Telegraph: Trans teachers must be allowed to use same showers as female colleagues, schools told

lcakethereforeIam · Today 19:09

I thought it was a retriever but, on a rewatch, I think you're right.

Thanks.

Urgh. That does sound like a mess.

On a positive note, it completely stops children being brought in to the same bracket as adults. They are service users, not employees. So that's another reason why the conflation of the GRC with gender reassignment can't be used to deny single sex changing facilities etc for children.

The middle bit got complicated, but if I understand it correctly, the schedule 22 bit towards the end provides the anchor that's needed to highlight the intent (biological sex, not legal sex) behind the law because a) it's about physical body differences, which include strength/vulnerability differences b) it would render it illegal to provide single sex facilities at all.

If FWS lose at the Supreme Court, it sounds like it would be against the law for employers to provide single sex facilities for their staff (point b above) .... and surely that could be shown to be farcical, because it must hopefully be obvious that this was never the intent 🤞

This seems to be the key bit:

In my view, requiring separate toilet and changing facilities for men and women can fairly be said to protect women from risks specifically affecting women; namely, the threat of male violence and infringement of privacy while in a state of vulnerability and undress.
This isn’t a natural home for these exceptions. But the exceptions for separate and single-sex services only apply to services provided to the public or a section of the public. Provisions relating to the workplace have no equivalent. The closest we have is Schedule 22.
Ff I am right that this is the only textual foundation for the lawful provision of female-only facilities in the workplace, that has significant implications for For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers. That is because it means that all provision for separate or single sex facilities in the workplace is tied to the meaning of the word “woman” in the Equality Act. That is exactly the word that is contested in this case. It has a statutory definition in s.212 as “a female of any age”, and the case is about whether female means biological female or “legal” female, as determined by possession of the GRC.

I thought it was a retriever but, on a rewatch, I think you're right.

Just throwing in this (rather scary) article from Michael Foran. I struggled to follow some of it but basically he is saying that the SS exceptions apply to those organisations offering services to the public but there is no comparable scheme for workplaces eg for employees.

The legislation seems such a mess!

knowingius.org/p/for-women-scotland-and-female-only?utm_campaign=post

They (and I mean women teachers, obviously) will probably be forced to start taking communal showers in order to not be accused of being transphobic and subject to disciplinary procedures.

lcakethereforeIam · Yesterday 23:11

Funnily enough, this popped up for me on YouTube.

Thanks, that was a good watch, nice and and calm and succinct.

Anyone else spot the Labradoodle wandering past at 7:30?

Indeed. And once you establish that men claiming to be women MUST be allowed to access women colleagues in toilets, undressing in showers and changing rooms in the work place, then it's logical that of course these men should be supervising girls in changing rooms, showers, dormitories and toilets. Otherwise the principle that they're really women collapses.

Just as the charade is exposed by the "men are women except then they're rapists" - then there's a reverse ferret and they're apparently men again.

I think people saying 'I've never showered at work' are missing the bigger picture. The GI side are drawing lines, grabbing territory. Very few people, with noble exceptions, envisioned and tried to push back when the GRA was drawn up and put into law, but here we are.

As a thought re schools, obviously this is guidance information for governors. I've seen rejection of the PHSE guidance from teaching unions in a joint letter (thread link below) but is anyone aware of specific guidance from a teaching union, or a collective such as in this letter, where specific guidance is issued by the union(s) for any of the following:

1. how to support gender questioning children
2. how to support trans-identifying staff (where the audience is the staff within the school, not the governing body creating the policy as per the NGA guidance)
3. how to teach PHSE, over and above what it says on the existing DfE guidance

It would be helpful to know (perhaps from any teachers on here) what, if anything, the unions are saying at a staff level. Or is the message just "reject the current draft [PHSE and probably any other] guidance.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5117718-100-organisations-ask-labour-to-abandon-tory-revised-guidelines-on-rshe

Edited to add thread link. Forgot that bit 🤦‍♀️

Neither have I, but I am able to see the importance issues beyond my own personal experience.

The Black Belt Barrister video above helps to clarify that the NGA interpretation is a misrepresentation of the Equality Act when conflated with the GRA.

So it goes much wider than schools. For example the Darlington nurses or the nurse in Fife, all of whom were told they should accept (transwo)men in single sex facilities for women.

@lcakethereforeIam he didn't, you're right. Also it would have been helpful if he had clarified that children can't get a GRC when he said that although the guidance was about teachers, schools may take a "risk averse" approach and also apply it to children. I think he's right but reminding them of this re the GRC would have been helpful.

Victoria Prentis as Attorney General overturned Suella Braverman's advice and clarified that the PC of gender reassignment does apply to children. So the muddling up of this PC with the GRA in the NGAs advice is also likely to lead some schools to think that they'd better be "risk averse" and let everyone just use the facilities they want.

I agree with the BBB that this really isn't risk averse at all. I'd like to see what it looks like head to head with the statutory KCSIE guidance, which references the Gender Questioning Children guidance when advising about changing facilities for gender questioning children. Perhaps someone should test this in a court.

So allowing one group to choose their shower denies another group the right, previously assumed to be normal, to choose not to shower with members of the first group. Indeed, may force, coerce, compel members of the second group to shower with 1st group members.
Can't they see how wrong - no of course not.

What a non story - I've never showered at work.

The more women are told they have to accept it the greater the need to push back. Women make up the majority of teaching staff, there is power in numbers - they could work to rule, strike, 'whistle blow' everytime this happens. If 1 teacher is suspended or sacked then all others protest/strike. Or are the majority not bothered about this?

As others have said this affects female students too u expect. This is a safeguarding issue.

Thanks for this. IIt's another clear analysis of the legal flaws in the NGA "guidance". I can only assume that the writers of this guidance assume that women staff will be too busy or scared to complain in schools that make the mistake of allowing men claiming to be women to access women's spaces like this?

Funnily enough, this popped up for me on YouTube.

Fwiw, he thinks the NGA guidance is wrong, but all the please don't cancel me's. I think he's a smart bloke though and by putting those in he's making a point, though probably a few genuine concerns. There's also a survey he's pinned at the top of the comments. Worth checking. The comments I did read were mostly supportive of the 'gc' side.

Unless I missed it, he didn't mention the GRC secrecy clause. That, imo, causes many organisations to err on the trans side in these conflicts.

bigdecisionstomake · Yesterday 19:40

Maybe I'm being a bit thick but I thought PE teachers showered during the working day routinely - certainly at my secondary school they did?

Yes, back when I was at school, in the Bronze Age, they did. We had two blocks with changing rooms; one had rooms with individual showers for teachers. The other didn't and you'd sometimes find the changing room door locked and it would be opened eventually, by a teacher who'd just had a shower.

Never more than one at a time, if I recall correctly.

Not while I'm in one, they can't!

The trouble is that governors rely on the NGA for training. At one time LAs offered training to governors but as budgets are cut this has diminished. Governors are legally responsible for schools and rely on the NGA to provide training. The fact that they've adopted the discredited Stonewall law that's got so many organisations into serious difficulties in the courts in the last few years just shows the stranglehold that these dodgy organisations still have on the charity sector

But I'm not sure how any of this shit ever gets challenged?

There's a big difference between "should" and "must". Schools can choose to disregard this advice and will hopefully do so. Although may be more difficult if local authorities adopt this as policy.

NGA - NGA is an independent, not-for-profit charity

So it has no legal standing. It has no official standing. It has no requirement to do anything it doesn't want to do. It is just another Stonewall or BMA and nobody has to follow their "advice".

The sooner those at the top (who should be there based on intelligence and merit) start engaging their brains and thinking, the sooner this stupidity stops. But it won't because a lot of those people get to the top based on WHO they know, not WHAT they know.

Surely this will fail at the first legal challenge.

Probably not before the rules are the kids have to get in too

Presumably these men who say they're women, having showered alongside their women colleagues will expect to be allowed to supervise teenage girls in their changing rooms as well?

Really makes you wonder about the type of people working at the NGA who see the bodies of women staff as resources for men to access when they choose.