The Scottish government is continuing to use its guidance Supporting Transgender Pupils in Schools—despite the UK Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.
Parents and campaign groups are increasing pressure on ministers over this refusal to change course. For Women Scotland has now launched formal proceedings, arguing that Holyrood is unlawfully persisting with gender self-ID policies that allow pupils to claim they have “changed sex.”
According to retired Deputy Principal Educational Psychologist, Carolyn Brown
It is clear that the Scottish government guidance for schools is unlawful, but my concern is that not only is the guidance unlawful but it is positively harmful to all children and their families, and poses significant risks to the psychological and physical safeguarding of all Scottish pupils. This is because the ‘trans’ schools guidance promotes the false concept of gender identity.
She goes on to warn of how the “guidance assumes that the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative and ‘transgender’ status are well-evidenced concepts when they are not.” This flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling against the Scottish government, which clarified that the terms sex, man, and woman in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. Sex is not the same as gender identity or certificated sex (reflected in a Gender Recognition Certificate).
A key criticism of the ongoing use of the guidelines in schools is that it can ratify a child’s delusions and set them on the path to lifelong medicalisation, at the expense of other, more appropriate interventions. Damagingly, the Scottish government has stuck with its harmful policy while it pretends to await ‘further clarification’ on the earlier legal ruling. As Brown argues
Affirming the concept of ‘trans’ amounts to potentially grooming the child towards a lifetime of delusion, confusion, psychological and physical harm. By its past and current actions, the Scottish government has created its very own child-safeguarding crisis.
