On June 5th, one month in advance, we booked and paid for a ticket to the Stonewall Children and Young People education conference today in London (July 5th) openly in the name of Stephanie Davies-Arai representing Transgender Trend. We received email confirmation of our booking and the conference fee was taken out of our account on the same day. Yesterday at nearly 4pm we received this email from Stonewall.
The Stonewall conference fee of £168 has not yet been refunded to our account.
Stonewall has chosen to base the withdrawal of our place at this conference on some defamatory, false and unsubstantiated accusations against us: we are ‘anti trans,’ we believe that trans people don’t exist and we are against ‘LGBT inclusive education.’ Stonewall has either not read any of our material, in which case they would be aware that these allegations are false, or they have read our material and simply seek to defame us.
Stonewall is the most powerful and influential LGBT organisation in the UK with an income of £8.7 million in 2018 including a £233,673 grant from the Department for Education. Stonewall has an Education Champions programme, a Children and Young People’s Services Champions programme and Stonewall School Champions award scheme. They have produced schools guidance for both primary and secondary schools. We have great concerns about the transgender content of Stonewall’s schools guidance, our analysis can be viewed here.
We have also produced schools guidance, for which our founder was shortlisted for the John Maddox Prize in 2018 and which was recently voted most compliant with EHRC Technical Guidance for Schools in a TES review. (Full article also available here). We have had an overwhelmingly positive response from teachers to our pack and a second print run is underway. Despite no government funding, corporate sponsorship or endorsement from government departments or teaching unions, we have become a competitor to Stonewall in the field of Education.
Unfortunately this is not the first time Stonewall has tried to silence our voice through the use of defamatory unsubstantiated allegations. This began as soon as we published our schools pack in February 2018. The response from Stonewall Scotland on Twitter was swift:
Stonewall released a statement including the following:
We wrote a letter of complaint to Hannah Kibirige and Ruth Hunt, then CEO of Stonewall, including the following request:
“The Stonewall statement misrepresented our aims, was deeply defamatory and was clearly intended to damage our reputation. We ask that it be taken down from the website or that this statement is published as a Right of Reply.”
We received no answer.
Unsubstantiated allegations from the Stonewall statement were used in articles in Schools Week, Pink News, Third Force News, Talk Radio and Heart Teaching amongst others.
We were then alerted to evidence that Stonewall had contacted local authorities to warn them against using our schools pack.
School Leaders in Warwickshire had also received a warning from Stonewall:
The Stonewall allegation appeared again in June 2019 in a post by Herts for Learning Ltd, in association with Hertfordshire County Council, on the Hertfordshire Grid for Learning website page:
Please beware of a ‘schools resource pack’ produced by Transgender Trend that pretends to be advising schools legitimately on trans inclusion issues. This is not the case. Masquerading as professional, ‘evidence-based’ advice for schools on how to ‘support trans and gender nonconforming young people’, the pack in fact provides the reverse. It is a deeply damaging document, packed with factually inaccurate content.
On the Herts for Learning page there was a longer warning:
An extensive quote from the Stonewall statement was followed by the statement: “HfL completely support Stonewall’s view and strongly advise all schools to avoid using their materials or guidance” followed by a link and advice to use the Allsorts schools guidance.
Because Stonewall is considered the most powerful and respected LGBT campaign group, their words carry authority. Their unsubstantiated allegation about the Transgender Trend schools pack has therefore been used as evidence enough that Transgender Trend is ‘anti-trans.’ For example, in a petition demanding an apology from BACP newsletter ‘Therapy Today’ for publishing a letter from our founder, a link to Stonewall’s statement was used as ‘proof’ of the following statement:
“Transgender Trend are not a therapeutic organisation, they are a group set up by parents who refuse to accept their children’s gender identity which campaigns against supporting gender diverse young people.”
Therapy Today issued an apology.
Stonewall’s statement pops up a lot in media articles which misrepresent our work (such as this one) and we have seen it quoted verbatim on propaganda materials against Transgender Trend.
Stonewall’s behaviour towards us is permission-giving. As the official representative of the LGBT community, they are not only influential in their message but in their tactics. A sustained harassment campaign against us by activists has the authority of Stonewall behind it. Here’s just a small representative selection of responses on Twitter since the schools pack was published.
We are the only organisation producing schools guidance which is concerned about the potential risk to gay and lesbian children and young people in the new ideas of ‘gender identity’ being taught in schools; which supports lesbians to define their own sexual boundaries; and which upholds the Equality Act definition of homosexuality as ‘same sex’ orientation rather than Stonewall’s new ‘same gender’ definition which in effect erases gay and lesbian sexuality. We feel that Stonewall is letting down the gay and lesbian communities with their change of focus towards trans rights.
We call on Stonewall to support lesbians in defending their rights and to look at the research and evidence behind the transitioning of children and the potential risks to gender non-conforming, gay and lesbian youth.
We believe that open, respectful debate is vital and alternative viewpoints must be heard. Attempting to silence those who call for research and evidence-based practice is not a tactic which will help children and young people. We invite Stonewall to openly debate with us. We are not afraid of disagreement and challenge. Is Stonewall?
UPDATE
The conference fee was refunded to our account.
We will continue to update this post with any more examples we find of Stonewall’s attempts to discredit us and examples of their statement used by others to discredit us.
We heard from a teacher that the Sex Education Forum advise against using our materials because this may lead to a school being in breach of the Equality Act. When the teacher contacted them to find out more she was informed that Stonewall had told them this. The SEF confessed they had not actually checked our materials themselves.
The Tate Gallery has published a booklet based on the project ‘I want to show you a body’ by artist Linda Stupart in association with Gendered Intelligence. This includes a link to the Stonewall statement as ‘proof’ that Transgender Trend is “a UK hate group masquerading as experts.”
A Schools and Gender Diversity event at Edinburgh University was postponed due to complaints about the speakers, including Stephanie Davies-Arai. The Stonewall statement was quoted by the Staff Pride Network Committee:
However from what we understand of the work conducted by Transgender Trend (the organisation that one of the proposed speakers is the founder of), they produced guidance for schools in England and Wales which has been resolutely denounced by Stonewall, stating, “It is a deeply damaging document, packed with factually inaccurate content.”
EqualiTeach cited critisism from Stonewall as part of their justification for defamation of Transgender Trend in their new schools resource published in May 2020:
But there is good news. This resource was funded by the Government Equalities office. When news of the resource broke on Twitter, both Liz Truss and the GEO swiftly issued tweets distancing themselves from it:
The GEO logo was also removed from Stonewall’s primary curriculum guide which was funded under the same scheme and this resource is no longer available on the Stonewall website, but accessible to members only.
More good news is that Warwickshire and Hertfordshire are two of the authorities who have withdrawn their transgender schools guidance after a judicial review application from a teenage girl regarding the Oxfordshire transgender toolkit was granted by a judge.
We are pleased to note that the link to the Hertfordshire Grid for Learning statement on Transgender Trend now leads to a Page not Found and the Warwickshire Head teacher’s newsletter of 14th February 2018 has been removed from their website.
The CPS Hate Crime guidance, written with Stonewall, has now also been withdrawn after another judicial review was sought. As Stonewall loses its authority and credibility we are confident that their defamation of Transgender Trend will simply cease to be taken seriously.
We believe that argued and evidenced critisism is valid – and in fact essential when the subject is policies and approach affecting children and young people. We have therefore analysed all Stonewall’s schools resources published since 2015 and we are happy for anyone to analyse our resources with the same rigour and attention to detail.
Stonewall can’t fall any lower in my opinion. An extremely nasty organisation. Thank you for bravely taking them on with cool, rational and scientific arguments.
The government would be wise to stop funding unprofessional groups such as Stonewall.
Stonewall’s use of aggressive tactics to promote their ideas is frightening.
I find Stonewall’s language typically defensive and lacking in rigour. Their terminology is colloquial and predictably empty in its rhetoric. I’m disappointed that Transgender Trend have been disallowed from attending the conference, but not at all surprised. Stonewall appears to be incapable of objective discussion or debate. They put their organisation’s dubious reputation before the Safeguarding of children.
“The government would be wise to stop funding unprofessional groups such as Stonewall.”
No chance! The politicians are too scared of being branded homo/transphobic, and the civil service who largely determine policy are becoming increasingly woke (many are humanities graduates, and the humanities sections of our universities are almost completely captured by post-modernism and cultural Marxism).
It is going to get worse.
Stonewall are a reflection of govt policy.
Are you going to sue Stonewall for their libellous bs and orwellian censorship?
We have been approached by lawyers who are very interested in this.
My gender non conforming and cross-dressing teen loves your stuff. He stopped his monthly donation to Stonewall when he heard how lesbians were being treated.
I enjoyed this post greatly. I am a lesbian with Asperger’s who thinks too many young women are being pushed into a trans identity by social contagion, homophobia, and underlying serious mental illness. I want these girls to have more time to consider the consequences of transition., and have strong lesbian role models to imitate.
TransgenderTrend – your picture of the email from Stonewall includes an email address. If this is not freely available from the Stonewall website, you might want to consider blacking it out, as there seems to be a “doxxing” trend and I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble over it.
Other than that, I think you should take legal action against Stonewall for their defamation. Get some authoritative scientific personnel to state that the message you put forward is scientifically correct (e.g. a man is not a woman, nor can ever be), be clear about your aims, and take legal action. The outcome will either make people be aware that Stonewall is an authoritarian organisation based on bad ‘science’, or will show the whole country in what direction the governing elites are taking Britain.
Thank you, we’ve blanked the email address.
Stonewall’s original purpose was the absolutely legitimate and necessary one of campaigning for equality and fairness for people who are gay, lesbian or bisexual, and that purpose has been largely achieved. Now that it has been “trans-jacked” and is being used not only to disseminate nonsensical ideas about “gender” but also to encourage dangerous treatment of young people who have problems coming to terms with their biological sex, all government funding should cease forthwith.
Stonewall was built by lesbian women and gay men and they are fiercely letting that community down now by pushing and focusing on trans only. They have disregarded all the abuse lesbian women are getting and seem to openly support transactivists. There was never this with the gay, lesbian and bisexual movement they wanted acceptance and have it by the majority now. The gender ideology is contradictive to sexuality and actually conforms to gender stereotypes that many of us have tried to get rid of. If we reduce women to a feeling then what exactly are they and how will they be protected by sex? I hope some rationality and common sense can be brought about but I doubt that stonewall can stop having tantrums long enough to listen shame on them