My 14 year old daughter has been sharing school changing rooms, including swimming, with a male. The school never told me, or her. What would you do?

[SernieBanders]

I believe this to be a failure of safeguarding and a risk to every female in the school.

I do not believe the school can give consent in any way, all children are under the age of 16, so they cannot either.

The school in question has adopted the Brighton Trans Inclusion Toolkit which actively encourages males and females to share spaces, including sleeping, without any supervision. They also have unisex toilets.

For the record, I believe all gender questioning children should be given full, dignified support for their schooling. However their needs do not supersede safeguarding and dignity of all female pupils.

What would you do? What legislation, guidance, rules would you quote to them? Straight to governors? The police? What?

@WiddlinDiddlin

A problem with one child needing to be alone for 5-10 min to change is that it needs 3 adults
1 supervising the rest of the class
2 supervising each other and the child.

And it assumes that there's spare changing facilities - that don't have other children's clothes in. And that said child can miss at least 20 minutes of their their lessons every time they've PE. Multiply that by however many gender confused children there are in a class / year group & it's completely unworkable.

I'm sure people who make these suggestions have never been in a school.

There is no need for special arrangements. If he is biologically male he must get changed with the males. End of.

a trans woman who had had the full operations might be different,

I disagree with this. Debbie Hayton is an example of such a person. He is a teacher who has 'had the operations'. He's still male and describes himself as an autogynephile. He has no place in a women's or girls' changing room or toilet.

To the PP who accused the OP of saying "men are the problem", as though this was wrong. I have to let you know that men ARE the problem. As the OP, a caring and intelligent dad, knows.

Also, the "but lesbians" angle is just homophobic nonsense. All women who have ever changed in a communal changing area have most likely changed in front of lesbians. And we don't care a jot.

PS there is no such thing as a "trans child".

Yes. It's always revealing to read the changing room aspects of most of these guidelines. Suggesting that certain children must leave lessons early, use changing rooms before /after others, change in different places etc.
You know that they've been written by those steeped in trans ideology / queer theory and never by anyone with a knowledge of basic principles of safeguarding children, managing groups, curriculum entitlement, health and safety in schools.

That's why we're in this mess - because we've allowed adults (some of them deeply unsuitable in safeguarding terms) to weigh in on the school curriculum, pastoral care and the organisation of schools. The fact that educators have been too frightened for their careers (just as in the NHS, civil service, law etc) to challenge what is evidently unsuitable and sometimes downright dangerous says a lot about the immense power these queer theorists have been able to lever for themselves.

I think if this happened at my school I would have been asking my mum for a note to get out of swimming. I was bullied by boys in primary school to the point that I had to move school then I went to an all girls secondary. I didn’t have much body confidence at 14 and really disliked changing in front of other girls as it was. Let alone a boy being in there. Lesbians never gave me a moment’s worry and it wouldn’t have bothered me more to change in front of them than any other girl. I didn’t want to change in front of anyone. But a boy in there would have freaked me out. Girls are going through a lot at 14. Their bodies are changing, they can feel very self conscious and need a safe space. I would have much preferred cubical spaces.

Look. Everyone knows men are majority of the problem - let’s not pretend women are completely innocent, even if very small percentage statistically. The issue I had is how OP was presenting his internalised hate against men when he is a man. It’s very unbecoming and raises doubts as to his agenda.

Men should not change with women. This is undisputed. For those transitioning, there should be separate spaces and not having either gender forced to share if it makes them uncomfortable. This is legitimate and a valid concern to raise but as I said, OP is presenting this with an agenda that doesn’t sit well with me. I just can’t figure out what is setting my alarms off.

… “[actual facts are] very unbecoming and raises doubts”

👋

I just asked my teenage son (yes poll of one) and he said he would see them as a boy still. So no not most young people. He said his friends would feel the same .

@Helleofabore - Yesterday 19:35

“Perhaps OP is struggling with their own ‘gender identity’ and is extremely jealous? Who knows. What I do know, OP is batshit insane and needs therapy”

A parent concerned by safeguarding their
daughter in the situation of sharing changing rooms with male children is most certainly not batshit insane. This is remarkable post.

Would you agree with @Helleofabore's comment?

The issue I had is how OP was presenting his internalised hate against men when he is a man. It’s very unbecoming and raises doubts as to his agenda.

but as I said, OP is presenting this with an agenda that doesn’t sit well with me. I just can’t figure out what is setting my alarms off.

How is objecting to a school placing a male 14 year old boy in a room with 14 year old girls internalised hate against men?

Do you mean by unbecoming?

Google says
unbecoming
(of behaviour) not fitting or appropriate; unseemly.
"it was unbecoming for a university to do anything so crass as advertising its wares"

So

"it was unbecoming for the OP to do anything so crass as objecting to a school placing a male 14 year old boy in a room with 14 year old girls"

What am I missing?
What alarm bell is ringing?

As a number of your posts have been deleted it's hard to know what's setting off your spidey senses.
But attacking those raising the alarm is a common tactic used to silence women and `I see no reason not to assume the same tactic can be used against men seeking to safeguard children or promote women's rights.

It's not about the specific danger posed by the specific child in this class - I'm sure the kid in question is perfectly harmless. The issue here is teaching girls that their boundaries don't matter, that their privacy, dignity etc comes second to someone else's validation. Don't question the male-bodied classmate playing on your sports team, don't expect a female-only space at a time when your own body is changing beyond all recognition, don't make a fuss, just know your place, etc. How can we hope to raise strong and confident girls with a clear idea of boundaries and consent when we are treating them like this?

For me this has always been the massive overreach of the wider issue of self ID - it destroys any attempt at safeguarding, asks us all to disbelieve our eyes and ears, and teaches girls (it's always the girls, funny that), that their own needs and boundaries do not matter.

Oh undoubtedly - but changing rooms were supervised when I was at school.

Of course then theres the issue that the supervising teacher could be an abuser...
Or some of the other same sex pupils could be...

Or... lets scrap getting changed in schools altogether because at this point no one can trust anyone to do anything that isn't abusing each other.

To those who (pretend to) think OP is creepy ... obviously he's found himself where the rest of us all have sooner or later - trying to work out and articulate why (say) single sex changing rooms exist in the first place.

He's concerned about safeguarding because he's worried about his daughter. But he could also just point out that sex segregation in undress/toileting situations is universally desired by humans, for privacy and dignity. By claiming an exemption from this rule, TRAs have destroyed it for everyone. What gave them the right to take away our choice like that?

@WiddlinDiddlin

Teachers can be abusers, of course. This risk is mitigated through a number of measures including DRB checks. And as far as I'm aware (though it's been a long time since I worked in a school), almost all schools have policies stating that teachers should avoid being alone with a solitary pupil, and I would imagine this is especially true if the pupil is getting changed! These measures are examples of safeguarding. Another example of safeguarding is separate changing facilities for male and female pupils.

We cannot ever eliminate all risk because unfortunately humans are what we are. But we can use safeguarding measures to make things as safe as possible so that children can continue to benefit from a full education.

Actually, no. Single sex carriages on trains were introduced in Britain in 1874 after a young lady was attacked in a non-corridor compartment by an officer travelling with her. It ended with her climbing out the door and clinging to the outside of the train until arrival at a station.
So people were becoming aware there was a safeguarding issue for women travelling alone, and rules were changed accordingly.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34061094#:~:text=In%20October%201874%20they%20were,who%20has%20researched%20the%20subject.
So this was a progressive move, allowing women to travel alone, in a safe environment. BTW, non-corridor compartments were phased out in the late 1980s s after a murder on such a train.

Same goes for public toilets, London got its first Ladies public toilet in 1893! For men, urinals behind screens had existed for decades. Although it took until ww1 to introduce legislation for toilets, so that women could help in the war effort and work at munitions factories.
https://leahbroad.substack.com/p/why-toilets-were-a-feminist-issue
Until that point, women had to measure their time out of the house, and return home in time for their next visit to the toilet... or pay at a restaurant or hotel to use their facilities (which of course was out of the question for poor women).

Taking away single-sex accomodations like these takes women back to these times. Nothing progressive about it at all.

I just can't believe how far we've gone down the road to insanity, that a parent who doesn't want their 14 year old daughter to be made to get naked (she doesn't get a choice) in front of a male is being questioned as to his motives.

That's just how much kool aid some people have drunk.

'Unseemly' ffs!

Personally I don't think that any schoolchild should ever have to undress in front of any other person, child or adult, of either sex. But that is without prejudice to the OP's valid complaint.

Well this blew up.

And went some places I didn’t expect?

Thanks so much for all the useful feedback and advice, please keep it coming if you have any more ideas, I am putting together lots of points and will get something together for the school.

As for the internalised man hating? Ha. Well , I feel I should write something longer when I am not shattered. It will be a long version of “men really are not women, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, I definitely don’t trust them through observation, recounted experiences (mainly from women) and having been a young one.”

And also this male is a decent kid

That he's choosing to impose himself upon girls' changing rooms indicates that he's not decent at all. He's mature enough to know that he's transgressing boundaries.

OP, being a man, is fully aware of what some men can do. This is why he wants his DD to learn to keep her boundaries - rather than being persuaded otherwise because 'trans'. Also, whatever the school thinks it is doing, it is breaking the law by having a boy of 14 changing with girls.

@SernieBanders Here is a recent document that the Department of Education have produced:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66d7301b9084b18b95709f75/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_2024.pdf
It is statutory. Schools and colleges in England must have regard to it when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

All of it will help and particularly the section starting p.111. Direct quotes from the document support your argument eg. ‘staff should be aware it is more likely girls will be the victims of sexual violence and sexual harassment and more likely it will be perpetrated by boys.’

As you know there will be a complaints system to follow first. The Department of Education has a complaint form too but you need to exhaust the school system first.

In my correspondence with the Department of Education regarding toilet safety, they are clear that governors and the school have ultimate responsibility for anything that happens to a child in their care. Whatever good or bad advice the school is taking, the buck stops with them and their governors.

Space and cost
Then the new setup has lrisks of the adults or children been given access private space and a single child in a state of undress.

Other children in an open changing room create a level of social protection as they all* know the expected minimum social standards in a changing room.

• all: if a child lacks capacity that child needed to be managed under the safeguarding policy (eg no access)