Two 14 year-old girls have written an open letter to the Education Secretary Gillian Keegan ahead of the forthcoming Department for Education draft transgender schools guidance. The girls have to remain anonymous for reasons that will become clear by reading their letter. The letter was first published on the website of the excellent Transgender Trend, whose motto is “No child is born in the wrong body”. You can donate here.
Dear Gillian Keegan
With the release of the Department for Education’s transgender guidance quickly approaching, we – two 14 year-old girls in separate secondary schools – want to contribute our thoughts to the discussion. There is a lack of student voices on this issue and it’s vital to have some perspective of what it’s like in a school environment where dissenting voices are stifled, extreme ideologies are presented as fact and girls are injured by boys in mixed-sex sport.
Schools are meant to be politically neutral; differences in thoughts and opinions should be encouraged and fostered, not shouted down and censored. There is a growing atmosphere of fear around this topic and many students, including us, are frightened to speak out openly due to the threat of ostracisation and bullying from students who adopt the authoritarian dogma of gender ideology. In our schools, opposition to this extreme theory is met with vitriol and restrictions on speech – in one of our schools, a student was discouraged from covering the topic of sport from a critical lens by a teacher and the discussion was branded too “triggering”, whilst a different student who was talking about the topic from a positive view was allowed.
It is vital that teachers present political topics in a neutral manner that allows differing viewpoints to be accepted. When controversial political ideologies are presented as absolute fact by teachers, whom students are meant to trust, this eliminates all chance of discussion, all chance of a nuanced debate. The concept of a ‘gender identity’ is a contested theory and it is not appropriate to present this ideology as absolute fact in classrooms. We urge the Education Secretary to construct an atmosphere of tolerance and respect by ensuring political neutrality is upheld in classrooms. By this, we ask for ‘gender identity’ not to be presented as unopposed fact. Teachers are required to be politically neutral in schools, so why is there a double standard when it comes to the transgender issue?
We’ve both – along with 72% of students from other schools across the U.K., according to Policy Exchange – had lessons on gender ideology in schools and every time it was presented as the complete truth. In schools across the country, kids like us are being told that girls can have penises, that humans can change sex, that there are seventy-two ‘genders’, that ‘gender identity’ is innate and unchangeable, despite NHS guidance stating that children who identity as ‘transgender’ may be going through a phase. This must stop, and if students are to be taught about ‘gender identity’, it must be presented in a neutral manner that specifies that this is a belief system, not fact.
As well as this, teachers must remain neutral when discussing this topic in lessons. We’ve also both experienced times when biased teachers attempt to implicate gender ideology in innocuous topics, for instance claiming that Zeus, the Greek god, was “non-binary”, or that Lady Macbeth was “gender-fluid”. Teachers also shouldn’t be asking students their pronouns, especially on the basis of non-conformity, or their sexuality or sexual preference, both of which raise major safeguarding concerns.
Some schools, including previously one of ours, feature ‘Pride flags’ in the corridors, with labels such as ‘genderqueer’, ‘non-binary’, ‘demiboy’, ‘polysexual’, among others, and include books in the library on inappropriate topics, such as Beyond Magenta, which includes a six year-old child engaging in sexual activity and fails to condemn this or mention the fact that this was unlawful due to the child being significantly underage. If schools are going to provide books promoting gender ideology they should also be required to feature books offering a different point of view, such as Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, or Trans by Helen Joyce.
We also urge the DfE guidance to specify that students must not be punished for holding gender-critical views and that bullying and harassment on the basis of gender-critical beliefs shouldn’t be allowed. There is immense pressure among students our age to conform to the popularly-held views that trans women’ are women, and any opposition to this belief is considered ‘transphobic’ and unacceptable. There have been many cases of students being bullied and ostracised for disagreeing with gender ideology, where gender-critical pupils are punished by teachers, excluded by students and abandoned by friends.
A lot of us are too afraid to speak out due to fear of the consequences and this must change so that different opinions are allowed to be heard, even on divisive topics such as this one. We’ve been asked our pronouns countless times and it’s so exhausting to have to constantly play along and pretend to agree with this belief system out of fear, despite the fact we view it as regressive and harmful. In some schools, students are punished for referring to friends or classmates with biologically correct pronouns – this is insanely harmful, and it’s convincing students to ignore the evidence of our own eyes and ears, to place a single person’s feelings over objective reality, to indulge in an ideology we fundamentally disagree with.
We should not be coerced into using biologically incorrect pronouns for classmates and we must not be punished for refusing to do so. However, at this current time, according to Policy Exchange almost 70% of schools force other students to participate in a gender-distressed child’s ‘transition’ – this has to change and we are not going to stand for this destruction of our freedom of speech and belief.
We’ve also heard that the guidance will allow a “relaxed” approach to non-contact sport. We believe this is naïve and dangerously negligent. One of us has experienced mixed-sex sport at our school and after being deliberately targeted by the boys, she was hit in the face and breasts, breaking her glasses. Afterwards, all the girls in the changing room were complaining how unfair it was they’d been forced to participate against boys despite an obvious physical advantage. And this was meant to be a non-contact sport.
Accidents happen, and when they do it’s always a lot worse when it’s a boy hurting a girl due to the differences in strength, muscle mass etc. As well as this, we see no reason for a boy to be allowed to compete in girls’ sports, especially due to the physical differences, since members of the opposite sex are likely to be stronger, faster and have an obvious athletic advantage, even at a young age, and also due to the fact that having to participate with males can and will make many girls feel uncomfortable and afraid, particularly when at a vulnerable age when we’re going through puberty.
Thanks to the insight gained from Policy Exchange’s Asleep at the Wheel report, we now know that this is a much more widespread problem than we originally expected. For instance, one in five schools had absolutely no single-sex changing facilities, which places young schoolgirls at significant risk from being forced to undress in front of males for PE – an obvious and blatant safeguarding risk. We deserve privacy whilst in vulnerable positions, for instance while getting changed, and our rights are destroyed when you bring boys into the equation. For that reason, we are hopeful that all schools are required to have single-sex changing areas, and that boys are not allowed to enter female-only changing spaces even if they ‘identify as girls’.
The same goes for toilets – despite schools being legally required to have single-sex toilets, at least 28% are not maintaining this standard. It can be extremely uncomfortable for girls to have to use the same toilets as boys, especially when dealing with menstruation, and single-sex spaces are proven to be safer than their mixed-sex counterparts. Thankfully, it appears that boys will not be allowed to use female-only toilets, which will hopefully put an end to occurrences like hearing a male voice in what is supposed to be a female-only space, as one of us has experienced.
Mixed-sex toilets tend to be less clean, less private and less safe than single-sex facilities, therefore we think it’s unreasonable for schools to have both mixed-sex and single-sex toilets, when single-sex facilities alone are more convenient, safer and more dignified. If a boy does not feel comfortable using the male-only toilets, despite being male, he could potentially use the disabled toilets instead, but mixed-sex toilets help absolutely no-one and put all girls at a disadvantage.
Lastly, safeguarding should be valued above all. Frequently, teachers deceitfully hide a child’s ‘gender transition’ from his or her parents, which has happened and is still happening at our schools, as we’ve seen in our own experience. Honesty is fundamental in the relationship between parents and teachers and to conceal something as significant as ‘social transitioning’ from parents is an astonishing betrayal of trust. Schools must be required to be open and honest about whether or not a child ‘identifies as trans’, especially when the child is in a vulnerable position.
In some schools, students’ recorded sex is changed in the register due to the student’s or parent’s requests. This is misleading to both other students and teachers; important information such as sex should not be falsified. Honesty and integrity are key components in schools and to cloud the waters under the guise of ‘inclusivity’ does not make it better.
So we call upon the Education Secretary to value the dignity and safety of girls in secondary schools like us and to value the freedom of speech of all students. We request schools become politically neutral in encouraging a diverse range of opinions and thoughts and not to stifle students’ rights by presenting a highly contentious ideology as fact.
Yours sincerely
Two secondary school girls, aged 14
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It’s a majority Islamic city, run by Islamists, full of Islamists. What did you expect?
Don’t know about “majority”, but otherwise it seems you are correct, alas.
Well the Home Office is full of people with a migrant background and traitorous Useful Idiots who hate the West, so this comes as no surprise, and London hasn’t looked British for decades now. Then you look at who you’ve got for a Mayor and all bets are off. Londonistan it is. Hopping over the Channel to the neighbours, France is looking especially unappealing and un-French nowadays too. I’m sure as Micron tidies up Paris ready for the Olympics you guys can expect more of his rejects arriving at your shores;
”January 30, 2024. The French weekly, Le Journal du Dimanche, publishes the most comprehensive and detailed survey on what French Muslims think. Not surprisingly, the results are disturbing.
The first question in the survey was about Jews. 17% of French Muslims admit that they hate Jews. 39% say they have a bad, or very bad, opinion of Judaism.
France is the only country in 21st-century Europe where Jews regularly have been murdered simply because they are Jews. Since the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi in January 2006, all Jews murdered in France have been killed by Muslims. Sammy Ghozlan, the president of the National Office for Vigilance against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA), which lists anti-Semitic acts and helps their victims, has emphasized year after year, for more than twenty years, that almost all violent anti-Semitic acts committed in France are committed by Muslims.
When it comes to Israel, the results are even more disturbing. Feelings go beyond hatred. 45% of French Muslims say they want the total destruction of Israel.
France also happens to be the country in Europe with the largest number of “no-go zones”. There are at least 751 designated Zones Urbaines Sensibles (“sensitive urban zones”), where Muslim gangs and radical imams are in charge. Non-Muslims can still live there, on the condition that they accept the status of dhimmi (tolerated second-class citizen), bow their heads, and admit that they live in a territory ruled by Islam. Members of Muslim gangs no longer respect the police. If an incident between a police officer and a member of a gang breaks out, riots follow, and the police receive orders that if the situation risks escalation, they are not to arrest anyone.
France is a country where more than 70% of prison inmates are Muslim. According to reports, the crime rate among the Muslim population is high.”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20414/france-skyrocketing-threat
Bloody hell.
You regularly report well on this issue. ——-You are however fighting a losing battle. It reminds me of when Albert Speer told the Fuhrer “The war is lost”. —-Hitler loved his favourite architect and if anyone else had just said what Speer said then he would surely have been shot. Instead Hitler said to Speer “Tell me if you hope the war can still be won and give me your answer in 24 hours”————–I also hope the war can still be won but I fear it is LOST. The war I am talking about is the War on the West.
War being waged on the West by… The West.
Mogs : France is not Paris
Yes, by traitors that pander to the UN and WEF rather than to their own voters. They are guilty of cultural vandalism.
I do hope the family have photo-copied the de-faced document.
It should not be difficult to determine who was responsible for the vandalism but positively confirming the perp will be nigh on impossible. However, I believe we can all confidently predict that the likely outcome will be…
‘Lessons will be learned.’
This confirms the rank failure of the Civil Service where their own code maintains that in carrying out duties civil servants must remain neutral. Of course this doesn’t happen. In my time amongst them being surrounded on a daily basis by ultra-leftwing woketards was simply a cross to bear.
Clearly some valiant pro Hamas jihadist felt that scribbling across a birth certificate and ripping it was tantamount to striking a blow for the bruvvers. What a brave, little anonymous hero.
Every single one of the people who had access to this document need pulling in for a stern reminder that they are civil servants and they will abide by the CS code – or else, and to be told that their wages are paid by British taxpayers and if they won’t behave they must F O.
Given that the offices are probably in London I am certain that ethnic Brits will be a minority sub-group amongst the office population with 95% of the staff being non-British and sun-tanned “minorities.”
The state of Britain.
Yet two people give you the red thumbs down. So this means that they think it is acceptable for government employees to act in this way. The father of the child whose document was defaced is therefore completely right to be fearful of living in a country who has imported this sectarian clutter and we must not criticise that or we are all RACISTS.
Thanks varmint.
The two downticks probably belong to my daily trolls and if not they are worrying, a couple of lost causes.
There’s a picture of it in the article.
Whoops. Seen it now. Thanks
Sue them.
Enough is enough.
We know the civil service are a problem but it is currently an assumption that it is a Muslim and not simply a bored employee or a Zionist looking to encourage Israel to go to Israel or something even more mundane.
He did not want to reveal his surname but no such qualms in the Israeli media.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-man-decries-filthy-tampering-after-israel-rubbed-out-on-babys-birth-certificate/
Isn’t this reading a bit much into a piece of paper getting accidentally torn and someone carelessly using it to get a ballpen to work? The home office obviously shouldn’t have sent it out in this state¹ but shoddy work reportedly happens. And why on earth is scribbling over the place of birth of the father (Israel) but not the mother (also Israel) discriminating against the daughter?
¹ Assuming these certificates cost money, this can’t be an attempt to get a replacement for free after the guy accidentally damaged it himself, can it?
“scribbling over the place of birth of the father but not the mother”
The fathers name was also “Israel” so who knows what someone thought when they saw what appeared to be a duplicate. It may have been malicious or complete inexperience and incompetence.
I too believe there is a distinct possibility that this is a case of incompetence.
The tear might be an accident. The scribbling out of ‘Iseael’ was not. There is no reason at all why an official public document should be altered. If it was done by “accident” the procedure dictates that the operative initials their error.
Agreed that’s the process but an incompetent wouldn’t know that.
I am undecided between malice (whatever they might have wanted to trigger) and incompetence. If it’s a case of the latter, we’ll find out soon enough. If it goes quiet, we’ll know it’s the former.
Have I betrayed how little faith I have in the modern version of “British Justice”?!
To me, this looks like someone trying a biro which is starting to get a bit old and doesn’t work reliably anymore. It’s usually possible to get it to work by scribbling, possibly after moistening the ball with spit, this being done using some piece of paper which happens to be available. I’m also not aware of any obvious ‘political message’ in scribbling over one of several instances of the word Israel on some page. I’m also not convinced that this wasn’t the guy himself or someone at his household accidentally ‘manhandling’ the certificate.
Going via the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism was only going to result in it being weaponised publicly before the department had an opportunity to investigate and respond.
For someone concerned with safety, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with increasing his visibility, including that of his wife.
In the great scheme of things, the civil service involvement in lockdowns, mandates, coercion etc. should really be the focus. Fix that and perhaps people will find their documentation treated with respect (assuming they are responsible in this instance).
Let me be blunt – utter nonsense.
Now where can I warm up my biro?
‘Israel.’
I’ll scribble and scribble on Israel until my biro starts working.
That’s some part of a piece of paper which is roughly in the middle of it and that the person who did this can read fluently enough to decipher Israel without a conscience effort to do so would need to be proven. Many people can’t.
I’m wondering whether someone got confused…the father’s name is Israel. Perhaps when they saw the father’s name they thought a mistake had been made re place of birth? As others are pointing out? This ‘story’ is a bit odd…
Probably the office cat.
Is this supposed to be a joke? A guy receives a slightly messed up birth certificate and, instead of just sending it back and getting a replacement, claims to the whole world he feels unsafe and has his ‘story’ sympathetically printed in the Daily Mail, under the usual headline of “Anti-Semitism”.
So the next time the postman delivers me a torn letter, I can also complain to the Daily Mail and say I no longer feel safe?
How about printing some stories on the atrocities performed by the Israelis against Palestinians? They have now killed 30 times the number of their losses on 7th October, surely there is more than one Palestinian fearing for his life whose story you could tell?
Scott Ritter accuses Israel here of murder, genocide, war crimes, human depravity, evil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VniH6Sgl8D4.
He goes on to say “the Israelis are in the business of killing innocent civilians for the purpose of driving 1.6 million people out of Gaza into the Sinai desert, depopulating Gaza, so that they can terminate Gaza as a Palestinian entity. This is not war. Israel will say we are going after four Hamas battalions that are in Rafah. Well, why do you drop bombs on civilian tent cities because you know there are civilians there? By the way, the civilian tent cities that you dropped leaflets saying go build a tent city in Rafah, that is a safe place, you’ll be safe there. So 1.6 million people did so, they’re there, then you starve them out, you deny them humanitarian goods, deny them food, medicine, horrific living conditions, but they stay there nonetheless, and then you drop bombs on them, you kill them, you slaughter them, you murder them. … This is ripping bodies apart, bodies of children, bodies of women, bodies of pregnant women, bodies of old men, innocent people, their bodies are being torn asunder, ripped into tiny little pieces, by the Israelis for the sole purpose of terrorizing, intimidating 1.6 million people into fleeing for their lives. Israel is trying to create the conditions where they say you have no choice: if you stay in Rafah you will die, and here we’ll kill 150 more of you tonight just to prove it. And the world is doing nothing – nothing. Silence.”
So, come on, DS, break the silence, please!
Huge bias from the editors here.
Only limp wristed stories of “terrible” acts of antisemitism and feelings getting hurt for this rebellious bastion of reporting.
It would not surprise me to learn the whole story was a fabrication, as here: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/12/17/registered-israeli-foreign-agent-campus-antisemitism/.
Well, so what? Swap Rafah for Dresden or Pforzheim and everybody’s going to cheer about it. And it least some everybodys will claim that infants and mothers and OAPs in either place brought this unto themselves because they’re just guilty having been born as members of the wrong …. well, let’s get into that in more detail, members of The Wrong™ is definite enough.
Imagine the impoverished civilian, bombed out of his house with half of his family dead or maimed. He has been going hungry for weeks on end, without clean water or medical aid for his shrapnel wounds. He finds no refuge. He is tired but cannot sleep.
He dodges a hail of bullets to scrabble through the rubble that was once his house. And then it happens: the last straw. He comes across an important piece of family documentation that has been deliberately defaced. Oh, the horrendous pain! How can he ever feel safe again?
IF the Home Office finds out who did this, they should be sacked immediately and lose their CS pension.