Identity politics and sex education in schools

sex education

The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has announced that a review of government Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) guidance will be brought forward following a disturbing report on external RSE resources, commissioned by Miriam Cates MP. But a review of RSE guidance does not go far enough without looking at the root cause of how extreme, age-inappropriate sex resources have been accepted into schools in the first place.

Extreme sexual practices and age-inappropriate material in schools RSE resources are linked to the Queer Theory-based gender identity teaching which has already undermined safeguarding in schools through an equality, diversity & inclusion and anti-bullying route.

Now under the banner of ‘LGBT inclusive RSE,’ Queer Theory is the basis on which more and more extreme RSE resources have been built.

The infiltration of gender identity politics into schools has snowballed over the last five years, under the guise of ‘trans rights’ and promoted by LGBT groups backed up by so-called Third Wave feminism.

LGBT and Third Wave feminism are part of a broader identity politics movement which also encompasses groups such as Black Lives Matter. Critical race theory, gender identity theory and Queer Theory are packaged together as one social justice movement that promotes a victim hierarchy based on degrees of oppression and degrees of privilege.

Thus a ‘cisgender woman’ (a woman) has privilege over a ‘transgender woman’ (a man).

This is incompatible with UK Equality law. There is no hierarchy of rights within the protected characteristics of the Equality Act.

These groups operate under various names: Trans, LGBT, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA+ (etc); Liberal, Third Wave, Intersectional or Sex Positive Feminism.

LGBT and Third Wave feminism are unrelated to historic gay rights and women’s rights/feminist movements.

LGBT groups do not support same-sex attracted people. Third Wave feminist groups do not support biological females. Both deny biological reality in favour of subjective self-identity.

Both operate under the cover of women’s and gay rights while simultaneously erasing the basis of those rights: sex and sexual orientation.

Both groups operate a world view based on the tenets of Queer Theory. This says that biological sex is an idea, a social construct promoted by white colonialists. ‘Gender identity’ on the other hand is real and cannot be questioned (the gender affirmative approach). The aim of Queer Theory is destabilisation of reality and erasure of boundaries: between men and women, gay and straight, adult and child.

It replaces the immutable reality of sex with the nebulous concept of ‘gender identity.’ Sex is ‘assigned at birth’ while gender identity is your ‘authentic self.’ Sex is a subjective quality, a spectrum of ‘maleness’ or ‘femaleness’ where ‘male’ and ‘female’ no longer exist.

It replaces the binary of male and female with the binary of ‘transgender’ and ‘cisgender’, with numerous options in between: non binary, gender fluid, gender queer, transmasculine, transfeminine etc. Terms with objective definitions – ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – are placed as equivalents to these subjective self-identities.

The concept of gender identity does not challenge gender stereotypes, but reinforces them. It does not support gay and lesbian young people but erases them.

Categories based on immutable, objective reality are recategorised as undefinable identities. Boys and girls are placed in the category ‘gender identity.’ Gay and lesbian people are placed in the category ‘queer.’ Sexual orientation is reframed as ‘sexual identity.’

When society is organised around the concept of personal identity, boundaries of reality are erased and words with accepted and widely understood definitions become meaningless.

When ‘man’ and ‘woman’ become subjective concepts, biological reality can be characterised as stereotyping. Thus a biological male must not be excluded from female spaces just because he does not have a stereotypically female body. Separate facilities for men and women can be framed as reinforcement of gender stereotypes. 

The movement is enforced through strategies of shaming and moral posturing. It is presented as kind, tolerant and progressive, based on the principles of acceptance and inclusion. Any opposition or questioning is decried as phobic, bigoted, discriminatory and exclusionary. It employs a range of defamatory labels to prevent debate and silence criticism.

To question any aspect of gender ideology or state biological facts is ‘transphobic.’ Women who stand up for sex-based rights and protections for women and girls are ‘TERFs’ (“trans exclusionary radical feminists”) and ‘anti-trans.’

Safeguarding concerns are characterised as a ‘must think about the children’ prudishness and moral outrage. The privacy and safety of women and girls is characterised as non-inclusive and a rejection of diversity.

Understanding biology becomes ‘biological essentialism’ and lesbians who do not accept men who ‘identify’ as women as sexual partners are condemned as ‘genital fetishists.’

To challenge the sex industry becomes ‘whorephobic.’ To object to any extreme or harmful sexual practice is ‘sex negative’ and condemned as ‘kink shaming.’

The trans movement specifically targets children and young people, both online and in schools. It encourages the development of a combination of victimhood and entitlement, a recipe for narcissism.

Third Wave feminism targets young women online and through magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue, which promote sex practices harmful to women and girls such as ‘breath play’ (choking/strangling) and anal sex. Subjects historically challenged by the feminist movement (prostitution, porn, the sex industry) as exploitative and conducive to attitudes of violence against women and girls, are recast as ‘empowering.’

Prostitution is reframed as ‘sex work.’ Stonewall has promoted ‘Sex Worker Pride Day.’

The movement is characterised by slogans: ‘transwomen are women’, ‘sex work is work’ etc.

LGBT inclusive RSE materials do not use the words male and female or girls and boys. Instead they refer to body parts as if they are unrelated to sexed bodies, for example ‘people with penises and people with vulvas.’

The decoupling of body parts from sexed bodies according to the tenets of queer theory dehumanises people, specifically women and girls, with language such as ‘menstruators’, ‘birthing parent’ etc. Sexual relationships become relationships between body parts, not human beings.

Once people are dehumanised it is easier to introduce sexual practices that are abusive, dangerous, degrading and dehumanising of women.

The term ‘sex positive’ is political, it refers to acceptance and non-judgment of any and all ‘sexual identities.’ The ‘TQ+’ part of the expanding LGB acronym encompasses fetish, BDSM and all ‘genders and sexualities.’

The introduction of gender identities into schools has been expanded to ‘gender and sexual identities.’ Sexual identities include pansexual, demisexual, scoliosexual and asexual. Children are led to believe they must be accepting and inclusive of all sexualities, including sexual practices ‘considered to deviate from the norm.’ No limit is placed on what exactly is included in this category.

Nothing under the Rainbow flag may be questioned. Children are encouraged to be ‘allies’ to the ‘LGBT community.’

Men who dress as sexualised caricatures of women have been introduced into primary schools through Drag Queen Story Hour, further confusing children about who is a man and who is a woman. Pride has become a display of adult male fetish where heterosexual men parade in women’s underwear or animal costumes (’furries’). Schools take part in Pride month to celebrate adult sexualities in the name of acceptance and inclusion. 

Red flags such as ‘Love is love’, ‘love has no age’ and ‘queering the primary classroom’ are based on the idea that childhood is a social construction. Queer Theory aims to subvert and disrupt understandings of childhood as a defined category.

‘Gender identity’ has been accepted as a basis of schools teaching and policy in place of biological sex as the distinction between boys and girls.

Queer Theory pulls the rug of reality from under the feet of the youngest children, confuses children about sex and blurs the boundary between the sexes. In the name of children’s ‘autonomy’ and ‘agency’, an adult ideology has been imposed on children and children’s behaviour is interpreted through its lens.

The activist model of ‘gender affirmation’ that brought down the Tavistock has been implemented in schools without scrutiny.

Children are encouraged not to trust their own instincts and observations of reality and denied their confidence in using basic accurate language. The principles of boundaries, privacy and consent are incompatible with ‘gender neutral’ policies regarding toilets, changing-rooms and accommodation, along with the distortion of the language necessary to uphold these principles.     

A review of only RSE resources will not change the initial basic failure of safeguarding in schools as a result of capitulation to the gender identity movement.

Queer Theory-informed gender identity ideology is the fertile soil for the growth of harmful sex education resources for children in schools. Without tackling the root cause, there is a danger that extreme sex education will become a matter of degree while the erasure of sexual boundaries remains the foundation of RSE teaching in schools.

Without scrutiny of the initial dehumanisation of human beings, the blurring of boundaries between the sexes, distortion of language and disruption of reality promoted through gender identity and Queer Theory, a review will not succeed in protecting children from an ideology that undermines their safety.  

We should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Homophobia, sexism and racism still exist in schools. The tackling of these issues must not be discarded, but separated from the current identity-based social justice movement which undermines all true progress in these areas.

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This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. Madeleine Morey

    Thank you, Transgender Trend. This is the clearest and most comprehensive summary of the current position that I have ever read. Every MP should read it – and every teacher, school governor, youth leader and parent.

    1. Karen

      I agree

  2. Pam Buffone

    This is happening in Canada in spades and parents or teachers who try to raise concerns to the school boards are not even allowed to speak. There’s one lawsuit ongoing involving teacher Carolyn Burjoski and more and more examples of parents being cast out of meetings for raising questions. There’s something extremely nefarious happening when parents cannot raise safeguarding questions about their own children in schools.

  3. Diane Sparkes

    To Transgender Trend,

    I identify as Transsexual, not Transgender and I am in agreement with everything said in this article.
    At 82 years of age, I have fought societal stigma from a time long before many knew what stigma was.
    However, as you quote in the second from last sentence “We should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater” some of us “are” those babies, but at that time when the War in Europe was ending, my life was just starting and I would not know just what that life had in store for me.

    What it would take decades for me to recognise, is something few specialists understand about genetics that was only been reported since 2018. The fact that an embryo genetically destined to be female may develop as a male foetus at birth if something goes wrong.

    To clarify: –

    Sex is determined normally at exactly 8 weeks gestation medical science believes – thus clarifying visually the sex of a foetus when born – making supposedly that observation is easy to confirm. Except that until Medical science developed significantly enough – observation of genitalia was all we had.
    A physical body at birth will take on a human form that will develop as one of two biological sexes, male or female. Providing no disruption occurs as the embryo develops to upset this biological specificity, set at the time of conception. A normal foetus will develop into a physical body, with its sex and brain determined, entirely due to that genetic event.
    Naturally, all this takes place, as a prelude to gender identity, because until the brain has matured significantly enough, any concept of gender cannot exist.
    What no one can be certain about – is exactly what that foetus, now an infant’s brain believes its sex to be.
    Especially if sex development is disrupted by the use of man-made chemicals!

    The reason: –

    It is a better-known fact today that disrupting the natural process of sex development has many consequences beyond intersex which many believe is as simple as having ambiguous genitals but in reality, is more complicated than that. Being intersex isn’t a disorder, disease or condition.

    However, the reality that disrupting sex development does do, means that persons so affected need to be looked upon societally with discretion – not stigma because not being a disorder, disease or condition – they are not responsible for being different – neither do they have a choice!

    Just so you understand, I do not claim to be Transgender or a woman – but I did decide to correct my biological sex from presenting with male genitalia to presenting with non-functioning reproductive female genitalia by surgical means – but that still did not make me a woman.

    Although, I may legally have a neo-vagina and a gender recognition certificate. Few in society or the Rainbow community realise the implications that being Intersex creates.
    An individual who identifies as transsexual but who may also identify as transgender if confusion remains about their true sex, or they have chosen ‘not’ to correct their anatomy. The reality of identifying as Transsexual is very clear – once modification of a person’s genitalia takes place – a Transsexual is what you will become.

  4. Karen

    Narcissm is promoted by the transgender ideology to vulnerable children with low self esteem.
    Their self hatred exposes them to accepting the lie that they are entitled to a new birth certificate, new name, new passport, new body. Self harm includes the desire to kill natural biological identity. The truth is that people can not change sex. Imitating the opposite sex is an unhealthy lifestyle.

  5. Dick Heasman

    I agree with 98% of this very good article, so sorry, I’m going to talk about the other 2%.

    I have never interacted with a sex worker, nor, to the best of my knowledge, ever even met one. But if I did, I would certainly not refer to (probably) her by that derogatory term. We rightly do not use the N word any more, we should not be using the P word either. And we certainly should not be aiming to shame sex workers.

    It’s such a pity, I’m sure Transgender Trend doesn’t hate anyone, so don’t give any ammunition to those who make out that you do.

    On a much less important note, ‘the sex industry’ is a very broad term, and I would have hoped that your language would be more precise. Or do you really think that Ann Summers is a bad thing which should be campaigned against?

    1. Transgender Trend

      Women who have managed to exit the sex industry (by which we mean prostitution, porn, lapdancing etc) object strongly to the term ‘sex worker’ as it normalises the idea that it’s a job like any other, preferring the term ‘prostituted woman’ which more accurately reflects their situation.

      1. Dick Heasman

        Please provide a link to the survey results that established that these women prefer the term ‘p………d woman’ to describe their former occupation (sorry can’t bring myself to spell out that horrible word).
        That still leaves all the women (and a few men) who are still sex workers. These people also matter. Did the survey ask them the same question?

        1. Transgender Trend

          This isn’t the platform to talk about the sex industry but we suggest you start with Nordic Model Now to find facts, stats, testimonies etc. It’s similar to the issue of child transition, those ‘for’ tend to be highly funded, highly visible organisations, while those who have been harmed cannot go public or are too traumatised to speak out.

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