Mick Hartley

As if to underline the point – previous post – about the spread of trans ideology in schools, here's an alarming report from the Telegraph:

Teachers who discuss sex-based women’s rights with transgender colleagues would be considered “transphobic” under a policy proposed by members of Britain’s largest teaching union.

The National Education Union’s trans and non-binary network has proposed that anyone who expects trans people “to participate in discussion or debate about their rights and/or identities” is transphobic.

The draft proposal of a transphobia definition, seen by The Telegraph, also cited “propagating ideas, concepts and misinformation harmful to trans people and which erase and ignore trans history, such as trans as an ideology or contagion”, as an example of transphobic behaviour.

The policy neither outlined what it meant by “trans history”, nor what “ideas, concepts and misinformation” would be considered harmful to trans people.

It further defined transphobia as a “rejection of trans identity and a refusal to acknowledge that those identities are real or valid” or the “incorrect use of pronouns”.

A whistleblower close to the teaching union told The Telegraph: “I am extremely worried by this. I’m from a Left-wing background and I hate this nonsense.

“We need free speech. Women need safe spaces. If this definition is accepted, anyone who says ‘You can’t logically self-identify as the opposite sex’, you’ll be a transphobe.”

The source added: “I think it will mean that teachers will be too scared to speak up in schools and they will go along with the NEU policy.”

Yep, that does indeed seem likely.

The definition has been drafted after a resolution to define transphobia was passed at the last annual NEU conference in the spring.

The conference instructed the NEU’s executive to “work with the Trans and Non-Binary Network to develop a Union definition of transphobia that goes above and beyond legal compliance and that supports and endorses trans and non-binary identities without resorting to the erasure or downgrading of ‘gender’”.

On no account must "gender" be downgraded. That would clearly be transphobic.

It came as the Department for Education finalises transgender guidance for schools, which could include asking schools to provide gender-neutral lavatories alongside those for boys and girls, or letting trans pupils use changing rooms before their classmates.

Schools would also be told whether to let trans children wear the uniform of their choice.

The Times reported that Kit Malthouse, the Education Secretary, will encourage schools to accommodate transgender pupils in “common sense” guidance, raising concerns among parents’ groups that safeguarding of children could be deprioritised as part of efforts to accommodate trans pupils.

It rather looks like Malthouse wants to wash his hands of the whole business. It's not looking good.