I was working with a tg vrt and i didnt realise until i was told because i didnt care one way or the other. I sense the person as a person on whats in thier head and not whats or was between their legs. Funny you never see headlines ‘heterosexual blah blah blah’ the judgement is in others who probably have thier own demons anyway. rather than the person who has had the bravery to say this is me, who i am and you can take it or leave it. They are prepared to lose family and friends and be judged, yes judged by bigots. That takes more guts than suffering a secret. So the best you can ever do is accept people as people whatever they present. I know if it were me i wouldnt be that brave.
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Judged by bigots? I didn’t know that people in the medical industry would have their medical research called bigoted, or transgender a who have transitioned and then transitioned back would be called bigots. But there we go. Proved my original point.
I suppose our definition of brave differs. But your core point rings true. It doesn’t matter who you are, what fairytale you follow, what you call yourself or think you are or aren’t. Be a good instructor, be a good role model and be a good person.
@BethMc I hope you have the answer you are looking for and have not been put off my some of the comments on here from the minority.
I’m absolutely sure the Corps would welcome a transgender persons with open arms. Good luck to you or your friend on your quest to joining this GREAT organisation.
The rest of you. Shame on you.
WO Merlin
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I think you misunderstood me. I was referring to the people who would judge and have a problem with anyone tg etc. as a bigot. It also tends to be a one way street as far as I know. There are certain bits which when lopped off tend not to grow back I understand. I may well be wrong not having experienced that but ask any eunuch or masectomy sufferer,.
Shame on me? I have said constantly from the start I don’t care who she is, who she thinks she is or what she wants to identify as, as long as she is a good instructor, role model and person for the cadets. I suggest you read my posts rather than just emotional knee jerking in the usual liberal way. I engaged in a debate, which still hasn’t been answered. If you don’t like that people hold different views, then I don’t know how you have survived the real world.
My personal views, dont come into it. However a little more than “move on” doesn’t cut it with me. I dislike Islam, but I couldn’t discourage or disapprove of a Muslim instructor. People can disagree on things. People can hold different views. Everything isn’t about being offended.
I couldn’t give a toss who you are, what you do, what you like, what fairytale you follow or what parts you want chopped off or added to yourself. What I care about is someone being a good instructor.
Thanks for proving my point aswell.
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Your personal views dont old chap, but your political views do all the time (like your last post) and it’s becoming rather boring.
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Seperate this thread and let’s have a good old debate about transgender then, I am still waiting on an answer other than “move on”, “your a bigot” or “boring”.
Waiting on an answer…
Personal attack removed
If you want to debate transgender, gays, religion or any other political stuff that could be offensive then find another forum. This forum unless I’m mistake is to help cadets and staff in the air cadets, yes we all have a good moan and groan about things including myself. you however seem to be going out your way to bad mouth the organisation, people in it and alienate others and definitely in my opinion fail as someone that represents the staff of the ACO! Some staff may have issues and personal views on certain things but nearly all staff I know keep these views PERSONAL and don’t go about saying things that could bring shame on our organisation like you.
If you want to debate these things fine, but I strongly suggest finding another location for those debates!
are we not supposed to be encouraging cadets to think for themselves? Critical think? Think outside the box? To stand on their own to feet? To be mature and adult in conversation, thinking and the world? Rather than spewing the same rhetoric at them? That’s call brainwashing…
And life is offensive. I find the kardasians offensive, I find religion offensive, I find liberals offensive. Just because you think is offensive, doesn’t mean others do, and doesn’t mean that because you suddenly get offended, makes it go away.
My views don’t represent anyone but me, are you suggesting that you allow and believe in censorship, just because someone says something you don’t like?
I have been making a point and you are all proving it. The regressive left have been shoving their ideals down other people’s throats for a long time now, it’s not nice to have it back at you is it? And read my posts again.
And it’s such a shame the personal attack was removed, that could have been fun! And proves again that the regressive left resort to attacking the person not the argument. See I am not a snowflake, I could have taken your attack and just moved on. I wouldn’t have got offended at it or sat and cried.
Still waiting for an answer too…
I’m a little taken aback to find posts with absolutely classic Daily Mail views on this thread.
I’d like, if I may, to clear up some misconceptions but first, let me establish my credentials.
I am a CI. I am a recently retired airline captain of 45 years experience. I am a qualified and active flying instructor.
I was a VR(T) officer in the 1980s until I went long haul at work and could no longer commit the time.
I am transgender. I was British Airways’ Diversity Champion.
I work for or with several diversity charities including, relevantly, Trans Media Watch, the Gender Identity Research and Education Service (GIRES), Mermaids and All About Trans. I am also a member of ITV’s Diversity Panel.
My squadron and wing welcomed me with no a single qualm or hint of prejudice. They looked at what I have to OFFER the corps, not my gender history, although I am completely open about that. I am now a very proud CI with the squadron I was a cadet with from 1966-1971.
First, engagement in debate.
Many things are up for debate but many, rightly, are not. What is not up for debate is that gender variance exists. It is rooted in a deep sense of personal identity. I know who I am. So do all transgender people (Note, transgender is an adjective, not a noun. There are no ‘transgenders.’ That is a trick used to dehumanise.)
NOBODY exercises undue influence on kids to transition. Nobody uses hormones, blockers or therapy unless the person has exhibited certain criteria. They will need to have displayed a consistent, persistent and insistent sense of identity that is a mismatch for the sex they were assigned at birth.
Looking at the average transgender kid, when treatment starts, all they will be offered is talking therapies. The parents will also be offered advice in line with current medical practice. This includes, most notably, that the child is not imagining things.
If the child continues to display the three ‘ents’ (persistent, insistent and consistent but now you know the shorthand I’ll use it) they may, just after the onset of puberty, be prescribed blockers of the GnRH agonist variety. This is actually much LATER than the original use for such blockers in children. They were developed to block precocious puberty in preteens. This is a condition where 4-11yo kids experience puberty. This use has been standard endocrinological practice for many years.
At the onset of puberty, doing nothing is NOT the no risk option. The changes that happen at puberty are irreversible and very distressing if you, for instance, know you’re a boy but develop breasts and start menstruating, or know you’re a girl but start to get hairy and deep voiced and experience the development of skeletal changes to your face, notably a brow ridge. ALL of these are hormonal effects at puberty. The blockers are a pause button which allows further talking and TIME to be absolutely sure. They are also fully reversible. If the transgender young person decides to revert to their birth sex, puberty starts again.
However, the vast majority of people who go on blockers continue with the 3 ents.
At 16, they will usually then be offered cross gender hormones to allow normal pubertal development in their acquired gender. Surgery may well follow once they are transferred from the young people gender identity service to the adult service. At 18.
NONE of this is vaguely controversial, except to the scaremongers of the likes of the Daily Mail.
The current very vocal debate is because the government equalities commission has suggested amendments to the Gender RECOGNITION Act. Now this act has no bearing whatsoever on treatment. That is the purview of the medical profession and generally, in the UK, follows WPATH guidelines, albeit with a lag of a year or two. The GRC is about changing PAPERWORK. We have had the ability to change most paperwork pretty much for ever but the GRC allowed the final change; one’s birth certificate. However, the process is lengthy, costly and degrading. The proposals are to simplify that process.
What isn’t controversial at any level other than the media inspired ‘public debate’ is th medical pathway. Oh yes, it’s possible to trot out so called experts who disagree, but to a man, they’ve been discredited, not by some ‘transgender lobby’ but by their PEERS.
I haven’t read the relevant ACP but I don’t need to. I know what it has to, by law, be based upon. The Equality Act 2010.
Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic. Once the intent to transition forms, the protection becomes active. It also covers the family members of the person intending to, in process of, or after gender reassignment.
They are required, by law, to be accorded normal human dignity. In their acquired gender. That includes use of the appropriate single sex facilities, in their acquired gender. Most will start to use such facilities when they start to present in their acquired gender.
Sports teams would be subject to the individual sport’s governing body but generally, for pre-pubertal cadets, will be in their acquired gender. Depending how soon blockers were prescribed that may be able to be continuous but if significant testosterone was not blocked, the sport may require a testosterone free period before a transgender girl can play on a girls’ team.
The opinion of parents of other cadets is sublimely irrelevant. The law protects the transgender kid, not the other parents.
And as for ‘psychological damage caused by being transgender,’ yes, it happens. But not as an inherent consequence of being transgender. It happens because of bullying by others, or because the transgender kid is NOT supported.
Being transgender and transitioning is not an easy path but the alternative, to be transgender and prevented from transitioning by fear, prejudice or peer or parental pressure is deadly. Transgender kids have a 30% suicide rate. Because of society’s behaviour.
I have no idea if I’ve addressed every point as I’ve just written this without reference to the thread but I, for one, am more than willing to engage in further debate. Just don’t try to debate transgender people’s validity.
I finish school talks for the brilliant anti-bullying charity, Diversity Role Models with this:
To be the best you can be, you have to live authentically. Never stop another from being authentic.
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In fact. I am tapping out. I value my time in the ATC. And knowing how much of a bunch of spineless wet lettuces we have in charge, I won’t engage further in debate. Because I know what will happen.
That’s the thing with the regressive left. Facts and debate don’t matter. It’s about feelings.
All the best in your ATC career.
Thank you for such a well thought out, open and honest post. It’s great to have someone openly challenging the pathetic drivel that comes on here from time to time.
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Steady on, I resemble that remark.
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Having just done CP update and sat in on the AVIP and staff cadet course, this has come at the right time. Thank you for your very clear and measured response. Good luck for the future and welcome to ACC!
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My only sincerest hope is that you don’t jump down the throat of anyone who challenges you and you allow them to have their own view / perspective, without expecting them to just be accepting. However I’ve read your piece and to me it screams make concessions for me and others like me or else, in a way that others wouldn’t be allowed to ask for them. Although I would hope I am wrong.
Personally I don’t care how people refer to themselves or live their lives, as long as they don’t ramble on about how they are different expect me to go out of my way to accept them. In the Corps do the job you are asked to and that’s not flag waving or making points and making people uncomfortable, which I feel you could easily do, an ATC squadron is not a soapbox. We are here to nurture the youngsters who join and I don’t expect people to push or force religious or political views and would be having a word if they did.
E&D policies don’t really apply to the masses other than to force them and make them accept something they might not be entirely happy with.
I imagine some of those showing acceptance are doing so as it ticks a diversity box and others as long as it’s not someone I’ll have to deal with directly / personally. It would be denied vehemently and with much vigour, but I’ve seen this at work, when they’ve employed people to tick a box.
I have got out the tin hat as I know I’ve not fallen into line with everyone else.
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No tin hat needed from me, Teflon.
OK, maybe my post came over as a bit evangelical but it was a response to earlier posts on this thread.
I’m not sure how many cadets know my gender history but its not relevant. I do my best to be an interesting, knowledgable instructor.
I tell a story in other places, when I do have a diversity hat on. It’s about labels.
Imagine a packet of curry. You look on the back and see the ingredients. Cardamom. Chilli. Garam masala. Coriander. When you eat the curry, each mouthful might remind you of an ingredient. One strongly of chilli. Another or cardamom. But you’d never call the dish cardamom. It’s the sum of its ingredients. Curry.
So with people. My ingredients are, in no particular order, woman, Captain, Pilot, instructor. Welsh. White. Atheist. Public speaker. Diversity champion. Transgender. Sometimes, depending on context, woman is the most important ingredient. Sometimes pilot. Sometimes flying instructor. Sometimes CI. And sometimes a combination. Woman pilot. Transgender woman. But my LABEL is person, or Cat.
This conversation isn’t one I’m ever likely to have with cadets as the ingredients they find useful are instructor, woman, pilot etc. But the preceding posts made the transgender ingredient float to the top.
I HOPE the only bits that came over as strongly as you suggest were the legal points about the Equality Act 2010. I’d hate anyone to fall foul of the law, which very definitely does apply to all, and in an Air Cadet context. Religion, ethnicity, age, disability, marriage/civil partnership, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation and pregnancy/maternity. The nine protected characteristics. Can there be a single squadron where NONE of there could be factors?
Now this we can agree on.
Haha. Glad to hear it.
Cat
Pretty sure that the only “concession” was that she wanted to be treated as a female, and afforded human dignity.
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