School Transgender Policy 1. Brighton: Allsorts

I have done a number of twitter threads on School policies, ostensibly, about protecting “transgender children”.  The only one I have blogged, thus far, focussed on the way they treat parents. We are treated as potential bigots who need educating on Gender Identity issues. The Schools,  invariably, take it upon themselves to keep parents in the dark about our ” Gender Dysphoric” kids.  They blithely inform us our kids are at significant risk of attempting suicide but still think it is good practice to hide pertinent information from parents. You can read that post here: Putting the Loco in Loco Parentis.   

I will now do a series on the policies I have found. Some have already been withdrawn but we need to preserve a record of the extent of the policy capture. Note that this series will be repetitive as they are clearly modelled on a small number of templates. The poor practice is widespread due to the cut and paste nature of the policies. The positive aspect of this is that we can recapture in the same way. We only need sensible templates that balance the needs of kids with Gender Dysphoria, with the protected characteristic of sex. We also need schools to stop usurping Parental Responsiblity to the extent they have done. I know of multiple parents who only found out their daughters were adopting male identities, at school, due to an administrative error! This cannot be right.

This document, I have based this on, was revised in 2019. I do have a copy of the 2014 document but I have done this blog based on the later version. You can access the document below:

Allsorts transinclusion jan 2019 update

This document was produced in Brighton which is a city with a such an open minded attitude it calls to mind the redoubtable Magdelen Berns’ quote: “Your minds are so open your brains have fallen out”. Brighton has long been a,commendably, friendly city to the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual community and now it has embraced the mulitplicity of Gender Identities. Brighton institutions are at the forefront of leading a societal change to prioritise “Gender” over Biological Sex. This policy, implicitly, endorses the idea that some of us can be “born in the wrong body” ; there are multiple Gender Identities and there can be a mismatch between Gender and Natal Sex.

In the introduction we are told this is a revised version following input from transgender children and their parents. The other agencies they reference, quote or signpost are listed below. Nearly all of these are Lobbying groups; advocating for the inculcation of Gender Identity Ideology in our schools, Universities and other public, or indeed private, institutions.

Stonewall, Mermaids, Gendered intelligence, Gires.

Educate and Celebrate? 

I can’t possibly include all the clips I made of this document. I will just select the most egregious examples. This guidance is amongst the most blatant in its evangelical zeal to propagate Gender Identity Ideology; to students, staff, parents, governors and wider society. The claim is made that children can choose whether they are “male” or “female”. Sex, it is argued is assigned at birth, whilst, in reality it is observed and recorded bar a tiny number of children whose sex is not apparent because they have Disorders/Differences in sexual development. People with DSDs are routinely wheeled out in this debate but, in fact, do not figure significantly in the Trans community. Gender , we are told, is on a spectrum and the guidance dismisses the idea of sex being either Male or Female. Anyone labouring under the delusion this guidance is merely a way to promote sensitive care for “transgender kids” needs to realise this is actually social engineering.

Here it is made explicit the aim is to challlenge “long accepted ideas of sex and gender”.    

These long accepted ideas include the idea that we are sexually dimorphic species and biological sex is real. One parent even reports that they were pleased the school discussed how to teach about sexual reproduction before their “trans” child had to take the lesson. Since when is it healthy for a pupil to be so coddled they can’t hear scientific facts without a specially tailored lesson?

Next up we look at the practical implications for children with a disordered sense of their sex.

The guidance makes it abundantly clear that any child who feels they are of the opposite sex will be allowed to use the toilets and changing rooms based on their feelings, not their anatomy. They even state that this is because the boy who says he is a girl is actually a real girl and furthermore the school will challenge this wrong think by training and awareness raising. 👇 . Teachers are given scenarios and advise on how to challenge these attitudes.

Children are to be groomed not to raise a rumpus about a person of the opposite sex in the most intimate of settings, Anyone who doesn’t see the safeguarding issues, inherent in this enforced removal of children’s boundaries, is, at best naive, and at worst reckless / with nefarious intent,

Even worse the child with trans status is to be re-educated to revise their own belief of what is socially acceptable Here 👇 the school will actively teach the child to ignore the “unwritten” rules about which toilets to use, Notice that in this clip they suddenly shift to “public” toilets. Could that be because they know schools are legally obliged to provide single sex toilet facilities? Furthermore the school, in the name of the trans child’s privacy will withhold the information from other pupils and parents. Thus a female child is to share spaces with penis bearing “girls” and her consent to this is disregarded.

I am a parent of a trans-identified male (biological kind) he did NOT use female spaces. Still doesn’t. No harm has come to him. See also @FionneOrlander. Fionne doesn’t use female spaces out of respect and, interestingly, because it “feels too much like male entitlement”.

In order to ensure the girl (or boy) knows what is expected of them their biology lessons will be tailored to reinforce the primacy of gender identity over biological sex.

I presume this teaching strategy was endorsed at the highest levels in the school and nobody had a moments disquiet? Nobody! I know from my own son’s, school that the biology teacher felt obliged to apologise for the way she had to teach about reproductive biology. Thankfully she taught the biological facts but with the caveat that she knew this was old-fashioned.

As this pack originated in Brighton most of the pack assumes that the school will be working with the trans child and their parents. It does, however, seem they anticipate some parental resistance and not just from the other parents. They recognise that some pupils may not have “supportive” parents and they outline strategies for dealing with the non-compliant parents. They just won’t tell them! They even make sure their computer system is adapted so the teachers, ancillary staff and even the other pupils, will know your child is identifying as the opposite sex and you, the parent, will be kept in the dark! 👇

Suicide risk. 

I have written many times about the suicide statistics quoted in this document.  The school claims 48% of trans identifying children will attempt suicide.

 This report they quote is based  on a tiny sample of self-reported attempts.  (13 out of 27 young people) It’s flawed data and shouldn’t be used . You can read more on this here Suicide in the Trans Community.

Parental Responsibility. 

The fact remains the school assert that  a specific demographic is at high risk of attempting suicide and yet they still state there’s no safeguarding risk.   They regard themselves as entitled to withhold  information from parents as a result of a condition which may result in significant self-harm or death.  Furthermore the only time they do recognise any safeguarding issues is when they may apply to the parents. 👇.  The framing of this advice is deliberately worded to paint the father as unsympathetic to a non gender conforming male child. 👇 Parents who affirm the new identity are described as doing their “best to work alongside their child”. The school is to be a safe environment for the vulnerable child which implies the non-affirming,  home environment is unsafe.  This impression is strengthened by the reference at the end. The inference is that non-affirming parents may be more likely to be a risk to their child.  

So, let me present an alternative scenario.  Supposes a young girl, with no history of any difficulty with their birth sex suddenly identifies as “male” in her teens. The mother is aware that her daughter shows autistic traits, or had a traumatic experience with childhood sexual abuse or has been bulllied after declaring herself attracted to females.   The parents are not told about this and their daughter is allowed to express herself as male in school.  She is using male toilets and changing rooms and  she is wearing a breast binder, all unbeknownst to her parents.  She is potentially placing herself at risk,  using male facilities, and potential health issues by extended use of a binder. This can cause breathing difficulties and even , in extreme cases, broken ribs.  This is not suppositiion. There are numerous YouTube influencers who have done all of these things before telling their parents and with the complicity of the school. 

Social Engineering?

Here is another startling clip from the guidance. Here they assert that Every Person will experience this disassociation from their biological sex. Yes! Most people don’t conform to the stereotypical expectations for their sex 100% so why are we pathologising this?   Below we are also told that some people maybe “partially male and partially female“.  This is beginning to look like a recruitment drive.  It also doesn’t make any sense. The first sentence imputes that we all have a gender identity but the final one allows someone to identify as “agender” . Even ten years ago we would have laughed this guidance out of court.  Now we actually having to threaten, or actually undertake, Judicial Reviews to reinstate  logic and reason into the school policies.

The Trans Umbrella

Another interesting aside is the school’s decision to leave out “Cross-Dressers” from within the school context, even though they are included in the Trans Umbrella, according to Stonewall. 

Ostensibly this is becase we know many young people play “dress-up” and, allegedly, the authors wish to avoid confusion.   Really?  I am an adult and I find this entire document mind bogglingly confusing. Could it also be that the authors of this report don’t want to trigger the idea of  sexually motivated transvestites?  Dressing in female clothes, for the purposes of sexual arousal, is a known male paraphilia.  Yet, under this ideology, these males are “trans” and, whilst the law allows males to be excluded from single sex spaces, many organisations have unilaterally changed spaces to include people who identify as “transgender” and as a “woman”.

The pack provides a handy crib sheet to emphasise key learning points, lest you forget.

The report then proceeds to quote some research from 2014 which highlights that over 90% of LGBTQ+ people report that they learnt nothing about trans in their sex and relationships education. Fast forward 6 years and it is ubiquitous! Yet we are all supposed to pretend there is some mystery about a massive spike in referrals to Gender Identity Clinics! We are actually inculcating it by teaching it to our vulnerable kids.

This next paragraph reads as if someone wanted to pack in as many types of oppression that the school needs to tackle.  On a surface level this is all highly laudable but are they actually consistent with this guidance?   I would argue they are not.

Any problems encountered by trans identifying people are above dismissed as being due to “transphobia“. This word is so over-used in the twitter sphere, and the media generally, as to be virtually meaningless. Recognising biological sex is real, being a Lesbian who is not attracted to people with penises, wanting a member of the female sex to perform intimate examinations. All of these are routinely described as “transphobic”. The idea that “transphobia” may be linked to “sexist and stereotypical ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman” is counter-factual. What this is saying is that if you compute someones biological sex, which lets face it is evolutionarily hard-wired, you are being “transphobic”. How has such an ideology taken hold in a rational society?

Yet in the next breath we are told that Gender is a social construct and learned behaviour. Children, we are told learn how to behave in line with the expectations for their sex. Thus far I agree. This includes “roles, clothing and activities”. However anyone who doesn’t conform is not necessarly showing us an indication of their gender identity. Again. Butch Lesbians, Femme Gay males and in fact many, many, heterosexual men and women don’t conform to varying degrees. That is because it is based on a social construct. So why are we medicalising gender conformity to mimic the sexual characteristics of the opposite sex if “gender” is just a social construct? Why not, instead, challenge the Social Construct?

I am no closer to finding a definition of  “Gender Identity” that doesn’t rely on socially constructed idea of “Gender” which are derived from sex (and often sexist) stereotypes.  We have already been told that it is not connected to Gender Expression.  A boy can be a boy and wear a dress.  (Seriously have these people never heard of David Beckham in a skirt of Marilyn the Gender Rebel popstar and celebrity, or an androgynous Annie Lennox).  This stuff is not new.  We could go back to the Eighteenth Century where Dandy’s were common in certain circles.  Alternatively Ann Lister in the 19th Century and Radclyffe Hall in the twentieth.  (Notice that the many/most were homosexual) . 

The nearest definition occurs in this clip on Sexual Orientation which manages to redefine homosexuality to water down the homosexual element, with the addition of “romantically attracted”. It also assigns sexual fluidity to Gay males, and Lesbians, who fought long and hard to win the right to exclusive same sex attraction. 

So it is defined as an “internal sense of self”.  An entirely unverifiable definition.  How does a man know what it feels like to be a woman?  He can’t.  There is no right way to be a woman. We are women by virtue of our sex.  Some of us are more aligned to expectations for our sex and some of us are less so.  A butch lesbian is a woman by virtue of her sex  not by how well she performs the sex stereotypes encoded in “gender”.  Same with a “femme” gay male.  Notice that sexual orientation is now defined to include attraction by virture of sex and Gender Identity.  The notion that someones sexuality can change over time is also slipped in. This allows males to describe themselves as Lesbians and Trans Men to identify as gay males.  How this watering down of sexual orientation has been endorsed by erstwhile Gay Rights groups, like Stonewall, is a question that will result in PhDs.  One Day!

Hate Crimes

Another common theme is the encouragement to record “transphobic incidents”.  Here an incident is to be labelled “transphobic” if there is a trans child in the class the incident will be challenged and recorded.  However the pack also warns teachers that more serious incidents should be reported to the police. Worth noting that women are not protected by Hate Crime legislation because misogyny is not covered.  Not to worry. Men are so busy killing us we don’t have the energy to get upset about being mis-gendered. Note, I am not being flippant here, hate crimes are recorded in accordance with the self-perception of the person doing the reporting.  Using factually correct pronouns has been reported to the police and will be recorded as a hate incident. 

Medical Transition

In common with all of the packs I have read the guidance also includes details about how children with gender identity issues can seek medical support.  This pack was written in 2019 but even then there was disquiet about describing some of these interventions in the way they are described here.  The very idea that a school guidance pack contains detailed information about a serious medical intervention is anathema to any idea of child safeguarding.  Blocking Puberty is not merely a “suspension” and as I have covered in my blogs on puberty blockers. Puberty Blockers. Part One

The  way they are talked about here is reckless and ill informed. 👇

Even more reckless is the way the pack signposts ways to circumvent delays in accessing treatment. If you don’t want kids/parents to use doctors over the internet why are you telling kids/Parents that it is possible. This looks disingenuos to me. Signposting with a note of caution looks like an attempt to claim “plausible deniability”

Female Sports

Another issue that the guidance glosses over is the physical differences in males and females when it comes to sport.  Certainly by the time my sons were 11 they towered above me and thereafter rapidly proceeded to a male puberty that conferred many sporting advantages.  This scenario, to deal with a parental complaint, is grossly dishonest.

Some sporting bodies have cravenly capitulated to the lobby groups and include players on the basis of Gender Identity. This has resulted in females losing to male players in fields such as cycling, boxing and cricket. In the UK, fear of lawsuits due to injury, I assume, has prompted the resignation of Rugby referees because of the danger to female players forced to play against males. The battle over women’s sports is , however, far from over. The long term consequences for females entering sport will be massive if they learn very early on that there is simply no point in taking part in an unfair competition with the odds stacked against them.

Woke Red Guards?

Bring me the child at seven and i will bring you the (wo) man.  This image is included in the pack showing how children as young as seven are now parroting the idea that they are not the right sex, 

This teaching has been going on in our schools now for at least 5 years. We are now seeing the fruits of this propaganda in the generation of teens who are identifying out of their sex.

I want to end with a particularly ridiculous scenario. One that has in fact played out at my son’s school. They have a handful of girls who identify as boys. One of them has had two male names and has reported people for using their last deadname, even though male. They play on the female netball team but reported their teacher for use of the word “girls” when cheering on the team. We are handing over an unprecedented amount of power to troubled kids. Is it surprising that some want to wield that power? Children as young as 7 are repeating the ideas they have been taught. The pack includes this drawing done by a seven year old.

Here the teacher is instructed to follow the child’s instructions about their pronoun use, even though they are Gender Fluid and may wish to be addressed differently on any given day. Remember it is not appropriate, we are told, to conflate Gender Expression with Gender Identity so here is the solution….

In the Chinese Cultural Revolution children were indoctrinated into the new religion via state education. Teachers were denounced, humiliated for not complying. Many went to their deaths, some betrayed by their own children. Children even changed their names to disassociate from their families.

I am not equating the rise of Woke Ideology with the Cultural Revolution in terms of scale and consequences but there are worrying parallels. The righteousness of the proponents of Gender Ideology who are so convinced they are on The Right Side Of History bring to mom this quote from James Baldwin.