My Letter to a Headmistress About a Transgender Teacher

The transing of kids is ending in the USA. Parents, let's do it in the UK too.

I try not to comment publicly on American politics. My focus here, at The New Albion, is Christian commentary for a changed Britain. As I noted when I launched this Substack back in 2023, there’s a lot of good conservative Christian commentary to be found from an American perspective these days, but I felt strongly there was something missing on this side of the Atlantic.

One of the chief problems on all sides in UK cultural and political discourse is that we are terminally America-brained, obsessed with its dramas as if they were our own. Of course, there will always be an extent to which America’s sneezes become the UK’s colds, and there’s plenty of cross-pollination worth discussing (my last two posts have focussed on Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, after all). But in general, we need to drill down into British specifics more than we do.

But, I’ll be honest, I have bent my rules slightly over the last couple of weeks since the inauguration of Donald Trump. The absolute legislative bonfire he has launched with his Executive Orders, ripping up four years of Joe Biden’s policies overnight, has been a political sight to behold, whatever you think of them.

And yesterday came one Executive Order which should be a source of unequivocal joy and hope to Christians across the Western world, including here in the UK.

Yesterday, Trump signed an Executive Order entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”. It is a major swipe, in the clearest possible language, and the unconscionable evil of subjecting children to so-called “gender transition,” cutting all federal funding for any such procedures. Lord willing, it is a signal of more to come.

After four years of gender-bending madness in the White House, and in every other seat of government in the Western world, this was breath taking. It’s not the end of course: a truly sane society would outlaw gender transition for adults, and embrace the obvious truth that “trans” people are either mentally ill, sexually perverted, or both. But, considering the past several years, this is quite a start.

This should give hope to people who want to oppose the trans agenda in the UK, which should include anyone who calls themselves a Christian.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We could undo this in four years. We really could.

For that to happen, there must be real political will from our leaders. Labour have made a few reluctant noises suggesting they want us to think they’re listening to concerns about this issue, for instance announcing an indefinite ban on puberty blockers (whilst calling for a clinical trial on a few lucky children!). But last week Keir Starmer was prominently photographed on Burns Night with a Drag Queen (a traditional auld feature of the celebrations?) at Downing Street, so colour me unconvinced.

But alongside the action and willpower of our leaders there must also be regular acts of dissent from normal people when the boot of the trans agenda attempts to stamp on their face.

And, with hope in the air across the Atlantic, I wanted to share one small act of dissent I made a couple of years ago in the hope that it may provide encouragement and something of a resource for others.

In late 2022, my wife and I were still weighing up whether we would be sending our oldest child, our daughter (now 6), to school. We have ended up home educating, but looked seriously at all the local primary schools.

Around this time, it came to our attention that one local school (generally regarded as the best of the local primaries, and attached to a relatively solid Church of England parish church) had a transgender teacher, a woman pretending to be a man.

After some thought, we agreed that there was no way on earth we could in good conscience send a five year old into a school that tolerated such absolute lunacy. And so, I wrote a letter to the head (and the vicar of the parish) explaining why this was the case.

My sense is that a great many parents, in their gut, feel the same as us, but either don’t know how to express this or accept that this is simply how things are and don’t want to kick up a fuss.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We know that now.

And so I have reproduced the outline of the letter I sent back in November 2022 in the hopes that it might be of use as a template of sorts to other parents. Please feel free to make use of it yourself, adapting it however you like, and sharing it with others.

I redrafted the letter a number of times before sending it, drawing on the advice of some wise counsellors. I attempted to strike a balance between clarity about the high stakes of the issue and generosity toward a headteacher who, unconscionable as her actions were, may well have been running scared and confused herself.

In the letter, I recommend Abigail Shrier’s excellent book Irreversible Damage, and enclosed a copy for the Head. Shrier was tweeting triumphantly about Trump’s Executive Order yesterday. Rightfully so.

The trans Emperor has no clothes, my friends. If enough of us start saying it, who knows where we could be in four years.

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November 2022

Dear Mrs. _____,

As a local parent, with a daughter due to start Reception in September 2023, __________ is one of the schools my wife and I considered. It has had a long-standing reputation as one of the best schools in the area, both academically and pastorally.

However, my wife and I will now no longer be considering __________, because it has come to our attention that your new Year 1 teacher is a woman who identifies as transgender and therefore goes by male pronouns and under the title “Mr”. From my understanding, all children and parents have been led to believe that she is a man—which is not the case.

There are two reasons why this means we will not consider __________: a concern for truth and a concern for safety.

First, the concern for truth: your primary role as a school is to teach the children of the community. This, of course, means a basic commitment to truth, and a corresponding aversion to untruth. However, a school in which all staff, children, and parents treat a female as if they are male (and in which children too young to know better trust that, because adults whom they trust have told them so, that said person is male) is a school out of step with its commitment to the truth. I cannot in good conscience send my child to a school in which a fact as fundamental as the difference between men and women is ignored. It shatters any trust I have in your commitment to teach other empirical facts.

This member of staff of course has the right to employment—everyone does. But she does not have the right to request that the school, children, and parents refer to her as a man. I have no doubt that the teacher in question has experienced profound distress due to her condition, and I sincerely wish she could get the right kind of help. However, there is no reason at all that her preferences should result in all social conventions regarding language (i.e. use of pronouns and titles) to be changed within the school, or result in small, impressionable children being told something that simply isn’t true.

Second, a concern for safety: your decision to treat this teacher as a man rather than a woman also physically and emotionally endangers the children in your school—girls especially. This is not because I believe this teacher to necessarily be an active threat, but because by forcing impressionable young children to participate in the accommodation of a trans person’s social transition, you are exposing them to the dangerous and increasingly likely possibility that they may come to wrongly regard themselves as transgender as well.

The meteoric rise in cases of trans identification in the past decade has affected girls in a vastly disproportionate manner. The reasons for this are explored well in Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage, which informs some of what I will say below, and a copy of which I have included with this letter out of a sincere desire for you to understand the import of what you are doing in your school.

Historically, gender dysphoria almost exclusively affected males. It occurred and persisted in early childhood, but in 70% of cases it would resolve at or after puberty. Before 2012, there was no scientific literature on gender dysphoria in girls aged 11-21—because it did not exist.

But in the UK, in the last decade, the percentage of children referred for gender transition treatment has increased 4000%. Now, the vast majority of people identifying themselves as gender dysphoric are girls—¾ in the UK. The condition comes on rapidly in adolescence. They have zero indicators of dysphoria in early childhood. It has a very high correlation with high-functioning autism. They largely identify as some other non-heterosexual sexual orientation prior to identifying as trans. It doesn’t occur in isolated individuals, like we would expect medical problems to, but occurs in a domino effect through friendship groups, where one identifies as trans and then swiftly others do too. Over 90% are white. The vast-majority come from what could comfortably be called middle or upper class backgrounds. Over 65% had spent increased time on social media before coming out as trans—the rest, presumably, were on it virtually all the time anyway.

This “rapid onset gender dysphoria” has now become what social scientists call a “social contagion”—a set of behaviours, emotions, or conditions which spread rapidly through social networks. The internet is now awash with the testimonies of “detransitioners”—young women who were unthinkingly ushered into transition, and are appalled that the parents, doctors, and teachers responsible for their care never simply said “no”. A prominent example would be Keira Bell, a young woman who has challenged the NHS’ Tavistock clinic in court. New data has shown that, in the past 2 years, around 15 children have been referred to Tavistock who are 5 or under—the same age as my daughter.

For these reasons, I could not send my child into a school where such a danger exists. If you want to consider further what I’ve said, I can thoroughly recommend the enclosed book. I sincerely hope that this letter, and the accompanying book, will prompt you to reconsider your approach. I would welcome any response you care to offer.

I have also sent a copy of this letter, along with an additional copy of Irreversible Damage, to Rev’d _____________ in his capacity as Chair of Governors, in the hope that it will be noted by the governors that these concerns have been raised by a member of the community.

Yours sincerely,

Rhys Laverty