{"id":8119,"date":"2022-06-13T08:33:30","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T08:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8119"},"modified":"2022-06-13T08:33:30","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T08:33:30","slug":"drinking-the-kool-aid-at-the-dfe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/06\/13\/drinking-the-kool-aid-at-the-dfe\/","title":{"rendered":"Drinking the Kool-Aid at the DfE"},"content":{"rendered":"

An example of DfE civil servants drinking the Kool-Aid was reported the other day. \u00a0It seems that rather than referring to girls or female students, DfE\u00a0advice on free sanitary products in schools\u00a0referred to \"pupils who menstruate\", \"young people menstruating\u201d and \u201clearners who menstruate\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em><\/a> reported that in the seven-page memo published in 2020 there was one mention of \u201cgirls\u201d and one of \u201cwomen\u201d, both in the footnotes, and two of \u201cfemale\u201d. \u00a0The wording has now been changed after The Times <\/i>brought it to the attention of the Department. \u00a0Ministers, we're reassured, had not been involved in writing it. \u00a0Nor checking it either of course. \u00a0But you wouldn't expect them to; that's what middle-ranking civil servants are for.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was all done, it seems, in the name of \"equality\". \u00a0But it's an odd equality which necessitates the removal of reference to women and girls. \u00a0Good old-fashioned misogyny, more like. \u00a0Or something much darker perhaps, as once the men behind all this successfully excise reference to women they can get on with the real task: getting rid of women themselves from the public square.<\/p>\n

All this brought Wiltshire Council to mind. \u00a0Last year I noticed that a document on its website had replaced \"sex\" as a protected characteristic under the 2010 Equality Act with \"gender\". \u00a0When I complained about this and enquired about how this happened, I was told that \"this was a genuine misunderstanding of the terminology on the part of the officer and not a deliberate decision of theirs to misrepresent the [Equality] Act\". \u00a0That was quite a relief. \u00a0But it's more evidence of Kool-Aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An example of DfE civil servants drinking the Kool-Aid was reported the other day. \u00a0It seems that rather than referring to girls or female students, DfE\u00a0advice on free sanitary products in schools\u00a0referred to \"pupils who menstruate\", \"young people menstruating\u201d and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}