I left my job as a Primary School TA (a job I’d loved and been effective in for many years) after we were asked to, as I see it, be complicit in the ‘social transitioning’ of a year 2 (6 year old) child. This was a child who liked some things more commonly liked by the opposite sex. Five or 10 years ago this would not have been any cause for concern, unless the child was being teased for it (in which case that would have been addressed by tackling the bullying; not changing the child!).
This social transitioning was with the support of the parents, and after a representative from the organisation Gendered Intelligence came into the school and delivered a 3 hour training to the Senior Leadership Team and some of the Governors.
I know other staff members were concerned and wanting to talk about what was behind this child’s desire to be treated as if they were the opposite sex. No discussion was allowed; the Governors refused to meet with me to discuss Safeguarding and Equality concerns (I had never had such a response to any problem I had raised in school before), and the Head of the LEA did not respond to the letter detailing my (evidenced) concerns about the ‘affirmation’ route for such a young child, after an initial acknowledgment of my letter. I keep writing, updating this person on issues such as The Interim Cass Report, in which Dame Hilary Cass said that ‘social transitioning’ is not a Neutral Act, but I suspect I am persona non grata. The LEA and Council are Stonewall Champions.
I believe that teachers, headteachers, LEAs, Local Authorities and even Social Service Departments have been ideologically captured and are forgetting all they should know about child development and safeguarding in this rush for short-term apparent solutions to what may be a variety of psychosocial problems such as autism, bullying, trauma and even parental pressure (which then remain un-addressed). My biggest fear, still, about this child is that they will lose the chance turn out to be a well-adjusted same sex attracted adult (there is strong evidence that persistent gender nonconformity, especially in young boys, is correlated with growing to be a gay adult). Instead, I fear we are ‘transing’ potentially gay and lesbian children.
I have responded to the Consultation about the proposed Bill to criminalise Conversion Therapy. I have criticised the biased language used in the Consultation – the term ‘gender identity’ is not defined and is a contested belief, based on stereotyping what girls and boys are ‘meant’ to be like. I thought we had moved far away from those kinds of constraints on children, especially in a supposedly ‘progressive’ area where the school is sited. Instead, we’ve gone backwards, where boys who like pretty things are being allowed, or led, to believe they are actually girls and ‘tomboys’ are led to believe they are boys. This is particularly egregious when applied to small children, who go through a developmental stage of being confused about the difference between looking like a girl, and being a girl. That confusion is simply being exploited by ‘gender identity ideology’. This is sexist. It’s also potentially homophobic.
I have also argued that we risk people like me, teachers and therapists being unable to safeguard gay and lesbian children and teens, which is the very opposite of what the Bill would seek to achieve. Sexuality and gender identity should not be conflated.
The Government really needs to step up and the DfE and Ofsted put their money where their mouths are and, as you say, get biased lobby groups who are seeking to apply adult ‘solutions’ to children out of schools. I fear it’s too deeply embedded – especially in Secondary Schools, where there is the pressure of social contagion, the internet and ‘activist teachers’. Even in my school I believe there were a couple of young teachers who were all for this new, ‘trendy’ idea.
It is now several years since I left the school. Feeling helpless, frustrated and fearing that I was seen as unsupportive or ‘bigoted’ took its toll on my mental health. But I do not lie to children and I could not stay in those circumstances, feeling complicit in what I believe to be harm.