Does it make someone a LGBTQ ally if they wear the pride lanyard but object when a transgender person uses their restroom ?

[thecatmother]

In my workplace we are very open and inclusive and many colleagues chose to wear their IDs on the Pride lanyards and are very active participants in all the Pride related events.
So far so peaceful, or so I thought, we had a new colleague joining recently, it is a lady who is transitioning from being born a man. She is very polite and just gets on with her work and day. I wasn't surprised to see her using the Ladies, unfortunately a number of my colleagues have formed an opinion about that. The management has been supporting the new colleague, and they held "conversations " with the complaining parties.
However, those people are still wearing their Pride lanyards, I can't get my head around that. The lanyards are purely on volunteer basis, we have generic ones. I generally wonder whether they actually realise that being an ally is not about getting drunk on Pride , but actually to be supportive to the people of LGBTQ.

Well, that's the first time I've seen the other side address the question of religion as a protected characteristic!

Shame the answer was ridiculous & offensive, but there you go.

DH & I just had a fun five minutes trying to come up with an industry which is also a profession, in which there are only white Christians & everyone's mental health is vetted before employment, to the extent that they're asked about childhood trauma. We failed.

Receipts or it didn't happen, as the young people say.

@thecatmother

Well, this thread has certainly outgrown my humble question. I had a simple question, and I believe I received an answer. To those hypothising about hidden childhood traumas and religious grounds and why there are separate toilets. The real situation is very much non eventful: don't know about anyone's childhood traumas, in fact my profession and industry do vet our mental health strictly; as for the religious aspect, all are white and Christian; toilets are separated due to the awfully old purpose built premises circa 1970. The modern buildings belonging to my organisation have unisex toilets. In fact, this discussion is scary and outdated. Makes me think of what the people would have been saying about BAME people in 50s/60s/70s and before.

So what happens when your workplace employs someone who isn't white and Christian? Or do they decline to do that?

And you think this is right and proper.

While we're here. The extension of OP views is this which I found really distressing. Sort of related to ops ideas about the. Dunno. How anyone who has suffered CSA can be ruled out of employment on mental health grounds.

DH & I just had a fun five minutes trying to come up with an industry which is also a profession, in which there are only white Christians & everyone's mental health is vetted before employment, to the extent that they're asked about childhood trauma. We failed.

Yes, curious one that.
I'll stop "hypothising" about it though!

In fact, this discussion is scary and outdated. Makes me think of what the people would have been saying about BAME people in 50s/60s/70s and before.

Just FYI you might want to educate yourself @thecatmother about the term BAME. It’s now considered dated and disrespectful.

CovidCorvid

But you’re not treating those “complaining” women with respect.

I think she's getting round this by not letting ethnic minorities, such as any Muslim or Jewish women, or women who've been sexually assaulted into her vicinity. It sounds very 50s.

as for the religious aspect, all are white and Christian;

In fact, this discussion is scary and outdated.

Makes me think of what the people would have been saying about BAME people in 50s/60s/70s and before.

I wouldn't worry too much about the past if I was you. I'd be more interested in how or why your place of work is exclusively white and Christian in 2021, it sounds as if their hiring policy is scary and outdated.

Well, I’d love to also know what would happen if a woman who could not use toilets with males was now employed? What would OP say then?

They have thrown racism around yet cannot see their own behaviour in the same light with regards to not only race but religion too.

DH & I just had a fun five minutes trying to come up with an industry which is also a profession, in which there are only white Christians & everyone's mental health is vetted before employment, to the extent that they're asked about childhood trauma. We failed.

Stepford?

I don’t have huge misgivings about toilets. I don’t think trans women should be able to compete with women, go to their prisons, have anything to do with schools etc.

However the toilet argument is really circular.

If trans woman are saying that they cannot bear to use the men’s toilet - then they are saying that male and female spaces are different and have an emotional and cultural purpose. They are saying that it would cause them distress to use a men’s - are they not?

Have I got this right?

So if they are saying that it would cause distress to use a men’s toilet, then they have to accept a woman’s distress at no longer being able to use a single sex toilet for women. A women’s toilet for trans women too is then no longer a single sex toilet.

A toilet for mixed sex is the best solution surely as it respects everyone? You can’t respect one person’s ‘distress’ and not another’s.

@JamieLeeCurtains

DH & I just had a fun five minutes trying to come up with an industry which is also a profession, in which there are only white Christians & everyone's mental health is vetted before employment, to the extent that they're asked about childhood trauma. We failed.

Stepford?

Stepford bio-wotsits wouldn't care about childhood trauma, though, would they?

And their replicants wouldn't need the loo...

@NiceGerbil

And you think this is right and proper.

While we're here. The extension of OP views is this which I found really distressing. Sort of related to ops ideas about the. Dunno. How anyone who has suffered CSA can be ruled out of employment on mental health grounds.

Great. Fab. So now I can't work because I was a victim.* So. Can I have some more benefits please because they aren't enough to live on. I'm sure that will do wonders for my MH. Being told I can't work even if I feel I can.

And in reply to OP. No my abuser wasn't a trans woman. But he would have identified as a trans-woman if he meant he could get into my girl only spaces such as Brownies/Guides. Not to abuse me there necessarily, but just because he could. And he wanted to show that power over me.
So no I don't think all trans women are predators. But if I come across someone who my brain reads as 'male' and I'm usually pretty accurate on that, then I go into a fight/flight/freeze trauma response.

• I actually don't work currently because of my mental health. However it's not directly linked to the CSA. Although that is probably a contributing factor.

That should have said have anything to do with safeguarding / sex education etc in schools

'DH & I just had a fun five minutes trying to come up with an industry which is also a profession, in which there are only white Christians & everyone's mental health is vetted before employment, to the extent that they're asked about childhood trauma. We failed.'

And that is v accepting of transwomen, has a big problem with men beating each other up in the bogs.

And has a post interview vetting procedure around mental health that delves into the most private and personal and upsetting things that could have happened as a child.

And if it turns out they have been sexually abused, assumes they're mentally unstable and retracts the job offer.

Hmmm

This doesn't happen does it.

Even if you're going for MI5 they wouldn't withdraw a job offer for that. And I mean. They're a public sector employer trying to widen their pool of applicants. I've looked

If it's good enough for James bond it's good enough for me tbh. Although yes he's MI6 before anyone points that out.

So the question is:

What sector in the UK is.
All white and Christian
Very supportive of trans employees
Has mental health screening before confirming a job offer
That delves into whether you were sexually abused as a child
And no matter what you experience competency is etc
Will withdraw the job offer because they assume you have mental health problems

OP?

Are you an astronaut? Thats the only sector I can think of where they drill into your psyche that much.

But if OP was an astronaut the bogs would be unisex and indeed pretty special suction things to stop your piss flying around in droplets all over the place.

OP. Are you an astronaut?

I claim my £10

Speech from the wonderful author Onjali Rauf

I’m here tonight because I am sickened to the heart at what I perceive to be a heightened ‘othering’ of the already established ‘other’.

As a woman who isn’t white and better yet, wears a scarf on her head, believe you me, I know what it feels like to be constantly ‘othered’.

Even in spaces where I hoped I might not be.

(continues)

If you’re a man who wants to step out of the socially constructed He-Man box that is ‘man’ to make a home in the socially constructed box of ‘woman’, then go for it.

But please, please, please, don’t do so to invade a space that women are still fighting so hard for.

Create your own space – a third space – a fifth space – a seventh space – one which caters to your own unique experiences and needs too – because you will have plenty of both that we as women won’t understand or share in too.

Or better yet, take space from the men – they have lots!

(continues)

As I look around in today’s world, I see more and more bewildered women and girls feeling confused, alienated and afraid.

Women like myself and my Sikh or Hindu or Jewish friends who need single-space places to safely unveil, wash up and reconfigure ourselves; or women who are breastfeeding and lactating and needing a space to let it all hang out; or women going through the menopause or chemotherapy who need safe spaces to just be looked after, or young girls on their first ever periods or sprouting breasts who need space for support and reassurance.

Or every woman ever, who needs a safe space like this to come and meet and talk about our fears and battles, and hopefully create better policies and movements for our future women.

Even the smallest annihilation of the basic right to be a woman in the presence of other women can have dire impacts on our health and state of mind.

A case in point: three weeks ago, I took a dear friend to lunch.

All was going well, we were having a beautiful time, and halfway through the meal, she left to go to the restaurant bathroom.

The woman that came back, was not the same one who left the luncheon table: for instead of the carefree, happy being I knew, came back a pale, quiet and slightly shaken version.

It transpired the restaurant had a gender ‘neutral’ bathroom, and as she had made her way down, a very innocent man had walked out of the toilets, banging into her.

Nothing of any significance to anyone watching – not until I tell you that this friend of two decades, had been raped in her university dorm room at the age of twenty, and feared all contact with men – no matter how nice, kind, friendly, non-threatening or ‘effeminate’ they might seem.

But as Greta Thunberg says, ‘Don’t listen to me. Listen to the scientists.’

(continues)

womansplaceuk.org/2019/10/01/the-sheer-audacity-of-our-existence/

Rejoining - but the majority of women want single-sex toilets, so mixed sex doesn't respect them or meet their needs. You've left out the option of the third space which is for anyone who doesn't want to use the toilets assigned to their sex & thus respects their needs.

I asked DH if he'd seen any violence in a workplace men's loo, in the c40 years he's worked, mostly in the UK but also in the USA & various European countries. He said no, of course not.

I feel that every human in my vicinity deserves to be treated with respect.

Respecting people doesn't mean agreeing with everything they want.

People don't need to have direct experiences to see the data that mixed sex facilities, no matter how the person identifies, that are in that 'old 70s style' are more dangerous that if those facilities are single sex. There are other options available than making unisex cubicals.

But yes, I've 'suffered a sexual offense' by a trans woman (what a detached, cold way of putting it). An ex of mine. I was already of the opinion that toileting facilities are pretty shite and need to be reconsidered well before that. I have had a thing about better toilets for years.

Makes me think of what the people would have been saying about BAME people in 50s/60s/70s and before.

And your focus on the person being shy and "normal" reminds me of remarks of decades past where priests and pastors and teachers and doctors couldn't possibly be rapists because they were so quiet and considerate, they do so much for the community, and don'cha just know how those deliquents are, so rude, no respect, can't believe a word they say...

If this was the 50s/60s/70s, you wouldn't be using BAME, that acronym didn't exist yet. POC barely existed, it was still a political identifier of solidarity at that time rather than painted on.

LGBTQ and BAME are fine discussing issues at population level, sometimes. For communities and individuals, many find it insulting. It erases people as individuals and the difference issues each group in those faces.

As someone who fits under both of those - here's a hint if you want to be "an ally" - stop thinking about us a blob group of people and think of us as individuals. Stop thinking your research has given you all the answers and wrestle with the complicated conflicting problems. People who think they already have all the answers are the worst allies.

I don't have an issue with unisex toilets, so certainly not bothered about trans people if they have cubicles with locking doors that work. My only issue issue is when there aren't enough toilets and have to queue. It's a bodily function that we all do, why have mystery and taboo around it.

Sexuality has nothing to do with gender identity. Why should women - including lesbians - have their single-sex bathroom taken away?

The office should provide a third bathroom space to anyone who doesn't want to use the bathroom of their birth sex. That would be fair, rather than making the women's loos a hostile place for women.

I am neither white, nor am I Christian. The women, who complained about the colleague are white and Christian.
I think the majority of the people here do tend to forget about that its ok to have different opinions, nobody needs to be insulted or called out.
However, a lot of views here are shared from a very dark place, as usual, when we strongly feel threatened by somebody's otherness we must look within ourselves.
My profession is none of anyone's business, but I can assure you that you would understand the psychological vetting if you knew. Again, being a victim doesn't mean that you can't work for us, it's about how you can handle yourself. Hence that's why I was baffled by the complaining party.
On this note, good night to all. Stay safe.

It's ok to have different opinions then op?

Great the woman who complained has a different opinion to you.

Respect it.

Gerbil - not all astronauts are white Christians. £10 note is jerked back out of sight

The best I could come up with was a convent, but why would they have lanyards & men's toilets? And nuns can be racially diverse: the only one I knew was Vietnamese.

However, a lot of views here are shared from a very dark place, as usual, when we strongly feel threatened by somebody's otherness we must look within ourselves

Would you say that to these women in this women's hostel, who found that the person who had assaulted two children in women's toilets was now housed with them?

"A transgender sex offender who targeted girls in supermarket toilets was living in a women-only hostel after her conviction.

Katie Dolatowski, 18, avoided a prison sentence for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in Morrisons, Kirkcaldy, and filming a 12-year-old over a cubicle in Asda, Dunfermline.

A women’s group has warned other female residents could have been put in danger by her presence in the supported accommodation in Fife, which has a shared bathroom.

It is understood she was moved into her own accommodation shortly after The Courier discovered where she had been living.

One resident in the unit for homeless offenders said: “This is a women’s hostel and it’s all women who work here. I feel sick and can’t stop thinking about what [she] has done.”

A spokeswoman for Women and Girls in Scotland said: “Katie Dolatowski has already taken advantage of access to female spaces to commit sexual assault.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that this person was being given the same opportunity again.

Continues here www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/fife/832849/warning-as-transgender-sex-offender-placed-in-womens-hostel/

we must look within ourselves.

OP, have a look within yourself as to why you can't say what 'living as a female' means. You stated this person was living as a female, transitioning, yet you either don't know or won't say what this entails. I wonder why.