Last year my son attended an RSE workshop. He came home saying he had been taught that there were more than two sexes, and that children could go on puberty blockers. He asked the presenter how a boy would know they felt like a girl and the trainer said they might like pink and unicorns. My son said that was sexist but was given no response. After the session my son to a friend there were only two sexes and was shouted at by some of the girls who called him transphobic. I complained to the Headteacher who told me my son shouldn’t mock genders (?) and that the incident didn’t reach the threshold of unkindness.
I managed to get a copy of the presentation which included presenting beliefs about gender identity ideology as fact – including the idea that everyone has a ‘gender identity’ which is different from their sex. There was also a diagram with a Disney Rogue at one end labelled ‘boy’ and a Disney princess at the other labelled ‘girl’. In the middle was ‘non binary’. None of the slides about reproduction and anatomy were labelled as being male or female, girl or boy. Only the body parts were labelled.
I took it up with the school and mentioned my concerns in a general manner in a mum’s whatsapp group. I was threatened by the school and told to be careful about saying anything defamatory on there. The school refused to concede that teaching gender identity ideology breached DfE guidelines which require materials to be evidence based and factual. In fact they said people who took my stance and didn’t keep up with changing science were akin to creationists.
I also checked the school’s equality and RSE policies, and sex had been replaced with gender throughout. The protected characteristics were listed incorrectly with gender replacing sex, and gender identity and ‘cross dressing issues’ replacing gender reassignment.
I escalated my complaint to a Governor panel review, who agreed to revise the RSE and equality policies (this has now been done). The provider was not invited back this year.
This year, a new provider was contracted. They refused to share materials with parents, and suggested speaking to parents through an online zoom call the night before the presentation was due to be made to the children so that they could guide parents through some of the materials so that they wouldn’t be misinterpreted or taken out of context.
Many parents were concerned, particularly when an online questionnaire was sent to the children which talked about pleasure and touch, and whether they knew who to go to if they were worried about their genitals.
Pressure was put on the school to back down and to postpone the presentation to allow parents more time to see and discuss the materials, and the workshop was eventually cancelled. We were then told it would not be rescheduled. I still have no idea what was in the materials.
Following the meeting at school, a teacher also sent a message to all the kids on the year on the internal messaging board with text copied from the ‘Bloody Good Period’ website – (a website about menstruation) and then linked to the website itself. The text and website referred to ‘people who bleed’. I checked the website and couldn’t find a single instance of where the words women or girls had been used. I complained to the school and the post was removed from the internal messaging board. The school said it was not as a result of my complaint.