Civil servants oppose plans to end trans reassignment leave policy

Why is that relevant?

Thanks. I wonder if that could put them on shaky ground, unless they were flexible. I had a colleague who never took sick leave, became unwell suddenly and needed a bowel resection. At the time we worked somewhere with a similar - no sick leave, not urgent - policy and stuck to it. She of course won at tribunal. I’m always much more interested in sickness policy as a result!

I've no idea tbh as I've never needed to ask, but I would assume elective is something that hasn't caused you to take sick leave previously eg cosmetic surgery etc.

Other posters have already answered this question, but I will just add that I read a recommendation from a TIM that facial feminisation surgery be done in stages rather than all in one go, because recovery is so demanding.

Because they're getting it aside from sick leave.

Sick leave covers recovery from surgery does it not? And if the employee has not enough sick leave they use annual leave and unpaid leave. Thats how employment works

Interesting - how does your employer define elective?

In theory yes but not all these treatments are NHS funded so unlike most civil servants are having surgery every year. Even funded treatments have long waiting lists, so I don’t think the yearly issue would ever arise.

That's a dreadful policy. The % of staff in this position must be minimal so I don't understand why it's so harsh.

My workplace divides sick leave into elective and non elective surgery (and recovery). I've no idea how it regards gender reassignment surgery. The only trans person I'm aware of left, as the environment wasn't supportive enough though.

This. A colleague took unpaid leave to recover from cosmetic surgery. Same should apply here. She was very unhappy with her body and this made her feel better about herself. Trans surgery, especially if it is only facial feminisation, is no different.

This is so misleading. It's not limited to time off for surgery, it's anything to do with reassignment, which the individual gets to decide so covers things like :
Laser hair removal
Make up lessons
Personal stylist appointments
Voice training
Tattoos

As well as all appointments.

In contrast my friend with PCOS who needed vaginal surgery to relieve intense pain and regular sick leave for symptoms very quickly ran out of allowed time. She also needed laser hair removal and was told that was cosmetic and so take annual leave.

We just want it to be fair. Trans people get the same sickness policy as the rest of us.

I get particularly annoyed by any comparison of time off allowed for maternity related issues and gender transition ones.

Quite apart from anything else, women having babies is the only way we ensure the continuation of the human race.

I don’t agree with paid time off for cosmetic surgery but for the record some of these posts do not match my experience in the civil service of time off for other medical issues. If someone has had to use annual leave for a surgery it is probably because they have exhausted their paid sick leave. Nobody should be using annual leave if they have sick leave left, we also have disability leave.

My understanding is you have a surgery booked, your manager asks for the doctors note which usually states what it was and then you need fit to work from the GP for any extra time off. This is the same for (ordinary) cosmetic surgeries in my experience. Although there are comparatively few of those, I have not heard of anyone having sick pay denied, it is moaned about though.

Perhaps women could say they were having gender reassignment surgery to become a transwoman and get 13 weeks off for a boob job, or facial feminising surgery (facelift/nosejob/whatever). It’s deeply unfair a man gets 13 weeks off for the same operations when both groups of people are having them because they don’t like the way they look but only one group gets a ridiculous amount of time off, no questions asked.

Why dont you Google the numbers yourself instead of asking me to look them out for you?

Paid for by the tax payer

and they have the nerve to say they need to raise taxes. No. Stop bloody wasting our hard earned money!

How many trans women get boobs job or facial surgery?

The boob jobs are the most common followed by facial feminisation surgery thankfully relatively few get genital surgery but they always have complications when they do so often require multiple revision surgeries.
However even if only a 1 person has these or anything else and gets extra time off thats discrimination against everyone else who is not given extra time off for surgery

Do the majority of trans people have all these surgeries?

None, but it should be in line with other sick leave. While it remains a treatment on the NHS then it has to be considered a valid medical treatment, but as a chronically sick civil servant, I don’t see why people with this one particular “illness/condition” should be given preferential time off.

That’s absolutely tragic what happened to that poor man. A case of therapists unquestioningly affirming him and surgeons jumping in to butcher him. Thanks for sharing this article.

No but they could have a boob job 1 year, facial feminisation surgery the next, genital surgery the next year and then the multiple revision surgeries over subsequent years and then they'll need another boob job because those implants will need replacing even if he wants to keep his implant size instead of increasing them.
And thats before you talk about surgeries to deal with the medical consequences/side effects of taking cross sex hormones, such as vaginal and/or womb atrophy or kidney damage/death from having to process the wrong sex hormones, just to name a few.

I really don't think you realise quite how harmful gender transition "medicine" is or how quickly it leaves the victim disabled and a patient for life even if they detransition

When the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004, Parliament was assured by experts that only about 5000 people in the UK would qualify to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. When a few MPs and Lords attempted to point out obvious problems that would follow from making it possible to get your birth certificate reissued with the wrong sex on it they were told it didn't matter because the number of people it would affect was tiny. Well:

(a) it wasn't, because each of those people with a GRC goes out into the world and interacts with others, so the numbers affected are far higher than 5000

(b) in the end most trans-identified individuals have not bothered to apply for a GRC, so the legislation is now largely irrelevant - but

(c) the arrival of the internet, easy access to porn, social media and so on have led to a social contagion which has led a lot of troubled people to identify as trans or non-binary in the hope that it will solve all their problems, and has given a glorious opportunity to many fetishists (all male) to claim to be part of this persecuted minority and to ride roughshod over women's rights and safeguarding procedures introduced to protect children and other vulnerable groups.

Throughout this mad period, many people who really should know better have refused to look at the facts and are still behaving as if the numbers involved are that original 5000 with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. That's the only way I can explain this Civil Service policy - that it was drafted and approved by people who thought only a tiny handful of staff would be in a position to take advantage of it.

Of course, anyone attempting to point out the reality of the position has probably been disciplined and faced the possibility of being sidelined, demoted or sacked as a hateful bigot, so I imagine most Civil Servants have rolled their eyes and kept stum.

Reassignment treatment isn't just one surgery though. It covers a whole gambit of potentials. Genital surgery, implants, hair removal, hair transplants, facial surgery, voice coaching etc.

Trans people are treated more favourably for all of this, than a civil servant undergoing for example cancer treatment.

To be honest I'm surprised there hasn't been an ET on it from a member of staff disadvantaged by the policy

If you think anyone is going to repeatedly have surgery that seems possible to only have it done once, someone is certainly bonkers.