Mick Hartley

An astonishing but unsurprising claim by a Scottish trans councillor:

Schools are a “safer space” for children to experiment with gender than the home, a trans councillor has said, as it emerged that teachers have been told not to tell parents if pupils switch pronouns.

Elaine Gallagher, Glasgow’s first transgender councillor, defended Scottish government guidance that teachers need not inform parents that their child is using a different gender if the pupil does not want their family to know.

The guidance states that being transgender is “not a child protection or wellbeing issue”. It encourages teachers to “respect the young person’s views and rights”.

Gallagher, who was elected to Southside Central for the Scottish Greens in May, told the Sunday Mail: “Kids know their immediate family a lot better than they are generally given credit for. If they suspect their parents or other members of the family will react badly they could well be reluctant to tell them they are exploring gender."

Ah yes – exploring gender. As in, growing up and facing all the challenges of puberty.

The absurd assumption here is that somehow these children live in a social vacuum, and then suddenly decide they've been born in the wrong body and all their problems will be solved if only they were the other sex. Curiously, this never used to happen to teens before the growth of social media and the spread of the gender cult. Why might that be, I wonder? And of course kids are always entirely sensible about their wants and needs.

The end result of "exploring gender"? Puberty blockers and medical mutilation, most likely. But don't tell the parents.

Also: this exclusion of parents has an undeniably strong stench of grooming: "don't tell your parents – this is our little secret…". Do teachers really want to be part of this? 

The Scottish government, though, is fully on board.

The government guidance to schools states: “A transgender young person may not have told their family about their gender identity. Inadvertent disclosure could cause needless stress for the young person or could put them at risk and breach legal requirements.

“Therefore it is best to not share information with parents or carers without considering and respecting the young person’s views and rights.”….

Some Greens want to extend the right to change gender to children as young as 12.

Hmm. Then there's the case of Katie Dolatowski.

Campaigners insist that the case of a transgender sex offender who duped staff into letting her stay at a refuge for women and children demonstrates how Scotland’s reforms will be “shamelessly abused” by predators.

Katie Dolatowski, 22, who was born male, entered Leeds Women’s Aid refuge under an alias and lived there for ten weeks until September, when her criminal past was uncovered by staff who contacted police.

In March 2018 Dolatowski forced a ten-year-old girl into a lavatory in a Morrisons store in Fife, and told her to take off her trousers. She said a man outside would kill her mother. The girl escaped. A month previously Dolatowski tried to film a 12-year-old girl in a store lavatory in Dunfermline.

She was freed from Polmont young offenders institution into female-only accommodation in Fife because otherwise she would have been homeless.

In the incident in Leeds, Dolatowski was said to have papers supporting her alias which she used to convince staff that she was a victim of abuse. She stayed in the refuge’s separate accommodation for trans abuse survivors, which has a shared garden.

Nik Peasgood, chief executive of Leeds Women’s Aid, said the centre was appalled that someone who had committed such crimes could gain access.

Trina Budge, co-director of For Women Scotland, a feminist campaign group, said the case showed why SNP ministers should “take off the blinkers”.

She said: “Does the cabinet secretary not think we will see many more such cases once sex offenders are state authorised to change not just their name, but sex on their birth certificate, and gain witness protection levels of privacy to hide their past?

“The naivety of the Scottish government is astounding and they should be taking this bill off the table and slinking back to the drawing board in abject humiliation at the risk they are prepared to expose women and children to.”

Here's the full Katie Dolatowski story.