EHRC response to school consultation

[Justme56]

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/equality-watchdog-advises-government-gender-questioning-children-guidance-schools

Schools are all going to need a lot more funding if they have to provide gender neutral spaces for everything!

Yes. The EHRC response is wholly based on the assumption that a child in gender distress is a transitioner and that's the end of it: their protections require that being baked into the situation in the same way as for an adult.

The issue is that social transition is increasingly being suggested to be harmful and not a neutral response, and the protection of those children's options as long as possible involves keeping them in touch with the reality of their sex. As well as protecting the rights and equalities of everyone else.

The EHRC response is wholly based on the assumption that a child in gender distress is a transitioner and that's the end of it

If DfE and GEO are doing their jobs, they'll be looking at this kind of point. They should be balancing everything. The Equality Act isn't the be all and end all. Authorities do not have to do anything as a result of it, they have to consider it and then justify why they do or don't do something. It's never been that there's a positive obligation on them to do things.

If the end result looks like this - like they assumed a child in distress must transition / be a transitioner, then they'll have failed to take the entirety of the issues and weight them.

It's bizarre that this response ever exited EHRC's doors.

Okay, EHRC. Now do it for 'catgender'.

A small part of the problem is that the PC of GR doesn't need any diagnosis, so what the parents, child and school want will not necessarily be based on what is in the best interest of the child.

The child may not have even attended a clinic, let alone had enough therapy to be diagnosed and a care plan put in place. What medical guidance are the schools using? Its such a complex issue, every child and every situations will be different.

Trans children in schools should have been a non-starter because its impossible to maintain privacy for the child in question and not lie to other children. Or have their class mates lie to parents.

All the interpretation of human rights law seems quite selective to me.

Not having single sex toilets denies girls the ability to access education which is a human right - but no-one seems to give a tiny fig, despite it affecting 50% of the school population, about that.

Maybe that's the aim? Part of #OperationLetThemSpeak?
The EHRC are stating that children, no matter what their age, must be given the p c of gender reassignment. No arguments.
This clearly evidences that the law's not fit for purpose( to everyone except extreme transactivists). So no need for costly court cases to examine competing rights, the EHRC have now openly stated that for children:
Stuff safeguarding
Stuff age appropriate
Stuff informed consent.
If a child of any age says they're transgender, then they must be treated as such.

The EHRC have handed women and parents this on a plate - in writing.

The EA & the GRA pose a danger to children. Their response couldn't be more clear.

Well that is just depressing.... it had been a good week up until I read that..

Urgh.
Haven't read all the comments on the thread yet but placemarking to come back and do so.
I did see a couple that said this points to a change in the law being needed. Very much. The PC of gender reassignment should very clearly apply to nobody under 18.
Either this is an activist response or it highlights just how inappropriate the law currently is.

Its bonkers trying to shoehorn EqA that is based on adult access to services and employment onto school and school children. We have the childrens and education acts for a reason.

If it's difficult for certain children to access education, the education act needs amending. The education system and child safeguarding should not be upended to fit in with the EqA. Its arse about face.

and it doesn't account for the points raised by Dr Hilary Cass, especially that social transition is not a neutral act..

I mean why every single child in a secondary school couldn't just claim they're trans if it's entirely based on self declaration, I don't know. I'm sure every girl has kicked a football at some point and every boy has done something that in the most rigid and regressive of sex-based stereotypes is associated with being a girl.

You don't have to do anything, there's no objective measurement of what that means, you just say 'magic trans' and that's it, the school has to bend over backwards to do what you want? If kids weren't so scared and bullied by the adults, they would do this. It'd be the Spanish Army men but just in schools - but kids don't have the confidence of military men - sorry ladies.

Social transitioning is not a neutral act, as Cass said. I am so disappointed in the EHRC that they have not recognised that a human right of children is SAFEGUARDING.

It’s awful. Does it change things?

I really hope not

Marriage is covered by EQAct, but children aren't allowed to get married. Bringing the rights of the child into this without stressing importance of safeguarding makes a mockery of everything.

And back to the ability to access education as a human right point - mixed sex toilets undoubtedly make girls stay at home during their period (and probably just in general too but definitely during their period).

You'd think with all the focus on attendance there would be a huge research study into the effect of mixed sex (even if by stealth) toilets on girls attendance and ability to access education?

No?

One of the things covered by TT was the fact that social transition and indeed all this discussion of children having identified into the PC of gender reassignment is 'adultification' which used to be considered abusive.

Disappointing that the EHRC would do something that is so harmful to children - adultifying gender questioning children.

Safeguarding failure by EHRC.

Children are restricted on where and the hours they can work, too. Age discrimination makes no sense in a school setting.

Gender Reassignment is "proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex." How can a child meaningfully propose to reassign their sex at some point in the future?

I agree that there is a lot of adultification in how this is handled.

We are letting children diagnose themselves, and, in many cases, giving children lots of power to influence how they are treating in school. Both by teachers and other children.

We are also expecting other children understand the concept of GR and laws.

How can a child meaningfully propose to reassign their sex at some point in the future?

And what about the many children with additional unmet needs - Autism, mental health needs, trauma, all identified as so high in this cohort - who may be gender distressed but not actually in the long term persist with this? The whole point is, as with the NHS decision on puberty blockers, about support and care for the whole child, not just the gender pathway, and ensuring safety and options preserved.

The EHRC appear to have missed the entire point of this consultation. What they suggest has been tried and hasn't worked. Is their point that it cannot work within the context of the mess of law that's been created? Or that their political preference would be for it continuing not to work for children or schools but remain in keeping with ideology?

Exactly. They aren’t allowed to vote or drink alcohol. But they are allowed to take puberty blockers that have been proven to cause permanent damage to their bodies. It’s reckless.

Yes and the WPATH files included children WITH CANCER likely as a result of the drugs they were on. Insane.

Now it's considered not in the best interests of the child to take puberty blockers and the NHS won't prescribe them, I don't see how they can meaningfully meet this criterion any more.

And if they did it would be a safeguarding concern - it appears taking puberty blockers is not safe.

I'm beginning to get a bit pissed off that people paid for by the public purse - such as whoever wrote this piss poor EHRC response - seem to be entirely ignorant of safeguarding and safeguarding law that protects children.

It's shocking that MNetters run rings about these people - who should, if they're going to write about children in schools, at the very least have a TINY TINY grasp of what safeguarding is.

I'm sure it must fail the public service duties. Being totally ignorant of something entirely relevant?

It's like someone commenting about airplane design who knows nothing about aeronautics.

This response is actually so odd, I even wonder if it's not an act of sabotage. Is it truly their final response they sent to the government? It hasn't been retweeted by the EHRCChair account or Baroness Falkner's own account (the latter much less active, the former does show EHRC retweets).

I suppose it's slightly possible that one /some of the extreme transactivists who've been lodging in the EHRC have gone rogue and sent this out but it's hard to believe. These things are highly regulated before they're released.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this is deliberate. It focuses solely on equality law and is released with these tone deaf comments to demonstrate (as TT points out) that Equality law actually disadvantages children as it was written deliberately to exclude their needs.

All part of blowing this apart. The NHS stops PBs. The instructions to stop weaponising suicide - nobody in government ever criticises transactivists for anything. The EHRC highlight how anti safeguarding children our Equality law is.
Wonder what will happen tomorrow - if I'm right 😃