A 13-year-old girl and her friend were scolded by a Church of England-school teacher for refusing to accept that people can identify as cats or that there are more than two genders, sparking a political row about how this is occurring in British schools despite 13 years of ostensibly Conservative rule.
Audio released by the Turning Point UK campaign group revealed a teacher at Rye College calling a student “despicable” after she refused to accept the validity of a classmate identifying as a cat and maintaining that there are only two genders.
“If they want to identify as a cat or something then they are genuinely unwell – crazy,” the student said.
The teacher at the Church of England-run secondary school informed the children that “gender is not linked to the parts that you were born with, gender is about how you identify, which is what I said right from the very beginning of the lesson.”
She continued to say that “there is actually three biological sexes because you can be born with male and female body parts or hormones… there are lots of genders – there is transgender, there is ‘agender’ who are people who don’t believe that they have a gender at all.”
When the girls refused to accept the leftist indoctrination, by maintaining that those with vaginas are girls and people with penises are boys, the teacher became noticeably enraged, saying: “Cisgender is not necessarily the way to be – you are talking about the fact that cisgender is the norm, that you identify with the sexual organ you were born with, that’s basically what you’re saying, which is really despicable.”
“If you don’t like it you need to go to a different school”, the teacher said, continuing: “I’m reporting you, you need to have a proper educational conversation about equality, diversity and inclusion because I’m not having that expressed in my lesson.”
Former government minister, Conservative MP Priti Patel criticised the actions of the teacher, saying: “This Left-wing indoctrination of our young people is disturbing and must be stamped out of our schools. The Government must put the rights of parents first.”
Yet, many were less than impressed with the comments from Patel, given that Conservative governments, including the one she served in, had ample opportunity to introduce legislation to prohibit such actions by teachers under law, yet have only issued toothless guidance, which schools often ignore.
Author and political commentator Douglas Murray said in response to Patel’s comments: “Agreed. But the girl arguing with the teacher is 13. Every year of her life has been lived under a Conservative government. So how did teachers like this get created in that time? How did the gender nonsense gestate and expand in those 13 years? Under a conservative government?”
GB News contributor Connor Tomlinson added: “The calculation has been made that it is more profitable and electorally expedient to continuously complain about the problem while doing absolutely nothing to stop it.”
The Conservative government is reportedly set to issue more ‘guidance’ to schools in England, according to The Sun, which will reportedly include prohibiting children from changing their gender at school without parental consent, as well as banning children who claim to be transgender from participating in sports competitions of the opposite biological sex.
Meanwhile, The Telegraph reports that Rye College allows children to identify as a whole host of non-human identities, including dinosaurs, horses, and even one child who identifies as a moon, refers to himself as “moonself” and wears a cloak to school and claims the ability to put curses on other students.
Although other students are bound by school uniform codes, those who identify as cats are allowed to wear fake cat ears in order to express their “true self”.
Tracy Shaw, of the Safe Schools Alliance, told the broadsheet that rather than raising red flags, many teachers have a “blind spot where anything involving identity comes in.”
“If a child is coming to school identifying as a cat or a horse, that should immediately raise red flags,” she said. “They think they are being kind by affirming these behaviours, but they are not being kind, because they are likely to be missing all sorts of things that are going on in that child’s life.”