UK museums handed guidelines on how to be more trans-friendly

UK museums have been handed a new 44-page set of guidelines on how to offer a more inclusive experience for transgender children.

“Museums should be places not just where trans kids go, but where they want to go,” the new Trans Inclusive Culture guidelines read.

“Simple signs of support speak volumes.”

The booklet, published by the University of Leicester, is designed to encourage museums to help children explore their gender identity and “stimulate positive explorations of gender.”

The university’s Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), encourages art institutions to use “posters, stickers, flags, and badges” to help encourage children to “explore self-expression without fear of reprisal.”

In addition, the guidelines recommends institutions provide access to restrooms and changing rooms that identify with their visitors’ chosen gender and staff choose their words carefully to avoid causing any offense.

One guideline offered to museums includes not asking a child to “disclose their identity,” but to “reaffirm their identity” — if they choose to tell employees.

“If a child chooses to do so, it is important that your response is affirming and that you remember it is the child’s decision as to whether they choose to share that information with others,” the guidelines read.

“If you are unsure of anyone’s correct pronouns, using gender-neutral pronouns is an all-inclusive approach and introducing your own pronoun communicates your trans awareness.

“Cultural organizations can play an important role in making trans children, young people, and their care[give]rs feel welcome, safe, valued, and accepted.”

The guidelines also offer advice on other situations regarding the LGBT+ community, including how to handle a discriminating coworker and suggesting men’s rooms also supply feminine hygiene products.

It also warns that a “climate of fear” has been created due to strong voices “becoming increasingly bold” with anti-LBGT+ matters.

The guidelines are endorsed by several large organizations, including the International Council of Museums UK. the Scottish Museums Federation, and the Museums Associations, among others.

Despite having some big backers, critics were quick to draw their own conclusions.

Director for non-profit Sex Matters, Helen Joyce, told The Telegraph that the guidelines were a “work of bigotry.”

“They treat the belief that there are two sexes as if it’s totally beyond the pale,” she told the UK outlet. “Inclusion in the way activists use it invariably means exclusion. Exclusion of views that do not conform to one particular ideology.”

Author Joan Smith told the outlet that the university is “creating problems where they don’t exist.”

“[It’s] using language that can only be described as fear-mongering,” she told The Telegraph.

She also said the guidelines “demonizes those of us who know that human beings can’t change sex, and I feel sorry for staff at any venue that adopts it.”