Gender Ideology In Girls’ School Harmful, Flawed

Media Release 1 July 2016
Family First NZ says that Marlborough Girls College has capitulated to ideology rather than biology, that it will result in the school community being harmed, and that the school has ignored sound legal advice.
Family First NZ had provided Marlborough Girls College with a legal opinion for schools released earlier this year that says they are not required under the law to have to allow transgender students access to shared toilets, showers and changing rooms, or allow transgender students to participate in sports teams that do not match their biological sex – despite the lobbying of groups like the Human Rights Commission.
“The toilet issue is just the tip of the iceberg. What about the issues of changing rooms for PE, camp cabins, and participation in sports teams? The school’s response ultimately fails to acknowledge the flawed ideology being pushed, the confusion it will cause to all students, and the long-term harm it will do to school communities,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.
“It is neither enlightened or loving to pretend we can just let young people decide which gender they want to be. What is most disturbing is that our state education system creates a school based on biological sex and then capitulates to being a school based on ‘gender identity’ – a completely non-scientific construct.”
“Most importantly, students have a fundamental right to bodily privacy. What should young girls who are uncomfortable or intimidated by the presence of a male in their bathroom or changing room do, particularly young girls who have been victims of sexual abuse? Is it safe for a young female student to be in an intimate facility with adolescent or older males? We have male and female changing rooms because of biology, not because of ‘gender identity’. Separate facilities reflect the fact that boys and girls have bodily differences; they are designed to protect privacy related to our bodies. Is it safe for a boy to be playing in the girls’ rugby team?” says Mr McCoskrie.
“What young people really need is affirmation of their unique personality and appropriate treatment for their unhappiness and other presenting emotional issues, and appropriate support for parents – but definitely not gender confusion which denies biological reality.”
Family First has sent schools a suggested “Student Physical Privacy Policy” relating to toilets, changing rooms, and sports teams which schools can consider adopting when considering this issue in their own schools. The suggested policy says that schools must be both respectful of the privacy concerns of all children and sensitive to the diverse needs of individual children, but that no child should be forced into an intimate setting – like a toilet block or a changing room – with another child of the opposite sex. The policy suggests that in special circumstances, the Principal may offer options for alternate facilities, which may be access to a single-stall toilet; access to a unisex toilet; or controlled use of a staff toilet, changing room, or shower.
“This is a common-sense and safe solution for school communities. Students with gender dissatisfaction must be given the very best support we can and handled with love and care, but ignoring biology is not a proper solution. To push the gender agenda in schools is a dangerous step to take,” says Mr McCoskrie.
READ the Legal Opinion.
READ the Student Physical Privacy Policy – Draft
“I don’t think a seven-year-old has enough life experience to understand precisely what they’re doing. I think it’s better a person gets to puberty and through puberty…” before such drastic and consequential efforts are taken.
GEORGINA BEYER
“On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity.” “I don’t think the goal of therapy is to make a child feel bad about who they are. It’s helping kids understand themselves better and what might be causing them to develop what I call a “fantasy solution,” that being the other sex will make them happy.”
DR KENNETH ZUCKER, leading researcher and clinician, chair of the group that determined how this issue would be handled in the DSM
“Treating these children with hormones does considerable harm and it compounds their confusion. Trying to delay puberty or change someone’s gender is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature… Children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions, second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons.”
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY PAUL MCHUGH, whose studies of transgender surgery brought the procedures to an end at Johns Hopkins University
ENDS