That’s so sad. Hope that kid is okay now. Jesus what is wrong with people?

The danger to children doesn’t come from strangers, the call is coming from inside the home.

Wow, what a piece of shit that lady is. If their God was actually as just as they proselytize him to be, these kinds of people would have been eaten by wolves already xD

Ugh. I hope he went on to live his life the way he wanted. Did you ever confront Teacher Karen?

That’s seriously fucked up

God this was upsetting. If I was a parent and had a teacher karen proudly tell me this I'd want my kid to double down on it. I hope this kid turned out okay....

I have poor heating in some situations - especially noisy ones or when kids make minor mistakes that could significantly alter their life.

Huh? Oh, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I guess I never connected those dots.

My son loves the Goth look and we support him with lots of love and care.

That makes 2 people I know this happened to. Almost exactly.

> Next day the boy’s head was shaved, he had no makeup, and he was wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt. He also had significant bruising.

All perfectly legal in the UK. Because english-speaking countries don't give a shit about protecting children from violence.

Compelled speech is just as dangerous, sometimes more so, than suppressed speech. People need to remember that every time they hear any laws regarding what should or shouldn't be said.

Kemi Badenoch, UK's Minster of Inequality, does not want "parents to support their kids". She wants transgendered individuals and "wokeness" purged from society.

This is the exact point. This will bring harm to that subset of children. It is intentional.

It appears the main effect is to assure that kids who don't get support at home will not have anyone to turn to in the school.

This is petty and cruel.

Its the whole point.

To be cruel to the kids and be anti-trans.

When they end up killing themselves thats an added bonus.

Edit: To the person commenting (and deleting) you're disgusting and I'm getting reported, you both don't understand nuance or that it's what the Government wants, not me.

They whole point is to make students be afraid of being out at school. The goal is to make sure gay kids live in constant fear of being discovered because conservatives want to return to the 80’s when being gay was a shameful and disgusting thing that you needed to hide or you would be physically attacked.

Affect

Affect is usually a verb. Effect is typically a noun.

A lot of kids don't WANT to trust their teachers, their teachers are just some of the few authority figures who haven't already behaved violently and abusively to those kids.

Right? I feared ALL authority figures.

Ya I never trusted a teacher. The physical and mental abuse I put up with made me hate school and dislike all teachers.

Kids dont blindly trust all teachers, they trust teachers who they view as trustworthy. This will just lead them to believe none can be trusted

Folks who support things like this simply want non-binary, or even questioning, kids to be afraid or abused.

Not the point of this conversation, but sometimes dogs are flinchy. I don't hit my dog, but he acts like I do. First time I took him to the vet they asked if we wanted anxiety meds because "he's a nervous fella"

> If there's a child questioning their gender, that is an entirely private thing between the child, their parents, and any associated caregivers/doctors/etc.

Except that sometimes their parents are hostile and cannot be safely in the loop. That's what this policy ensures: that hostile parents will either be informed their child is hiding their identity from them so they can abuse them, or ensure those kids cannot access any support from a safe adult.

I agree...but with the side of the parents and kid. " Stop injecting your political opinions, your supposed attempts at morality, and stop forcing these individual, private struggles people have out into the public as if any one has any right to judge or comment on another"

And destroy any trust the teacher and kid have established.

It also isolates queer children, they'll have no adults they can talk to and will have to be very careful when talking to their peers.

It's very obviously deliberate.

The right doesn't believe children should have autonomy. To them, kids are the property of their parents, and people have every right to control all aspects involving their property.

Teachers aren’t bound by confidentiality. They’re not doctors or lawyers.

One of the reasons I left my last job was I was told I was no longer allowed to run LGBTQ+ support groups for students that I had been running for 8 years (I'm was on the mental health/wellness side of things). Of course it happened within a week of a conservative governor coming into office. It was the middle of the school year too - so it was really awesome telling these kids we could no longer meet in the middle of having groups.

Especially in the US, the education system has way bigger problems than this. But God forbid we tackle any real issues.

Just last week in the US an elderly cis wonan was murdered because her neighbor thought she was trans, and a cis man was stabbed to death for defending a trans wonan from being assaulted in the street. There's also been cases of cis women who look "butch" having the cops called on them for using the bathroom

I'm in California, but my local school board has a fundie majority. They recently passed a policy banning any flag that isn't the American flag in classrooms (which really means "fuck your pride flags"), and they're about to pass a policy that would force teachers to out students to their parents, as in this article. My partner and I went to protest these decisions, but the board could give precisely zero shits about hearing a different perspective or thinking one step past their draconian suppression. These policies are literally illegal and open up the schools to a number of lawsuits, but who cares, as long as LGBT students are scared and sidelined, right?

> it's almost looks like it's designed to do that.

It literally is designed to do that. It's the whole point.

Some poor kid is gonna get a law named after them when the inevitable happens.

> it's almost looks like it's designed to do that.

That's exactly what it is. Many countries right now are struggling with an ultra-nationalist right-wing movement (at least from the US-politics perspective, I don't know if it'd still be "right wing" over there) that really took off in the last 5 or so years.

It's designed to remove all possible support from them so they stay in their box. What does a childs world look like? Home, School, extrcurricular activities.

Not every family has the money for extracurricular activities so that means their child can't find suppirt anywhere.

Maybe its time to go full California prop 65 warning label on this? Parents could encourage kids need to make it super trendy to tell their teachers this, hopefully once a day or so. This would mask the children who might be harmed in a sea of children who have reasonable and responsible parents. Teachers could also engage in malicious compliance. Send letters to parents for each and every instance to the point where they become white noise. If everyone is getting letters, nobody is.

Not me finally understanding who I am and taking steps to change myself into that person and now we have right wing fascisty bs popping up everywhere 🥴

I envy your naïveté if you thought this was strictly some US cultural shit. I mean, c’mon, the UK has a *state religion*; even the US never went that conservative with it.

Because the UK, like everyone else, also has conservative nutjobs?

Oh don't you try to pin this on another country, the UK is crawling with transphobia.

TERFs were active in the UK *long* before the current trans witch hunt in the US. Stop blaming other people for your problems.

Because vomiting up Christian evangelical bullshit is incredibly profitable.

I would not be surprised to see a money trail following all this hate.

JK Rowling

The UK has been very conservative about anything social for, well, forever. It just doesn't always have the rabid evangelicals at the forefront of the debate.

Now it's our culture war bs

I was going to post something similar. I’m a teacher, and kids tell me shit all the time— personal things. I’m always very up front with what I have to report. But if a child is telling me something like questioning their identity before they tell their parents, that to me tells me I need to tread really lightly with the parents and be careful how I speak to the parents or if I speak to the parents at all about the issue. Because ultimately, I’m just the child’s teacher. A parent has a lifelong relationship with the child. If the child is not telling their parents, there is a goddamn reason, and that boundary should be fucking respected.

they aren't clueless, we are long passed the stage of assuming all the terrible things the tories do to this country are out of incompetence rather than malice.

The explanation you’re seeking is already found in plenty of comments in other threads here:

Teachers aren’t currently being prohibited from informing parents; all this guidance seems to do is force *all* teachers to tell *all* parents, which isn’t great for the kids whose parents would react…poorly…to the news. (For example: The sort of parents who might describe “exploring your gender identity” as “spiraling”.)

For some people (my parent's for example), "dealing with it in the best way" means beating the shit out of their child until they decide they aren't trans anymore. If kids don't tell their parents they're questioning their gender, there's usually a good reason for that.

> …because it means that I could then address it in the best way.

The problem is, some number of parents (perhaps disproportionately represented among the group of kids who don’t feel safe telling their parents how they identify) feel that “the best way” means abuse and abandonment. LGBTQ+ kids make up 30-40% of unhoused youths, largely due to familial rejection.

Requiring teachers to report on this requires them to assess the likelihood of abuse and abandonment (which they are not trained to do) and requires kids to report sufficient information to justify that assessment (which they may be reluctant or unable to do).

More still, a significant protective factor against LGBTQ+ kids attempting to die by suicide is acceptance/validation of their identity and a sense of belonging. 85% of trans youth report experiencing suicidal ideation, 75% report having a specific plan to die by suicide, and over 50% report having made at least one attempt to die by suicide. An insidious aspect of this law would be that kids will now be too afraid to confide in their teachers, meaning they will lose those protective factors at school without gaining any potential support at home that might theoretically have come from mandated reporting.

Because some parents aren’t safe.

I think the problem is what happens if there isn't a supportive environment at home? This could lead to violence and discrimination towards trans kids who are just trying to be who they are.

> What's the issue with wanting to consult somebody's parents/legal guardian if they're starting to say that they want to wear a different uniform that the one that their biological gender dictates?

The issue is that a student with an ultra-conservative parent might be punished, abused, or even killed by said parent. If they want confidentiality from their own family, there's a reason.

There are two types of children here. Those that want their parents to know that they want to be called by a different name, and those who don't want their parents to know this. I think it's pretty logical to say that the children who do want their parents to know will likely tell them themselves, if they haven't already. So this basically only impacts children who actively do not want their parents to know. Do these children have no rights here? Maybe there is a good reason why they don't want their parents to know.

What if those bullies literally are your parents?

The issue is that there is now this push to isolate parents from their children and leave them in the charge of the state. As if somehow the parents are the problem.

“This will only hurt kids in the long run”

That’s the point. To get kids to not trust adults, to suffer in silence and not tell any adult, to treat it as a shameful thing that they may feel different than what their parents expect of them.

If they don’t trust any teacher with this, you think they will trust any teacher to do the right thing if they tell their teacher their father is molesting them?

That's the point. Conservatives want trans kids dead.