A year of disrupted schooling means there are plenty of issues facing our schools right now. But delegates at last week’s National Education Union conference were more interested in another subject: developing a new – and presumably beefed-up – definition of transphobia.
‘Transphobic news stories are a continued and escalating blight on trans and nonbinary members’ lives, with severe consequences on mental health,’ said motion 22. The ‘Pride in our Union’ motion (you can read the full text here) called for a ‘definition of transphobia that goes above and beyond legal compliance and that supports and endorses trans and non-binary identities without resorting to the erasure or downgrading of ‘gender”.
Make no mistake: this should not be a priority for a teaching union. Trans people are not particularly oppressed in the UK, and certainly not in sectors such as education. Policy makers and headteachers have bent over backwards to be accommodating to transgender teachers like me and the mover of this motion.
Debate is something the trans lobby always seems keen to avoid
The Equality Act may have made it illegal to treat us less favourably on the grounds of gender reassignment.
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