The religious use of the word “Tutu” used to be a reference to the archbishop of Cape Town and tireless campaigner against injustice, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This week a “tutu”, if you read the rightwing papers, appears to be the compulsory dress for all boys at Church of England primary schools, along with perhaps a tiara to say their prayers in. To judge from the fuss, the end times are upon us. The Church of England matters in education. It runs about a quarter of all the primary schools in England, which may be a scandal in itself. But the latest fuss is not a real cause for scandal.
It stems from a report on how to combat bullying in schools, which appeared three years ago, and was updated at the weekend to cover the bullying of children for being gay, bisexual, or trans. The passage on tutus and tiaras comes in the context of childhood as a time for imaginative play, in which children may very well explore all kinds of roles and identities. The whole report is saturated with a desire to make children feel welcome and valued for themselves, whatever their family background or orientation may be.
It takes seriously the harm that can be caused by words – especially the playground use of “gay” to represent pathetic or merely unfashionable behaviour. That kind of language is damaging both in its implied threat of ostracism or worse, and in its identification of differences in sexual identity as grounds for exclusion from the society of the schoolyard. As society becomes more accepting of gay, bi and trans people, it also becomes more aware of them, and in some cases, alas, more hostile to them too. It is quite right for the church to fight back against such tendencies. In fact, the only sensible objection to the report is that the Church of England still can’t apply to its own priests the same rigorous standards of equality that it rightly demands of its schools.
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