Too afraid of being bullied
Transgender Trend shares a heartbreaking and enraging letter to Rishi Sunak from five teenage girls asking for single-sex toilets in schools.
Five teenage girls from schools across England have got together to write to the Prime Minister asking for the re-establishment of single-sex toilets in schools, for the privacy, dignity and safety of girls, and to state this unequivocally in the forthcoming trans schools guidance. The girls have used pseudonyms to protect their identities, which we also think sends a strong message about the situation for girls now in schools, that they are too afraid of being ostracised or bullied for holding gender-critical views [to make this reasonable request openly].
Dear Rishi Sunak
Single-sex facilities are an essential safeguarding feature, however we – five girls in secondary school – are concerned that this matter may be overlooked in the upcoming schools transgender guidance in place of a recommendation for a mixture of single-sex and mixed-sex toilets. If this is the case, it will severely lessen the safeguards set in place to protect girls and will place many at risk. We urge the Prime Minister, as the father of two young daughters, to ensure our rights are upheld in the upcoming schools transgender guidance.
Secondary school can be an incredibly turbulent time for girls – our bodies are changing, the social relationships between boys are girls are different, and we may not feel entirely
uncomfortable with everything happening to and around us. This can be an extremely distressing time, and single-sex spaces such as toilets can be a place for us to deal with stress in a private environment – but when you introduce the opposite sex into the equation, any dignity we retain is immediately obliterated.
But girls don’t need dignity, right? Girls don’t need anything? Girls are the ruling class? Girls are the oppressors of trans people? Girls are cis-white Karens?
Periods, for instance, are something that solely girls experience at school. When dealing with menstruation, girls must have private spaces where we can sort this out with dignity, away from potential shaming from boys and the humiliation of having everyone know you’re on your period. However, boys continue to mock girls for menstruating…
If there were no menstruation, there would be no boys to be mocking girls for doing it. How about a little empathy or even gratitude, instead of mockery and disgust?
At one of our schools, there have been multiple complaints from students – for instance, at a student council meeting, the pupils grouped together to ask for change; the boys explaining they found the feminine hygiene products “disgusting”, and the girls stating they felt afraid and upset being forced to use the same toilets as the boys, which have gaps at the top and bottom. However, the school refused to change anything, and to this day, half the toilets in that specific school remain mixed-sex.
Too bad, JuniorKarens. Sucks to be you.
In another school, one of us started an online petition asking for single-sex spaces, however the petition, once reaching 12,800 signatures, was deleted by Change.org.
Trans people>girls.
.Could be the result of some trans-orgy by chance happening at Change.org. Perhaps that nice Mr Musk could be asked to take it over and then delete it. Change.org I mean; the trans-orgy is probably over.
Worth a try, surely.
While I fully expect there’s a lot, LOT more than five girls who feel exactly this way in the British school system these days, I’m going to express polite doubt that they actually wrote the letter; it is very likely that their parents actually penned the letter.
This isn’t the first or even second petition change.org has deleted, and I don’t recommend that our side use it for that reason. There are other sites (iPetition, for example) that are more reasonable.
Freemage, why do you think that? Girls in secondary school aren’t ignorant or illiterate (typos notwithstanding). Perhaps if all of them were eleven, you might have a point – but the secondary school age range in England goes from eleven to eighteen, and they don’t give their ages. I find it perfectly plausible that they wrote it themselves.
Don’t forget, children these days have wide access to one another across many online networks. They’re far more capable than many adults are, and necessarily spent an enormous amount of time online during the pandemic. We already know that there are pro-anorexia groups online where girls from around the globe encourage one another to self-harm, and ditto pro-trans groups. Why is it unlikely that girls who are on the side of reality don’t have similar networks? Did you not watch the video of that fourteen-year-old at Let Women Speak reading her poem?
I completely agree, Tigger. They are not even obliged to grow up like William Hague :-)
Freemage, I have the same question Tigger asks. What makes you think they didn’t write it? It doesn’t strike me as too eloquent or technical or professional to be plausible for teenagers.
I guess I’m with Freemage, based on the fact that I have been reading student writing for years. I will concede this was not in England, so maybe they still require that students learn to write, but I am in the same boat . It didn’t sound teenage to me. Writing skills have deteriorated since I started teaching, and they weren’t great then. And I teach adult students.
Perhaps the students wrote it, and had help with editing and revising.
Mostly, my suspicion arises from a few key phrases. First was “an essential safeguarding feature”–“safeguarding”, in particular, is a phrase I’ve only ever encountered adults using, and even then it’s rare.
The other red flag for me was appealing to the Prime Minister “as the father of two young daughters”. Again, that’s a tactic I see plenty often in adult debates, but not one I see much in arguments made by teens.
Now, I need to be very clear, here. I see no reason to doubt that these are real girls, who really do feel this way. I just think they were given considerable assistance in expressing their concerns.
Hmm. I think “safeguarding” could be in their vocabulary via reading terfs on social media. The father of young daughters rang a little false to me too, but, I dunno, it was a collaborative effort – five authors – so I can imagine one of them saying “we should play the worried parents card too” or similar. I’m agnostic, but I don’t think it’s such obviously adult writing as to strain credulity.