I read a thread on twitter recently (written by someone who is/was a teacher incidentally) about how the tories are positioning trans people as the new “enemy within” to replace immigrants at the next general election (I’m not explaining it very well, can link the thread if anyone is interested).
So I think we will see more of this.
FWIW I agree it’s not safeguarding, but by making it a “safeguarding issue” it makes it VERY hard for schools to hold their own line on this unfortunately.
I can believe that completely, the intensity of anti-trans rhetoric has been increasing like mad the last couple years, it’s clearly becoming the controversial issue of the hour. It’s scary even more so how many people are buying into it - and from both sides of the political spectrum too.
Surely they’ll have to justify how exactly it is keeping children safe before it gets implemented?
Actually, I’m not sure they will. Teachers (and schools) can suffer very serious consequences if they are felt not to have safeguarded children effectively- sometimes the fear is enough to make teachers or pastoral staff uncomfortable when having these conversations and shut them down in awkward ways OR to make schools come up with bizarre policies around these things.
Section 28 technically only prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality”- but in practice it meant schools/teachers were very reluctant to discuss LGBT issues, many LGBT support groups in school got closed down etc. All the pre-section 28 sex-ed I remember was solely focused on “one man/one woman” couples. It also meant that teachers received no training on these issues, and things could be extremely difficult for teachers in same-sex relationships.
I also think that actually there’s very few cases where children are totally out at school with their parents having no knowledge (that’s hell of a risk for a kid to take, after all). But it feeds into this fear of “Lefty teachers are making your kids trans” which helps demonise both trans people and teachers.
The secondary I went to was already doing this. Including outing a non-binary student to parents who would throw them out if they came out, literally saying “tell them or we will”
The trans contingent stopped coming out pretty fast.
I’m not there any more, but it’s not getting better.
What the hell is happening in the UK? You guys were doing so much better than the USians and now it’s getting close to the other way around.
I don’t know how much depth you would like here, but after WW2 in the UK there was a level of consensus around state support, nationalised industries, social housing, free at the point of use health care etc…
In the 1970s, capitalist interests started to undermine that, the ultimate result being Thatcher’s neo-conservative/neo-liberal government, who aimed to destroy as many of these things as possible, as well as destroying the class consciousness of the working classes (or attempting to) and breaking the power of the unions- thus significantly reducing the ability of the working classes to advocate for themselves.
Despite making many people’s lives significantly worse, the Tory party managed to keep power until 1997. One of the ways they did this was by creating enemies both outside the UK, and also within UK society, and convincing the people that they were the only party to keep them safe, and other parties were not to be trusted.
In the 1990s, this was all starting to fall apart a bit, see, for example, the poll tax riots, and eventually a Labour government got in. This Labour government wasn’t the democratic socialist government of old- it was very much committed to a liberal ideology. That said, things were done to genuinely improve the standard of living of people, and to improve equality for marginalised groups, and to improve standards in the workplace. I’ve recently characterised these things as “crumbs from the table”, and they are, but nonetheless, they were things that the very wealthy did not like.
So, the right wing started casting around for enemies and settled at the time on a few main targets A) “foreigners” and B) “benefit scroungers”. Ideally, if they could, they combined these into one group, hence “horror stories” of large families coming over from Eastern Europe to claim benefits in the UK etc. etc. This fed/created/revived a reactionary right wing faction in UK politics, including parties like UKIP (which might be seen as similar to the farthest rights of the US republican party, with a specific hatred of the UK and “foreigners”) and the BNP (literal Nazis).
When the financial crisis happened in 2008, that spelled the end of the Labour government, but there was still suspicion of the Tories, and so they entered government in 2010 in coalition with the Lib Dems. Whilst the Tories immediately set about making people’s lives worse in order to serve capital, the Lib Dems did arguably act as somewhat of a break on some of their very worst ideas. So, the right wing press became more reactionary, more money was funnelled into positions that UK politics considered “the far right”, a lot of energy was expended on making people fear these manufactured enemies.
In 2015, this strategy paid off, and the Conservatives got majority- however there was huge pressure on them as a party to hold a referendum on leaving the EU. At the time, I don’t think this is what all Tory MPs wanted- there are a lot of business benefits to being in the EU. But the pressures were there, and the referendum happened, and various big players wanted the UK out of Europe, either for tax reasons or for the political destabilisation of Europe, or probably both, and thus the UK voted to leave.
Cameron resigned and May took leadership, and called an election in 2017. In 2017, some interesting things happened, not least that Corbyn was leader of the Labour party, and offered people what felt like a real alternative and hope. He was hugely attacked by the right wing press and, well, everybody, but the Conservative majority was still cut by a large amount, leaving them as a minority government that was at war with itself.
In 2019, the Tories are running scared, to an extent- in February, several MPs left the party to form a new Pro-European party, further weakening their position. For the people who are hanging everything on Brexit going ahead, the whole project feels in jeopardy. Eventually, Boris Johnson becomes leader, does things that undermine democracy, and then calls a general election.
This election was very much fought on the basis that the Tories would “get brexit done” and no-one else would- and arguably was fought on fairly racist lines. The Tories won a huge majority.
So, what does any of this have to do with trans people, you’re asking (if you’ve kept reading to this stage, in which case, well done). Well, the Tory party is once again in crisis- covid has been a disaster for them. Brexit is starting to bite. A lot of people in the country are really suffering and will start to suffer even more. There’s got to be an election in 2024 at the latest, and it’s likely things will be very bad/worse by then.
Their traditional enemies of benefits scroungers and foreigners are increasingly difficult to use right now for various reasons which I won’t go into because this has been long winded enough already. So, they’re casting around for a new issue, and unfortunately, it seems like trans people have become the new “enemy within” - particularly as it’s a “difficult” issue for Labour right now. For this to work, they a) have to whip up fear against trans people, and b) have to persuade the general public that they are the only party who will “keep people safe” from the “enemy within”.
tl;dr: To keep capitalists in power, trans people are a convenient enemy.
The American Right is providing the playbook here, when it comes to using trans kids as political bait. There’s also already plenty of nervousness in schools around LGBTQ+ issues. Schools are VERY nervous about keeping anything from parents for any length of time, and that can already look like calling parents about sensitive issues without first consulting with the student. I was told in a previous school that a child coming out to me MUST be recorded as a safeguarding incident. I was also told I MUST NOT allow that child to have a conversation with me about such issues: “tell them that you will be making a record of the conversation and that they should speak to the designated safeguarding lead about it if they require further guidance”. I was given to understand that conversation around gender and sexuality could be construed as grooming—a full year before I heard that line dominating politics over in the US. My current school is a lot better, but, yeah, we are further down this road than we should be.
