The shameful era of Section 28 echoes in the trauma of those subjected to government-sanctioned homophobia, embedding silence and stigma that continues to harm LGBTQIA+ people today. Margaret Thatcher, in her infamous reasoning behind the indefensible decision to “prohibit the promotion of homosexuality”, declared her intentions with resentful transparency;
“Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life”
Today, however, Labour hides behind a manufactured wall of plausible deniability through claims of “respect and dignity.”
The Department for Education’s Statutory guidance for Relationships, Sex, and Health Education (RSHE) will revive the days of mandated discrimination, though teachers will not be silenced in the ways they were 40 years ago.
Differing from the explicit prohibition found in Section 28, in the RSHE guidance, students are required to learn about the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Though the curriculum is the formation of a decade-long campaign to dismantle transgender rights and recognition, destroying societal understanding of what it means to be trans along the way. This is not guidance for inclusive education; it is tailored discrimination and epistemic control.
Yet again, Labour are willing to put trans young people’s safety and futures on the line to facilitate the institutional denial and rejection of their existence.
The Facts and the Law
The internationally condemned Supreme Court ruling set a dangerous precedent, institutionally embedding the “biologically nonsensical” reduction of self in the solely oppressive notion that ‘biological sex is natal sex and that cannot be changed’.
69. “Pupils should also be taught the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment. This should recognise that people have legal rights by virtue of their biological sex, which are different from the rights of those of the opposite sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.”
This is not so much a case of “don’t say trans”, but rather an active and orchestrated attempt at portraying trans existence as lesser than any others, something to be avoided, for your perception is destined from birth and abandoning your “virtue” puts you in conflict with those who adhere to the bounds of a ‘functioning society.’
Despite the RSHE guidance later reinforcing that “schools should avoid language and activities which repeat or enforce gender stereotypes”, they are telling young people they are defined by birth written classification of biological requirements, and should they deviate from this, they will be labelled second-class citizens. As the BMA reflected in their opposition to the ruling, “attempting to impose rigid binaries has no place in science, whilst being actively harmful to transgender and intersex people”, which is why the Department for Education had to differentiate between facts and law.
Transgender, nonbinary, and intersex young people are soon required to navigate a school environment in which their narrative is pre-determined, a social standing of statutory inferiority.
But hey, at least they’re being polite…
69. “Pupils should also be taught to recognise that people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, as with the other protected characteristics, have protection from discrimination and should be treated with respect and dignity”
Beyond the facts and the law
70. “In teaching this, schools should be mindful that beyond the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment there is significant debate, and they should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact. For example, they should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity.
Defining trans and nonbinary individuals as the product of ‘debate’ is by no means respecting what it means to experience gender in those ways; it restricts who they are to a framing of anti-trans ideology, which has cemented the regressive idea that affirming a trans person’s gender constitutes the endorsement of a “particular view”. One that we are being told violates the manufactured post-ruling environment of prerequisite denial.
SexMatters, an anti-rights group motivated by the “total eradication of the trans child”, has had direct influence on the EHRC’s “course correction” towards the systematic oppression of trans individuals. A Supreme Court ruling of their causing has emboldened the group to threaten inclusive public bodies with litigation for not sharing their unmitigated resentment of equality. Recently threatening the Welsh Government with legal action for “disobeying the ruling”, because their trans inclusion training maintains the basic affirmation that “trans women are women, trans men are men, and non binary people are valid.” In the eyes of the ruling’s motivators, being an “inclusive and diverse workplace, where everyone feels free to be their true self” is “clearly unlawful”.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in no way mandates this grotesque weaponisation of social stigma. Beyond the facts and law is an orchestrated campaign politicising trans existence to a point of mandated rejection.
A simple solution
70. “Schools should be mindful to avoid any suggestion that social transition is a simple solution to feelings of distress or discomfort”
Clause 70 is reflective of the entire section in its reduction of what it means to be trans and the experiences which follow, to a definition written by people who will never know.
Social transition is by no means a simple solution; it requires strength, resilience, and self-confidence to a degree of admirability, especially in young individuals.
Yet this guidance views transitioning in a light cast by the internationally discredited Cass Review, a social contagion of easy influence in which people are not expressing their core sense of self, but a coping mechanism for perceived difference and past trauma. Purposefully reducing trans youth into a framing that ‘justifies’ the withholding of needed support, portraying their identity as something to be avoided.
40 years on, we have to ask. Are we really doing this again?
Express their views
71. “Schools should encourage young people to consider how to express their views while remaining respectful of the opinions of others. Schools should be clear that bullying or disrespectful language or behaviour is never appropriate”
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, along with its glorified partner SexMatters, engaged in what they referred to as “strategic litigation.” A strategy of ever-increasing legal protections of explicitly discriminatory views under the guise of “freedom of expression” and “protected belief.” Reducing trans people to a state of foundational indignity, for the resentment of their being is on a path of greater legal protection than those who suffer the consequences of institutional abandonment. Through the silencing of trans voices, the political and media class are able to constantly redefine the bounds of what is considered discriminatory behaviour, tailoring the expression of transphobia under a guise of healthy discourse.
We are not in a respectful environment of expressing views; we are in a no-man’s land of supposed ‘debate’ in which a minority’s humanity is subject to judgmental evaluation, and this guidance amounts to conscription. Drafting young people into an environment of analysing another’s individuality, debating another’s humanity, provided they do it nicely.
Encourage pupils
72. “Where schools decide to use external resources, they should avoid materials that use cartoons or diagrams that oversimplify this topic, that could be interpreted as being aimed at younger children, or that perpetuate stereotypes or encourage pupils to question their gender.”
Clause 72 is an ambiguous mess, purposefully leaving headroom for the removal of LGBTQIA+ books should they include a representation of transgender people, family members, friends, or history. Granting schools and parents enough plausible justification to censor inclusive materials, whilst claiming it is for protection. And in doing so, they declare the acknowledgement of gender diversity as an inherent danger, restricting a minorities representation to age requirements and trigger warnings.
Stripping transgender young people of healthy ways to understand their feelings, to find connection in shared experience, in place of manufactured guilt from an intrinsic rejection of their being.
In stark parallel to Section 28, trans education is framed as a form of “indoctrination” or, as they politely put it, “encouragement.” Just as Thatcher’s government deemed queer identities a threat to ‘functioning’ society, the RSHE guidance implies trans visibility as a suggestive wrong, a political contagion.
Respect and Dignity
This guidance shares extreme similarity to Section 28, though where there was silence, now there is predetermined dehumanisation of governmental construction, under an all too familiar guise of “dignity and respect.” The DfE are not encouraging inclusive education on the reality of being trans; they are defining it as a conditional means to an end. Trans young people will be taught to see themselves as a legal anomaly of prerequisite lesser status, and peers encouraged to express unwarranted opinions on their existence.
Education should be a foundation for acceptance, empathy, community, and the exploration of one’s identity, safely and without ostracisation.
Guidance of this nature should support the healthy development of young people in all their vast individuality and expressions, not statutorily dictate which lives are allowed to exist without question, and which are open for debate. No, this is not inclusive education. It is a manufactured hierarchy, where trans people are “respectfully” pushed to the bottom and told it is for their “dignity.”