It’s PARENTS who should decide what sex lessons their children receive, writes NADINE DORRIES
One evening many years ago, when my two younger daughters were safely in bed, I ushered my husband out of the room and sat down beside the fire with my eldest, then nine.
I’d bought The Body Book by the agony aunt Claire Rayner — which attempted to explain the facts of life to children of an appropriate age. But as I began to read it, she reached out her arm. Without looking at me, she closed the book, said, ‘Not now, Mummy’ — and left the room.
I didn’t raise the subject again. But I did leave the book in a prominent place and, in the years that followed, I know that all three of my daughters read it.
Every child is different — and develops at different speeds. At nine years of age, another girl might have been keen to read the book and asked many questions about puberty and her changing body, but my eldest daughter was not.
I may have been wrong about the timing that day, even as her mother. But — call me old- fashioned — I do know one thing. It should be a parent’s responsibility to choose when and how their child is taught about sex.
NADINE DORRIES: One evening many years ago, when my two younger daughters were safely in bed, I ushered my husband out of the room and sat down beside the fire with my eldest, then nine
Yet relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) classes are now a huge part of life in Britain’s schools, and parents have very little say in it.
Since ‘LGBTQ-inclusive’ sex education became compulsory in secondary schools in 2020 under then-Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, a lucrative cottage industry has spawned.
Taxpayer-funded organisations and charities have produced explicit teaching aids for children of all ages — and the results are highly concerning.
This week, MailOnline revealed some of this bizarre material, which includes describing anal sex and orgasms to pre-pubescent schoolchildren, and even setting ‘masturbation’ as homework.
One organisation has asserted that, from birth until the age of one, babies can ‘experience pleasurable sensations’ by touching their genitals. Even to claim this at all is deeply worrying — and smacks of the worst kind of perversion.
READ MORE: Twelve-year-olds are being taught about anal sex in school while nine-year-olds are told to ‘masturbate’ for homework: The shocking lesson plans used by teachers in UK classrooms
Other teachers are spreading scientifically false claims about biological sex, presenting gender as ‘fluid’ and emphasising that people can be born in the wrong body. Of course, some people are genuinely trans — the question is whether or not children are being indoctrinated in an extreme ideology.
And the extraordinary recording leaked online this week from Rye College in East Sussex suggests that at least some are. Brave pupils captured the moment when one teacher utterly lost her temper, calling a teenage girl ‘despicable’ after the youngster had questioned her classmate’s claim that she identified as a cat.
The teacher’s rage was chilling. When the children suggested to her that there were only two genders, she angrily replied: ‘It is not an opinion!’
Her tone was strident and threatening. I call that verbal abuse.
Yet this is the kind of dogma, pushed by trans-rights zealots, that’s now being taught in schools — and all too often, the parents have no idea.
Many schools refuse to let parents even see the controversial RSHE materials to which their children are being exposed.
All this prompted the current Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, to write to schools in March this year and instruct them to make the material available to parents — as, of course, it should be.
Yet some schools have been reluctant to do so. Part of this seems to result from the pressure brought to bear on them by the publishers, often citing commercial sensitivity.
Many teachers are ‘indoctrinating’ children with scientifically false claims about biological sex, presenting gender as fluid and furthering the ‘trans’ narrative that people can be born in the wrong body. Pictured: A lesson plan from a school in Dorset, for schoolchildren in Year 10, aged 14 to 15
It seems to me that these inaccurate, age-inappropriate, extreme, confusing and sexualising lessons from unregulated Left-wing organisations are a campaign to undermine parents.
And it’s time we put a stop to it.
Yesterday, it was reported that the Government at last plans to ban schools from letting children ‘change gender’ if their parents refuse to consent to it.
Youngsters who want to ‘change pronouns’ — that is, for example, a boy who suddenly prefers to be called ‘she’ — will not be allowed to take part in competitive sports. Parents will have to consent to their children changing pronouns, and pupils and teachers won’t have to use the new pronouns if they prefer not to.
Teachers will also have to tell parents if a child is questioning their gender — even if the child refuses.
These moves are the result of a campaign launched by backbench Tory MP Miriam Cates, who called for a review of the latest RSHE guidelines — a campaign I was happy to support as an MP.
Miriam deserves the credit for these new plans — which are sure to attract the fury of the trans-rights zealots.
The only question is — why did it take so long?
Will Dior open a door for Meghan?
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attends a ceremony to mark the centenary of the Royal Air Force on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace on July 10, 2018
After Spotify severed ties with Meghan and Harry come reports that the couple could become the new faces of Christian Dior.
When they left Britain, the Sussexes promised to ‘drive systemic cultural change across all communities, one act of compassion at a time’.
But those bold humanitarian ambitions may now, it seems, be side-lined for life as clothes horses and Kardashian-style influencers.
I have some sympathy with Meghan.
It’s now clear that life as a hardworking royal duchess would never have matched her ambition.
How much better it would have been for everyone if she had realised this from the start
I’ve seen some bizarre political stunts deployed to help win elections, but the latest by actor-turned-activist Laurence Fox — who hopes to stand in Boris Johnson’s former Uxbridge constituency — is surely the strangest of all. On Father’s Day, he set fire to bunting decorated with the LGBTQ+ ‘Pride’ flag, branding the design ‘vile’ and ‘disgusting’. The video was trending on Twitter within hours.
Fox has shown that the more outrageous you are, the more attention you get. I wait with bated breath to see what he does next.
On Father’s Day, he set fire to bunting decorated with the LGBTQ+ ‘Pride’ flag, branding the design ‘vile’ and ‘disgusting’
Offended by a bikini pageant? Just switch off
Miss England organisers are debating bringing back the ‘swimwear round’, in which the contestants parade in bikinis. Former Miss England Katrina Hodge, who campaigned to stop the practice in 2010, has now revised her feminist opinion.
‘By successfully ending it, I took away women’s choice and freedoms,’ she says, adding candidly: ‘I also made the competition highly boring.’
When it’s more important than ever to defend freedom of expression, each to their own.
Those who want to parade in their swimsuits should do so, and anyone who’s offended doesn’t have to watch. It’s a still a free country, just about.
Extra time for Wags at war
It feels like only yesterday that Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy were slogging it out in court over who leaked what to whom. Now it looks as if we are about to go through the whole unedifying spectacle again.
After losing the initial libel battle, Becky had to hand over an ‘interim costs’ payment of £800,000. Now she has been hit with a bill for costs totalling £1.8 million, including a £2,000 stay at a five-star hotel for Coleen’s lawyer. There is no proof that the costs are not legitimate — but Becky doesn’t like it. A return to court is not impossible as the two Wags fight it all out.
Is this all part of an elaborate PR ploy? Neither woman has spent much time in the news of late and Wags aren’t known for shunning the limelight.
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