Gender neutral toilets in todays news!

That's fair enough, NotSpaghetti. I wasn't singling out your posts as being part of the 'fake' accusations, or arguing with you in particular. The accusations are all over the place, including on threads on here, and I do think it's important to look at the story as a whole.

Having said that (and I think that in this case the papers have picked up on the 'furry' thing to sell copies), conversations with practising teachers or a glance at letters pages and discussion boards show that animal identities are happening in schools, and also that there are staff who are so invested in 'inclusion' that they leapt to the defence of the (possibly hypothetical) one in this case.

It’s a great pity if the headline grabbing cat issue detracts from the way the teacher behaved and whether the school takes action on dealing with bullying.

Glorianny

And the school may well be protecting a transgender child and the girls in question. I doubt if those girls have taken any account of the abuse they might receive if they were identified as targeting a transgender child.

All pupils should be protected. They should certainly be protected from teachers who call them despicable and openly criticise their parents and home life. She called a child’s mother “sad”)

The girls repeatedly said it was their opinion and asked that it should be respected and the teacher repeatedly said her opinion was fact and they should leave the school if they didn’t agreed with her.

These children were not protected by the school. They were shamefully bullied. This conversation was wrong on so many levels.

Doodledog the "fake" was that the conversation was about identifying as a cat. It was not. This was a media manipulation.

I just thought the way that "everyone" including politicians jumped on it and made it about identifying as a cat was worth comment.

My mistake obviously. I'm not "invested" in this. I should have picked a different word.
I'm hoping it's clearer now what I meant.

I am sorry again that this has become about cat identity instead of toilets - which I prefer to be either women's toilets or individual WCs as you find with disabled ones. I am not a fan of "gender neutral" unless they are an extra.

Smileless2012

Great post @ 10.02 Doodledog. As you say the only disputable issue here is whether or not there is a pupil at this school identifying as a cat.

Could the school have denied this to protect a vulnerable pupil? It's a possibility and would also protect the school from any backlash if it was accepting a child identifying as a cat and supporting that child by allowing certain 'cat' behaviour.

It's important to take not of the fact that the school has not said that the recorded incident with this teacher has been faked.

Yes, as I said, the Head should very well have been protecting a vulnerable child, and I think that's absolutely fair enough.

Glorianny I agree that the fact that this was recorded suggests that the girls were expecting to need to back up their side of the story, as I said upthread. That is not a great indication that the relationship with the teacher was good, or that the girls could expect their views to be respected. The teacher has a right to disagree, but the role of an educator is to explore issues, not to call children names or to suggest that differing views are despicable.

Also, the 'fake' accusations are very disingenuous, I think. It's a classic 'Gotcha!' that ignores the rest of the story, and it is very important that this is not allowed to happen. The 'cat' element is probably about newspapers looking for an eye-catching story, but the story as a whole is indicative of the shutting down of free speech (and a right to an opinion) that has crept into our schools and other institutions in the name of 'inclusivity'.

Smileless2012

What does "not really about the cat/girl" mean NotSpaghetti?

If you listen /watch you will see it's the end of a (heated) conversation where gender was the issue, the cat issue is not central to the argument.
The conversation was really focused on the genitalia/gender "debate".

Of course a transgender child should be protected from abuse but saying that a boy can't be a girl and a girl can't be a boy is a fact, not abusive.

Girls at school should not have to accept a transgender boy whose identifying as girl into their toilets and changing rooms. If schools are going to accept transgender children and want their school mates to accept them too, then they need to provide totally separate toilet and changing room facilities.

And the school may well be protecting a transgender child and the girls in question. I doubt if those girls have taken any account of the abuse they might receive if they were identified as targeting a transgender child.

I don't think the cat issue is all that important. I do think what is evident if you listen more carefully to the recording is that there has been some sort of issue between the girls doing the recording and another pupil. The teacher plainly says "she" is writing a statement and "you" (the girls) will be asked to write one. The girls (and they are clever) manage to turn the debate away from their own actions and onto a more general discussion. It would be interesting to know what had gone on beforehand.

Great post @ 10.02 Doodledog. As you say the only disputable issue here is whether or not there is a pupil at this school identifying as a cat.

Could the school have denied this to protect a vulnerable pupil? It's a possibility and would also protect the school from any backlash if it was accepting a child identifying as a cat and supporting that child by allowing certain 'cat' behaviour.

It's important to take not of the fact that the school has not said that the recorded incident with this teacher has been faked.

Yes, if you post”It’s fake” then those that want to believe it, will believe it.

The same goes for those who think it’s true, of course.

How odd that we have returned to an era where nothing can be trusted except our own experiences.

I’m still confused 😕

I'm still confused about what point NotSpaghetti is making, but I think the bigger problem is that there will be a lot of people who genuinely believe that the conversation was fake, because there are those with a particular agenda who are saying so. I've seen it on here.

Nobody likes to think that they have been duped, and many people do like to see those who think differently politically exposed as dupes, so the fact that politicians and other people had commented on the case gave a perfect opportunity to shout them down, too. It's a double whammy - repeating the 'it's fake' accusations shows how much better informed the repeater is (or thinks they are), and lets them point out that those with opposing beliefs are 'jumping on a bandwagon' or just easily fooled.

The joke (such as it is) is on them, of course, and their sense of superiority short-lived, but not everyone will hear the part of the story that makes that clear.

I’m confused too.

The tiktok link shows how it’s grown.

But the original recording of pupils being called despicable still stands.
Or are you saying that was faked?

There was a conversation (real and undisputed) between a teacher and two girls, and this was recorded, presumably because the girl was expecting to need back-up as her point of view would be shouted down.

The teacher clearly had half baked ideas about so-called 'gender', claiming that intersex is a gender. The girl referred to someone identifying as a cat, and said that she had a right to say that this person is not actually a cat, but a human, and was told that her views were despicable, she should go to a different school, and would be reported to the head for expressing them.

What is debatable is whether there is an actual child in that particular school who identifies as a cat. The Head (or a spokesperson) says not, which may or may not be to protect a vulnerable child. We don't know one way or the other. But that is not the point. The point is that there is no freedom of speech around so-called 'gender' issues in that school, and the teacher was way out of line in the way she tried to gaslight the girl and bully her into denying the evidence of her eyes.

The element of doubt about a small and irrelevant part of the whole was pounced on by the trans lobby with a Gotcha! (sound familiar?) and used to suggest that this is all 'political correctness gone mad', that people have been 'fooled', that it was all fake and so on. The resulting smokescreen deliberately obfuscates the reality, which is that children are being cowed into compliance with the Stonewall agenda, and the conversation is/was not 'fake'.

What does "not really about the cat/girl" mean NotSpaghetti?

So what is the thing you were saying was fake? I am confused now

No. There was a conversation. You're right - the one I posted above:

www.tiktok.com/@commonlycensored/video/7246038839947529499

But not really about the cat/girl - it was more about how many genders there are

Ah, I see.

It was the idea that the conversation between the teacher and the child was ‘fake’ that I wanted to make clear is untrue. It was real, regardless of whether there is a cat-identifying child in that particular school or not, however much the trans lobby would like to pretend otherwise. They are responsible for the idea that this is all a media construct- it isn’t. The conversation did happen.

I have no idea about what happened in America, but very much doubt that the incidents are linked in any way, really.

Doodledog yes I know.
I have even posted the link to tic-tok above so people could actually see it.

I just said it was being linked to the cat litter issue in America.
... This was a comment that I probably shouldn't have made here - but the whole thing going mad and the "conflation" and "running away with things" and "taking things out of context" by the media in particular and then chinese-whispers by people who didn't go back to the original source seemed to all be linked.

I personally think the teacher was a bit bull-headed frankly but it is still not as it has been described (especially if you hear what went before).

I had no intention to hijack the Gender neutral toilets thread.

Apologies if I have done this.

I’m familiar with gender neutral toilets in some other European countries. Don’t like them.
About twenty years ago, The office I worked in introduced gender neutral toilets . It took about 3 weeks for the women to say enough. Let’s revert to separate toilets. We don’t want to paddle in urine or face awful smells and we want privacy. The managers accepted this.
Dread to think what would happen now

NotSpaghetti

Here's some info about the cat litter thing and how it spread - just in case anyone wants to know.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna51439

I found the worry that you may need "go buckets" in a classroom incredibly sad.
So lucky to live in a country where we don't (yet) need to take mass shootings so very seriously.

I think there are cross purposes here. Your link refers to the US, whereas the incident where the child is called ‘despicable’ for refusing to say that a girl who identifies as a cat is not actually a cat happened in the UK. That is the one that has been called into question by the trans lobby, despite the fact that the ‘despicable’ child recorded the conversation and it is clear that she was told that neither her views nor the evidence of her eyes are acceptable and that she should go to another school.

Yes Louella12 I don't usually post things I've not seen. I put the link up above.

Here's some info about the cat litter thing and how it spread - just in case anyone wants to know.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna51439

I found the worry that you may need "go buckets" in a classroom incredibly sad.
So lucky to live in a country where we don't (yet) need to take mass shootings so very seriously.

NotSpaghetti

MrsNemo and others... the cat story is a total fake - though Suella Braverman fell for it!

It's not a fake at all .

Have you listened to it?

I agree that hand washing facilities that are open to view by everyone aren't a problem Lathyrus.

Men can and do expose themselves whether they're identifying as women or not but it's not rocket science to be able to work out that an intact male, identifying as a woman and accessing women's safe spaces is going to find it much easier to do so.

I agree the irrelevance if the teacher was speaking hypothetically Doodledog. If that was the case, it does make one wonder why the teacher chose that particular example; not something I'm sure the majority of teachers would have done.

What is not in dispute however, is the fact that the teacher told the student that her point of view was despicable and she could look for another school.