Episode 5

Warning: this episode contains some explicit language and discussion of suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

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“Victoria”

Ok this is an extreme example but I’ve heard of a primary school teacher in grade 1 – that is 6 and 7 year olds tell the class why it’s really important she doesn’t call them boys or girls , and then give herself strikes on the board every time she slips up and then they have to choose a penalty for her. That is inappropriate on any level, like it is inappropriate for a teacher to give themselves strikes and get the kids to choose a penalty if, except like in, I mean I can imagine some situations where that might be age appropriate or pedagogically appropriate but for 6 year old kids around a weird thing like saying boys or girls, that is bizarre and confusing.

In the last episode we learned how queer theory made its way into Australian public schools. Now, let’s see how that’s playing out for teachers, students and parents. 

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Welcome back to Desexing Society. I’m your host, Stassja Frei. Episode 5: Unsafe Schools

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Victoria – not her real name – has been teaching in Melbourne high schools for roughly 20 years. In 2014 she encountered her first trans student.

“Victoria”

This kid was like, huge personality and, at that point, I had never seen it before, I was instantly struck that I don’t think that’s a great thing to do to a kid, because that’s a boy. He’s not a girl. I would’ve thought that he was gay, but I don’t know. He was already affiliated with an organisation with government funding which was like a trans youth type organisation that had him all over their website as like a youth ambassador type person. And it just struck me as like, I don’t think that’s a good idea, to put this kid in the centre of everything, and then to put him all over a website and make him into this kind of thing because how will he ever be able to go back from there, like, he’s not a girl.

Nothing much happened. Just a weird feeling for Victoria that this was a bit wrong. She moved on from that school.

“Victoria”

And the next school I was at is where I really came up against it in a way that shocked me. I moved to a girls’ school and there was a pride club and there were a lot of posters for Minus18 and various other sorts of youth organisations but Minus18 very prominently and there were some girls who were signalling with their hairstyles and that kind of thing that they were a bit alternative or whatever and there were quite a few girls that were going to this pride club and one day as the form teacher, like a kind of, you know, form tutorial type teacher, a group of these girls approached me and they said that they were running a project where they were encouraging the teachers not to address the students as girls. And then a conversation ensued with some of the other students and some of the other students, the girls, were saying, why? That’s just dumb. You know, like these were kids. This was 2015, so this conversation couldn’t happen now. If this happened now, the other girls would’ve just frozen and said nothing, and you would never know what they thought. But this was back then, so it was all a little bit more up for grabs. So some of the other girls were saying why? That’s dumb or whatever and this really interesting conversation happened where the language that girls who were pushing for it were using was already very social media language, they were like, I’m not calling you out or anything I’m just saying that like this is a thing that we need to do and blah blah blah. And I at that stage just said to the girls that were pushing it, I just said, girls, you are free to do this, but you need to know that there are going to be a lot of staff who will feel very strongly that they don’t wish to go along with it and we can talk about the reasons why if you like, but just prepare yourself that you might find it a bit shocking or bruising – there will be a lot of staff who do not like this. And they were ok with that. And then a short time later, the wellbeing coordinator stood in front of the staff of that school, which was a girls school and suggested that we should not call the students girls, we should not address them as girls, we should call them, I don’t know, students or something. 

That was 2015. In 2022, a private girls’ school an hour from Melbourne, Toorak College announced it would avoid “general female references” when addressing students. This was decided by students after two girls said they didn’t identify as female, and teachers went along with it. At Killester College, a Melbourne Catholic girls’ school, the universally understood woman symbol was removed from toilets and changerooms with little protest from well, anyone. Meanwhile, at St Bedes College, a Melbourne private boys’ school, the principal Deb Frizza, instructed teachers and staff to stop using the words, boy, young man, and Beda Boy which is an affectionate nickname for alumni. Here, the principal met resistance. After backlash from staff and parents, she backtracked. And boys there are still called boys.

This is queer theory in practice – erasing the male female distinction. Though in many cases, it seems that females are the only ones who are being erased.

“Victoria”

That was so shocking to me because of the nature of girls’ schooling. The history of girls’ schooling is different from the history of boys’ schooling. The history of boys’ schooling is that boys went to grammar schools and went to university. The history of girls’ schooling is that girls’ schools are always coming in the historical footsteps of women who had to fight for girls to be schooled at all. 

Teachers like Victoria have been put in an impossible situation. Keep quiet and violate one’s conscience or speak up and lose their jobs. She’s careful, but she refuses to use wrong sex pronouns. 

“Victoria”

I do a bit of strategic misgendering because I pretend I’m oblivious because they have to hear it! An obviously female cannot walk around thinking that people are going to play by secondary school Melbourne rules for the rest of their lives. How are they going to live in the world if they really think that they’re at risk of self-harm or having a panic attack when someone calls them she? I’ll say she and then they’ll get on with the work and nobody died. 

Pronouns are a really big deal for trans people, especially kids who think they’re trans. You probably know about she/her, he/him and they/them pronouns but did you know that you can just invent your own pronouns? Here’s a young woman on TikTok to explain:

TikToker

Today I’m going to be teaching you how to use spore/spores pronouns in sentences so let’s go. Spore/spores pronouns are neopronouns. But why would a person want to use spore/spores pronouns? For example, a person who has been struggling with gender lately. This person has already tried using he/ze/it pronouns but still doesn’t feel right using those, so this person wants to try neopronouns that relate to nature, therefore spore/spores pronouns could feel relatable, especially because this person feels a strong relationship with nature. Anyway, here’s how to use spore/spores pronouns in sentences. Spore is such a wonderful person, spores smile is so contagious, in fact, I saw spore make a whole audience smile. I think spore should be very proud of sporeself. Oh my goodness we made it through!

Neopronouns like sporeself are a bit like having to remember four different names for the one person and using them in the correct order in a sentence. You’re constantly translating in your head, replacing she with spore. But they’re so important to kids. And god help you if you get it wrong. Here’s another young woman on TikTok, tears streaming down her face because someone has called her she.

TikToker

I don’t understand what is so hard about correcting other people when they misgender others, like, it takes you like two seconds but you know what it takes for me to have to constantly do that? A lot of fucking unnecessary emotional labour that I already have to take on on a daily basis just to fucking exist and be who I am. But you don’t have the energy to speak up and say something on my behalf? And I just have to keep white knuckling this?

“Victoria”

I feel sad for them, my heart sinks when I see them coming across the room at me, I think oh god, it’s the end of the lesson, it’s the first week of term, this kid looks like they’re’ going to ask about pronouns, here we go. For them, it’s so hard, they’ve blogged about it beforehand, “I’m going to ask my teachers today”, they’ve usually, unfortunately been encouraged by the wellbeing coordinator, who will then send a follow up email to encourage us all to do it, but for them, they’re just little, they’re kids, and we’ve told them that this is something that they can ask and we’ve also told them that if the teacher doesn’t agree to do it, that’s going to hurt them. And if the teacher does agree to do it, the teacher is sending them an affirmative signal that says at some level I either believe you’re not the sex you are, or I agree to go along with the idea that you need to hear you’re not the sex you are. I also agree with the idea that if people don’t call you by this pronoun you’re requesting, you will be harmed. So I feel that if I were to agree with pronouns – because I do not use them – but if I was to consent to them, I’m making that child more fragile.

Of course, not all teachers are like Victoria. Some are right on board with the gender identity movement.

“Victoria”

But I’ve got a colleague who uses the singular they for every human individual because he thinks that that’s a great thing to do. And he’s part of the vanguard of changing the conversation so he refers to every single person, including his colleagues as they.

But isn’t that misgendering?

“Victoria”

Well it is in my case. But at the same time, it’s also really confusing, and I’m not being ridiculous here, I’m saying that I actually sometimes can’t follow what he talks about in meetings because I don’t know whether he’s talking about many or one.

The singular they/them is not only confusing, but uncomfortable. It creates something like cognitive dissonance because it breaks the rules of the English language. For example: they is going to the shop. It’s awkward to say and to hear. We need a minute to remind ourselves that it’s only one person we’re talking about. 

Adopting opposite sex pronouns or they/them or neopronouns like sporeself can be a way to gain power over others. In a classroom setting, this reverses the power dynamic between teacher and student, which can be very appealing to a teenager. If others refuse to comply with these language demands, the powerful accusation of “transphobe” can be deployed. Power and control is something that Jane – not her real name – has observed as an allied health professional working in Melbourne high schools.

“Jane”

You find young people that would otherwise be very powerless within a high school pecking order, adopting a trans non binary identity as a way of gaining power and social currency. Because as soon as you do that, you have adults fawning all over you to acknowledge you and to support you and affirm you and to give you what you want so for a young girl who, with teenagers, no one listens to you, if you want a voice, if you want the adults to take notice of you, you say I’m non binary, or I’m trans, and then people who wouldn’t listen to you will start to listen to you and give you what you want.

Jane has grown increasingly alarmed as gender identity has become the dominant subculture of this generation.

“Jane”

There used to be phases people went through – the goth phases, the emo phases even things like cutting and anorexia were ways for young people to have control over their bodies or control over their lives but I think now what we’re seeing is most of that has fallen away and the predominant way that people do that now is to become non binary or to be something other than the cis het kind of young person because that’s now not cool, that means you’re boring.

I should probably explain cis het. Cis, spelt C I S, is a chemistry term describing the position of atoms in molecules. In chemistry, the opposite of cis is trans. Cis was appropriated by the trans movement to describe the vast majority of us who are not transgender. And het is short for heterosexual. Cis is a term that gender criticals, like myself, entirely reject. We’re not cis women, we’re women – adult human females. We’re not a subset of women. We are the real deal, so we don’t need a prefix to describe us. And the same goes for men. Trans activists have invented the term “cisgender” to redefine the very average, normal, common experience of not having a trans identity. And they’ve created a flag for cisgender which consists of three dull grey stripes. Nothing says pride like the colour grey after all. So no wonder kids think that cis het is boring.

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One of the Safe Schools recommendations was for students to create Stand Out groups. These are clubs for LGB, trans and intersex students and their allies.

“Jane”

And so schools run these rainbow clubs, diversity clubs, inclusion clubs, gay straight alliance, it’s known by a whole bunch of different names, parents aren’t told if kids go to it, usually it’s a lunchtime activity, sometimes it’s run by a well-meaning teacher or the wellbeing team within a high school will run these clubs. And so at these clubs, it’s basically an indoctrination session into gender ideology, so they’ll often start by going around the circle talking about pronouns, talking about how you identify, so it becomes the main focus of what happens and of course once you start going around and talking about pronouns, you’re developing a hierarchy within that group, because, you can go if you’re an ally, but that’s pretty boring isn’t it? But if you start to adopt an identity, then you become in and part of the crowd, and who as a teenager doesn’t want to belong?

Pride clubs are student led, but there’s always a teacher helping to facilitate. Victoria has occasionally attended out of curiosity to see what takes place. Sometimes it’s wholesome things like making origami in rainbow colours or watching an episode of Glee. Or they’ll hatch a plan to change school policies.

“Victoria”

So the kids will get together at pride club and then go and tell the teachers not to call girls “she”, you know, not to call girls girls, that’s what happened in that pride club at that particular school I was working in all those years ago. But the other thing that they’ll do is they will be the place where kids meet kids that they would never have met. So I’ve seen a year 7 student sitting in a corridor with a student who was maybe in year 11, so we’re talking about a 12 year old and a 16 year old, maybe 17 and the 12 year old was discussing where that child sat on the aromantic-asexual spectrum and the 17 year old student was discussing that with them. So these are vectors of knowledge. This is where the kids find out where to go online to find out all this nonsense and they see someone who is a role model of some kind who is acting out all of these bizarre identities. Those kids wouldn’t meet if it wasn’t for pride club. There is no reason for a year 11 student to ever speak to a year 7, why would they? 

For those who don’t know, aromantic describes people who have little or no interest in romantic relationships. However, they may or may not experience sexual attraction. So if you struggle to form meaningful relationships but like to have one night stands, you’re part of the queer crowd now. Asexual originally described people who do not experience sexual attraction at all. But that has now expanded to mean all sorts of things, including that sometimes you might be in the mood for sex, and other times not. Asexual people might still enjoy romantic relationships, just without the sex. But other asexuals might enjoy both romantic and sexual relationships. It’s a spectrum. So, that’s just two examples of what your kids might learn via Pride Club.

Victoria was working at a very pro LGBT school where the pride club was led by an enthusiastic teacher.

“Victoria”

And the person running it was a classic example of a teacher who just wants to be where the action is, wants to be the person who the kids disclose their special identity to, hypes the suicide risk, stands up at staff meetings and says it’s really important we have more gender neutral toilets cos otherwise kids will get kidney infections from holding their wee in all day and that person brought in someone from Drummond Queer Space, I think it’s now just known as Queer Space, but back in those days it was Drummond Queer Space. And I went along because I was like “oh oh, oh we’ve got an outside speaker, let’s see what this is about”. And that person was an individual I would’ve identified as a butch lesbian and she was older and should’ve known better. And she just did this amazing presentation where she brought in lollies and gave them little fredddo’s and lollies for every single sexuality they could name. They had to name the letters of the LGBTQ+ thing which is fine. And some of the memorable things she said was, she just went through every sexuality that could exist and she came to lesbian and she said, mostly we say pansexual these days she came to bisexual she said mostly we say pansexual these days [oh no] and my mouth just kind of dropped. And then during this presentation she said, I’ve been doing these kind of things for years and just for the first however many years that I worked with kids we used to say same sex attracted, but I can’t believe we used to say that. Now I knew exactly what she meant, the kids didn’t.

Pansexual describes attraction to all genders or regardless of gender identity. It’s the all-inclusive sexual orientation that means you have no problem dating trans people. So this woman from Queerspace was telling lesbians they should be attracted to boys. Her tut tutting about the term “same sex attraction” is because that’s now considered transphobic. It’s been replaced by “same gender attraction”. So lesbians should be attracted transwomen because trans women are women, even though we all know they’re men. And gay men should be attracted to trans men even though they’re women. As an aside, Queerspace is part of Drummond Street Services which rakes in just under $14 million a year, and 97% of that income is government funding. 

“Victoria”

And then she said that all of the kids at this pride club would be very welcome to attend some of the youth events that Queerspace runs in the community. And she said that they had a wonderful event recently which was for queer youth and the youngest person there was 3 and it was a trans kid that was brought by her grandmother and wasn’t that gorgeous. And of course the kids in the room – well when I say kids, the girls in the room went “aww” and I was just like, call DHS, like a 3 year old trans kid taken to a queer youth group by her grandmother, his grandmother whatever the sex of the child’s, grandmother. Anyway, then, and the reason I’m telling you this story, the facilitator of the group said…

By facilitator she means the teacher, not the guest speaker.

“Victoria”

…“well, we’ll have to get the emails of all of the kids so that you can send them an invitation” and then she turned to the kids and said “don’t worry, it won’t be including parents” so what she was doing was conspiring to set up a private email list within the school email list so that this wouldn’t just be an individual email to an individual student or a year level email or anything like that, it would be this specific group of emails to be emailed about community events outside their parents knowledge. These events are mixed sex and mixed age, so you could have a kid who went to pride club one week, she’s 13 years old, she went with her mates and then she trots off, having been invited by email behind her parents back to some kind of queer event in the community, those events are usually 12 to 25, like that’s what they call youth, it could be a 25 year old male in that room with that 13 year old girl because of pride club. 

Jane has also observed that school pride clubs have become hostile to gays and in particular, lesbians.

“Jane”

And so what you see now is, these diversity clubs at school being dominated by the students who are non binary. I don’t see the young lesbians anymore. No body identifies as a lesbian. They identify as non binary. No body identifies as bisexual, because that’s trans exclusive, you have to be pansexual, but even so you’re not pansexual, you’re more likely to say you’re non binary And it’s really sad because for some young people who are starting to realise that they may be gay, they may be lesbian, it would be really fantastic to have some avenues of impartial support, but it’s been taken over completely by trans.

Stassja: Is it definitely more girls gravitating towards this than boys?

“Jane”: Definitely. The boys that I’ve known that have participated in this, are generally your very effeminate gay boys or boys that are discovering that about themselves, but it is predominantly girls. And even girls- and I’ve seen girls who I’ve gone wow, you’re going to grow up to be a fantastic butch lesbian have decided that they’re non binary and then the next step is no they’re trans and they’re actually a boy so there’s no support for lesbians to actually become lesbians and no role models, no guidance for young women to become the lesbians of tomorrow, they are transed along the way.

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“Julie”

I was called into the school because they wanted to have a conversation around Claire’s identity and they wanted me to sign a gender affirmation form and again, this was all before I’d done much research and I really was absolutely taken aback and confused and didn’t really know what the right thing was to do, all I knew resonating in my head was this messaging you always get, you have to support, you have to be accepting and it’s almost aligned with homophobia if you’re not supporting these things, and I guess I grew up very supportive of the LGB community and still am and so I thought well like, I can’t be a bigot I have to sort of go along with what they’re saying, so I asked them to explain what it was about and they said well we use the pronouns that your child wants and the name that your child wants, and I said, what if I’m not happy with that and they said well, legally, well no not legally, they said our policy is that we’ll use what your child prefers anyway but we would prefer it if you would give us your support. So I signed it. I wouldn’t now. It’s a decision I wouldn’t make again.

We first met Julie – not her real name – in episode 1. Her daughter Claire was a patient at their local Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service, CAMHS, and the case worker wanted to refer her for puberty blockers. Julie felt it was all a bit rushed, so she did some reading and decided this was not a healthy pathway. When she called CAMHS to tell the case worker why they wouldn’t be continuing with the service, she got a different staff member who warned her to never take her daughter to the gender clinic. That was the end of that. But Julie’s difficulties with Claire’s school was another matter. It was during her first term of high school that Claire started identifying as a boy.

“Julie”

During the initial conversations I was having with Claire about this sudden decision, it came to light that her new friends at high school which was a recent place for her, were all trans, every single one of them, there were about 5 or 6 girls who were all identifying as boys and to me it just looked like an absolutely obvious attempt to fit in and make new friends and I suspect it probably came from those kids, but that is speculation. I would hope that a health or education professional wouldn’t be so irresponsible as to suggest that but that’s also speculation.

A year on, Claire is still identifying as a boy.

“Julie”

I think that this was a real contagion issue at her school because actually every single one of the friend group that I mentioned before, they’ve all transitioned back again, Claire’s the only one that’s maintaining this identity and I actually wonder that maybe she’s in too deep to find her way out – almost that social stigma or embarrassment when you’re a 13 year old of then having to change back again even though the school and myself have said to her, that’s fine if you want to do that.

This reminds me something Victoria brought up. It’s the question of how widespread the problem of social contagion is in schools.

“Victoria”

So one thing I find frustrating is people will look at legislation and what the actual policies are and they’ll say well it’s this and they can do this and they do this. Or people will do the opposite and they’ll say “omg gender is completely rife through all schools everywhere” and I’m like well, it’s a bit of both, it’s patchy and there’ll be places where it’s off the charts shocking even to me I’m like oh god I can’t believe that’s happening and then other places will be like, hm, I feel like I’m still on planet earth. I don’t have the capacity to make exact judgements about why and how those little weird pockets and patchiness occurs. And it makes it hard to talk about because people say ‘that’s not happening’ you’re like well, it’s happening here, it might not be happening there and it might not be written into policy so all we can do is collate stories and that’s what I’m doing – I don’t mean in any formal way, but people tell me things.

I think two things might be at play here. Firstly, the role of teachers. If teachers are enthusiastically promoting trans ideology, then students are more likely to adopt the belief system. I’m thinking of the teacher Victoria described at the start of this episode. The one who penalises herself for using the words boys and girls. The second factor seems to be where the popular kids, perhaps influenced by social media, have adopted a trans identity which in turn starts a trend at the school. From what Julie tells me, her daughter’s school has some very eager teachers encouraging Claire.

“Julie”

She brought home a binder from school a few weeks ago which I found, she says it’s from school, I found it in the cupboard and it went in the bin and we had a talk about the impact on breast tissue and breastfeeding later on,

Ten years ago I would never have imagined teachers colluding with girls behind their parents’ back to flatten their breasts. But that’s where we’re at. And as Jane points out, it doesn’t make any sense to not inform parents about what’s going on with their child.

“Jane”

What we have is a state system from the government down through to schools that is designed to drive a wedge between parents and their children. And it does that by creating secrets, by creating ways for the school to keep information from parents and so when you look at the policies of the Victorian government where they can transition your child socially at school and not tell you, there we have a school then holding info about a student which when you, if you believe the statistics to be valid, being trans or non binary puts you now in this high risk group for suicidal self-harm, you have a school now that is holding that information and keeping it from parents, and parents are the ones who are best placed to understand what their child needs – not to mention care for them and have a responsibility for them, and so, the policies of the governments mean that schools can now start separating students from parents in terms of that health and wellbeing information.

It’s a natural stage of adolescent development to start separating from one’s parents. But education department policies, based on the advice of academic philosophers and queer theorists, are setting families up for estrangement.

For Julie, her daughter’s school is actively undermining her parenting. Now that she understands that social transition leads to medical transition, she wants to renegotiate Claire’s gender affirmation plan with the school. It’s been a year and a half since she first signed the document. The school has ignored her requests to meet.

“Julie”

Very firm that it doesn’t matter what you say, we’ll be using the male pronouns and your child will be called by this name and all of her school reports and her student card and her everything like all of her online presence, it’s all with that name and those pronouns and yeah, it doesn’t matter if I’m happy about that or not, it’s supposed to be reviewed every 6 months that document and I haven’t seen them since the beginning of last year. And I’ve rung up and asked for conversations cos I want to change it, I want to withdraw my consent. Even if they’re going to do it anyway, I want them to know that I’m not in support of it because now I know a lot more about the affirmation model of care/

Parents have been stripped of their rights. It surprises me that Australian parents aren’t up in arms about what’s going on. Victoria offers the following explanation for why there’s been so little push back:

“Victoria”

No one makes a fuss about this if their kid seems totally fine. And the minute their kids are not fine, bang, they’re out of it, they’re retired for life, they’re off the chess board, because they’ve got a crisis to manage. 

Most parents in the midst of the crisis aren’t able to speak up because if they do, they risk alienating their child or worse. In 2021 a trans identifying teenager in Perth was removed from her parents by the state because, well it’s hard to say why.  The judge decided that “words and phrases” used by the parents were “abusive and derogatory” and were harmful to the child’s “very sense of self”. Because of this, the judge refused to disclose in his ruling exactly what those words and phrases were because it might further harm the child. We can only assume that the parents – who wanted psychotherapy rather than testosterone for their daughter – were refusing to use the male name and pronouns that their daughter was demanding. 

Victoria has only encountered one parent who was willing to take the risk and make her thoughts known to the school.

“Victoria”

And I received an email from a parent who said “I’ve become aware you are calling my daughter by a different name and calling male pronouns. This is not acceptable. I found this out by looking over her shoulder and seeing her homework was addressed to her by another name. You may think you’re doing the right thing, however, we are working with our daughter and we believe that she is part of a phenomenon of ROGD, rapid onset gender dysphoria which is sweeping the western world. Please do not call my daughter by this name.” And I was just blown away by that, I’d never seen anything like that and I haven’t seen it since. I was so amazed. I couldn’t wait, until the end of the day when I scurried into a classroom and made a phone call to that mother. And she was-I think she thought I was going to attack her or something like that. And she told me that I was the only professional – doctors, psychologists, family members, teachers, everyone – who had ever listened to her and not affirmed and that everyone else that she’d dealt with had just immediately gone “oh great so what does he want to be called.” I felt a tremendous sense of helplessness that I can’t help these families more, because she asked me at one point “could you talk to her cos she respects you and maybe just another adult voice to say don’t do this.” I don’t actually think that that kid would’ve listened to me particularly, but um, I said no, because I can’t. 

Like we saw with health professionals, there is currently no mechanism for teachers to express their concerns or disagreement on these issues. It’s created an oppressive atmosphere where no one knows who to trust and dissenters fear retribution if they’re discovered.

“Victoria”

I sometimes feel like I’m going completely insane, and without wanting to sound over the top, I do experience distress over this issue, because it’s horrible watching all of the distress of these kids and watching people who you respect and like as good people, not take responsibility. 

And it’s a similar story for Jane.

“Jane”

It’s horrible. Because if you express anything other than the approved view, you’ll be in trouble, you’ll be in strife, whether that be official or not, you have to just stick to the party line, otherwise you might as well not work there. So sometimes the best resistance is just to be very passive and kind of not endorse it, not seek it out, and not have the conversations to begin with and at times what I’ve tried to do is ask little questions – oh really? What’s going on there? But you have to be careful not to out yourself because you will find yourself at the end of a process that you might not be very happy about.

Stassja: that sounds really stressful.

“Jane”: Well it is, because what it’s asking people to do is to go against every fibre of common sense in their being. It’s asking schools to play a role, and the people within those schools to play a role that, that’s not their role, they’re not the parents, they might have what’s called in loco parentus so the role of the parent while the student is there, but that doesn’t extend to making life long decisions or decisions that can have lifelong impacts like changing someone’s gender at school, because we know that socially transitioning your child is not a neutral act, it can lead onto and does lead onto, further medicalisation and permanently damaging pathways. 

Even voicing concerns about the trans movement outside of the workplace can land you in trouble, as Jane found out. 

“Jane”

So last year my employer became aware that I had posted some things to social media and even though the account was not in my name, my identity was revealed and through a process, that I can only describe as a drawn out version of the Spanish inquisition, I was subject to an investigation and summary judgement process that my employer deems as fair process, but which has no objectivity in it. So if somebody makes a complaint against you, you’re at the subjective will of the person investigating the complaint. 

Jane had shared news articles and a few memes that reflected her gender critical views. They weren’t even shared publicly, just within her personal network. A vindictive person within that network anonymously reported her to the school, along with screenshots to prove she was guilty of wrongthink. 

“Jane”

And so I was judged to have, offended against my employer by doing those things and was told not to do it again. Ultimately the outcome was nothing much, however the process is the punishment and it’s the humiliation and the trauma and the white hot burning rage of knowing that you have done nothing objectively wrong and that anybody that takes an issue with anything that you can do, can make a complaint to your employer in an attempt to ruin you and your employer will back them. And the way that my employer put it to me was that, because somebody had been offended by what I had posted, therefore I was in the wrong. So there was no, there was no objectivity or reasonable person standard applied, it was purely the subjective opinion of one nasty person.

All of this happened in secret. 

“Jane”

The whole process is meant to be confidential, so you can’t seek support from the people you work with or that you know. So me even talking about it today is a risky thing to do but I think also, we need to talk about it, because, I don’t know how many other people this has happened to because you can’t know and cos no one wants to talk about it. 

Thankfully, Jane is a union member. So despite the isolation she felt at work, at least the union was on her side.

“Jane”

I had a lot of support from the union, it was actually really good. The union probably took a bit more of a casual approach to it than I did, because they see this kind of thing all the time, but then I was strongly advised that it would be against my interests to take it any further because the mechanisms within my employer to take it further would not look upon this favourably. So it was possible that I could get an even less favourable outcome, if I went further, which could include losing my job. So unfortunately, I have bills and I am the breadwinner, and I am just not in a position to do that.

Jane was incensed by what she’d been through. She had to face her investigator on a daily basis, and now it felt like there was a target on her back that read, heretic. She started looking for work elsewhere and was successful. She left the school soon after. 

“Jane”

If my boss could not defend me or see reason, then that was just not a safe place to work. But that workplace has just absorbed the government policy hook line and sinker so what else could you expect? It was never going to be any other way. But I now have this folder in my file that will go with me wherever I go. It’s sealed, but it’s there. But I can’t know, how many other people have been put through this. 

*******

When schools socially transition children, it’s not just those individual children that are impacted. All students are affected, but girls in particular. Girls are being taught to accept discrimination. Victoria tells me about a school swimming carnival where a boy with a special gender identity wore a fabulous two-piece bathing suit and competed in the girls’ category. 

“Victoria”

And I stood there and I watched this kid win all of the under 19 girls swimming races and then the second and third girls jumped out of the pool and give him these huge hugs. I just, I was shocked, to be honest, to witness it, as if it was ok. And that boy used the girls’ changing rooms on that day. I know because I saw him go into them. And no one died. I am in no way saying that that particular young man is in any way unsafe to girls in those changing rooms, as an individual. It just shouldn’t happen.

In Loudon County Virginia, USA, schools were forced to adopt the same policies regarding toilets and change rooms, allowing students to use the facilities of the opposite sex. It led to a teenage girl being anally raped in the girls’ toilets by a boy wearing a skirt. News reports initially described him as gender fluid, meaning a person whose gender identity is not fixed and can change from day to day or hour to hour. That changed very quickly to, no, he’s not transgender, he just wears skirts for attention, implying that the rape had absolutely nothing to do with the school policy that allowed boys into the girls’ toilets.

“Jane”

This is where I sense in schools that there is a little bit of sanity because I’ve been involved in numerous conversations with senior leadership within schools around the provision of private facilities or changing facilities or toilet facilities or even camps for students that identify as trans and non binary, and you can see their discomfort with the conversation. So I get the feeling from that that they know this is bullshit, but it’s policy and they have to do it. So what a lot of schools are doing now is creating the non binary toilet or the non gendered toilet, which has very high doors and walls, so you can’t look under and you can’t – unless you’re spiderman – climb over and they have them in a kind of more open area, so  where I’ve seen, they’re still keeping male and female but they’re often creating a third block of toilets. 

For Victoria, who works in schools closer to the city, she’s noticed something a bit different.

“Victoria”

In general it only goes one way. Like, female students continue using the female toilets and it’s the males that are more likely to push for an accommodation. 

And what about school camps? Julie isn’t just a mother of a girl with rapid onset gender dysphoria. She also works in education. 

“Julie”

As an educator I’ve had to put a 12 year old boy in a dormitory with a whole bunch of girls, and the conversation was, we have to protect that child, we have to protect that child’s rights, and my argument was, what about the rights of all the other biological girls in the room? But that wasn’t a conversation that leadership wanted to have. And I see that quite a lot.

It’s been pointed out by many before me that these policies send a dangerous message to girls. It teaches them that boys and men who wear women’s clothing are safe.

“Jane”

But we’re asking also a lot of women to do now, asking all women to do is to ignore that little voice in your head that goes, this isn’t right, or this isn’t ok and I really feel for those girls becoming women, coming up through university now who that little safety voice has been squished, completely squished – you can’t think that, trans women are women, thought stopping technique. You can’t be uncomfortable with a man in your space. You’re a bigot, you’re a transphobe. So we just put young women and girls at just ever more risk of experiencing male violence because they’re not taught to have those instincts or to trust those instincts or then to self-flagellate if they have those instincts that they’re a bad person.

********

Queer theory has made significant gains in Australia’s public schools. Education departments are pushing it. Teachers are either on board or too afraid to speak up. It can become disheartening to think of a generation of kids believing that misgendering is the end of the world or that same sex attraction is transphobic. But there’s still hope. At Woodgrove High School in Virginia USA, where that terrible rape occurred in the girls’ toilets, students staged a walk out in protest of the school policy that enabled it. They want a return to single sex toilets and change rooms. 

And at Lyons Township high school in Illinois USA, a tampon dispenser that was installed in the boys’ toilets was ripped from the wall and stuffed in a toilet in protest. 

Closer to home, Victoria shares with me a very comical story. It’s the last week of school and things are chaotic. This is a lazy time of year where teachers have finished teaching and they’re just filling in time before the holidays start. Victoria is directed to oversee a gym activity with a group of students she hasn’t taught before.

“Victoria”

Everything’s going along and then suddenly, this group of they/thems and this group of girls in hijabs just start facing off, and one of the girls in hijab is just going, “you’re a girl! You’re a girl! You are so dumb! You are so dumb!” like, “what is they/them? That is bullshit!” and she’s just saying all this hilarious stuff, like really pugnaciously and the they/thems are just utterly without any defences cos that’s not their style, they bully online or they, you know, make origami frogs together or something – they’re also really painful and annoying and they had been annoying this girl and one of the they/thems – they’re all girls obviously – they’ve turned around and – what did the girls say? She said something like, “you’re transphobic, and you’re” – she said – it sounded like reading a script off social media, and when social media happens in front of you, it’s just hilarious! So the they/them was saying something like, “you’re such a bigot, and you’re transphobic, you’re so narrow minded” and, but mostly she didn’t really know what to say. But the other girl was in full flow and it was hilarious, that this girl from North Africa was just like “you’re ridiculous! You’re so stupid! You’re so dumb bro!” and they all call each other bro – I find that very funny- she’s like “bro, you are so dumb, you’re a girl, what is they/them?” and as the teacher, I was just like, obviously my role is to deescalate – no one died and it was all fine. And No one got suspended for transphobia which is what would happen in some schools. Some young teacher would treat that all very seriously. And obviously people should be nice to each other and people shouldn’t bully each other but that was pretty equal. I don’t know who did wrong or who won in that exchange. And I privately found it very amusing to watch.

There’s still hope.

*********

Coming up in the next episode of Desexing Society we’ll take a slight detour and learn about the leading cause of gender dysphoria in males that you’ve probably never heard of.

Michael Bailey

It is sexual arousal by a male about the fantasy that he is a woman or by imitating women, usually via cross dressing.

Phil Illy

In my personal experience, I stopped repressing once I learned that autogynephilia was why I wanted to dress in women’s clothes and why I wish that I was a woman.

And we’ll explore why this topic has become so taboo.

Michael Bailey

Tthey don’t want people to think of them that way, that’s embarrassing to them and what they really value is that people think of them as women.

Phil Illy

You can clearly read the documents put out by WPATH and they omit reference to the most common cause of gender dysphoria. They also don’t name the homosexual type either.

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Thanks for listening to Desexing Society. Written and produced by me, Stassja Frei. Thank you to my script editor, Ms Edie Wyatt, my sound technician Matthew Friend, and to everyone who made this podcast possible. For more information, or to donate towards this project – which I paid for myself – please visit desexingsociety.com