gender ideology in schools
... and the NHS and Scotland
April and May have been interesting times in the struggle against gender ideology.
Cass Review
Firstly, the Cass Review, a report for NHS England on gender identity services for children and young people, exposed the lack of evidence for the safety and efficacy of puberty blockers, which have been pushed on ‘trans children’ for about a decade now by GIDS, Mermaids and their ilk.
NHS defines sex as biological sex
Secondly, the NHS updated its constitution to state: ‘We are defining sex as biological sex’ and banned transgender terms like ‘chestfeeding’ in hospitals.
Schools guidance on gender ideology
Then, on Thursday 16 May, the government published draft guidance on sex education to stop schools from teaching children “contested” ideas about gender ideology as fact. It is out for consultation until 11 July.
Sadly, the Green Party Education Spokesperson, Vix Lowthion, dismissed the guidance when she posted on X:
“Banning sex ed in schools... Young people have the Internet outside of the classroom. They encounter all sorts of half truths - Sex Ed at primary school ensures that they can get facts from people they trust. This is a half-baked, click bait proposal. Damaging for kids.”
The guidance is not about ‘banning sex ed in schools’: it is about making it age-appropriate and about banning contested ideas about gender ideology, which have been taught in schools for several years by external providers of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE).
Already in 2020, Transgender Trend reported how external providers were misleading schools about equality law and the biology of sex and promoting unsafe practices like gender-neutral facilities.
(I live not far from the north Essex school that is the subject of a police investigation into serious sexual assaults in 2023 by a boy on a girl in gender-neutral toilets.)
Transgender Trend has just posted about the new draft schools guidance to say that the important changes are that gender identity ideology must not be taught as fact and sex education must not be taught before the age of nine. Here is the section on Gender Reassignment.
43. Pupils should also be taught the law about gender reassignment. Schools should be clear that an individual must be 18 before they can legally reassign their gender. This means that a child’s legal sex will always be the same as their biological sex and, at school, boys cannot be legally classified as girls or vice versa.
44. If a child is questioning their gender, schools should refer to the guidance for schools and colleges on gender questioning pupils for more information.
45. Schools should not teach about the broader concept of gender identity. Gender identity is a highly contested and complex subject. It is a sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or a number of other categories. This may or may not be the same as their biological sex. Many people do not consider that they or others have a separate gender identity.
46. If asked about the topic of gender identity, schools should teach the facts about biological sex and not use any materials that present contested views as fact, including the view that gender is a spectrum. Material suggesting that someone’s gender is determined by their interests or clothing choices should not be used as it risks leading pupils who do not comply with sex stereotypes to question their gender when they might not have done so otherwise. Where schools decide to use external resources, they should avoid materials that use cartoons or diagrams that oversimplify this complex concept or that could be interpreted as being aimed at younger children. Schools should consult parents on the content of external resources on this topic in advance and make all materials available to them on request.
Scottish Green Party expels ‘sex realists’
Meanwhile, also on 16 May, the Scottish Green Party expelled a number of members who had declared that ‘sex is a biological reality’.
This is reminiscent of an attempt to do likewise in the Green Party of England and Wales. A motion to the party conference in March 2022 called for all signatories to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights to be expelled. The motion along with the list of 105 extreme gender ideologists who signed it is at gcgreens.uk/statements/the-purge-motion. It failed, thankfully.
Maybe the expelled members will take legal action against the Scottish Green Party. There have been several recent high-profile discrimination cases that should give them hope:
Roz Adams, who was unlawfully discriminated against by Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre over gender-critical beliefs
Shahrar Ali, Green Party former deputy leader, who was discriminated against over his views on gender
Rachel Meade against Westminster Council and Social Work England
The Scottish Green Party really are obsessed with gender ideology. The break-up of their alliance with the SNP under the Bute House Agreement seems to have had less to do with the SNP abandoning its climate change target and more to do with the demands of their own LGBT group, which didn't like the SNP’s acceptance of the Cass review nor the decision by the Sandyford clinic (the Scottish equivalent of the Tavistock GIDS) to stop giving puberty blockers to children.
Still in Scotland, it was interesting to me that Nicola Sturgeon has just acknowledged that the transgender controversy was one of the main reasons why she resigned - www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/20/the-brass-neck-of-nicola-sturgeon - as I’d publicly stated before she resigned that it was untenable for her to argue for self-ID at the same time as Adam Graham was undergoing rapid prison-onset gender dysphoria so that, once convicted of rape, he could become Isla Bryson and go into a women’s prison.
My body is me!
I've chosen the thumbnail picture of My Body is Me! by Rachel Rooney to illustrate this post because it is a good example of teaching material for young children that challenges the gender ideology that a child can be ‘born in the wrong body’.