Transphobic bullying – a reactive or preventative approach?

In the last eight weeks I have supported three colleges to deal with quite serious incidents of student transphobic bullying.  Could such incidents happen at your organisation? Do you know what to do if they did? What are you doing to prevent such incidents? Are your staff aware of the implications of recent research on homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying?

In the last eight weeks I have supported three colleges to deal with quite serious incidents of student transphobic bullying.  All involved students who were in the process of undergoing gender reassignment. These incidents could have been avoided with better communication and awareness-raising.

My experiences coincide with a recent government publication following research on tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying. Although the research concentrated on schools, many of the research outcomes are applicable to a post-16 education and training setting.

The findings of the research are organised around four main approaches to tackling HBT bullying:

• Preventative or proactive approaches
• Interactive, discursive and reflexive teaching
• Playground or school life approaches
• Reactive and supportive approaches

The research found that education providers have undertaken much less work on transphobic bullying. That correlates to my anecdotal findings in the sector

You can read the report by the Government Equalities Office here

In previous equality newsletters, I have highlighted to the sector a number of useful resources on trans equality. Two that I would particularly recommend are:

Trans under construction – LGBT Trans guide, by NUS, which you can download here

Guidance on trans equality in the post-school education, by the forum for sexual orientation and gender identity equality in post-school education, which you can download here

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you were interested in training workshops to raise understanding and awareness, or consultancy support for example to develop guidelines for staff. My contact details can be found here