Rishi Sunak said…

Certain characteristics don't apply to children. Haven't you read what they are?

This is a good point. Why did they go down this road to start with if not in DfE guidelines?

To my knowledge, none of the transitioning children I teach are taking drugs, they're changing names and pronouns.

Why would it not be the parents responsibility? Or the doctor who prescribed the drugs?

I find it quite an extreme viewpoint that I have any responsibility here for acting under instructions from parents and doctors.

Or are you talking about cases where parents aren't aware? In which case I refer back to previous posts of calls for clear nationwide guidance.

Not all schools did this, it was a choice

And look at the mess we are in.

So the sooner we get guidance, the better.

I just checked and it says the Equality Act applies to everyone.

So, to confirm, gender reassignment as a protected characteristic includes children.

Schools would have liked guidance, but in the absence of government guidance, approved organisations such as Stonewall were very happy to step in.

The government is to blame for this gap.

Herc, if you are acting under instructions from doctors then of course that is fine. If you are acting under instructions from SLT, that is their responsibility.

You don’t know if children being affirmed in school are then accessing drugs online. You don’t know if they would or wouldn’t be doing that if they weren’t being affirmed. You don’t know if the child actually wants to desist but daren’t. You don’t know if it is being driven by the parents. There are any number of ways teachers could be supporting harm to children by affirming a trans gender. Teachers are professionals and what they say carries weight, so, yes, they do have to take responsibility for what they do

But you clearly don't understand it.

Not every characteristic will apply to everyone.

Pregnancy and maternity, for example, does not apply to men. Nor does it apply to children.

Marriage status does not apply to children.

Gender reassignment also should not apply to children, because like marriage, it's not an appropriate thing for children to do.

Would you argue that because of the EA, we should accept married children? After all, according to your reading we shouldn't be discriminating against them.

Giraffe, surely if the s hooks mace the choice, surely they also carry some responsibility for that? As I said, not all s hooks went down this road, so a choice was made

I’ll try that again,
surely if the schools made that choice, they also carry…

We're asked to do all sorts of things via CAHMS, Ed psych, other medical professional reports. We'd be disciplined for out right refusal to comply.

I really think you're over emphasising the role of teachers on detransitioning kids. Their peer group and family have more influence. Peer groups tend to ignore teachers anyway!

I would never criticise teachers for following the guidance of medical professionals for all that guidance may be flawed, I don’t believe teachers should be expected to question it. I do think that socially transitioning kids just on the parents’ say so is probably negligent, and without parents’ consent it is downright culpable.
I think you underestimate how important teachers are. Of course kids are highly influenced by their peers, but they look to the adults around them to model what adult behaviour is. To reiterate, teachers are professionals and how they behave and what they say really matters

Endlesstea yes that is an important point

A PP wrote "The Labour Party has a new agenda, a quasi religious belief which amalgamates queer theory, gender identity, critical race theory. This new agenda will suffuse everything they do, it has replaced socialism."

Pick-your-own-identity politics is an extreme neoliberal position that is actually incompatible with socialism. Creating your own bespoke identity and then claiming oppression on the basis of it is in diametric opposition to class analysis, because it destroys the notion of class as being something that is imposed on you by circumstances beyond your control.

Without socialism, the Labour Party aren't going to fix the issues that you mention, because without class analysis, those issues won't be deemed important. Instead, endless money will be wasted on EDI trainers and the like, who would be flipping burgers with their numpty degrees otherwise.

Pick-your-own-identity politics is in fact a means of getting unearned power in an environment that has embraced queer theory as gospel. A white man, who would otherwise be classed as an oppressor regardless of wealth, can become classified as oppressed and therefore gain power in a structure that gives privilege to those who are labelled as being oppressed in wider society. Sarah Summers (who is taking Brighton Rape Crisis to court) profiled an EDI trainer who would be a photographer languishing in obscurity if not for a Brave And Stunning decision to transition. This trainer now talks about wearing h** sister's knickers in front of rooms full of workers, some of whom may be the victims of this kind of paraphilic clothing theft. If this trainer was born female, talking about wearing someone else's knickers would get the training session immediately halted. Labour aren't stopping this misogynistic nonsense: it is the Tories who are pulling govt departments out of Stonewall and other EDI Industrial Complex accreditation schemes.

Schools have a responsibility to safeguard ALL children and not to discriminate against any protected characteristic.

Using wrong sex pronouns and forcing girls (and boys) into mixed sex spaces is discriminating on the basis of protected characteristics of sex, religion and probably disability also.

Teaching children that they must lie if adults tell them to is a safeguarding failure. Teaching children that the normal rules of grammar can be bent for some people and not others is confusing at best. That third person pronouns are sometimes based on observable sex but sometimes on what - inner feelings? How are they supposed to tell, what are the rules around this? How do they know? It's all immensely destabilising for education.

If I were a teacher I'd point this out and say I would be happy to use names and not use any sex-based pronouns at all for specific children with issues around gender identity, but that I will not create a climate of fear and compelled speech against normal English usage for GC, religious, non NT, SEND, or non-native English speaking children. And that I believed using preferred pronouns is in breach of KCSIE and the existing guidance requiring teachers to be politically impartial. And goes against what Cass says too.

Sooner or later there will be lawsuits against schools. It won't be against individual teachers, but it will be against schools and the Head, ultimately, will be responsible I suppose.

I very much hope there will be more EHCPs which safeguard against this political ideology too.

Teachers, and schools, will have to manage a diversity of opinion and belief. They manage it for different religious beliefs already, how this one ideology has caused such total capitulation is really quite frightening.

So you've got nothing that says that gender reassignment doesn't apply as a protected characteristic to children?

Bearing in mind that the Tavistock, the medical experts, were prescribing puberty blockers to young children, and cross-sex hormones to older children.

You mean something like the Cass review. We've been discussing this for half the thread.

The Cass review specifically says that gender reassignment doesn't apply as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act to under 18s?

For reference, the equality act requires that people who have had or are undergoing gender reassignment cannot be discriminated against compared with other people of their natal sex, so I’m not sure the equality act has much to help you Giraffe as you seem to be suggesting you specifically treat such children differently to how you treat ‘typical’ children of the same sex.

Agree with your last line especially. Some of these posts show the mess we’re in and how dc have been impacted by an invasive ideology.

Schools 'must tell parents' if kids use different gender identity https://mol.im/a/11978023 via https://dailym.ai/android