So how do we fight the misleading guidance that is eroding the Equalities Act?

Thanks for that re Bounty, redtoothbrush

Its as stupid as the changing room situation.

Yes we agree whole heartedly that mixed sex wards are wrong and undignified and get fined if we do it.

Yes we agree whole heartedly it is wrong and a breach of privacy and dignity for one sex to be compelled to undress, be in situations of nudity or accept intimate care in front of the other sex.

UNLESS the other sex is a man who has decided he is internally a woman. In that case the exact same objective experience that is considered wrong and offensive must be treated by the woman as if it's perfectly ok because objective reality changes in the presence of a man's internal, subjective feelings.

It makes a total nonsense of having sex separation at all in any situation.

Regarding the issue of single-sex wards, I emailed [email protected] to ask whether they still support single-sex wards being, err, single sex.

Sorry

*They weren't kicked off

Honestly it sounds ridiculous, but it definitely seemed to be the case, that if not one complains, that equalled there was no problem. Not a mentality of what possible problems could arise from this.

YY. I've worked in several different areas of the public sector and in my experience that is the case.

They were kicked off but the DoH were forced to admit there were concerns that were being over looked and that there were problems with safeguarding. A few Trusts did say they they would not renew.

It might have only been a tiny victory in the scheme of things but it did force an acknowledge and hospitals to think more about whether what they were doing could be problematic. I'd personally like it to have gone further. It probably did need a legal challenge.

It did demonstrate to me though, the extent to which you can expose institutional pants around the ankles and a good way to start anything of this nature by a soft approach.

It creates more difficult questions that are harder to simply ignore.

Red I worked for years for an LA and much of what came down from on high was gone through with a toothcomb and a lot of 'Oh God how do we implement this (because we have to) while spinning it to cause the least possible harm. I worked with a lot of brilliant people who were very fed up, very ground down, and most of whom have long since left the field they got so sick of it all. I wonder if I was just lucky in being part of a particularly good team.

Much of the guidance given to and circulated by education clashes with existing legislation and policy such as safeguarding, the Equality Act, the Code of Practice..... I doubt the incoherence has been missed, but people will be afraid to speak the truth and point out the incoherence in position and the legal entitlements and risks to the children involved.

You make a big assumption with that.

What was very apparent to me with Bounty was people charged with safeguarding issues really didn't think or were fully aware of what their responsibilities where and what conflict of interests there were because no one had ever bothered to ask the relevant questions in a formal process.

Instead they tended to be unthinking bureaucrats who seemly followed what everyone else was doing, thinking that somewhere along the line one of these other people had asked the blindly obvious.

They didn't want to take on the extra work associated with flagging up a potential conflict of interest. Its easier just to agree than question what might have come from a superior.

Asking in a formal way, gives power to staff who feel they can't ask relevant questions because of the risk to their job.

Honestly it sounds ridiculous, but it definitely seemed to be the case, that if not one complains, that equalled there was no problem. Not a mentality of what possible problems could arise from this.

I think it is a problem of British society and of large institutions. This is why we are getting a shit load of scandals. And why this is a scandal waiting to happen.

My old manager was a arse of the highest order and one of his annoying habits way saying: Don't ASSUME. It makes an ASS out of U and ME.

Its gratingly good advice.

Sorry side track

What happened with bounty? I just googled and it's all old and about the campaign. Were they kicked off? I have a feeling they weren't.

Unlike others, we don't preach to people how they should spend their money and what causes they should support, Lyra

Seems to me that there is a distinct lack of safeguarding that has gone on here.

Much of the guidance given to and circulated by education clashes with existing legislation and policy such as safeguarding, the Equality Act, the Code of Practice..... I doubt the incoherence has been missed, but people will be afraid to speak the truth and point out the incoherence in position and the legal entitlements and risks to the children involved.

And yes, the homophobia aspect is something that needs to be openly challenged.

Good for you Lyra . You're as entitled to your opinion and to use your money to please yourself as any 'lady' here.

Just wanted to let you ladies know that your posts have inspired me to donate the £1467 I recently had returned to me by HMRC for overpayment of tax to the Labour Party and to Stonewall 😘

Another one that springs out to me in particular is the Education and the involvement of Mermaids.

What scrutiny have Mermaids been put under? Is what they are saying properly backed up? What is the political position and does this create any conflicts of interests?

Seems to me that there is a distinct lack of safeguarding that has gone on here. Someone has seen they are a charity who support families and trans kids, but hasn't really thought much beyond that.

Also, if you are letting in Mermaids are you also letting in Homosexual charities who might be doing work on sexual orientation.

How can children make an informed decision if they are being taught about gender identity but not also sexual orientation?

If you are doing one and not the other, are you leaving yourself open to the accusation of homophobia?

In disability issues, the Equality Act has an expectation of reasonable adjustments, with the key word being reasonable (proportional to budget, size of organisation, number of people affected, degree to which they are affected). If a (properly done, not thoroughly fudged like the Scots one) risk assessment and evidence of having made reasonable adjustments (which include compromise) then that is legally defensible grounds for not accepting an individual or meeting their needs as they request. It's about balance, the Equality Act in this way doesn't expect other involved parties to accept real disadvantage or loss.

So a reasonable adjustment to a request to enter a changing room of the opposite sex might be provision of a unisex space, or for a facility with a large budget and large clientele, it might be to restructure the changing room to be single, lockable rooms instead of a communal room.

The sticking point here is that it is NOT about meeting the specific raised needs about safety etc, it comes down to the one basic debate: are trans women legally women in all situations without exemption, or are trans women trans women, who are fine to join women in many social situations and categories but there are exemptions around intimate care, nudity, privacy and dignity where biological women are seen as a specific legal group with their own separate rights. (Sex) In those situations separate arrangements need to be made for trans women and biological women.

If you believe transwomen are transwomen then that seems the sensible way forward. If however you believe that trans women must be included as biological women at all times without exemption - that by self id they are women in every legal sense and biological women have no separate needs or rights of any kind - then no reasonable adjustment will seem reasonable because it dodges the key issue of validation and acceptance of dogma over actual fact.

Until a legal decision is reached - which is going to involve pushing it to a court - as to whether biological women are an identifiable group with separate needs and requirements to be met in some situations that require them to be planned for as a separate group without incorporation of anyone other than biological women, this won't be settled.

RedToothBrush

Brilliant post and yes to it all.

Perhaps what we need are some tireless researchers willing to flood TPTB with FOI requests - as Dr Nic did with the prison trans population.

People have started to post on social media about how its women and radfems challenging this that are the ones upholding the law.

I think thats a useful message to post online, it appeals to both left and right. Left wing people are concerned about the erosion of human rights and the loss of human rights legislation.
And right wing people are concerned about upholding the law.

When MN took on the government over Bounty, the whole stick was that 'women on a maternity ward are not vulnerable'.

It was almost a case of demonstrating the various ways in which Trusts hadn't considered safeguarding when it came to Bounty and why women WERE vulnerable and acted in ways which they would not normally do so AND how widespread issues were, and how no complaints didn't necessarily mean there wasn't an issue. Its just that women didn't feel able to complain or raise an objection. Hence this is why they were vulnerable...

You can do this, by asking certain questions about how institutions have done risk assessments for certain situations that might involve a vulnerable person via an FOI request.

What I suspect you will find is an absence of risk assessments, and any policy there might be, will be based on one sided thinking.

You have to force transparency on how they have come to decisions like this, and ask how they have assessed the needs of both vulnerable women and transpeople and come up with said policy.

Its all in the wording as to whether it works.

But the basis point is getting them to some how admit that whilst they might be assessing the needs of transpeople they have not considered its impact on vulnerable women.

Its essentially about pointing out, whether they have fully compiled with their responsibilities via the Equalities Act that protects on the basis of sex as well as gender.

The intent is to start growling at institutions that you know all about the Equalities Act and how they might be breaking the law and almost hint that they have a liability that they need to sought out pronto.

These institutions do not want a legal case and will try and head it off.

Yes a legal case would be very helpful, but getting institutions to be seen to have their pants down on safeguarding, is more to the point.

We are talking schools - have they assessed properly the bodies going into schools and whether they are suitable.
We are talking hospitals - and potential rape / sexual abuse victims
We are talking plastic surgery etc - and whether young people are getting a range of information from a range of sources and are able to make properly informed decisions which are accurate.

Identify who is most at risk.

At the moment, the situation is the idea of the poor trans community where everyone is a good guy. That's never the case in any situation. There are good and bad in every community and their are people with conflicting interests which might be putting the vulnerable at risk for their own political agendas and profit.

As I say, I don't think you need to necessarily get as far as going legal. Just scare people and make them realise they are responsible if they don't take their safeguarding seriously in this area and something does happen on their watch or they might face a legal challenge.

I think the crux for me is that sex and gender identity have become conflated, when they are two different things.

We need to fight to keep "sex" and "gender identity" separate for the purposes of law and policy, rather than chuck them together in the same box. Funny though that the "MAN" box doesn't get co-mingled like this, isn't it

Most women's rights issues concern biology, perceptions of it, and social circumstances stemming directly from it such as child rearing.

I feel I'm losing the right to have a biological sex based identity as opposed to a gender identity. Why should gender take precedence over sex? For those who do not identify with, or as having a gender, this is discriminatory.

We're on the same page RedToothBrush but perhaps that didn't come over in my post. I was responding to meditrina.

Its not about the 'least disadvantaged group'. Its about safeguarding of all vulnerable persons.

Work on it from this point of view.

It's possible that trans people might be the more disadvantaged group in particular situations. Personally, I would not be in favour of banning transmen from female spaces because they appear masculine. They are female and have every right to be there. Or from creating situations which make it difficult for them to access appropriate healthcare, e.g. no longer receiving mammogram invites.

But it's never about transmen or transsexuals in this narrative of disadvantage, is it? Always about the transwomen.