Sex and self-affirmed gender: a crisis of truth

If you read the recent Spectator headline, ‘Let’s kick ‘gender identity’ out of school’, you would be forgiven for assuming that it was a guest post written by a staunchly conservative religious leader.

In fact, it was written by Debbie Hayton, a transgender teacher and journalist. Hayton came to national prominence last year as a result of incurring disciplinary action from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress. To Hayton, a trans person, it must have felt like a cruel irony to be denounced as transphobic by so-called ‘cis-gendered’ (ie non-trans) members of that committee for doing little more than to don a T-shirt that bore the slogan: ‘Trans women are men. Get over it!’

Hayton’s Spectator article highlighted and commended the government’s U-turn on integrating transgender ideology into Sex and Relationship Education (S&RE). The latest guidance states: ‘Resources used in teaching about this topic must always be age-appropriate and evidence based. Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material.’