Madness... a top girls’ school is cancelling head girls
MODERN life is pretty surreal. But last week things took a really bizarre twist when a leading independent girls’ school, St Paul’s, decided to remove the ‘girl’ from the role of head girl on the grounds that it was ‘too binary’.
Yes, you read that right. An allgirls’ school has ditched the use of the world girl and replaced it with head of school.
And not just any all-girls’ school, either, arguably the country’s finest: St Paul’s, an establishment which parents battle tooth and nail to get their daughters into – and then happily fork out £26,000 a year in fees to keep them there.
A place that for over a century has championed the education of young women, that has encouraged them to pursue their ambitions to the highest degree – now trying to pretend that the condition of being female does not even exist.
It’s not only bizarre, it’s also incredibly sad. Young women should be proud of their sex, not seek to erase it. Yet this is the point to which this horrible gender culture war has brought us.
It doesn’t take a genius to identify the source. Last week Stonewall, the high-profile LGBT charity that makes a small fortune from advising public bodies–including schools – on ‘best practice’ when it comes to gender politics, told teachers that they should stop referring to children as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, and employ the term ‘learners’ instead.
In addition, everyone must have access to the lavatories, changing rooms and dormitories they feel most comfortable with; and, of course, when it comes to sport, trans girls must be allowed to compete in their chosen category.
For some time now this dogma has been taught in state schools. My daughter had it in Year 10. But what’s so shocking about the St Paul’s thing, the reason it feels so significant, is because this is no ordinary school; it’s the poshest, most academic school there is. If even they are succumbing to this female exclusionary propaganda, then we really do have a serious problem. The girls – sorry, ‘learners’ – who study here are the opinion-formers and leaders of tomorrow. They are the Trojan Horse of the hardline trans lobby. If organisations like Stonewall, with their disdain for free speech and their refusal to countenance any form of constructive debate around the issue, can capture their hearts and minds, victory is secured. No one will even be able to question their ‘truth’ again. And there are signs, anecdotally at least, that it’s working. This move, appar
I SEE that Shamima Begum (or her lawyers, or her agent, or her PR, or all of the above) are now trying to re-cast her as a victim of human trafficking. How very 21st Century of her. Next thing you know she’ll be doing a documentary with Stacey Dooley.
ently, has been been instigated by pupils, who feel the new title is ‘more modern, age-appropriate and inclusive’.
I was also speaking to a friend a few weeks ago, a fellow parent whose daughter does not attend St Paul’s but who knows others who do.
She told me that more than a dozen girls in t he sixth form there are currently identifying as transgender. School-gate gossip? Perhaps. But perhaps not, given that the school’s deputy head, Helen Semple, apparently presided over a training session in April where it was suggested that there are now more than 150 different genders.
Children – even intellectually gifted ones – are so easily influenced by adults in authority.
Self-identification, the non-existence of biological sex, the idea that you can change gender as often as you change your socks: all these ideas have been imported into mainstream education, wrapped up in rainbows and unicorns and presented not only as gospel truth, but – and perhaps more importantly – as fun, cool, trendy.
In any other circumstances, one would just have to laugh and file the whole thing away under the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ category of modern absurdities.
But this isn’t f u n n y. I t ’s really serious.
The top girls school in the country is CANCELLING girlhood. And with it, the future of womankind.