Mick Hartley

From the Times:

A group teaching nine-year-olds that some children may not feel like “a boy or a girl” is sending its books to every primary school in Gillian Keegan’s constituency to protest sex education reforms.

Pop‘n’Olly, an LGBT educational resource provider for children, parents and teachers, claimed the government guidance will have “devastating consequences” for pupils. Draft relationships and sex education (RSE) guidance, published last week, will include a ban on the proactive teaching of gender identity, warning that it is a “highly contested” area.

It comes after complaints from education campaigners that a wild west of private providers were taking workshops and handing inappropriate resources to schools. In response, Pop’n’Olly is donating 33 copies of one of its LGBT children’s books to all primary schools in Chichester, West Sussex, which is the education secretary’s constituency.

Pop’n’Olly are the very definition of an inappropriate resource.

The book, aimed at nine to 11-year-olds, said that children are “assigned” a sex at birth by a doctor and compared identity to a recipe for baking a cake. Olly Pike, chief executive of the company, said: “When the people in power won’t see LGBT+ people for who we are, it can make us feel helpless. However, we also have power and we can make a difference with our actions. We are delighted to donate our books to these primary schools ahead of Pride Month.”

Resources on Pop‘n’Olly’s website include a “scenarios” activity — which it said was aimed at upper Key Stage Two pupils aged nine to 11-years-old — featuring statements from cartoon children. One child’s statement said: “I don’t feel like I’m a boy or a girl, but people keep asking me which I am.”

Under each statement, pupils are asked if the scenario is OK and how they think the child feels. Another child, named Fabio, said: “I love painting my nails, but a few people make fun of me at school for doing it.” A third, named Donna, said: “I love my short hair and I like wearing boys’ clothes. I’m good at football so the boys are happy to play with me, but some of the girls keep talking about how I don’t fit in.”

These people are idiots…dangerous idiots. They've turned the problem on its head. When children find they don't fit the gender stereotypes, the solution is to challenge the stereotypes, not to mutilate the children to fit the stereotypes. Everyone kinew this a few years back.

For an in-depth look at Pop'n'Olly, see this Transgender Trend piece from a couple of years back:

Without spelling it out this is the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative, in which denying your sex is explained as being part of dress up, clothes and hairstyles. Children taught this harmful nonsense in primary school will take these ideas into secondary school and their experience of puberty, where the possibility of doing damage to their bodies and mental health increases vastly. It will be the girls who are most at risk of interpreting the normal angst of adolescence as being trans….

Pop’n’Olly materials are best described as adultification, an activity which normalises adult sexualities and niche ‘gender’ identities, and invites children to join in the discussion. Few schools are likely to say yes if an outside body offers to teach their seven-year-olds queer theory and about being transsexual. Yet this is what they will be doing if they use Pop’n’Olly resources or accept their free books.