The Minister for Women and Equalities said that Labour “will protect single sex spaces and ensure trans people have support as well”
BY NANCY KELLEY, IMAGE BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Bridget Phillipson’s conference speech last weekend had a single throwaway line that has been troubling me. She said that Labour “will protect single sex spaces and ensure trans people have support as well”.
It’s just one line. It could mean almost anything. Really, the only thing it signals clearly is that when it comes to trans people’s rights and lives, Labour remains committed to giving off centrist vibes over engaging seriously with how far the UK has travelled down a transphobic rabbit hole and how unsafe many members of the trans+ community feel as a consequence.
This kind of framing has been consistent over recent years. We’ve heard it from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting, both in opposition and in office. We’ve heard it from the Minister for Development and Minister for Women and Equalities Anneliese Dodds, both in opposition and in office. It’s quite literally the party line.
Like all centrist “lines to take” it’s not really grounded in values, and it certainly isn’t a reasoned policy position. But it matters. This is a framing that comes from a desire to appeal to “both sides”, yet naively adopts in its entirety the narrative of the gender critical lobby.
And in the case of Bridget Phillipson, it is coming from a minister at risk of following in the footsteps of her Conservative predecessors and implementing a policy as damaging to trans+ and gender non-conforming children now as Section 28 was to LGBTQIA children in its day.
In its dying days, the Conservative government issued a consultation on draft guidance for “Gender Questioning Children in Schools”. The draft is irredeemably awful: it proposes preventing trans+ children from socially transitioning (changing name, pronoun, uniform) in almost all circumstances, it proposes outing trans+ children to their parents, and it proposes protecting the right of school staff and students who hold transphobic views to direct those views at trans and gender questioning children. At the same time, the Conservative government made draft changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education (the statutory guidance for the Children Act and the basis of all safeguarding practice in schools) that link KCSIE to this draft guidance.
All of this nasty, dangerous and transphobic policy-making should have been thrown in the bin by an incoming Labour government. So far, it hasn’t been. Instead, under the leadership of Bridget Phillipson, the Department for Education has made these troubling changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education permanent, changes that are already leading to trans+ and gender non-conforming children being less safe at school.
DIVA has spoken to educators who are supporting trans+ children directly impacted by this mess. Children who are staying closeted at school, not because they fear the reaction of staff and pupils, but because they fear the reaction of their parents when the school outs them. Children who have supportive parents and just want to come out in their own time feeling forced into disclosing to prevent hostile teachers outing them for wearing gender non-conforming clothes. Children who are disgusted that who they are is being presented as a safeguarding risk.
And in response to questions from inclusive education campaigners challenging the basis for these changes, the Department has given the following answer:
“KCSIE reflects key aspects of the Cass Review, which can inform schools and colleges when making decisions concerning gender questioning [children] – both in terms of the need to take a cautious approach, especially for primary age children, given the lack of evidence, and of making sure that parents are involved in making decisions.’
The Cass Review – criticised by a wide range of international expert bodies from the Endocrine Society to the American Society of Paediatrics and the Yale Integrity Project (see Dr Ruth Pearce’s excellent summary here for more) – was not a review of the evidence on safeguarding trans and gender non-conforming children in schools.
The fact that Dame Cass went outside her remit to express such strong opinions on social transition should not be seen as relevant to anything other than understanding her worldview: one where social transition is concerning purely because trans+ children who socially transition are highly likely to have a stable trans identity into adulthood and are consequently likely to medically transition. Yet here Dame Cass’ views are being used by DfE to justify a potentially highly significant change in education and safeguarding policy.
If Bridget Phillipson’s throwaway line at the Labour Party Conference troubles me, this response from her department sets off a klaxon. Trans+ and gender questioning children deserve to be able to go to school and learn in safety. Bullying of trans+ children is already tragically commonplace: research by the charity Just Like Us found that 10% of trans+ children are bullied at school every day, and that 54% have been bullied in the last year. There are signs that the shift in KCSIE is already making this worse.
Trans+ children deserve so much better from us. They certainly deserve better than having their education and wellbeing sacrificed on the altar of thoughtless centrist positioning by a government that hasn’t taken the time to stop and think.
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