Teacher banned from profession after outing trans kid by name on social media

A teacher in the U.K. has been banned from the profession indefinitely for outing a transgender student on social media.

According to The Daily Mail, in May 2023, a whistleblower alerted the unnamed Manchester school where 54-year-old Camilla Hannan had been teaching since 2001 that Hannan had posted offensive and anti-trans sentiments on X, then known as Twitter. In one of her posts, Hannan even outed a transgender student by name.

“Where I teach we have gender identity policy,” Hannan wrote in one post alongside an eye-roll emoji. “It’s a load of nonsensical rubbish, as you’d imagine.”

In another post, Hannan wrote that she taught a student who had changed their pronouns, going so far as to include the student’s name in her post. “I worry about what the next steps will be,” she wrote.

“Where I teach the trans kids are untouchable,” she wrote in another post. “They get everything they ask for and everyone staff and other students alike, is petrified of upsetting them. They don’t seem oppressed to me more like oppressors tbh.”

In two other posts, she seemed to suggest a link between autism and being transgender, writing that her autistic students “are all plastered with trans flags and badges, without exception.”

Studies that have shown that transgender and nonbinary people are more likely to be autistic than cisgender people have been misused to fuel the anti-trans, ableist narrative that there is something “wrong” with transgender and nonbinary people and that their gender identity is the result of mental illness. Some trans and nonbinary people on the spectrum suggest that the real connection is that autistic people are less likely to feel a need to conform to social pressures around gender.

The Manchester Evening News reports that in August of this year, Hannan admitted to writing the posts. A Teaching Regulation Agency misconduct hearing was held to address the matter, and in September a panel found that she had shared the private medical information of the student named in her post without the student’s knowledge or consent. The panel noted that she had also “repeatedly misgendered” the student.

A report on the panel said that it had found that Hannan “had a deep-seated attitude, and that, whilst she was entitled to have that attitude and hold the views that she did, it was not acceptable for her to have posted these on social media in a way that was damaging to the profession, the School, pupils and in particular” the student she outed. The panel said that Hannan’s behavior was incompatible with a teacher’s duty to be a role model for students and the wider community.

According to the Manchester Evening News, Hannan blamed her posts on her frustration with her workload and admitted that she had exercised “poor judgment.” In a statement, she said that she does “not bear trans people any malice or ill will” and she respects “their right to live as they please, and to ask others to refer to them by names and pronouns of their choice,” the Daily Mail reported. However, she added that she was concerned about so-called “gender ideology” — a clear anti-trans dog whistle — in schools.

But according to the Manchester Evening News, the panel noted that Hannan’s remorse seemed to be “somewhat self-serving.” They said that the fact that she believed her posts were anonymous suggested that her remorse “stemmed from being caught, rather than from reflections on her own behavior.”

The panel banned Hannan from teaching indefinitely. She will have the opportunity to appeal the decision in two years.

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Originally published here.