Bognor!!!!!!!!!!!

Couldn't access posting yesterday so will have to spam you today. Bognor went well - good audience (both perceptive and participative) and a lively panel (me, Joan Moules, Len Tyler, Amy Myers and Rebecca Tope). I was in august company!

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

The International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia is today and, once again, the blog hop is on from 17th to 27th May to mark the event.



Last year I blogged about the freelance training I do and how the UK has laws in place to guard the interests of LGBTQ people. Of course (and alas) you can’t legislate for what goes on in people’s minds. It was with great sorrow I read this, about a transgender teacher who’d taken her own life.

The newspaper implicated there is one I banned from our house as of last year, as they were so negative about the Olympics. They have a history of writing spurious stories - even during WWI they were regarded as unreliable – and they have their seemingly homophobic moments.

But I’m not going to rant about them; I’m focussing on something they said in support of their stance: “echoed the parents’ concerns about whether it was right for children to have to confront complex gender problems at such a vulnerable young age”. You see, in my experience (as parent, governor, trainer, friend, etc) children are more than capable of dealing with complex issues and tend to be incredibly inclusive, as well as being “blind” to difference.

I recall a conversation years ago a friend had with her child about a girl in his class.
Mum: Did you play with Sunita today?
Him: She wasn’t at school.
Mum: She was. I saw her.
Him: Oh. She must have had her hair differently so I didn’t recognise her.
Sunita was the only black child in his class and possibly in the whole school.

In the same way, I've heard of schools celebrating difference in their children, talking about Down’s syndrome, and the pupils not at all making the connection that some of their mates were Down’s children. Because they’re not labelled, they're just Jonny or Kirsty or whatever.

So where does that “blindness” go? I'm convinced that they’re heavily influenced by the adults around them, who are the ones who see difference and have such an issue with it.

So maybe “the parents’ concerns about whether it was right for children to have to confront complex gender problems at such a vulnerable young age” are really the parents’ concerns that their children will either grow up accepting of gender variation or will ask them awkward questions to which they’ll have no sensible answer. And they’ll have to face their own attitude towards complex gender problems.

My giveaway is a donation in the name of a commenter to Albert Kennedy Trust, and any e-book from my back catalogue.