Keep it simple

Gender identity does not belong in schools

What’s up with RSE?

Changes to Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) are on the way, but far more slowly than was indicated in the Coalition agreement of December 2023. RGE has received a letter from the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, that clarifies what to expect for 2025 (quotations from the letter are in italics):

• The RSE Guidelines have been removed from the MOE curriculum website.

• “To support schools in the interim period before the refresh of the health and physical education learning area (HPE), a suggested list of draft RSE topics to be taught will be made available for schools to use.” This is expected by the end of Term 1 (April 11).

• The writing process for the new curriculum “allows for diferent groups of experts to be engaged at various development stages to ensure wider representation across the learning area.”

• The Ministry of Education is in the process (as at 18 February) of convening the first contributing group. “The Ministry will work with relevant subject associations and other sector groups to ensure the appropriate technical knowledge and expertise is present at each stage.”

• “Curriculum resources and supports for each learning area will also be updated to align with refreshed curriculum content.”

• “Like all learning areas, once draft HPE content is avalialable it will be shared with schools and the public for consultation and feedback.” This consultation is scheduled for Term 4, 2025.

The RSE Guide is gone but the “suggested list of draft RSE topics” has not yet been announced. In this gap, many schools are choosing to continue with the RSE lessons already in place, while waiting for more concrete guidance from the Ministry.

Of major concern is the possibility that ‘gender identity’ will still be included in the suggested list of topics to be covered in RSE. We need to widely challenge the misguided attitude that gender identity is simply about ‘kindness and inclusion’ and explain why it must be be purged from the school curriculum. But how best to do that?

In her latest newsletter (104), Helen Joyce from Sex Matters, observes that it’s unlikely we’ll be able to turn around the years of trans propaganda in one conversation.

You can’t say everything on your topic. In fact, on any specific occasion you can say almost nothing. My working definition of a good interview is “three strong points and no clangers”. This means it takes absolutely ages to get your message out, shift public opinion or – and this is surely the end goal – bring about the change you want to see. As a rough rule, around the point at which you think you simply cannot bear to say whatever it is even one more time is about the point that the average person may, if you’re lucky, have become dimly aware that there is something going on.

Most people are not gender ideologues but they have been duped by persistent pro-trans messaging into a state of confusion and trepidation. As Helen says, “Many of your listeners firmly believe falsehoods or at least think everything is too complicated to know who’s right or wrong.”

It will take patience and perseverance to break through the ‘be kind and inclusive’ catchcry. Key to getting our message across is keeping it simple. The following three strong points are good places to start the critical conversations with your family, friends, school, and MPs.

Three simple messages about ‘gender identity’

#1. It is not true

School is supposed to be grounded in reality, with facts, science, and critical thinking skills to the fore. When the lie that humans can choose their sex is taught to children, trust in schools and teachers is sabotaged along with the truth.

There is no evidence whatsoever that humans have some sort of soul-like internal feeling that tells them whether they are male or female. Sex is a reproductive category, determined at conception, and cannot be changed, even if a person fervently believes they should be the opposite (or no) sex, and even if that person makes significant changes to their outward appearance.

Gender identity is an unverifiable belief that has no objective measure and should never be presented to children as fact. ‘Transitioning’ to become another sex is nothing more than individual perception and make believe that children should not be pressured into accepting as real.

How did we get from the “Girls can do anything” campaign of the 1980s to the belief that girls who like climbing, driving, and building must truly be boys?

Invariably, the ‘evidence’ for gender identity is based on sex stereotypes. When a boy likes quiet play and glitter he is told he must really be a girl. A girl who likes rough and tumble is encouraged to think she must be ‘in the wrong body’. These are regressive and homophobic stereotypes, yet they are often the only ‘proof’ provided before parents and schools start enthusiastically affirming a child’s opposite sex identity.

Instead of teaching a belief in gender identity, schools should be teaching about gender diversity - that people come in two sexes and with all sorts of personalities and should be accepted and included as the sex they are.

#2 It is not kind

Far from being the ‘kind and inclusive’ ideology that it presents itself as, gender identity turns healthy children into lifelong medical patients, separates families, and bullies other people into expressing the same beliefs or they will face consequences.

Like the Pied Piper, ‘gender identity’ leads children away from their families and into a labyrinth of medical consequences. What starts as pretending to be the opposite sex (social transitioning) can quickly become the gateway to increasingly drastic body modifications:

From social transitioning… to an irrational fear of the necessary developmental stage of puberty,

…to taking puberty blockers that stop sexual development but also have unknown effects on the normal social and cognitive development of teenagers,

…to cutting off healthy breasts in a double mastectomy (so-called “top surgery”) which means future breastfeeding will be impossible and chronic pain is likely,

…to taking cross sex hormones, that must be injected every three months for LIFE, and can render the patient infertile, sexually dysfunctional, and with an increased risk of heart attack,

…to having a hysterectomy (and becoming sterile) because the excess testosterone has caused irreparable damage to the uterus and ovaries,

…to genital surgeries that are euphemistically called “bottom surgery”, a term that does not convey the magnitude of the operations, nor the high complication rates, nor that male patients will be permanently sterile, nor that body parts created by plastic surgeons do not look like or function in the same way as natural vaginas or penises. Here is a doctor’s chart listing the many differences between a neovagina and a real one.

None of these catastrophic consequences can be properly explained to a ten year old who is starting on puberty blockers or a fourteen year old who is having the first hormone injection. Children cannot give informed consent to these interventions because the whole field of ‘gender medicine’ does not have the backing of good quality research. (Read more from the Cass Review here.)

Children who have not experienced puberty and have never had an intimate relationship are being robbed of the opportunity to naturally progress into adulthood and to decide later, with their sexual and reproductive functions intact, whether or not to become parents.

Why do we have age restrictions on alcohol, tobacco, tattoos, and many other things but not on powerful medicines that disrupt a child’s normal development?

Gender ideology - the belief system that demands ‘no debate’ and pillories anyone who questions it - deliberately poisons young people against their families and encourages them to “go no contact”. Thousands of caring families have been devastated by such cruel ultimatums where children deprive themselves of the support of the people who love them the most. Read some of their stories at Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT).

Gender identity is a personal belief that has been marketed as a human right. In reality, ‘trans rights’ are demands for preferential treatment. People who claim to be ‘trans’ insist that everyone else must alter their world view to align with theirs. Even small children are co-opted into this, through the plethora of picture books that lie to them about human sex categories and the enforcement at school of ‘preferred pronouns’.

There is no human right to force others to agree with you. Teaching children that disagreement is ‘hate’ or that other perspectives are ‘bigotry’ does not develop kindness in them. Instead of encouraging inclusion, ‘gender identity’ models exclusion, even of close family members if they dare to voice a differing opinion.

#3 It is not wise

What has become of the wisdom of adults? We are supposed to guide children towards resilience and independence. Instead, too many adults are leading children down the opposite path via ‘gender identity’, to a sense of entitlement, permanent victimhood, and lifelong medical dependence.

Rather than learning of the wonders of the human body, children are encouraged to embrace body dissociation and self harm. At school, in books, in social and entertainment media, literally EVERYWHERE, they are being:

told that regressive sex stereotypes are valid

taught that sex is on a spectrum, fluid, and easy to change

reinforced in the belief that their personal feelings belong on a pedestal and they are entitled to be affirmed by everyone around them

swayed into thinking that they are too fragile to face the normal developmental stage of puberty and must avoid it at all costs

given a permanent victim status and fear of other people who are deemed ‘hateful’ people simply for disagreeing with them.

The gender identity industry is a major waste of personal and social capital. It is a pipeline by which children can rapidly go from healthy to mentally unwell to physically damaged.

Instead of treating this socially-created disordered thinking with psychotherapy, children’s bodies are medicated and surgically altered. All that money being spent on medicating and mutilating children would be better spent on changing attitudes instead of changing bodies. Why is the first response to gender questioning children to administer drugs, when changing the band width of what it means to be a boy or girl would be so much easier and better for all of us?

Why is the fantasy of ‘gender identity’ being cemented in place with medical interventions when children with anorexia who think they are fat are given psychotherapy, not weight loss pills?

Gender identity has become a youth subculture - the latest way that young people show they are up to the minute with their peers. It is no longer even necessary for a medical diagnosis for teens to declare themselves ‘trans’ and become one of the cool kids.

This subculture would not be of much concern except, unlike the goths, punks, or emos who came before, being ‘trans’ steers children towards permanently altering their bodies while they are too young to understand the lifelong consequences.

Children should be taught to understand that there is no right way to be a boy or girl - their own way is the right way - and that no one is born in the wrong body. Whether it is male or female, each person’s body is something marvellous and irreplaceable.

Compassion for all children

If ‘gender identity’ appears in the RSE suggested topics list, we need to be ready to strongly oppose it. Although we will be able to withdraw our own children from the lessons, we must change the minds of those implementing the new RSE, or all the other children will continue to be indoctrinated into an extremely harmful ideology, and that affects us all.

“Engage people’s compassion, rather than spewing facts,” advises Helen Joyce. Always bring conversations back to the fact that we’re talking about children. Gender ideology is a belief system created for the benefit of adults that is being foisted onto children, who are motivated to please the people close to them and who will believe almost anything they are told by trusted adults.

There is no benefit to children in disconnecting them from their sexed bodies, disrupting their natural and necessary development into adulthood, and making them lifelong medical patients, forever dependent on synthetic hormones.

Share these resources

Lisa Selin Davies explains why I am Jazz should not be read to children. (Jazz Jennings began ‘transitioning’ from male to female as a young child. This picture book does not cover the multiple corrective genital surgeries and sexual dysfunction that Jazz has faced as an adult.)

Can Humans Change Sex? This is a short and simple video explanation of why, when a person changes their outward gendered appearance, they have not changed their sex.

Click here to watch Stella O'Malley and Sasha Ayad talking with Billboard Chris about what led him to become a human billboard, with some excellent tips on how to engage in honest conversations about gender ideology. Highly recommended viewing, especially from 8.35 to 17.50.

Independent NZ Guidelines on Sex and Gender in Schools This Guide was sent to all NZ schools in May 2024 and provides research-based evidence and a compassionate roadmap to support schools to develop a respectful school climate that meets the needs of their diverse communities and is in alignment with globally-recognised best practice.