermining of safeguarding children is embedded in this ideology and how speedily threats of "legal action" (no doubt based on fake Stonewall law) are issued to anyone who challenges anything.

It makes me weep that we've given proponents of this ideology such free access to children and that so many schools have abandoned their critical thinking about all things trans.

OP, if you are not sure about whether this child is a boy or a girl, then don't tell your child. Don't put it on their shoulders that they now have to lie or tell everyone and get caught in the fallout.

Once it comes out, and it will, you can tell your child that you had some information, but not all and that it is not nice to gossip about other people when you are not sure of all the facts.

What you can do, is ask the school what measures they have planned once it does become known. Keep it non specific about which child, but that you have heard rumours and ask them if this is indeed true, how are they going to support ALL children when the truth comes out. Not just the children who will feel betrayed and hurt about their friend lying to them about something so fundamental, but also how to support the trans child, who is probably going to feel mortified, hurt and will be rejected by their peers.

This boy is probably telling loads of kids that he's pretending be a girl, and swearing them all to secrecy. There's no point in being special if nobody knows.
Give your child the gift of free speech, and tell her the truth.

I think this is exactly the right way to go about it.

At that age, there will almost certainly be very young girls who will have spoken to this 'girl' sbout their crushes, periods or giggled about sex. And those girls might have not worried about getting changed in front of that 'girl'.
None of them know that that girl is actually male, no matter how they identify.
Its likely they would behave differently if they knew and would feel very betrayed and violated if they find out.
The whole point of this is that it doesn't just affect the trans child involved.
It means every single young girl who doesn't know can very negatively affected.. It is a massive failure on the part of all the adults to keep this from them.

There seems to be an assumption that the entire school knows something.

It could as easily be that the only information they have been provided with is that the child is female. If they then start demanding that the child undergoes intimate medical examination, they'd be breaking the law and potentially traumatising a female child for not appearing feminine enough - which a previous experience of could result in a kid not wanting to be seen unclothed during PE.

Spite driven gossip without even any facts - including discussing a kid on Mumsnet - could lead to this child and potentially others, (often not white due to internalised prejudices about how female children should look), being bullied and abused.

Fuck's sake.

What if this child is biologically female? And you're proposing sending a threatening message to the school...

Just ask the school what they plan to do in the future, on residentials and in sport including playing at other schools. The obvious red flag - changing in girls' facilities or using girls' loos - is being dealt with, albeit problematic for disabled children, staff or visitors in the future.

I cannot see that telling your daughter will help her if she feels she has to keep an important secret which is hard to do at that age. And it would certainly plunge the trans child into a maelstrom. Even if the child is being persuaded to trans by his parents it's still not on you to precipitate matters.

I think you've quoted the wrong person...

As a person who needs a wheelchair on occasions, but I usually have to manage with just the walker, I can assure you on this subject it's all about the disabled toilet.

What if this child is biologically female? And you're proposing sending a threatening message to the school...

That is why the OP is best off telling the school there is a rumour and see what the school says.

I do have to say I have never seen a parent asking for plans and measures for when something happens, described as a 'threatening message'. Are you sure you used the right words?

Threats are still threats, whether they're couched in terms of 'I was wondering what would happen if there happened to be a child at the school...' or the threat is an open 'We reckon Nana's <insert other unisex name> a boy and we're waiting for you to explain yourselves and give us Nana's personal medical history in case we can just be offended instead of actively outing somebody who might not even be male but we're applying Eurocentric appearance expectations - and causing the child and family as well as the school significant harm'.

Eurocentric appearance expectations?!?!? Are you suggesting women from other parts of the world look like men?

Why did these multiple teen suicides in one county not hit the news? Why do TRAs not link to news articles about them? Seems strange when they'd support their cause so well. Or maybe they never happened...