A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how new parents in New Jersey were forced to fill out a form about whether or not their hours-old infant was gay, straight, transgender, genderqueer, etc. I didn't think I would find a story to top that, but this one out of the United Kingdom comes close.
Related: Is Your Newborn Gay or Straight? Transgender? GenderQueer?
What are some reasons kids typically get kicked out of preschool or daycare? I worked at one while I was in high school and college, and the two main reasons I remember were either behavior problems or health risks. There was this little boy who loved to bite anyone he could put his little mouth on, and while he didn't get kicked out per se, his parents did get a lot of warnings. There was another incident in which we had a little boy who ran a high fever and cried constantly, and his mother got to a point where she didn't really want to do anything about it because we were disrupting her job. Don't get me started on that lady...
However, I don't remember "transphobia" being a reason, though this was back in the early 2000s when we were all still a little sane. But that's the case for a nursery school student in the U.K. — we're talking a kid between the ages of three and four.
The U.K.'s Department for Education (DfE) keeps data on why students are removed from government schools, and it looks like homophobia and transphobia were added to the list of potential reasons during the 2020-21 academic year. That data reveals that during the 2022-2023 school year, one child in that age range was removed for "abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity."
Does a three-year-old even know what sexual orientation is? And isn't that the beauty of the innocence of being three years old? You're more likely to hate someone because they won't let you have a cookie than you are because they feel the need to tell you their pronouns.
In the words of JK Rowling, "This is totalitarian insanity. If you think small children should be punished for being able to recognise sex, you are a dangerous zealot who should be nowhere near kids or in any position of authority over them."
But it gets worse. In addition to that poor "transphobic" little one, a whopping 94 students were suspended from primary school for being homophobic and transphobic. That includes ten children who are in year one (the equivalent to kindergarten in the United States) and three who were in year two (similar to first grade). That's 14 total "transphobic" students under the age of seven.
Overall, 164 students of all ages who attend these schools were removed during the 2021-2022 school year for being either transphobic or homophobic, while that number rose to 178 in 2022-2023. I really wish I could get my hands on the stories of what happened specifically to trigger this nonsense.
Toby Young, who is associate editor of The Spectator and director of the Free Speech Union, has weighed in: "It beggars belief that schools are suspending children as young as five for breaching their ‘transphobia’ policy. I would have thought that if your ideology is so rigid it justifies you punishing toddlers for not complying with it, that’s a powerful argument for discarding it in favour of something less dogmatic." Amen to that.
It looks like the U.K. has bigger fish to fry anyway. Overall, 787,221 students were suspended during the 2022-2023 school year, a number that has more than doubled since the 2016-2016 term. Primary school student suspensions are even up 31%. Maybe they need to figure that out instead of allowing activist schools and teachers to put ideas into the heads of small children.