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?

1)my experience of teens tells me it's vanishing unlikely that a 'trans girl' in high school is sexually attracted to girls
2) why do you believe this person is more likely to harm your daughter, than one of the other girls?

@BigSilly why does it have to be harm they are worried about? Privacy and dignity also comes into it, and the gradual erosion of boundaries. If you tell young girls they have to let men and boys into their changing areas when do they get the right to say no?

Sexual assault can be more about power, it's not always driven by attraction.

Regardless, girls have a right to be able to change away from boys and men, yes even gay boys and men!

Teaching girls that males with a trans identity are always safe would be an epic safeguarding fail due to the number of middle aged, heterosexual male transwomen. Not to mention the existence of males who pretend to be trans for nefarious reasons. Recent history has warned us not to assume certain categories of male human are beyond suspicion.

Do you really not know that males (of any gender ID or none) commit the vast majority of all sexual and violent crimes?

2. Because he is male and 99% of all sexual assault is carried out by males. This does not change if they identify as a female.

So no, I do not think someone who is 99 times more likely to commit sexual assault should be in a teen girls changing room.

The question is - why DO YOU?

Let me introduce you to the crimes of voyeurism and indecent exposure. Criminal offences that males usually target women and girls with. Hence why women and girls are afforded the privacy and safety that single sex changing rooms, showers, toilets and dormitories provide.

In promoting the presence of males in female spaces you are upending the social contract and safeguarding principles. You are instructing teenage girls that their undressed body is required by random boys for the purposes of validating their belief that their male body is actually female. You are telling girls that they have no right to privacy or boundaries if some males require them to undress in front of them.

If nothing else, a quick scan at the Ministry of Justice's damning statistics about sex offending amongst men - all men and those who claim to be women should make you think differently about the risks males pose to girls and women.

1. The must be a homosexual argument?
2. The what about a homosexual argument?

Any male by seeking access to female spaces is causing harm.
• That male is causing harm by attempting to gain a right to wag his flaccid willly in a space from which he, a male, is excluded
• That male is causing harm by attempting to breaching the social contract which was created to protect females.
• That male is causing harm by attempting to create a social hierarchy based on the subjugation of female needs and rights.

Irrelevant. Why can't these males just respect girls' boundaries?

“why do you believe this person is more likely to harm your daughter, than one of the other girls?”

Any male person has a risk of harming a female person that reflects the same risk that any other male person in the UK has of harming a female person. No stage of transition changes this.

The comparison here is male not female. There is very low chance of a female person harming another female person. There is a much higher chance of a male person harming a female person though.

Accurate language strips away the the obfuscation. It is important to use accurate language.

Quite apart from anything else, a large number of transw suddenly discover that they're "actually lesbians," when they do whatever it is makes them claim to be women.

This plus as well as being 99 times more likely to commit sexual assault boys are bigger and stronger.

There is also the issue of dignity and privacy. Teen girls want privacy away from male bodies. Why are their needs less important than one deluded boy? Why can't he change / pee in the teachers toilets if they're so keen on inclusion?

Why is it so important to you that boys should be washing and changing and using the toilet with girls?

In essence we need clearer legislation and guidance. I have no problem with trans pupils being respected in schools and being referred to by their chosen names with parental permission. However I believe the intent of current law is that there should be female only spaces including changing areas and toilets. There should be separate provision for trans pupils but guidance and the law should be clearer that a female space is exactly that. The guidance in my public sector employer encourages people to use the areas they align with and encourages trans allies to challenge anyone who objects. This is simply not right and leaves most of us afraid to say anything.

The problem with toilets and changing cubicles is you are always going to have to make a choice between privacy or safety. Because of this blurring of boys/men and girls/women going into areas for the opposite sex, people consistently design for privacy.

1.A young woman who suddenly feels nauseous, her head pounding, rushes to the toilet in the locker room. She is being sick because she has a brain aneurysm. The woman in the toilet cubicle next to her hears her, rescues her, she gets to the hospital in time to be operated on successfully.
2.A man feels ill. Goes to the enclosed toilet and has a heart attack. No one sees him and people are looking for him. His body is in there for hours.
3.A 12 year old girl is led into a mixed sex toilet at one of the busiest stations in the U.K. and raped twice. No one notices. The man walks away. She bravely goes to the police later and he is arrested through cctv footage which has done nothing to prevent or safeguard.

(The first situation happened to a famous actress, the second a famous politician, the third happens too regularly to ordinary women, girls and boys)

School toilets are being designed to be acoustically sound and private. There is now a new design addition of a private ‘gender-neutral’ toilet on each floor in secondary schools. The DfE have said to me they are designing toilets to be private. They are not designing them to be safe.

It isn't important to me particularly but if I had a trans child I wouldn't want them to be changing on an open changing room either. As long as everyone has separate cubicles that's all I am bothered about.

How many schools have the space for separate cubicles in changing rooms?
We had up to 30 girls at a time changing for PE when I was at school and room for maybe 10 cubicles. If we all had to wait to use cubicles there would have been no time left to actually do any PE.

Do we know what response the OP had to the excellent letter!

if I had a trans child I wouldn't want them to be changing on an open changing room either.

Why not, though? Girls and boys have been changing in sex-segregated communal spaces for decades. A gender questioning child looks exactly the same as any other child of the same sex. What would you be unhappy about? Genuine question.

Edited for clarity

Did the stats refer to women. 'queer' and 'young people' do not reference sex. Original, please. Government stats say 98% of violent and sexual assaults are carried out by males.

A transgirl is a boy. Boys in the majority are sexually attracted to girls. Doesn't matter, anyway, because a person with a penis should not be in the girls' changing room on grounds of privacy, dignity, safeguarding for the girls, and own safety from being accused of sexual assault, voyeurism etc for the 'transgirl', who is also learning that women's boundaries are irrelevant to him - and the girls are also being taught this. No and no. Also it is illegal for a school to have mixed sex changing rooms or toilets - and a transgirl is male (you cannot change sex and how you feel is irrelevant).

Small update to this thread from the OP just in case people had not seen the current outcomes.

second thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5309038-secondary-school-complaint-about-mixed-sex-changing-rooms-update-school-response-and-request-for-help-writing-the-escalated-complaint-to-governors

third thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5330837-secondary-school-mixed-sex-changing-rooms-complaint-update-from-school-again?page=1

Summary: Stage 2 complaint exceptionally paused by school governing board as too big and complicated and they cannot be expected to deal with complex legal issues as lay people (governors) complaint is ongoing. FOI requests, ongoing.

Please pop any updates or advice on the third thread!

When I get another update, I will start a fourth thread to keep it all together.

(additional - appeal for any parents or teachers in Brighton who can stand up and make an enquiry to secondary schools about mixed sex changing rooms - we really need you to send an email to your local head - can you help? https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5347768-parents-of-secondary-school-children-in-brighton-who-dont-believe-teenage-girls-should-have-to-get-changed-with-males-can-you-help )

Outrageous. It benefits no one. It normalizes the removal of privacy. One has to ask who lobbied Brighton to adopt this? I'll not mention names but you don't need to search too hard to see some big names promoitrans issues in children's spaces. Questions should be asked

You would benefit from reading the history of this and not making assumptions and jumping on some sexist bandwagon, he is a concerned Father, trying to protect his daughter (and girls generally) from possible sexual assault/voyeurism, the boy in question is being “affirmed” and encouraged to use and feel entitled to use girls private spaces. Hope that helps.

Oh yes. Then everyone can change in the changing room related to their sex. Awesome. You should get right on that.

There is probably a universe where all schools have individual lockable changing cubicles. But it’s not this one.

When were you last in a normal school?

So you’re saying that all gay boys should be in the girls changing room? Or are you saying only those gay boys who wear dresses. Do you realise how homophobic you sound.