Safe Schools transgender awareness program could do more harm to kids than good
 |
| Australian author and feminist Germaine Greer at the 2006 Humber Mouth Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
AS parents send their children back to school, they might want
to check if their primary or high school is signed up to the so-called Safe
Schools Coalition Australia.
One parent who did some checking was Cella White of Frankston in
Victoria. She
has withdrawn her child from Frankston High School.
Other parents across Australia are doing the same.
In the name of anti-bullying, Safe Schools are urged to let boys
who believe in their mind they are a girl to use the girls’ toilets, change
facilities and even sleeping quarters on school camps.
Safe Schools material contains posters of boys dressed in girls’
school uniforms with the message “gender is not uniform” and schools are
encouraged to let children wear the uniform of their felt gender.
Now gender dysphoria is a serious issue and
no child should be bullied for any reason.
But Safe Schools goes way beyond the purview of anti-bullying
programs to proselytising for radical gender theory.
For example, girls who think they might be boys are given advice
about flattening their breasts.
The Safe Schools-promoted Minus 18 website, funded by the
Victorian Government and promoted by the program nationally, advises “7 ways to
bind your chest” — a practice which it casually admits can kill.
“Because you are compressing tissue, it can cause damage and
potentially even breakages to your ribs if done improperly, if things go wrong
with your ribs, it has the potential to be lethal,” according to the Safe
Schools-promoted material.
And boys who think they might be girls are advised to “tuck”
their genitals, a practice that can lead to infertility.
The Safe Schools-promoted Minus 18 website goes on to also
affirm radical sexual experimentation.
Of course most of us who are parents will be concerned about
material like this.
But to be told objecting might cause vulnerable young people to
commit suicide is emotional blackmail.
But more serious questions about Safe Schools go to legal
liability.
Who is liable if a girl damages her breasts or a boy becomes
infertile from tucking his genitals — or worse still, has surgery they later
regret?
Is it the school principal who allowed the program? The
Education Department? Or state and federal governments? It really should be the
federal and state politicians who signed off on the program.
The Rudd/Abbott/Turnbull Governments have channelled $8 million
of taxpayers’ money to Safe Schools.
486 primary and high schools are running the program.
Despite the rainbow carpet being rolled out in schools, gender
theory is highly contested with leading feminists such as Germaine Greer
scathing.
Women and girls should feel safe in their toilets and change
rooms from male-to-female transgender people who have not undergone a sex
change, they rightly say.
And there is no scientific evidence that anyone is “born gay” or
that little boys and girls have been born in the wrong body and that surgery,
hormones, tucking or binding are the solution.
Yet Safe Schools teaches gender theory as fact — even to primary
school children.
What Safe Schools doesn’t say is that most gender dysphoria
subsides before puberty.
It is likely the program could be doing more harm than good,
particularly if kids later regret their sex change, as many transgender people
do.
Of course this is deeply emotional for families where children
are grappling with their sexuality or gender.
However, love, compassion and empathy along with truth telling
and professional help should be the approach, not transgender ideology taught
as dogma.
It is time politicians found the courage to defund Safe Schools
and to push back on rainbow politics.
If they don’t, more parents like Cella White will vote with
their feet to the detriment of public education.
