Civil Service Trans policy - what can I do?

I know that Unison is Woke (my union) although the reps I know are secretly uncomfortable at best with the policy that they are required to promote. At worst, they are horrified.

Is this document official policy? It is written by a:gender. The Permanent Secretary of DCMS says that it should be "required reading" but not that it is official policy.

The cover states that it is "subject to Civil Service Employee Policy Review".

The people who wrote the policy played Lynne Featherstone like a fiddle when she was minister.

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/person/lynne-featherstone/

And my civil servants, you know, they had already read up all about me. They were very clever. It is not as if I was some kind of foreign body coming in. I found I had a submission for a transgender action plan, which I would have done, but they had thought ahead from everything I had said on the Equality Bill. I thought how very clever. I mean, that wasn’t on anyone’s list but they had obviously decided that would be one of my priorities.

But how do they KNOW that the U-turn was due to them?

Only smiling, happy faces are permitted in the vicinity of trans people.

You are not allowed to have your own motivations or desires but exist solely as a backdrop to the Brave and Stunning.

the 2010 [Equality] act stipulates a person is no longer requires to be under medical supervision - so a person who decides to live permanently in the opposite gender, and whether completes or forgoes any medical procedure, is still protected by the act.

Is this true? Does anyone know?

Therefore post transition, it would be humiliating,
inappropriate and undermining to expect a person in their acquired gender to use toilet facilities of their birth sex or indeed be restricted to the use of the accessible toilet.

No. This is their interpretation and it is wrong to assume it's a logical conclusion of the above statement.

The ‘exemption clause’ in the Equality Act 2010 says that single sex exemptions CAN exclude transpeople of the opposite sex, on condition the "targeted provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim"

The examples given in the notes to the Equality Act include:

• Cervical screening services (as only women need the service)
• Women-only domestic violence support units (where women may not feel safe in the prescence of males)
• Separate male and female hospital wards
• Separate male and female changing rooms in department stores
• A women-only massage service provided by a woman in the clients’ own homes
• Group counselling sessions for female victims of sexual assault (who may not attend if a male transsexual was present)
• Women-only Associations (where the purpose is to gather together people sharing a particular protected characteristic)

If it's not "undermining" to expect transwomen to use different changing rooms. I don't see how it's "undermining" to expect them to use different toilets.

This government department has incorrectly interpreted the Equality Act in my opinion and that they are punishing women for protecting themselves from a male in a female space, or even expressing negative views on this, is abhorrent.

DoxxMetwice - I know that this is probably a stupid question given the state of the unions at the moment, but what is the stance of the civil service unions on this issue and are they worth approaching? The only other thing that I can suggest is, following on from a thread I was reading the other day, there are women on here with HR expertise. It may be possible to put together a standard response to give to employers who are introducing this kind of 'guidance' highlighting legitimate objections and any elements of employment and equal opportunities law that this guidance may be actually contravening or, at the very least, is incompatible with in spirit. Then, if any cases do arise, the employer cannot argue that they have not been warned and individual women may have some concrete support if they are disciplined.

I find this paragraph particularly troubling

Any continued objection or inappropriate comments by work colleagues to the use of the facilities appropriate to the gender of transition should be seen as unreasonable (discriminatory) and should be met with communication, discussion and education before the situation gets out of hand. In this sometimes contentious area, transsexual employees are entitled to expect support from management.

So the woman complainant would not only not be entitled to management support but subjected to Maoist re-education. The civil service is a very important place for this battle as it is right at the heart of our institutions. Women employees should at least have an easy guide to the areas of law and custom and practice that they could at least potentially rely on should it come to it. I'm afraid I have no knowledge of employment rights if any remain.

57 pages of cognitive dissonance.

My thoughts were also regarding the pre/ post transition thing.

But how do they KNOW that the U-turn was due to them? I've oft had to U-turn 'shit forgot sanpro' 'shit l am being plagued by extreme IBS wind etc and am a bit sensitive about people being present while the noise reverberates the cubicle'!

So "post transition" is now a meaningless concept

This could be a bloke in a suit with a beard suddenly announcing "I decided I was a woman a week last Tuesday" leaving their poor colleagues to tot up how many misgenderings, pronoun infractions, and microaggressions they'd inadvertently committed.

talkinginthedark - even in an anonymous survey?

So, women who are uncomfortable must be educated.

That's pretty worrying.

Yy UndersAndOvers, women are absolutely being bullied here. But when those who are supposed to protect their staff from bullying are the ones who are enabling it, and it would be your career on the line if you point that out, it’s a little tricky.

Sooner or later there will be enough of us aware and refusing to go along with it all that we can start to say no. I think we will have to see legal test cases brought where we argue the case for women’s right to privacy/single sex services etc, argue that our human rights are being massively breached.

"Many...."

How many?

Who's counting?

Page 8:

^"Many trans people, having transitioned permanently, prefer to be regarded as ordinary men and women, and therefore, cisgender. In these cases, where it becomes essential to refer to their pre-transition
status, the phrase ‘woman (or man) of trans history’ may be used."^

Now I'm confused.

So words basically mean nothing anymore.

HelpTheTigers - women saying no to men - hateful! Isn’t that one of the rules of misogyny?

When I worked at a large multinational company we had a anonymous staff survey each year. Some of the questions were: have you experienced bullying, did you report it, did you know who to report it to, was it resolved to your satisfaction. There was a free text box too.
If anyone ticked they had been bullied the management seemed to go into panic mode.
I would consider women are being bullied into accepting all this bullshit - and fill in the bullying questions.

@ROwantrees - any advice?

*The pigeon hole one, that is

No one has EVER taken actual sexism/misogyny in the workplace this seriously, have they? Despite the widespread and known phenomenon of sexual harrassment and discrimination at work.

Where are all the many-paged documents telling men in the civil service how not to be misogynist arseholes towards the women they work with?

It couldn’t be clearer.
Males: full human beings in their own right.
Females: a sub- category of humans whose purpose is to enhance the life experience of males.

The longer this TRA bullshit goes on, and the more I see how it’s embedded in public/state institutions like the civil service, the more I see how misogyny is absolutely enshrined in the whole of society. And needs uprooting!

Nice idea, btw, Fekko

That's horrifying. So we have to be compliant, acquiescing and smilingly docile in our own oppression and erosion of boundaries?

It's bad enough to have them eroded but to be reprimanded for not plastering on a smile whilst enduring this is just hideous. No help I'm afraid, just anger that you're in this situation.