This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to The Spectator Podcast.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator podcast. I'm Katie Balls. This week, the debate over

transgender rights rumbles on in the wake of proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act.

Is there a trans-Orphodoxy shutting down debate on the issue?

Our parents are right to be concerned that teachers may be hiding their child's trans issues from them.

Meanwhile, across the channel, French socialist John New Melanchon is aiming to unseat an increasingly unpopular Emmanuel Macron.

So does Melanchon have a chance of becoming president?

First, Madeline Kearns describes her teachers are at the front line of the transgender

politics, being given new guidance on primary school children's gender identity, telling

them to avoid outing a trans pupil to their parents. And in James Kirkup's article this

week, he argues that there is no room for dissent with the trans orthodoxy. Their concerns

over the change to the Gender Recognition Act

are too quickly labelled transphobic. Madeline joins me today, together with India Willoughby,

a transgender activist, newsreader and television personality. Madeline, in your article on The

Spectator this week, you start by saying that on trans issues, children are seen as the experts

and teachers must affirm and facilitate.

Can you explain a little bit more about the situation in schools that you witnessed?

Sure. So I trained as a teacher in Scotland in 2016 and we had a workshop from a group called

LGBT Youth Scotland. And in the course of that workshop, we were encouraged to decorate our classrooms with posters of transgender people.

And we were given a definition of transgenderism because many of us weren't quite sure what was meant,

which was certainly more expansive than the one I was used to hearing. And that was that it could really be anyone who doesn't feel comfortable in their own body,

which is what we traditionally thought of, to somebody who maybe just likes to wear clothing

...