Teacher struck for posting online 'Where I teach the trans kids are untouchable'

[IwantToRetire]

A teacher has been struck off after ridiculing her school's gender identity policy and posting transphobic comments online.

Camilla Hannan, 54, posted offensive remarks including 'where I teach the trans kids are untouchable' while working at the school in Manchester.

The teacher, who had been employed at the school since 2001, also wrote of trans students: 'They get everything they ask for and everyone, staff and other students alike, is petrified of upsetting them. They don't seem oppressed to me more like oppressors tbh.'

Hannan admitted all the allegations against her and accepted they amounted to unacceptable professional conduct.

A Teaching Regulation Agency misconduct hearing said the behaviour demonstrated a lack of tolerance and respect for the rights and beliefs of others.

More at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13988139/Teacher-struck-school-gender-identity-trans.html

A friend of mine moved her daughter from one of the All Girls schools in Trafford.

One of the reasons she cited was that it was all Trans Stuff constantly. There were other reasons relating to other children in the family but she commented on it without being aware of how I feel about the subject at all. (We've since had conversations).

So yeah, I wouldn't say I would be surprised if it was a girls school.

Interesting to read the TRA report (I note the irony of the three-letter abbreviation for the Teaching Regulation Agency), as I wasn't sure whether she had posted anonymously or not:

"The panel noted that it was not initially clear from the name used for the social media account whether or not this account belonged to Miss Hannan. The panel also noted that these posts had been drawn to the School’s attention by a whistleblower from another school, who had been able to recognise that the posts were made by Miss Hannan as a result of an older and un-related post which revealed her surname."

A better word for "whistleblower" might be "ideologically motivated activist maliciously trying to get a good teacher sacked from her job".

Obviously Hannan was taking a big risk posting that kind of content online, though as it seems no one had realised who she was, or what school she worked at, until someone deliberately decided to out her, then the harm done was minimal to non-existent. I'm not defending her, because I think teachers should be very very careful about what they post online, but let's face it, she was raising very legitimate concerns in those posts.

This. I dont know how old she was but given she was teaching there for 23 years, perhaps she has reached the end of her tether in teaching and with the landscape she is now in in schools, thought she had nothing to lose anymore, didnt want to stay, didnt want to defend herself, accepted the allegations against her, thought 'ok then' and off she goes to a nice little job in B+Q or something.

Notwithstanding anything genuinely offensive that she said, 'misgendering' isnt really a thing, its an invented thing.

There is a duty to report any breach of safeguarding, which includes breaching social media policy. Would you prefer people to turn a blind eye when a teacher posts a pupil's name on social media?

If a student changed their surname from their father's to their mother's, for their own personal reasons, and a teacher refused to use the new surname as they felt strongly that all children should have their father's surname - do you think that would be ok?

We can all have our opinions, but it's basic manners to refer to a person in the way they wish. Genuine mistakes are one thing, but making an effort to use an incorrect name, pronouns etc is just plain rude and not in line with how professionals are expected to behave at work.

Exactly. It can't have been anonymous if she was identified.

There is a duty to report any breach of safeguarding, which includes breaching social media policy. Would you prefer people to turn a blind eye when a teacher posts a pupil's name on social media?

In my view the school was engaged in a huge safeguarding breach by socially transitioning its pupils, which as Cass has told us, is not a neutral act.

What interests me most is that while some people aren't bothered by using cross sex pronouns, for others it feels like lying, like having to profess faith in a god they don't believe in. There's also a question of whether a person thinks it is harmful to either use cross sex pronouns or to not use them when requested (i.e. so-called misgendering).

I've never had a job where I felt forced to pretend something was real. I don't know what the psychological effect would be on me.

I think an earlier poster summed it up for me by saying the system has to change to be able to accommodate people with differing beliefs in a way which can be said to be supportive of both.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Thats a name, not some made up bit of someones personality

The concept of gender is bad enough, its sex stereotyping and hugely regressive but it is just part your personality and interests, nothing more, nothing less. You can call it 'gender' if you want. Its no more important than my stamp collecting identity, there goes Stampy Soupy.

Your pronouns relate to your sex, nothing more, nothing less

@CuriousAlien

"I've never had a job where I felt forced to pretend something was real. I don't know what the psychological effect would be on me."

Seriously? You've never had to go along with transparently fictional corporate bullshit just for an easy life? I have absolutely no problem using "preferred pronouns" (I work for a US multinational so it's rife) despite thinking it's contemptible bollocks. No different to enthusiastically professing my belief in the latest corporate vision statement or the revenue projections that can only be explained by our CFO actually being Super Hans from Peep Show.

I wonder if they will grow up to be unemployable if they assume all their needs will always be met regardless.

@WhosPink nope never. Maybe that's why I didn't take that route. I can't even pretend Father Christmas is real. I don't have a problem with other people doing it though.

So because you have no issue going along with a lie you think others should be fine with it? Many people can’t even bear working within a corporate environment because they can’t be doing with all the bullshit. Schools shouldn’t be places were we compel the speech of teachers and students simply because the current fad for 11 year olds is pretending they are neither male nor female or one of 101 gender identities. It’s absurd this has gone so far and whilst this woman clearly stepped across the line by outing a child online her criticism of trans ideology isn’t something that should be considered as breaking professional standards and as far as “misgendering” goes I think the jury is still out. Personally I think it will transpire that compelled speech is by far the greater problem.

What interests me most is that while some people aren't bothered by using cross sex pronouns, for others it feels like lying, like having to profess faith in a god they don't believe in. There's also a question of whether a person thinks it is harmful to either use cross sex pronouns or to not use them when requested (i.e. so-called misgendering).

I agree with this. When people say that using preferred pronouns is all about "politeness" it ignores the fact that for many of us the internal taboo against lying is stronger than the internal taboo against being impolite. Or as the late Magdalen Burns memorably put it, "I'd rather be rude than a fucking liar."

This is a false equivalency. Corporate bullshit (eg. cynically exploited statistics; empty rhetoric; manipulative marketing) is NOT the same as a systematic denial of the sex binary in humans.

I'd struggle with the corporate bullshit - indeed, I've fought similar in my own workplaces, to my own limited ability.

But my frustration with even the very worst of that pales into insignificance with being pressured to use language that implicitly - explicitly, even - seeks to deny

1. physical reality

2. that women are materially definable as a class of human being […] women (as adult female humans) are culturally, legislatively and politically important, with their own sets of needs, rights and concerns […] women have a right to meet and discuss freely that which affects their lives profoundly. (Victoria Smith)

and

3. that social transition "is not a neutral act, and better information is needed about outcomes" (Cass Interim Review)

This isn't just asking me to compromise my ethical values in a limited professional context in the service of big business. It's demanding that I support a wholesale restructuring of society that I believe is making women and children less safe (safe, that is, in the old-fashioned, physical, sense - as well as the more recent "emotional" application).

NB. None of this is to comment on, or defend, the teacher in question - I've not followed this story, although it sounds from the summaries in this thread as if she was utterly unprofessional in her social media use. It's also not to say there aren't any circumstances in which using preferred pronouns would be appropriate, or that I support proactive misgendering on a point of principle. It's just to say that the analogy above just doesn't work - the issues surrounding pronoun use are worlds away.

I think we all know how to google...

Altrincham Grammar for Girls was so riddled with it a few years back that they actually told the staff to stop referring to the class collectively as ‘girls’! That was one of my first ‘hold on a minute, why are there suddenly so many teen girls coming out as trans?’ moments.

I hear from a current Alty Girls pupil that there has been a massive demographic shift and the majority of the girls in the lower school are now of SE Asian and E Asian heritage, which may well mean a lot less focus on Tumblr style Identity politics!

Two wrongs don't make a right.

No, but by punishing the lesser crime and not the greater, you allow the greater crime to continue unchecked. II think all the teachers, and particularly the head, who engaged in this appalling ideological manipulation of children should be sacked, and some should be in prison.

Children aren’t allowed to change surname unless all parties with parental responsibility agree. A teacher’s opinion is neither here nor there because it’s written into law.

Yet some schools have changed children’s first names on school records without even informing the parents, who inevitably find out at parents evening when a teacher is blithely using an unrecognised name or when the parent signs in to top up a dinner money account.

(FWIW IMO the tweeting about a pupil using recognisable info was and is totally unacceptable but if schools hadn’t spent 10 years following Stonewall ‘Law’ and the government had enough balls to issue statutory guidance there would be no need for teachers to tweet about any of this anyway!)

Personally I have no problem calling adults by a name typically associated with the opposite sex because it doesn’t mean anything (eg Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson) but teenagers who name themselves after objects or anime characters are unlikely to benefit from having their fashion fads facilitated by the school.

In my 80s high school there was a brief fashion for changing the spelling of one’s name - sticking a Y in the middle of Jane or adding an extra L to Nicola.

In hindsight it was a bit of a tragedeigh.

This isn’t the girls’ school in Manchester that has been forced to admit a male pupil, but there is one. Or there was a few years ago, I’d guess that there are several now. I’ve heard parents of girls at all the highest rated single sex schools say that gender identity issues are absolutely rife.

nm

Basically the school proved the teacher right. Trans ARE untouchable. If you're trans, its a free for all, no one else has any rights, only trans. Where was the respect for the teacher's beliefs?

It wasn't Alty Grammar. Though I have heard that about it too.

I've heard a lot about the massive demographic shift affecting Alty Boys (I have a boy) too, so I'm not surprised to hear similar for the girls tbh. Apparently it's very cliquey along race lines and the kids don't mix well, partly due to language differences and partly due to parenting style as well as other cultural issues and I've heard it's causing its a range of different problems. It can't be blamed on immigration either imho - it's very much a domestic related issue too for various reasons.

The trans stuff certainly not going to help these cross cultural friendship patterns. I can imagine white middle class pro-trans liberal families very much being at odds with what's going on and there being a significant battle going on to try and enforce gender ideology against a rising tide of resistance.

Having said that, I don't think it's restricted to the Alty Grammars by any means. I do think that the snobbery and racism is being particularly noted with the two Alty schools as there's resentment that particularly well off white kids who, just a couple of years ago would have easily got in, just aren't. It was taken for granted that they'd get a space. And these parents are vocal.

The level of competition has simply shot up and the entry requirements have gone up considerably and it's difficult to really explain this adequately if you aren't familiar with the area.

For those who aren't: The whole school system in Trafford is creaking under this wave of immigration from Hong Kong and a spike in the birth rate. There's a complete lack of spaces everywhere. Primaries and secondaries and private, comp and grammar. Trafford was actively marketed in Hong Kong as the best place to relocate - for cost and quality of living and having the best schools - and the majority of the HK migration have aimed for the area as a result. I know Hong Kong brokers were buying housing unseen at silly prices at one point a couple of years ago (though it has since settled). It would be more of a shock if this wasn't affecting Alty Grammar considerably tbh. My experience of HK parents has been that they have been exceptionally pushy in terms of educational expectations. (This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I'd argue a lot of the other parents in my son's year group have a terrible attitude. Some comments in my WhatsApp group have genuinely shocked me).

It's also affecting Cheshire East and Warrington -partly cos there's a massive overspill due to lack of Trafford spaces and kids not making the Grammar school grade and partly due to house prices in Trafford and parents trying to still get into the grammars/private schools from our of catchment. I know of kids going to 'lesser primary schools' (which aren't bad schools by any stretch of the imagination) whilst parents desperately hope to get a space elsewhere at a more desirable school via waiting lists.

It's a complicated mix of factors going on. But yes I do think it will have an impact on how favourably being trans is seen and treated by kids and staff.