Civil service bans men from women’s spaces? Leaked guidance

The thing is when you give boys puberty blockers you are effectively chemically castrate them and we know from history (castrata) and science that they end up much taller than they would have naturally grown as the growth plates dont fuse. So these younge men stand out even more because they are so much taller than women.
Conversely when you give puberty blockers to girls they dont get the growth spirts triggered by puberty and end up shorter than they would have been again making them stand out more because they are so short.
The sad fact is no amount of surgery or hormones will allow men to truly pass as women or women pass a men

Agree with you 100%.

But I don’t think we’ll ever be able to stop discussing this. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Men have been allowed to abuse in public and perform their kinks in public. Laws have been passed in other countries protecting their rights to do so. They are not going to give these up. Children have been damaged beyond repair, physically, mentally and emotionally, and will remain vulnerable to transgenderism and anti-safeguarding mission creep.

What we think of as our rights are actually privileges, because they can be taken away from us. We will have to remain vigilant and assertive to retain them.

In addition this very valid reply @lcakethereforeIam, it would also be abhorrent to have any gatekeeping of access/acceptance conditional on an individual undertaking any kind of potentially risky/damaging treatment like this. Any such conditions create an unreasonable incentive for a gender-questionning prepubescent child and their parents to choose a drastic and dangerous pathway when they otherwise might not. Therefore while it's true that in a small number of cases an individual may be close to "passing" at first glance, it is really important that whatever rules we mutually agree as a society are applied in the same way to all trans-identifying individuals, with or without medication, with or without surgery. None of the medications or surgeries are risk free so nothing in the rules for what gives access to what must make taking those risks a gatekeeping condition, or we as a society would be guilty of forcing a vulnerable individual into whatever damage those "treatments" entail. In some cases the individual may choose to undergo them anyway, for their own self-acceptance, but they need to know that nothing will change legally. So in terms of bathrooms, changing rooms, hospital wards, prisons and workplaces, whatever the rules are for someone who very much doesn't pass, 5 minutes after deciding to transition, must also be the rules for someone with the most carefully curated and almost-convincing presentation. Dignified, respectful and equitable - yes. Allowing access into single-sex areas of the opposite sex - no, never.

Not just the TRAs, I suspect. There has been a particular type of online commenter who has regarded this issue as an absolute gift for lambasting British institutions and the whole concept of liberalism in general, while not really appearing to care that much about women’s rights at all.

Spare a thought for them today - it’s hard to keep banging on about the “elites” and “leftists” and how everything needs to be burned down, now that sanity is prevailing. And we’ve not needed an authoritarian government to do it, we’ve achieved this correction through grassroots feminist organising, the courts, (eventual) wider public debate, and finally through the institutions!

None of the transwomen I work with remotely pass. And also, because of "bring your whole self to work" 🙄 their identity at work is predominantly about being trans (progress flag around their work photo icon, progress flag behind them in Teams meetings, intranet articles about trans joy etc etc).

And nobody pays any attention to what toilet people use. I sometimes use the unisex one if it's nearest to the meeting room I'm in. I've never worried that people might think I'm trans because I've popped in the unisex loo. I can see how it might be more of an issue if you work in a tiny office with few facilities. But this is not the case in civil service offices. And if it was, all the allies can just agree that they will start using unisex facilities en masse in solidarity. In reality, they won't because it's just not an issue and this whole drama about "outing" people is just another attempt to block any enforcement of single sex provision.

First, they said third spaces were impractical because it would cost workplaces too much. And then when workplaces do provide them they say they can't use them because they are too outing. I assume their next course of action will be taking legal action because expecting someone to use a unisex facility when they don't want to use the one for their own sex is an egregious breach of their human rights (or something).

I wonder if the managers who I assume will generally be low to middle level managers who will be receiving the complaints have had proper training in the law and will be supported by higher level managers when they tell their TW staff to say out of the women's

I mean civil service track record isn't great here is it

Well no, this is the issue. A lot is being left to the discretion of line managers, who inevitably will take different approaches. The policy says not to challenge someone for being in the wrong facilities but how comfortable is an employee going to be raising an issue with their line manager when said line manager has pronouns in their email signature and is a self-professed ally?

To a lot of people, on the surface, this policy looks pretty good. But I don't think you realise how entrenched GI is in the civil service and in the public sector.

When the new policy was announced, it went down exactly as expected. People saying how awful and cruel it is, lots of union reps up in arms and people performatively posting links to the bullying and harassment policy. But who has been doing the bullying and harassment? Many people on her have followed enough employment tribunals to know the answer to that.

GC views are acknowledged in the policy, which is progress I guess, but the protection of GC views in law is seen as an a aberration that will eventually be overturned. Most GC people keep their heads down and try to avoid invoking the wrath of TRAs, who are still the loudest voices. I'd imagine it's the exact same in the NHS, and will be equally challenging implementing the new policy there. Having the policies is a start, but there is still such a long way to go.

It's interesting that the disability reasonable adjustments legalities have just changed to hold managers responsible and legally liable themselves when the policies or adjustments are not followed through directly. I would think a good barrister would have a case there if need be, that this should be equally applied in other areas of EqA related issues.

And yes, I don't think any of us are naive enough to think it won't have to go to court in individual cases, but the escape hatches are steadily being closed, and any hope of a court win against policy removed. Provision can be made for men with gender identities, that provision just cannot be to deprive women of single sex facilities.

The advice that staff should approach management if someone is using facilities they should not be - in case they should accidentally confront or 'harrass' a trans identified person, is an inversion of the actual fact that a man who consistently uses female only facilities could be found guilty of harassment himself. And any workplace which permitted this to continue would have culpability.

Yes, it is an intimidatory tactic......which the civil service is going to have to be held accountable for.

Yes, Dave in Accounts but with a super special alter ego who comes out in his leisure time, or safely at home behind closed doors.

Yes, as I said earlier, I can see how it might be difficult to provide different types of facilities in very small businesses or organisations. But it is not an issue in the majority of civil service offices.

But as we know, it's not about having access to appropriate facilities to use. It's about validation of identity at all costs. I hope more people will now realise just how unreasonable and uncompromising TRA demands are. And all this talk of bullying and harassment and outing is just another scaremongering tactic. Hopefully, what it will mean is that GC staff can no longer be bullied with impunity. The latest tantrum is because they don't want the CS to be neutral and to treat everyone fairly. They want to continue to have special status and to be mollycoddled and have their rights elevated above everyone elses.

And yeah I think it's inevitable there will be court cases. I saw someone from PCS union saying that the new policy is in breach of the Equality Act 🤯And if course, they will be supporting trans people to take legal action. Well, let them crack on I say. The law is clear, there is no public appetite to change it (quite the opposite in fact) and the new policy reflects the law, even if it is wishy washy in places.

Yes, they want to preserve the status quo, which is that people are too afraid to say anything.