[Andy McDandy]

Wakanda, Syldavia, Valverde and R'lyeh presumably?

[Tubby Isaacs]

[Philip Marlow]

Truly my flabber is gasted. Imagine the whole business turning out to be a concocted waste of everyone's time.

[Bones McCoy]

Truly my flabber is gasted. Imagine the whole business turning out to be a concocted waste of everyone's time.

The cat was just another dead cat.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Truly my flabber is gasted. Imagine the whole business turning out to be a concocted waste of everyone's time.

Yeah, but we're missing the real issues. Apparently a fed up teacher told some trans-baiting kids off.

[The Weeping Angel]

From Private Eye

[Crabcakes]

“Please don’t print my name, I am a bigot and don’t have the courage of my convictions” more like

[Philip Marlow]

That letter repeats a trick I've seen in other tabloid campaigns. You lead with a single, alarming/ludicrous showstopper guaranteed to attract attention - Child identifies as cat - and then, when sceptical minds start poking away at the story, you claim that actually this obvious nonsense you've invented and which has lead to a glut of social media discussion about how X knows Y whose daughter's cousin's best mate who goes to another school absolutely identifies as a cat/dog/parakeet/musk oxen and the teachers are supporting them you know isn't really the important bit of the story at all and, in fact, anyone who insists on continuing to point out what utter bullshit it is is doing so to distract from the real issue, which is...

Certainly, based on the short audio recording which is all the direct evidence we have, the teacher's response was less than ideal. But then I can't help thinking back to my own schooldays. Gender identity wasn't really an issue, but I can remember a handful of occasions where teachers snapped at the wind up merchants and the bullies; had we all been carrying recording devices around with us and someone had managed to get one of those episodes to a newspaper with an interest in making an issue out of it...well who knows.

[Andy McDandy]

Yes. See also: Fargle's bank account. All the cretins come out of the sewer, tell their stories to a receptive and unquestioning press, then when the poison toad is exposed as a liar, the press still have the Racist Vicar of Bromley to moan about.

[Philip Marlow]

Helen Carroll, who writes for the Mail, was on Twitter at one point asking for stories from mums whose children identified as animals. For a fee of course, and with the offer of anonymity thrown in. Can't imagine how that could be used to mislead.

'Now listen Timothy, for the next two weeks you're going to be a hedgehog, alright?'
'But why mu...?'
'A HEDGEHOG.'

[davidjay]

We haven't moved on from the eighties days when tabloid muckrakers would offer England supporters a few quid to throw a brick through Johnny Foreigner's shop window.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

We had the Mail turn up outside our school and offered money to kids to fight each other for the photos...

[Tubby Isaacs]

That letter repeats a trick I've seen in other tabloid campaigns. You lead with a single, alarming/ludicrous showstopper guaranteed to attract attention - Child identifies as cat - and then, when sceptical minds start poking away at the story, you claim that actually this obvious nonsense you've invented and which has lead to a glut of social media discussion about how X knows Y whose daughter's cousin's best mate who goes to another school absolutely identifies as a cat/dog/parakeet/musk oxen and the teachers are supporting them you know isn't really the important bit of the story at all and, in fact, anyone who insists on continuing to point out what utter bullshit it is is doing so to distract from the real issue, which is...

Certainly, based on the short audio recording which is all the direct evidence we have, the teacher's response was less than ideal. But then I can't help thinking back to my own schooldays. Gender identity wasn't really an issue, but I can remember a handful of occasions where teachers snapped at the wind up merchants and the bullies; had we all been carrying recording devices around with us and someone had managed to get one of those episodes to a newspaper with an interest in making an issue out of it...well who knows.

Yeah, exactly.

After the debunking, it's "the real issues". With added anonymity. Publishing last year was worth nearly £7bn, hardly the sort of boutique industry where a word out of place would mean it were impossible to get a job, and anyway her beliefs are protected in employment law. What people like that mean is that they know it might make them a bit unpopular.

[Andy McDandy]

A few years ago, a roadside shrine was set up to a man who had died in London while attempting to burgle a house. ODHSNM, I'd say, but for some people this was too much. One chap was filmed kicking the shrine and floral tributes apart - and that would have been the end of it were it not for wider angle photos of what looked like a wall of paps and reporters cheering and egging him on.

[The Weeping Angel]

“Please don’t print my name, I am a bigot and don’t have the courage of my convictions” more like

Or because they fear losing their job.

[The Weeping Angel]

This article gives an indepth look at the case and what people on both sides got wrong.

https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/the-m ... -point-for

The recording starts after some prior exchange, so we don’t know exactly what the precipitating event was. From the outset the teacher accuses one girl of saying another student needed to be put in an asylum, which they strenuously deny. The teacher is cross that having said the example of “identifying as a cat” is insane, the students are questioning someone’s identity.

The teacher is extremely dismissive of the idea that “there are only two genders”, questioning where the girl heard this. The pupil is not permitted to have any other opinion - the teacher states “it is not an opinion you can have”.

The girls say there’s only girls and boys, no other “private parts”, and the teacher responds that “gender is not linked to the parts that you were born with”. The teacher tells the student that there are three sexes.

The teacher says there’s multiple genders, and the girls retort that they think that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina and that’s it. The teacher says that what the girls are saying is that if you aren’t “cisgender” you’re “weird” and thinking that is “despicable”. When one girl says her mum would agree, the teacher calls this sad.

The teacher likens this to homophobia, which again the girls dispute, saying they have “no problem with lesbians and gays”, and that this isn’t homophobia, its about transgender. The teacher says they are related, that the child is “so wrong”, that they are “confusing sex and gender”, and when the girls say again that if you have a vagina you’re a girl and a penis you’re a boy, the teacher says this isn’t an opinion they can express in this school and if they don’t like they “need to go to a different school”.

I urge you to read the whole transcript or listen to the audio, because I found the whole exchange shocking and saddening.

Throughout the recording the teacher struggles badly to articulate what gender actually is and the whole thing demonstrates what happens when handwaving about bodies and identity and being who you are collides with someone willing to ask what you actually mean in plain language.

[Andy McDandy]

Sounds like a shit teacher (or an OK teacher with shit training/materials) dealing badly with the usual sex ed. snickering.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Some otherwise decent teachers struggle with sex ed for a variety of reasons; personal, religious or just lacking knowledge.

Also - if you start a lesson like this without being very clear in your own head about what you want and need to say you will end up in difficulties. And you may not get it clear until you have tried to teach it...

[Abernathy]

[Philip Marlow]

Oh joy.

As I'm hardly the first person to point out, even Section 28 didn't attempt to force teachers to out gay pupils to their parents.