education

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Labour’s Section 28 is here – act now

In May 1988, the Conservative government introduced Section 28. This legal measure outlawed support for “homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” across Britain, especially in schools. While Section 28 was eventually repealed between 2000 and 2003, it has had a long legacy of harm. Most LGBTIQ+ people who lived through it have never forgiven the politicians responsible.

In February 2026, following a similar pattern of escalating moral panic and extremist rhetoric against trans people (including non- binary people), the Labour government looks set to introduce its own version of Section 28, in the form of proposed revisions to the guidance on “keeping children safe in education” in England. These proposals seek to erase trans children: through extreme restrictions on social transition, toilet and sports bans, and censorship of the word “trans” itself. Like Section 28, they will most likely also create a wider chilling effect, reducing support for lesbian, gay, bi, and gender-nonconforming young people as well.

There are some important differences between the situation in the 1980s and today. Section 28 provided a strong rallying point for action in part because it was a single, explicitly homophobic, and powerfully impactful legal clause. Labour’s transphobia has been a lot more piecemeal, and complicated by an endless series of messy court cases, including this week’s extremely unclear High Court ruling on proposed segregation measures in the workplace and public services. Meanwhile, many Labour politicians continue to claim that they oppose transphobia, even as they support the most actively transphobic government in British history.

It is for this reason that we need to be loud, clear, and explicit about the active danger posed by Labour government policy. And this danger is explicit in the new proposals for “keeping children safe in education”.

Protest outside EHRC HQ, 2025. Photo from Trans Kids Deserve Better.


What is the new schools guidance?

“Keeping children safe in education” is statutory guidance for schools in colleges in England. As “statutory” guidance, the document effectively operates as part of English law. It is regularly updated by UK governments, and the Labour government is now consulting on proposed revisions for 2026.

It is these proposed revisions that pose a threat to the safety of young trans people.

Importantly, this is not the same as the draft non-statutory guidance on “Gender Questioning Children” introduced by the Conservative government in late 2023. That guidance was not law, and was never formally adopted by the government – although in practice, many schools changed their policies and practice because of it.

However, Labour’s new proposed revisions to the guidance on “keeping children safe” are clearly influenced by that Conservative document, as well as the Cass Review, and the 2025 anti-trans Supreme Court judgement in For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Ministers.

In 2023 I outlined some key issues with the Conservative guidance. Here are those points, with notes on what has changed or been kept the same, as Labour seek to bring the Tory proposals into law.

  • Trans students are presented as an implicit danger to themselves and others. This is still effectively the case in the 2026 proposals, which position a young person coming out as a major safeguarding issue.
  • Schools are told to out trans students. This is still effectively the case in the 2026 proposals, which ban measures to protect trans students’ privacy (see toilets and changing rooms) and encourage schools to tell parents if their child is is “questioning their gender”.
  • Schools are encouraged to intentionally misgender students. This is still effectively the case in the 2026 proposals, which draw on the Cass Review to discourage support for social transition.
  • Schools are told to ban trans girls from girls’ toilets and changing rooms, and ban trans boys from boys’ toilets and changing rooms. This point is made even more strongly in the 2026 proposals, which draw on the 2025 Supreme Court decision to call for a complete trans toilet ban.
  • School uniforms should be worn according to “biological sex”. This is one of the few Tory proposals which has been dropped from the 2026 proposals. The new proposals instead state that schools and colleges “should consider adopting policies across school and college life that maintain flexibility and avoid rigid rules based on gender stereotypes”.
  • For sports, schools are told to “adopt clear rules which mandate separate-sex participation”. This is still the case in the 2026 proposals, which explicitly ban participation “in sports designated for the opposite sex”.
  • The guidance entirely ignores legal protections for young trans people. This is almost entirely the case for the 2026 proposals, which acknowledge possible Equality Act protections on the grounds of “gender reassignment” in one short footnote.
  • The guidance does not actually use the word “trans” once. This is still the case in the 2026 proposals. Young trans people are instead referred to as “gender questioning“. The document also uses the term “LGB” instead of “LGBT”. The language of trans or non-binary identity and experience is entirely erased.

Safeguarding and risk

“Keeping children safe in education” is a safeguarding document. The idea of the guidance is to manage risk, and help prevent harm to young people. Yet the Labour government’s proposed changes will have the opposite effect.

Discrimination and exclusion hurts people, especially young people. If implemented, the new guidelines will ensure that schools cannot possibly be an affirming or safe space for young trans people. This will be especially dangerous for the many young trans people who do not have a safe home environment, due to the transphobia of their parents, carers, or guardians. My own research has shown how an absence of affirmation can put young trans people at risk of sexual exploitation and statutory rape. These risks can be mitigated where people are able to socially transition in a safe, supportive environment.

This leads me on to the biggest issue with the proposed guidelines: their fearmongering and misinformation around social transition.

Social transition

Social transition describes a range of things a person might do to affirm their own gender. These things might include: a change of clothes or haircut, a change of name, and/or a change in pronouns. Social transition describes a series of choices that are linked to coming out as trans or otherwise gender diverse (e.g. non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid). Social transition can also be a stage of experimentation or questioning, where young people figure out what is right for themselves. The changes we make may be temporary, or permanent: but regardless, these are deeply personal decisions.

In the Labour government’s proposed changes to the “Keeping children safe in education”, social transition is represented as a problem. The document recommends that “Schools and colleges should take a very careful approach”, and that “Primary schools should exercise particular caution, and we would expect support for full social transition to be agreed very rarely”. It further states that “a [school’s] decision relating to social transition may not be the same as a child’s wishes”.

This guidance is justified through reference to the final report of the Cass Review, a document which pathologises social transition by insisting that it should only be undertaken with medical guidance. This recommendation is as dangerous as it is offensive. Social transition is a personal decision linked to coming out. Doctors should have no role in deciding how someone dresses, or what name or pronoun they use.

The Cass Review has been widely discredited and condemned globally by researchers, medical practitioners, and community groups with relevant experience and expertise. This is in part because its most controversial recommendations are informed by pseudoscience and misrepresentation of evidence. For example, the Cass Review found no actual evidence of harm caused by social transition. Instead, it positions transition as a problem in and of itself. Its recommendations have been adopted as part of an eliminationist drive to erase trans existence entirely.

Speaking to the Metro this week, Dr Cal Horton, an expert in trans childhood, explained:

“Trans children need to be supported and respected in order to be safe at school, in order to access their right to education, in order to enjoy their childhood. Instead, we are seeing a complete ban on access to appropriate toilets, PE, accommodation on school trips, a complete erosion of their rights. It will lead to children avoiding the bathroom, avoiding exercise, missing out on school trips, dropping out of school, losing any hope of education, equality, friendship, happiness.”

I agree with Dr Horton. Furthermore, I believe these are the intended outcomes of the new Labour government proposals. As with Section 28, young people are presented with a choice between state-mandated abuse, or staying in the closet. The overall aim is to stop trans children from existing altogether.

As with Section 28, these hateful guidelines will never fully succeed in their aims. If implemented, they will certainly cause enormous harm. Yet trans kids are powerful and know their own minds, and many will continue to come out.

It is incumbent on us to fight with them for liberation.

Act by 22 April

We have two months to fight back against the Labour government’s new Section 28, as a consultation on the proposed guidelines is open until Wednesday 22 April.

One of the most obvious things you can do is respond to the consultation. This will likely be a long and discouraging process, so if you choose to respond, I encourage you to give yourself as much time as possible to work on it. There will also likely be consultation guidance produced by organisations such as Trans Actual and Gendered Intelligence. I will update this post as soon as that is available.

You can find the UK Government’s consultation page here. Note that they are consulting on a series of wider changes to the “Keeping children safe in education” guidance, not just the section on “gender questioning children”. Scroll to the bottom of the page for consultation document, full draft guidance, and a summary document.

At the same time, you may quite reasonably distrust government consultation processes at this point. I know I do. The consultation on the EHRC’s trans segregation plans last summer received approximately 50,000 responses, which were fed into AI instead of being read by human beings. If media reports from the likes of The Times are to be believed, the EHRC then simply produced the same hostile guidelines they were planning to all along.

Fortunately, there are a lot of other things you can do to oppose Labour’s new Section 28, including:

  • Writing to your MP
  • Organising against the proposals within your union
  • Organising against the proposals with other parents or students
  • Asking your local school’s headteacher or board of governors to speak out against it
  • Banning the Labour Party from your local Pride (if they’re not already banned!)
  • Supporting trans youth groups
  • Supporting youth-led campaign groups, especially Trans Kids Deserve Better
  • Planning or supporting protests against the Government, Department for Education, and Labour Party

I’ve written about these ideas and more in two previous blogs posts. Both are also available as downloadable zines, so feel free to share these freely, either as PDFs or through printing them out and sharing them around.

I am hoping to update the first one at some point to more explicitly address the latest proposals. However, I am not realistically sure when I will have the time or capacity. You are therefore welcome to create your own updated version too if you want, as long as you don’t sell it for profit, or misrepresent any of my original words or messages.

If you seek to understand criticisms of the Cass Review, or collate evidence for sharing others, I am maintaining an ever-growing roundup of academic research, commentary from medical experts, and statements from community groups here:

…and if we fail?

The original Section 28 was met with a storm of protest. LGBTQ people rallied across the UK. Ian McKellen came out as gay on live radio to speak out against it. Lesbian activists disrupted the BBC news, and abseiled into the House of Lords. The campaign group Stonewall was founded to oppose the new law.

None of this succeeded in stopping Section 28. But it did provide the initial momentum for a long, gruelling, yet eventually entirely successful campaign for its repeal. In the process, an entirely new wave of campaigning groups and activists emerged – including Queer Youth Network, where I cut my own teeth as a young campaigner.

The Conservative Party, meanwhile, never fully shook off the legacy of Section 28. They are still distrusted by many queer and trans voters for the harm they caused to entire generations.

If the Labour Party similarly proceeds with its plans for trans segregation and erasure in schools and beyond, we must never forget. Their legacy will be one of bigotry and hatred – and it is up to us to ensure their policies fail.

Protest outside the Department for Education, 2025. Photo from Trans Kids Deserve Better.


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Call for abstracts: World Community Development Conference

In summer 2026 the World Community Development Conference will be coming to Scotland! I am part of a group of lecturers from the Community Development programmes at the University of Glasgow who are helping to organise this event.

Running from 29 June to 2 July 2026, the conference will be a space for connection, critical reflection, creative exchange, and global solidarity. It will be rooted in the values of justice, participation, community empowerment and human rights and underpinned by Community Development’s emphasis on collective initiatives for collective outcomes.

Conference Themes and Guiding Questions

We invite submissions aligned with one or more of the following core themes. To support your thinking, we offer the following open questions:

1. Challenge

This theme centres on critiquing and confronting systems of injustice and advocating for policy and funding to support rights-based Community Development.

  • What are the most urgent challenges facing communities and how is Community Development responding?
  • How are issues of power, inequality, technology, marginalisation or oppression being confronted and addressed?
2. Change

This theme is about co-creating new approaches through collaboration and future-focused dialogue, while strengthening the resilience of practitioners and communities in complex environments.

  • What new ideas, or practices are driving meaningful change in your work?
  • How is resilience being built in communities facing political oppression, social or economic inequality, or the ill effects of climate change?
  • How are human rights and Community Development being used as tools for accountability?
3. Collective Action

This theme explores community organising through inclusive, participatory, and justice-driven practices and connecting across borders to build solidarity.

  • How are people coming together to organise, mobilise, and demand justice?
  • What examples of effective collective action can you share, and what impact is it having?
  • How can we ensure that Community Development is oriented towards collective justice rather than exclusion?

Presentation Formats

We welcome a wide range of formats, including:

  • Conference Paper: Research or practice-based presentations (20 minutes)
  • Facilitated or creative workshop: Participatory, performative or creative workshops by individuals or groups (1 hour)
  • Lightning talk: A concise presentation highlighting a key issue or insight (5 minutes)
  • Poster presentation: Digital or multimedia posters showcasing projects or research
  • Creative and participatory formats: Including book launches, exhibitions, and cultural events

Submission Requirements

Please submit a 300-word abstract or a 3-minute video of your proposed contribution, including:

  • The topic and framing of your contribution
  • The format of your presentation
  • The relevance to one or more of the conference themes
  • Author/s name(s), organisation/institution, contact information (e.g. email address, mobile/telephone number).

Submissions should be submitted via this page.

Logo for the Glasgow World Community Development Conference 2026.
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Call for new Editorial Board members for the Community Development Journal

Application deadline: Friday 17 January 2025, 24.00 UTC/GMT

We are currently recruiting to the editorial board of the Community Development Journal (CDJ), for which I’m currently one of the co-editors. This is a normal enough practice for many publications, but a bit of a historic moment for CDJ, which has historically relied on recommendations from an existing board member over the past 59 years(!) of the journal’s existence.

The current CDJ editorial board takes a very constructive and democratic approach to decision-making, so I’m really excited for the potential to reach beyond our existing networks to expand our diversity of knowledge and skills. Moreover, as Kirsty Lohman and I note in our editorial for issue 60.1, this will be (as far as we are aware) the first time we have ever recruited beyond the UK and Ireland – something that I feel is long overdue.

The full call can be found below, cross-posted from the CDJ Plus website. If you are at all interested, please do apply! Importantly, we are seeking to recruit practitioners as well as researchers, so you do not need to hold any kind of academic post in order to apply.


The Community Development Journal is seeking to appoint up to five new Editorial
Board members to join us from March 2025. We welcome applications from
academics and practitioners globally, particularly encouraging those from under-
represented groups.

About the Community Development Journal (CDJ)
Established in 1966, the CDJ is the leading international journal in its field, covering
a wide range of topics, reviewing significant developments and providing a forum for
cutting-edge debates about theory and practice. It adopts a broad definition of
community development to include policy, planning and action as they impact on the
life of communities. We particularly seek to publish critically-focused articles that
challenge received wisdom, report and discuss innovative practices, and relate
issues of community development to questions of social justice, diversity and
ecological sustainability.

The journal is published in partnership with Oxford University Press on a profit-share
basis. The income received from the journal is managed by a charitable trust linked
to the journal, of which editorial board members are also trustees. The trust can fund
initiatives such as conferences, seminars and other activities that support its mission.
The strategic objectives of CDJ are currently:

  • To produce the leading international journal in the field;
  • To develop critical reflection and theoretical learning on community development;
  • To promote international learning and exchange;
  • To promote informed critical debate on community development theory and practice;
  • To develop and support appropriate relationships, partnerships and networks to further these objectives;
  • To ensure that CDJ is well governed and financially viable to achieve the above objectives.

With several long-standing board members retiring, we are looking to refresh the
membership with active and engaged people committed to promoting community
development scholarship.

About the role
Board member responsibilities include:

  • Attending board meetings (virtually or in person) as required. There are currently two full-day board meetings per year, including one residential.
  • Contributing as a peer reviewer to the journal at the request of the journal editors. This may include reviewing up to four articles per year.
  • Supporting and participating in our events and initiatives.
  • Promoting the Community Development Journal and encouraging submissions.

We ask that Editorial Board members commit to minimum of three years.

Who are we looking for?
The Community Development Journal is committed to equality, diversity, and
inclusion. We actively seek to create an Editorial Board that reflects the diversity of
the communities we serve and study.

Skills and experiences we would particularly welcome include some of the following:

  • Good links to practitioner networks;
  • Experience as a community development practitioner/academic;
  • Financial management;
  • Familiarity with UK charity governance;
  • Interest in editorial roles;
  • Supporting people to build capacity for writing;
  • Organisation of community development focused events;
  • Knowledge and/or experience of democratic publishing models.

    How to apply
    Please submit your application including:
  1. A brief statement outlining the knowledge, skills and experience you would bring
    and explaining why you are interested in becoming a member of the CDJ Editorial
    Board
  2. A two-page CV

    Send your application to secretarycdj@gmail.com with the subject line “Editorial
    Board Application.”

    Application deadline: Friday 17 January 2025, 24.00 UTC/GMT
    For any queries, please contact secretarycdj@gmail.com

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New article: The association between microaggressions and mental health among UK trans people

I have a new article out in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, co-authored with colleagues at University College London. It reports on the findings of a study led by Talen Wright, looking at the mental health impacts of microaggressions on trans people.

You can download and read the full study for free here:

The association between microaggressions and mental health among UK trans people:
a cross-sectional study
by Talen Wright, Gemma Lewis, Talya Greene, Ruth Pearce, and Alexandra Pitman


What did we find out about microaggressions, mental health, and trans people?

Wright designed a survey of 787 trans adults in the UK, asking questions both about participants’ mental health and their experiences of microaggressions. When analysing the findings, we found that experiencing more microaggressions was associated with worse mental health, including increased severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms, and increased odds of lifetime self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts.

We also found evidence indicating an association between specific microaggressions and specific mental health outcomes:

  • Participants who reported more misuse of their pronouns by others were more likely to report increased thoughts of self-harm and suicide.
  • Participants who reported more experiences of their gender being denied by others were more likely to attempt suicide.
  • Participants who reported more experiences of people around them acting uncomfortably around them because of being trans were more likely to report increased symptoms of depression.
  • Participants who reported more experiences of people around them denying the existence of transphobia were more likely to report increased symptoms of anxiety.


Why is this study important?

With apologies to my co-authors, I consider this a form of “cat detector” research. I base this term on an image shared a few years ago by the Facebook page High Impact PhD Memes, purporting to show someone successfully wielding a cat detector:

The meme is labelled as follows: Interviewer: "How would you define your previous works?" Me: "Groundbreaking". Underneath this is an image depicting the researchers' previous works: a person holding a machine in a cat's face. The machine is labelled "cat detector", and has one face lit up green, labelled "Yes", indicating that it has successfully detected a cat.


The meme is funny because, well, it’s obviously a cat. The research is stating the obvious.

And so this research might quite reasonably seem to many trans people. We know that microaggressions are harmful: that when people deny who we are, it hurts. When researchers or journalists or politicians talk about high rates of poor mental health among trans communities, we know that it is because people are harming us, that entire systems are set up in ways that harm us.

At the same time, we live in a political and policy context where trans people’s voices are rarely heard, and disinformation runs rampant. A lot of cis people are getting inaccurate information about our lives and needs, including healthcare commissioners, doctors, nurses, therapists, educators, and civil servants, as well as our families, friends, and colleagues. Trans people are often portrayed as overly sensitive to other people’s transphobic behaviour, or living in denial of reality.

Given this context, I feel it is beneficial to demonstrate empirically – with statistical analyses! – that small actions add up, and “microaggressions” cause real harm.

I hope this research will be useful for countering non-evidenced transphobic policy approaches. For example, the UK government’s current guidance on “Gender Questioning Children” in schools directly encourages educators to undertake actions that are associated with harmful outcomes in our study. As more research is conducted and published in this area, we will have more information available to clearly demonstrate the risks of transphobic policy, and empower advocates fighting for change.