Young voices - some not allowed

[arethereanyleftatall]

My 15yo DD was invited by her school to go to a 'young voices' event. An event for children to share and discuss their views on a wide range of topics.
She was one of 8 from her school, many other schools attended with same numbers. Hundreds of pupils. She said there were many children their with pride pins etc on display.
She is gender critical and believes sex matters.
Basically her views were not allowed. She was shouted over by other pupils in the discussions and organisers did nothing.
They all had to write on a post it who their inspiration was, and pin in to a board. She put JKR. The board was being manned by the organisers. When she came back to the board her post it has been removed and placed on a 'hate' board alongside terrorist organisations etc.
She absolutely hated the day, said it wasn't 'young voices' at all, but 'young voices as long as you agree with us.'
She is petrified of being expelled/suspended/told off because of her views.

Any advice please on what to do?

Part of the reason that sport is good for young people is that it teaches them how to take defeat. Do you crumble? Or do you go again, but better prepared?

This could be a fantastic (if painful) learning experience on how to handle organisations, how to handle a meeting, how to handle your 'boss' (the school SLT), etc.
Teenagerhood can be horrible. You're no longer a child but you're not yet a fully functioning adult. It's a whole new way of being.
I suggest that OP's DD tries to get past the childhood reaction (distraught, broken) and tries to find the adult reaction (using the rules and regulations to her advantage). Don't wait for them to find fault or pass judgement; put your complaint in first, as outlined above. If she starts to take control of the situation then she will feel better.

Meanwhile, look up some Maya Angelou quotations.

I had a look around the British Youth Council website that nauticant posted. Their 'Complaints' button doesn't work. But their 'Press' one does. How telling.

Hi OP's DD - you are awesome. Well done for having a brain and using it.

If any of your teachers were there, now you know which ones you can't trust to be impartial and allow critical thought.

JKR is amazing, she's done so much for charity and women and girls.

Your belief in science and facts is legally protected. This was bullying and you were bullied at this event. Stand tall, you've done nothing wrong.

I can imagine these type of things are popular with activist type students, who as we know are not always the best at debate and discussion. Shouting over people to ‘shut them up’ is quite often all they have. Well done to your daughter for standing up and saying her piece. It takes courage to do this.

There are so many good comments here, on how to complain and exactly what about.

How awful for your daughter to have been subjected to group bullying by adults. She's definitely courageous to have stood up to it. Good for her.

A horrible experience for your DD but good for her for speaking up.

This.

First of all your daughter sounds like an admirable, brave, and clear thinking young woman. She has my full respect. She may recognise this quote:

"It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends."

Secondly, raise hell.

This is outrageous bullying. It needs to be investigated. Your school should be supportive and responsive in looking into the matter. Tonight, I would sit with your DD and help her to write down everything that happened in as much detail as possible. If there were others there that can corroborate, make a note. Also write down how she feels. Because that matters.

Thirdly, if you don't get joy via the school, then there are many options to pursue. Councillors, MP, media. Lots of people and organisations that will be happy to help and advise. The Free Speech Union is another one. This route may not be easy, though, so I'd caution you and your daughter to consider carefully.

The first and most important thing is to let your daughter know she is supported and safe. I'm so sorry this has happened - it's an unfortunate symptom of an ideology that can't work without on coercion, threat, abuse and manipulation. Your daughter has been a victim of authoritarianism. It makes me so angry that a child could be treated so badly.

Complaints policy here:

https://www.byc.org.uk/about-us/our-vision-mission-and-values

They had a “hate” board? That alone is a concern. What a strange thing. I’d query this with the school as presumably the teachers organised entry etc.
ask school to ask young voices

Part of the reason that sport is good for young people is that it teaches them how to take defeat. Do you crumble? Or do you go again, but better prepared?

But sport is about competition, consistent training, hard work, sometimes teamwork, dedication. The defeat is about just losing in a fair contest. Or so it ought to be. Sport is not about being demonised for your opinions, shouted over, depicted as evil, and being harassed by your teammates.

Yes. While it's good to teach our children resilience, courage and how to argue their position, this sounds far beyond something that any child should have to deal with using only grit and guts. This sounds like institutionalised bullying and victimisation. Serious. Very wrong. OP's DD will need support and help to navigate it.

It is NOT hate.

On the other hand, the way they treated her is. Or at least I struggle to see how you'd put up a defence to say it wasn't.

(At least in a sane world, with sensible universal definitions of words. I guess in practice "hate" tends to mean "blasphemy against a special person's beliefs" these days, so doesn't apply to non-special people?)

One last point, OP:

She is petrified of being expelled/suspended/told off because of her views.

Should this happen, your daughter would be supported by a rather large number of furious women, who can and have funded many court cases. There are specialist lawyers who would LOVE the chance to take this court. Every similar court case so far has resulted in a win for 'gc' women. Yes, women have been bullied, harassed, intimidated and lost their jobs for expressing their 'gc' views.

These are protected views and nobody can discriminate against her for holding or expressing them.

She can look into:

Jo Phoenix, Maya Forstater, Rachel Meade, Denise Fahmy for examples.

This is what tribalism does. People who think they’re being kind are outsourcing their critical thinking to others. They’ve heard from trusted voices that JKR is hateful. No need to find the evidence for themselves; lots of people have said it, so it must be true. These people need to grow the hell up and do some research.

My sympathies to the OP’s amazing and intelligent daughter.

Has she considered a career in journalism?!

Just wanted to add another voice telling your daughter she's brilliant and was treated terribly. Please tell her she's not alone x

Yes. Your daughter is wonderful. That takes a lot of courage.

And if this Youth Voices was publicly funded I would report them.

Add my voice to the growing list of people appreciating what your super-strong DD did. She was really brave and very badly treated.

It's about transferable skills e.g. resilience. Or learning that if it is not a 'fair contest' then there are ways to appeal. And you do get 'demonised' in sport - never heard of sledging?

Meanwhile
I think that we need to add, OP, that your DD doesn't need to fight this fight if she doesn't want to. Sometimes you find that things that are sold as "fantastic opportunities" are not actually so. We don't know if your DD is Y10 or Y11. If Y11 and I was the parent, I'd tell them to direct their efforts to something more useful (GCSEs!) rather than taking on some random Government initiative.

From their website:
"BYC is committed to providing a high quality of service. We acknowledge that
we may not always get it right, and when this happens, would like to know what
has gone wrong so that we can sort out the situation as quickly as possible and
try to ensure that it does not happen again"

Critical thinking is positively discouraged these days, I find. We are pretty much sleep walking into totalitarianism. I'd love to be able to say that I'm being a tad over-dramatic for effect, but the sadly I don't think I can say that.

Your daughter is amazing. It's hard to express less popular opinions so very brave if her. I find it shocking that this event was managed in this way. Reminds me of the methods used for Hitler youth where dissenting views were squashed.

I think that we need to add, OP, that your DD doesn't need to fight this fight if she doesn't want to.

I agree, that's an important point to make. If she wants to, she should be supported, but she may also want to save her energy.

Your daughter sounds awesome and incredibly brave…and right

Yes. It's up to adults to insist that organisations abide by the law and operate free from intimidation and bullying. We mustn't devolve this to children - just as we don't delegate the responsibility to safeguard children to children
The school needs to pick up a number of issues:

The open bullying
The failure of the organisers to step in and insist on an atmosphere of mutual respect for different views
The lack of understanding on the part of organisers of the law in relation to free speech
The lack of political impartiality

plus numerous other issues.

Reminds me of the methods used for Hitler youth where dissenting views were squashed.

What I'm left wondering is what people think all the "anti-hate" campaigns were for.

Do they have any inkling on why behaviours are good or bad at all? Or what the general principles are?

All they seem to be grasping is that you can't be mean to certain groups any more, but it's as if for them they think that change has occurred only because those groups are now officially Good rather than Bad.

For them it's apparently still fine (indeed necessary) to hate the current Bad people, and "anti-hate" is all about finding new Bad people to hate.