New EHRC guidance for schools

Seriously, what's the plan beyond the leak, & "someone wanted to bring this to much wider attention"? Because if there are women working on it, and it seems to be from posts here that the leak could scupper that work, what's the offset for that? Does anyone know?

Birds - The ridiculousness of this is almost funny if it wasn’t so enraging.

Always I am sure there as a case in the states where a women’s high school swim team all got changed in the janitors cupboard for this reason.

So, what's the big plan then? Strong arguments for saying the leak is justified - if the outcome undermines work that's being done by some women, presumably there's something planned to counter that? What's the end goal? Someone mentioned up thread about getting a lawyer to pick it apart. Deadline for feedback is when - tomorrow? So, who is paying for this? Who is organising it? Is there any plan beyond the leak?

The examples given are shocking. And they seem to over-interpret the law. They place all the onus on girls to adjust to the trans girl whose rights seem to be paramount. The idea that one girl may object to having a transgirl in their changing room? What if the school is 50% Muslim? I went to an all girls school and the communal showers in the gym went unused - teenage girls don’t usually like stripping off in front of each other let alone in front of a male bodied classmate. Are 15 girls meant to squash into the single staff changing room in order that a trans classmate can use the Girls changing room? Appalling - girls don’t matter AGAIN

And it is all Mumsnet fault for copying a public twitter link?

Sounds awfully similar to suggesting it is a women’s fault a man hit her, if she had just done what she was told...

Sooo EHRC will now ignore women pointing out that guidelines breach the Equality Act and human rights out of spite?

I would also add, if women's groups have been involved in the writing of this (highly doubtful) I don't think they are on our side and we definitely need other women's voices.

Gone through it a lot more and truly shocking.Needs a lawyer to go through point by point and refute their whole document to them. Dont think they have a case to defend much of it. I think this directly contradicts the law for example as single sex means what is says on the tin
: However, schools must comply with the School Premises (General Requirements and Standards) (Scotland) Regulations 1967, which

provide that in every school which is not designed exclusively for girls, half the toilet accommodation should be for boys; and the EA 2010 when developing policy on the use of toilets by trans pupils. There is nothing in law preventing schools taking an inclusive approach by supporting trans pupils to use single-sex facilities that align with their gender identity, unless such an approach puts another pupil at a detriment.

Propertyfaux My point exactly. If women's rights groups had been involved in drafting these guidelines, they wouldn't have been written like that.

It's just like with the new Relationship, Sexual Health and Parenthood curriculum in Scotland. That was drawn up without talking to any of the women's rights groups who don't support transgender ideology. Then it got put out to the public for feedback and despite a great many people writing to them after that to improve the curriculum, it's taken years to get rid off the worst nonsense. All of that hard work just to essentially tinker round the edges. Because by this stage, authors are pretty attached to their words.

Based on the curriculum as it currently stands, our teachers are still going to be teaching gender ideology to children, talking to them about porn without mentioning that it is harmful to women and so on.

To return to the school guidelines - "a few select groups" were sent these for feedback. On draft guidelines that look much more like a final draft than an initial one. And having now read them it's clear that women's rights groups haven't been offered a seat at the table in producing these, or else they would read very differently. They even include guidance going back to how the EHRC used to misrepresent the EqA before Fair Play for Women forced them to correct themselves.

No, whichever women's rights groups have been sent this for feedback were offered nothing but the crumbs off the table.

I've produced guidelines myself, for work, and there's a big difference between being involved and consulted with on drawing them up and being asked to comment on the nearly finished product.

Have just started going through it and a huge WTF in the first few paras:

gender reassignment, which means proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process, or part of a process, for the purpose of reassigning a person’s sex.

The current EHRC technical guides for schools in Scotland and England (published in 2014) contain this example:
“A school fails to provide appropriate changing facilities for a transsexual pupil and insists that the pupil uses the boys changing room even though she is now living as a girl. This could be indirect gender reassignment discrimination unless it can be objectively justified. A suitable alternative might be to allow the pupil to use private changing facilities, such as the staff changing room or another suitable space.”
In the new draft guidance, EHRC has cleverly concocted a scenario which results in a GIRL (not the transgirl) being excluded from the GIRLS changing room, leaving the transgirl in the changing room with the other girls.
This draft guidance clearly illustrates the mindset within EHRC and shows that they are not listening to the concerns of women, despite their claims to the contrary. The draft guidance also shows that the government’s assurances that the Equality Act exemptions will be maintained are worthless, when the EHRC is actively trying to ensure they are not implemented.

So no-one should ever leak anything on the off chance someone who considers themself more important and influential might have been doing something about it already?

That sounds reasonable.

This is appalling. If this is a draft then they clearly have completely ignored concerns for women and girls and are prepared to collude with misrepresenting the EA. If this is an example of the good work you will be undermining if you make a fuss then I suggest you do it as loudly as possible and ignore those telling you to be quiet.

The changing room scenario is absolutely terrible. The one girl who isn't happy getting changed with someone with a male body goes off to a separate cubicle to change. As if it would only be one... well it might only be one who speaks out I suppose. Guessing the imaginary school has no Muslim girls in it, for example.
I can't believe this is from the EHRC who actually are aware of single sex exemptions.

It they were listening to the women’s groups then there would be no reason to leak it. If women’s groups had been ignored or listened to and dismissed then trust is lost both ways. Why would they start listening after the draft?

I do understand what pp are saying about trust and leaks but I'm so uncomfortable with damming OP (of twitter as well) - these type of policies HAVE been sneaked through and without the tenacity of women these would have been pushed through. Women are nervous, scared and down right pissed off and we all want our say.

So, let me get this clear: are women being told to keep their gobs shut and avert their eyes, yet again? In case things turn out worse for us? (And they will, if we fail to keep our gobs shut and our eyes averted. Men will make sure of that.)

Final point: when anyone comes across anything like this, i.e. anything confidential that has even potentially gone to GC women's groups for feedback/where GC women's groups can have some kind of influence, understand that you have NO IDEA how it will affect those groups if you decide to leak it, and therefore if you do decide to leak it you are knowingly making a decision that may well have an adverse impact on the groups involved and on the process itself. This is inarguable. So just be clear that is what you are doing if you choose to do something like this, and it is what you are actually defending if you defend leaks like this.

This has been shared with women's groups, that much I can say, and it has only been shared with a very small number of groups in Scotland which the leaker has said themselves in that thread, and this leak may well impact the trust that the EHRC has shown to who they have sent this to, and may mean that groups that provide important challenge to the EHRC are not trusted to be involved again, and possibly will no longer be engaged with throughout this process. As such, this leak potentially undermines the very hard work undertaken by any affected groups, as well as the relationships these groups have worked very hard to build. Only women's groups challenging this guidance would be making the points made in that thread, and as we all know most groups - be they women's, children's orgs or LGBT groups - will not actually challenge this guidance, so the EHRC may well believe that it can easily pinpoint the likely source of the leak, and as I say, may choose to longer engage with them.

The person who shared this has done a massive disservice to those groups and the work they do, as are those defending it. This should be deleted to minimise the damage. If it isn't, then it is clear that the poster really could not give a crap about the impact this has on those doing the hard graft of challenging this guidance, and those aren't motives I think anyone should give any airing to.

I didn't leak it. Deleting at this point will not undo the leak. That is the point of a leak. Whatever was contained is now no longer.

And quite frankly,

a) the EHRC should be ashamed of producing these guidelines, they could do with a whole lot of public shaming for being base enough to write this and

b) if a leak by an unknown means that the EHRC (who inexplicably repeated the mistakes from the previous guidelines that a number of excellent, publicly available and well publicised critiques highlighted) will ignore criticism of their guidelines, then they were never earnest about working with women's rights groups to begin with.

So screw those whose work is undermined by this? Got it.

Me too Birdfoottrefoil. Having seen my friend involved in a policy change in the NHS which involved publishing draft proposals to the affected population for feedback, then meeting over a thousand individuals and umpteen stakeholder groups and politicians in countless public (and publicised) meetings, I know which approach I prefer.

It is if the wider public don’t know. I get you point to some extent but if the source of the leak is not known it may be nothing to do with women’s groups and everything to do with someone unhappy in some other organisation (possibly one that is otherwise woke). But in the context of dodgy deals being done behind closed doors to deprive women of their rights, I am twitchy of any suggestions that we should not known stuff.

The horses have bolted now anyway. Deleting at this point will not help dispel any suspicion that may befall all of those that the EHRC may have sent this to for feedback.

And given that women's rights organisations are likely not going to be complimentary about this, it's completely naive to think the EHRC would only have asked women's rights organisations to look over the draft. There's going to be quite a few more orgs, groups and individuals involved. Having seen now how bad these guidelines are again, I'm not surprised someone wanted to bring this to much wider attention.