One of the many disturbing things occupying my time at the moment is an anti-trans lobby group that has written an “advice” booklet for schools on how to “support” trans children. I use scare quotes advisedly there because their advice is deeply damaging and, far from supporting trans children, is likely to lead to worsening mental health. Following the “advice” would also lead to schools breaching the Equality Act.

Essentially the booklet encourages teachers to practice conversion therapy on trans children. That would be bad enough if they were trained to do such a thing, because the vast majority of the relevant health care bodies have disavowed such treatment. But of course teachers are not trained counsellors, and could do considerable damage to vulnerable youngsters.

Anyway, the group resposible for this awful document has been raising money to print copies and send them to all schools. They are doing so on Crowdfunder. Despite having received an enormous number of complaints about the project, Crowdfunder is allowing the project to continue. Apparently dishonestly raising money with the intention to harm children and encourage schools to break the law is not against their terms and conditions.

Well, you know, freeze peach and all that. But we are free to do things too, and in my case that means never using Crowdfunder again. If you have a project that you want to fund, please consider using a different platform because I won’t back anything on Crowdfunder, and I suspect that a lot of other people will have taken the same decision.