Parliamentary staff urged to police pronouns and ‘identify transphobia’

It may be that you access both male and female facilities, which we support
Wtf??

I worked for the civil service when they decided to put sanpro in men’s loos what fresh hell was this I put on a group chat what a waste of money. I got disciplined for hate speech - bullshit

Hope is lost, in my view. They 'gender-neutralise' all the language and this then get written into policy. I watch institutional capture happen round me all day long. This is how it happens.

I still think it's a fad (obviously not the LGB part of the alphabet soup), and that serious questions will be asked - are already being asked - about the '+' and the practices this seems to be intent on normalizing.

'My Identity' has always been the territory of peak teen angst and by the time they hit their 20s most people realize no one else gives a shit. Back in the 80s the androgynous dressers, Goths and punks ended up working in offices and banks, and were more invested in living and paying the mortgage than wondering how others were perceiving them.

At the time they get really arsey, thinking 'My Identity' is the be-all and end-all, and how dare you say something so fundamentally important is a phrase, and I'll still be dressing like Morticia Addams into my forties. I did. And it was all a crock of crap.

The institutional capture is what makes this situation different, but at some point when Gender Identity has stopped being fashionable, and we see what's left of the '+', a different picture might begin to emerge. In the meantime, it's very depressing that the more vocal brand of activism isn't content for everyone simply to dress and present how they wish. Misogynists just will not leave women - our sports, our spaces, the parameters of our medical history, even the language defining what female means - alone.

This really isn't too much to expect.

Just what I was going to say.

I work for a quango and we have the some policies - I'd imagine they're pretty common across these kinds of orgs. When questioning whether it was appropriate/legal for someone of the opposite sex to use the toilet of their preferred gender from the moment of transition, I was told if women don't like it they can use unisex toilets. These are few and far between, meaning women who already have greater need of toileting facilities due to menstruation, menopause and birth injuries are even more disadvantaged.

Demicolon preferential treatment under the Criminal Justice System has been one of the aims of Press for Change for "transgender" people since the 1990's in the UK. Since PfC took their lead from campaigns and manifestos in the USA I would astonished if there were not something similar in North America, possibly under a "Human Rights" cloak?

We see this play out in UK courts all the time, with "gender confusion" being accepted as a mitigating factor, convicted sex-offenders being spared prison due to their "vulnerability" if they are "trans", given lenient sentences, etc.

4.00 "Press For Change" campaigning

4.10 The right to have transsexual status taken into account when being sentenced, so that a non-custodial sentence is given whenever permissible, because of the additional difficulties faced by transsexual people in prison.

Search https://web.archive.org/ for

http://www.pfc.org.uk/campaign/pfcaims.htm

The International Bill of Gender Rights
As adopted June 17, 1995 Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

Search https://web.archive.org/ for

http://www.pfc.org.uk/campaign/princpls.htm

Tallisker I think SEEN is a legitimate, legal counter to a:genda and the Civil Service would be very unwise to try to discriminate against members:

https://seen-network.uk/

(I wish Mumsnet would sort out how web.archive links break the formatting and end up with an unholy mess - hence the workaround above.)

100% agree, maybe we need to lobby for an enquiry now?

I've seen the creep into my bit of the civil service. We have a really good balance of the sexes and I was told shortly after joining that the department was known for its sex equality.

However we have a gay man who promotes LGBT themes all the time, and a recent joiner identifies as queer. The visibility of the (now) LGBTQIA+ message is now front and centre. The two of them present to the leadership group on how to root out LGBTQIA+ phobias, advise on pronouns etc. My (gay) director now calls himself 'cis'. Lots of people have taken to wearing the Proud Trust lanyard which is rainbow stripes on one side and the trans colour stripes on the other.

The new queer member of staff has recently joined a:gender, the civil service pro-trans staff group which dictate language. This is celebrated and applauded.

There is a recent staff group called SEEN (Sex Equality & Equity Network) who promote sex-based rights and strive to protect those with gender-critical views. The howls of outrage about the formation of this group are frightening, the vitriol directed towards its members is dreadful.

Hope is lost, in my view. They 'gender-neutralise' all the language and this then get written into policy. I watch institutional capture happen round me all day long. This is how it happens.

Shit, and I didn't include the article:

https://www.thefp.com/p/justice-is-no-longer-blind-in-canada?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR3SezqLPZnjzHUjVfquKUbEgYY5wJKMKL3sg2tkkobPUUJlFZD_jYSTmaI

This is something of an aside, but I think it relates, despite being in Canada.

I don't really know much about the publication, but this has been about the only in depth article I've been able to find on this topic, which I was aware of through hearing from people involved in the system.

It's about the court system incorporating race considerations when sentencing.

Where I see it as related to this is that it's about a very particular approach to identity questions becomeing incorporated into the system, not at the po;itical level, but rather quietly and under the radar through another part of government, in this case the courts. But we've seen similar stuff in the civil service.

Here in Canada the courts have more powers to essentially create law compared to the UK. But both the courts and the civil service have been instrumental in pushing all of these ideologies into the political sphere, rather than the main push coming from politics into the civil service and courts.

I rather wonder if that isn't also the case in the UK.

I would add that any party not deeply concerned about this and committed to dealing with it, root and branch, and ending this capture, has no business in power. The fact that a party may be in hock to/sympathetic to the particular extremist lobby that has performed the capture is irrelevant: to not address this means being fundamentally involved in prejudice, forced belief and control, and happy to throw away democracy, transparency, impartiality and all the other values on which a party should stake their claim to be fit to run a country.

It is going to have to be that every person trained by this extremist lobby, every policy written based on that training or with lobby involvement, has to be regarded as compromised. The brainwashing has to be reversed and balance provided with clear expectations that commitment to freedom of belief and religious tolerance are the basic fitness requirements for employment in a position of trust. That there are no special groups who get to be above the law or have laws of their own.

And then they can focus on why the actual fuck tax payer money was used to fund the lobbies that were permitted to comprehensively fuck over taxpayers.

How can Parliamentary management both pull out of that Stonewall employers’ scheme and still have guidance promoting Stonelaw? Which is it? And where is the statement that the new staff guidance will be based only in the law of the land. And that they respect and support the right and need of women at work to be able to access single sex spaces at workplace in line with the law…?

Precisely.

And when sense finally fights its way back into the room, a very serious inquiry is going to have to be held, as to how this was able to happen to government institutions and departments that are supposed to withstand this kind of thing and maintain their written policies and supposed values. Because the next movement seeking political capture might be considerably worse than this one.

Questions were asked of the minister for safeguarding on the 'webchat' a year or two back, but HQ deleted them.

It has been the biggest fundamental, institutional safeguarding disaster of modern history.

This 👆🏼

Pronouns describe the sex of the person you are talking about not their gender. Can’t you just say that on repeat?

Agree, it is destroying the foundations of our democracy.

FFS haven’t they just had years of investigations revealing a terrible bullying culture of staff in Parliament by some MPs and now these long suffering staff they’re being foisted with this shite.
What kind of men want to get in women’s toilets by force? What kind of employer would let them?

ScrollingLeaves · Today 00:25

This is despite single-sex spaces being protected by the Equality Act 2010. The guide states several that gender reassignment is a protected characteristic under this law, but fails to mention that sex is protected too

They should be able to understand this.

They do understand it and exactly why it's not helpful to them; they think that they are entitled to ignore it and put their own spin on things.

And it will be a big, long term job to root it out.

There is a reason that in many historical periods the civil service changed with a change in regime - in some instances with the old civil service members being dispatched through execution. It's just very difficult to run a state the way you want if the bureaucrats are not on board.

It will be much more difficult in an instance where the people creating and implementing the questionable policies will remain in place and can't be compelled to change their personal views.

The valuing of a really politically neutral civil service seems to have been lost. I suspect because most people under about 30 don't actually understand the idea of political neutrality. They have been educated from the time they entered school to believe that it is immoral. (Possibly we only have ourselves to blame, after all, it's the adults in the room who decided that is what schools should teach.)

In any case, imagine trying to root any ideology out of a captured civil service - Marxism, Catholicism, free market libertarianism - with no real tools to make them do what you want.

This is despite single-sex spaces being protected by the Equality Act 2010. The guide states several that gender reassignment is a protected characteristic under this law, but fails to mention that sex is protected too

No word ever needed to be made more clear. Since when does Sex mean Gender Reassignment?

Gender Reassignment is one characteristic in the Equality Act, Sex is another. They are discrete.

They should be able to understand this.

These idiots need to be called out. If anybody asks my pronouns they will be told my pronouns are “I and me.”

"Sir Peter Bottomley, the longest-serving MP currently in the Commons and father of the House, said he had “some concern”, adding: “The word ‘sex’ appears without stating it is a protected characteristic – I think that may be a slip, an omission.

“It is obviously sympathetic to people and some managers will find it useful, and a person who is transgender will find it interesting. I believe it would be better guidance if the people issuing it had checked it with the LGB Alliance.”

He added: “I hope that the House authorities will come to an open discussion on how this effort to help can be made more inclusive and more helpful to all.”

Kate Harris, co-founder of LGB Alliance, which was set up to defend lesbian, gay and bisexual rights from gender ideology, said “policing pronoun usage” was “completely unacceptable in a liberal democracy”.

She added: “This guidance is an activist’s handbook for those who seek to do two things: to pretend that their cult beliefs are mainstream, and second to isolate and ostracise anyone who refuses to accept their ludicrous fantasies.
“Pronouns are the gateway drug towards unnecessary medicalisation of gender non-conforming children. Wake up Parliament – you are being sold a very dangerous pup.”

Oh to be a fly on the wall and see all the dummies being spat out!!

I'm currently suffering with 15 infected mosquito bites so have had some slightly delirious moments the last few days, yet even my fevered imagination hasn't been able to come up with shit as crazy as some of the things going on at the moment! Which indicates to me reality has gone totally out the window!

Me too Boiled. Utterly sick and miserable when will it stop!! I want reality back now, I don’t like this crazy world