Success! Following a detailed complaint by OBJECT, a course on Transgender People in the Workplace written by Gendered Intelligence for the Open University, marketed by @FutureLearn has been withdrawn from sale while the materials are reviewed.
@Transgendertrd
@Genderintell

We complained that the course did not define its terms eg gender, masculine, feminine. Nor did it offer evidence for its many assertions eg that 1% of people are trans.

Vitally important facts were omitted, for example that hormones and surgery cause permanent sterility and damage body integrity and functioning.
The course selectively quoted authorities in such a way as to distort their intended meaning,

The course presented only one side of a huge and complex tangle of arguments about transgender ideology on which both the government and the NHS had just (15.6.2020) announced huge and far-reaching policy changes.

BBC Newsnight 18.6.20 covered serious shortcomings at the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic, eg homophobic parents wanting their children to be trans not gay, and the director asking clinicians not to refer grave concerns to the Safeguarding lead.

OBJECT said it was inaccurate to ignore all these issues and present the trans issue as if there were general agreement on it.

The course treated gender dysphoria as an established fact although Withers (2018) presents evidence that it is a psychological disorder with no biological basis, often spread by social contagion. To be balanced, the course should at least discuss these viewpoints.

The course did not meet its stated aim ‘to increase understanding of gender diversity’. In fact it does the opposite, reinforcing the rigid outdated gender binary, ie stereotypical concepts of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’.

The course presents gender as innate and immutable. Biological sex is said to be assigned: we asked for the evidence for this. We believe it to be a faith statement and as such unsuitable for inclusion in the course.

We asked Futurelearn to explain why there is not a single extensive peer reviewed long-term medical or psychological study which shows that changing ‘gender’ makes people happier or healthier in the long term.

We cited the 2020 Civitas report on transgenderism.

We pointed out that evidence in the course which suggests that 'sex reassignment that includes hormonal interventions in individuals with GID improves gender dysphoria' is elsewhere described as ‘very low quality’. We asked why would anyone cite low quality evidence?

We pointed out that this course was written solely by Gendered Intelligence, a transactivist organisation which denies that sex is a biological fact and claims that gender resides in the brain.

Highly respected academics such as Professor Cordelia Fine, winner of the Royal Society Science Prize 2017, evidences neuroscience to contradict the claims made in this course that brains are gendered male and female from birth.

Gina Rippon, Sheila Jeffreys and Heather Brunskell-Evans have also published extensively on this topic citing differing views from that of Gendered Intelligence. We asked why this work was ignored.

Oxfordshire and Warwickshire County Council who issued guidance to schools along lines promoted by Gendered Intelligence were forced by parental pressure to withdraw it.

Other organisations have also critiqued the information offered up by Gendered Intelligence and found it seriously wanting: eg https://www.transgendertrend.com/ 
https://fairplayforwomen.com/  http://www.objectnow.org 

The existence of detransitioners (now represented by the Detransitioners Advocacy Network) clearly indicates that changing gender does not work for everyone so why was it presented so uncritically?

The same goes for transwidows, ie the wives of men who have transitioned. These are now represented by an organisation called Transwidows Voices
@GMJE365

The course contradicts the views of a number of prominent trans people – Debbie Hayton, Miranda Yardley as well as the views of cross-dressers like Grayson Perry.

A number of UK broadsheet newspapers have also published again and again material critical of the attitude represented by your course. JK Rowling has now entered the fray, but from the bubble of your course students get no clue that there is any controversy around this topic.

Some of us at OBJECT have degrees from Futurelearn’s partner organisations and are concerned that the reputations of these institutions might be sullied by association with such a one-sided and ill-presented course. We look forward to your urgent response before we contact them.

The content of the course is in direct conflict with Futurelearn’s stated values of openness & transparency: it is not transparent to present one view of an issue which affects people’s lives and well-being as if there were general agreement about it when the opposite is true.

To do so is partisan, one-sided and unworthy of an educational institution.

We note that Futurelearn also commits to learning from your failures. Please do not hesitate to act on this instance of failure immediately.