Secondary School mixed sex changing rooms complaint: Update from school (again)

[TangenitalContrivences]

Hello everyone - Have just received a further update from my daughters (14) secondary school (Brighton) regarding my complaint - which is at stage 2 - go to governors complaint, and my further email to the school asking them to comply with the EHRC interim guidance.

I'll copy both responses below, redacted.

I would very, very much appreciate specific feedback to include in my responses to the school, it's been people here (and elsewhere) who have helped me put together really powerful letters that have clearly rattled the school.

However - there is still a male in the female changing spaces at this school. Therefore it is mixed sex.

(link to the last discussion if you want context https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5309038-secondary-school-complaint-about-mixed-sex-changing-rooms-update-school-response-and-request-for-help-writing-the-escalated-complaint-to-governors )

I cannot imagine an adult responsible for children telling a distressed girl that she must take her clothes off in front of this boy, provide her body to meet his needs, and there will be consequences for her showing her distress or refusing to comply.

Telling a teenaged girl that she may not say no or refuse to provide her body to a man if he says the magic words and it might upset him - when her feelings are irrelevant.

It's the stuff of nightmares, it really is. It's insane. We have not seen establishment abuse of women and girls like this in decades if not centuries. There will be the picking up of pieces for this in decades to come where those girls become women who were trained young to be compliant to abuse.

"There will be the picking up of pieces for this in decades to come where those girls become women who were trained young to be compliant to abuse".

That's such a chilling thought.

I've just been watching Small Things Like These, about the Magdalene laundries. I don't want to compare the horrors suffered by those unmarried mothers and their children with women battling trans incursions into women's spaces. However, the comparison that I will make is that what was once widespread and unchallengeable is now regarded as shocking, incomprehensible and and misogynistic; I hope that the gender identity madness will one day be seen in the same way.

There will be the picking up of pieces for this in decades to come where those girls become women who were trained young to be compliant to abuse.

It's become very clear to me that this is a feature, not a bug.

Akua Reindorf’s comments here should resonate within the school. She tells it like it is, not as they would wish it to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/06/ehrc-commissioner-calls-for-trans-people-to-accept-reduced-rights-after-years-of-lies?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Apropos of nothing, I'd always assumed that Akua Reindorf was a man. But they won't give up without a fight, as the grudging tone of that Guardian piece makes clear.

Just caught up with this OP. Keep going.

Unbelievable responses from a school that is neglecting the safeguarding of girls.

Just managed to get all of this in a chronological order and sent off to a solicitor to have a good look at. Not a shit one either.

Yes but they've miscalculated. They don't know that behind the scenes very many parents, including all of us on here and OP and many others are supporting their children in recognising the rank misogyny and teaching them how to fight it.

The more they force girls to undress in front of boys, the angrier we get. We might not all be out shouting on the streets but we're teaching our girls to see them as the enemy they are. To think critically, to stand up for their rights. .

This is real oppression of girls and many of them will come out fighting into brilliant young adults who will fight to stop it.

There are many schools where this ISN'T happening and the girls in those schools - my DD is one - are aware of the huge fight and how lucky she is.

I hope OP's court case is the first of many. I hope the teachers who are forcing girls to undress in front of boys are sacked.

Well done. Wish I could buy you a drink / tunnocks tea cake / treat of choice!

From the Guardian article:

However, the human rights campaign groups Liberty and Amnesty called on the EHRC to make sure the rights of trans people were properly considered when it draws up guidance for public bodies on how to implement the changed legal landscape.

Speculating, but considering what they've said already, they mean that they want law breaking to continue, with men using the ladies. Transactual said "it's not helpful" which I take to mean that they want to bully a concession to ignore the law.

Fuck the lot of them.

Not 'helpful' to respect women and girls' rights.

Only to respect men's wishes and entitlements to use them.

It's still baffling to me that this is actually the situation we have to deal with. And people are still in a flap about there occasionally being a situation in which under the SC a trans person might be left without a loo! When no one cared about the women excluded from women's spaces and they could shut up, put up or go without.

@TangenitalContrivences
Good luck,
I have three DDs and one DS.
Im with you on this

@TangenitalContrivences Please let us know if you need to crowdfund any legal fees. I'd be delighted to contribute.

If there are boys entering the girls changing room it might also be worth your daughter keeping a diary?

I do understand this is about policy though and doesn’t actually matter if they are currently.

@TangenitalContrivencesI second the above comment about crowdfunding. We have done lots of gardening in the past.
This was in the Times today, shows how strong the resistance is in education to accepting the law.
No legal definition of biological sex, teaching union members told

https://www.thetimes.com/article/23e62b5a-1754-4199-8233-887c05b4d739?shareToken=ae73c25f8da573dc6b77f6f5da2aafee

Good for you @TangenitalContrivences

UPDATES:

Ofsted response - generic canned email reply stating they will look, but most things are not their responsibility and therefore do not expect much.

LADO: have not responded to my follow up email. Apparently the Brighton LADO is even more captured than the schools. Not sure what to do next.

SCHOOL: have not responded since my last email back.

FOI RESPONSES: due on this Friday. They are for both liability insurance details and what safeguarding work the school has done to make sure it is indeed safe to allow mixed sex changing. I will throw the school under the bus to the insurers once I get their details. The lack of safeguarding work should be enough to end the career on the head and the head of safeguarding, but this is Brighton where we live in opposites land. I assume they will get promoted.

Thanks for all your help gang, can't tell you how much it's appreciated and valuable.

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(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 )

Hmm. This is a bit odd.

You may have answered this before, but is this school in a Trust or Local Authority run?

It’s local authority, not sure which would be easier to get a safeguarding concern actioned!

I feel like I’m shouting into the void trying to get anyone in Brighton to admit teenage boys are a safety risk to teenage girls.

@TangenitalContrivences you have missed the s off the end of your username in the last couple of posts so they’re not showing as from OP and might get missed by people.

You cannot change your username once you’ve posted on a thread,

How strange, it’s happening on the linked thread too

Second account managed to lock myself out the last one ☝️