Mick Hartley

There may be welcome signs here that the tide is turning – the decision by the BBC to part company from Stonewall, for example. In Scotland, though, they're marching relentlessly to their brave new world. Stuart Waiton – How trans ideology took over Scottish schools:

Many will have been shocked to see boys and male teachers turn up to Castleview Primary School in Edinburgh wearing skirts last Thursday. ‘Boys as young as three will take part in the gesture in order to “promote equality”’, reported the Daily Mail.

In truth, an initiative like ‘Wear a Skirt to School Day’ is a logical expression of the Scottish education system’s embrace of trans dogma. This is spelled out at length in government guidance called Supporting Transgender Pupils In Schools . This 70-page document shows in detail how the Scottish state is promoting trans identity in schools, often behind the backs of parents.

Debate about gender self-identification is raging throughout society, but the Scottish government has taken a completely one-sided approach in its advice to schools. The Scottish authorities treat an individual’s self-declared gender identity as an unquestionable fact – even when this identity is being voiced by very young children. From the state’s perspective, if a young girl says she is a boy, then she is a boy.

The guidance states that ‘responses to a transgender young person coming out can vary but the majority of parents and carers will want to do what is in the best interests of their child’. What is in the ‘best interests of the child’ has already been prejudged, based on the ‘truth’ of gender self-identification.

Much of the guidance is concerned with how schools should respond if parents are not on board with trans ideology. If parents question a child’s chosen gender, they are told they could be putting his or her wellbeing at risk. The guidance even goes as far as to claim that children who do not get the support of their parents when changing their gender are far more likely to consider suicide. But the evidence used to back up this claim comes from an advocacy group in Canada, and is based on a self-selected sample of young people.

The risk of suicide claim is constantly trotted out, despite the lack of evidence and despite the brazen and grotesque emotional blackmail behind it.

Advice from the Samaritans, who know a thing or two about suicide:

'Steer clear of presenting suicidal behaviour as an understandable response to a crisis or adversity. This can contribute to unhelpful and risky normalising of suicide as an appropriate response to distress.'

And:

'Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life.'

Also, from a statement made in 2018 by the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust:

'Suicidality in young people attending the GIDS is similar to that of young people referred to child and adolescent mental health services. It is not helpful to suggest that suicidality is an inevitable part of this condition.'

But never mind all that. For Scotland's school children professed gender identity is all important, no matter the age of the child, and if parents don't accept it, well, that's their problem. They must be bigots, who need to be educated in the correct way of thinking.

Yet parents who raise concerns about any of this will be fobbed off. The Scottish guidance says such parents may simply have ‘inaccurate or incomplete information’. Where this is the case, staff are instructed to create situations in which the young person (and, one assumes, the truth-bearing teachers) ‘have their views heard’, helped by a ‘support plan for the transgender young person’. This apparently creates a ‘safe space for transgender young people to be themselves and have their identities respected’.

The end result of all this for parents is that they are treated as a potential threat to their own children. Indeed, the government believes that concerned parents will often need to be kept in the dark, in case their outlook and understanding does not comply with their new ideology.

Astonishing.