Mick Hartley

More from Miriam Cates (previously) on the disgraceful DofE failure to provide clear-cut guidance on transitioning in schools:

In recent years, radical gender ideology has spread through schools like an epidemic. 80 per cent of schools have children that want to be treated as the opposite sex, 40 per cent allow children to self-determine their “gender” — often without parental knowledge – and in some schools, adherence to trans ideology has taken on cult status with no dissent allowed.

Taking on a new “gender identity” is not a disposable teenage fad like a crazy hairstyle or a crush on a pop star. The long-term physical consequences of transition are well documented, and the devastation caused to family relationships is immense. Paediatrician Hilary Cass concluded that social transitioning is not a neutral act, and indeed there is no evidence that affirming a child’s feelings of “gender distress” has any benefits at all. There are also obvious risks inherent in allowing boys to use girls’ toilets or in allowing boys to take part in girls’ sport, and in keeping secrets from parents. The fact that schools — which have a legal duty to protect children from harm — are endorsing the social transitioning of children in their care should be seen as a major failure of safeguarding that requires Government action.

But it isn’t just the harm being done to “transitioning” children that should cause alarm. When schools allow a child to change their name and pronouns, other children in the school are pressured into accepting this new identity. I’m willing to bet that most adolescents know that humans can’t change sex, so in being forced to collude with the transition of a peer they are being pressured — every time they speak to or about their “trans” classmate — to speak a lie. When people are compelled by those in authority to repeat untruths or remain silent when lies are spoken, they lose their sense of self-worth and ability to resist coercion; it is unthinkable that this should be happening to children in a democracy.

We urgently need guidance that makes clear that schools do not have the authority to treat a child as anything other than their birth sex….