Keir Starmer says he doesn’t want schools teaching young people about transgender identities

[u/PinkNews]

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/06/25/keir-starmer-trans-education-general-election-2024/

[u/jmdg007]

Surely people realise Trans people aren't going to just go away by not mentioning them in school? I went to a Catholic school about 10 years ago where they never got mentioned once by teachers yet I know at least 2 people from my year who are Trans now.

[u/limeflavoured → u/jmdg007]

Surely people realise Trans people aren't going to just go away by not mentioning them in school?

It's literally identical logic to that used for Sectuon 28. They think that by forcing schools to avoid mentioning it people will stop being trans. It's inhumane.

[u/snippity_snip → u/limeflavoured]

The entirety of my time at school was under Section 28. Never learned that other people like me existed, so I didn’t know I could have a normal happy life and relationships like everybody else.

Still grew up to be gay af. I just got to be depressed and suicidal all the way through school. So I guess that was a win to the tories? 🤷

[u/cloche_du_fromage → u/snippity_snip]

I went roo school way before section 28 and was fully aware of gay people existing.

For a couple of years there was also a commonly held belief it was contagious...

[u/snippity_snip → u/snippity_snip]

My point here was really not so much that I didn’t know gay people existed at all, obviously ‘gay’ had been used as a derogatory in schools for a long time. The point is that ‘gay people’ were only known of as some strange, possibly contagious or predatory negative thing, people who existed in the shadows and were to be feared or made fun of.

If I’d known that gay people are for the most part just normal people who lead lives much like the rest of society, having jobs and happy relationships like everyone else, that would have been an immense help for my growth and mental state.

Instead, teachers were functionally banned from even mentioning the existence of gay people. Thatcher explicitly didn’t want young people to grow up thinking they had “an inalienable right to be gay” or that a gay person could have a normal family life.

[u/cathartis → u/snippity_snip]

I went to an all boys school during the 80s, so just when section 28 came in, and although I'm not gay myself, I saw completely the opposite to what you describe.

Everyone knew what being gay was. It was regularly used as an insult. Everyone knew who the gay kids were. They were the boys who obsessed over pop music and all hung out together. They weren't particularly subtle about it either - I remmeber one of them complementing me on my butt. And whilst being called gay was an insult, and used to rile up other kids and start fights etc, I don't remember the obvious gays being particularly targetted - the other kids just accepted that that's the way some people were, and best not to mention it.