Binary Nonsense

Merry-Go-Round
Mark Gertler (1891-1939)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

The alma mater of a long list of distinguished women from Rosalind Franklin and Dame Kate Bingham to Emily Mortimer and Rachel Weisz, is to rename the role of head girl because it is too "binary".

The head girl of St Paul's Girls' School, one of the country's leading private schools, will be known as head of school after calls from pupils to make the role more inclusive.

The school confirmed that the change would take effect from the next academic year, prompting outrage from some staff who claimed that it sent  a "damaging message that girls have to be ashamed to be seen as girls".

"Why do the girls have to change their name?" a source said. "They should be teaching young women to be proud of their sex, not ashamed of it. It's very contradictory. How can you be a single-sex school that exists to empower girls to do well and at the same time support girls to identify out of being a girl?...

The school said the main reason it was reverting to the historical title of head of school was because senior pupils considered themselves young women rather than "girls", although it added that the "binary connotations" of the title were a factor in the decision...

Senior pupils felt that the gender-neutral title was "more modern, age appropriate and inclusive", it said, adding that "in making the change, we are confirming, not denying, our ethos and traditions"...

About seven out of 778 pupils at the school identify as non-binary, requesting that the school refer to them as they or them. "It's a damaging message for the majority in order to protect the minority," Stephanie Davies-Arai, the founder of the campaign group Transgender Trend, said. She claimed that the push for inclusivity had gone so far that "only male people can be girls or women without fear of offending anyone, apparently."

Further details have also emerged of a training session in which staff at the school, where fees are £26,000 a year, were told there were at least "150 gender identities"...

(Lucy Bannerman, The Times, 2021)

What a mixed-up world we live in. Only "150 gender identities"?  Surely not? 

Apparently the list includes the following well known variants:

Bicurious, Questioning, Perioriented, Varioriented, Heteronormative, Erasure, Cishet, Gender Apathetic etc.

*No doubt feeling terribly left out of all the thrilling inter-pupil sex scandals that have lately engulfed every private school in the country naive enough to educate children of both genders (sorry, "all genders) together, the denizens of St Paul's Girls' School (SPGS) in Hammersmith have managed to muscle their own way into the "culture war" by declaring, with a great swish of their glossy hair and a flash of their angry teeth, that they are no longer going to call their "head girl" a head "girl" but simply "head of school". Huzzah! Double hockey and extra tapioca all round!

SPGS has done this, in part it says, to avoid the "binary connotations" of the title. For, despite its misleading name, St Paul's Girls' School is not just a school for girls. It is also a school for members of the hundreds of other genders now recognised by people under 25, all clattering up and down its marble halls in their expensive, non-gender-specific shoes.

The school also says it is changing the job title because senior pupils consider themselves "young women" rather than "girls". And, of course, they are women, the little treasures. How they cope with the humiliation of dragging themselves in to the £26,000-a-year St Paul's Girls' School is both a mystery and a tribute to their strength and bravery.

In time, no doubt, the young multi-gendered people of SPGS will insist on removing the word "girl" from the name of  the school itself, which will be absolutely spiffing for everyone, if a little confusing for prospective parents, who won't know whether they are supposed to send their child to it, or to the other famous St Paul's School, just over the river in Barnes, that has traditionally made the possession of a tiny, hairless willy a principal condition of entry.

(Giles Coren, The Times, 2021)

*Sir, Further to your report "St Paul's ditches 'binary' head girl", as a former pupil of St Paul's Girls' School and as someone who was taught to care about English grammar I am in a quandary about the future of our language. I understand why in the present climate, a head girl should be called head of school (although I thought that was the head teacher) but I do wonder how the school can now justify calling itself a girls' school.

(Avronne Palmer, London NW7, The Times, 2021)

*Sir, Given the decision at St Paul's Girls' School to rename the head girl "head of school", is there not an argument for renaming the school's "high mistress" and indeed the many "masters" of Oxford and Cambridge colleges who are now women?

(Elizabeth Freeman, Corston, Somerset, The Times, 2021)