Do I give them the facts (Trans related) ?

[BelaLugosisShed]

My workplace has been informed that a (very young) staff member is transitioning to female , new name etc.
Also informed that they have decided to carry on using the Mens' loos until they are "fully transitioned" - every single person I have spoken to believes this includes full surgery.
I really want to tell them ( the women especially) that surgery is not required for a GRC , that once a person has that certificate and subsequently new ID documents, it will be illegal to ask them if they have medically transitioned, classed as discrimination.

I feel it is their right to know this but am worried about being pegged as a bigot and /or troublemaker, which makes me feel like a coward and hypocrite.
I wouldn't care if they used the Ladies but if just one woman objects, surely their views matter?

The person involved is very quiet, doesn't socialise with colleagues and has no social media presence (in either name) , which is odd for a 19 year old, so there is no way of knowing what side of the trans fence they sit on.

Honestly (and I say this with my own reservations about women's spaces being taken over by the loud trans lobby), I'd leave it be.
They're a known colleague. The likelihood is they just want to come to work and get on with their job.
If a trans discussion happens then you could mention that now transitioning doesn't include medical transition but I wouldn't be going out of my way to flag it up with everyone.

Keep out of it.

BelaLugosisShed

Is there a gender neutral facility?

You don't need to make a show of this person, they're probably struggling enough.

The trans issue is really fucking important, but unless there is a risk in some way, I don't think you need to get involved here at this level. It's bigger than this.

This isn't your average or garden TRA raising hell to get access to women's spaces - so don't raise it specifically.

No neutral facilities, gents downstairs ,ladies upstairs - it's a large warehouse / shop with offices upstairs.
Funnily enough we moved from a building with unisex, self contained bathrooms.
I really don't want to cause any hurt for the young person involved, thankfully the uniform is unisex , they are customer facing.

I disagree. My natural inclination would be to not say anything, for fear of adding to this person's distress.

But firstly, that's how we got into this mess in the first place.

Secondly, and more importantly, this is not, and never has been, about individuals.

There is no room in the ideology to make a distinction between a nice guy and a bad guy. If there was, I would fully support it.

The fact that this chap is nice, should absolutely determine the way you approach it, though.

Which is why I asked if there are gender neutral facilities.

Offering a gender neutral facility will often solve the issue. If they are happy to use it, which many are, problem solved.

If they are not, it will highlight why. At which point, HR absolutely need to be alerted to those reasons.

Because they need to deal with it. They need to address the issue.

That may HR accepts that this person has every intention of using the women's facilities, despite any objection. Which they may well end up agreeing to (HR I mean).

But pretending there is no process to go through, no objections to acknowledge, and no conclusion to draw is what is happening everywhere.

Sorry, I posted before I read your last post. Could you ask if one of the facilities could be changed to gender neutral?

I would have absolutely objected had they said they were going to use the Ladies immediately , it's become obvious that the dept.manager ( there is no HR dept , head office is abroad) simply asked which facilities they wanted to use without any kind of discussion with the female staff ( no women in management at all).
I think I will have to raise the fact that once legally transitioned , which I believe takes a couple of years ( at the moment anyway), no questions can be asked nor objections raised.

BelaLugosisShed

This is the part that pisses me off about the whole thing.

You cannot ask whether this man intends to have genital surgery.

Firstly, in my opinion, it doesn't matter if they do or not. Having surgery doesn't make you less of a man. It also doesn't preclude autogynephilia (although this transwomen doesn't sound like an autogynephile).

But you can't ask. And I totally understand why. It's intrusive.

But for those people who think that having a penis should be the basis for exclusion, where does it leave them? In fact where does it leave any woman? You absolutely can't object on the basis that they are a man. You can't object on the basis of a penis. You can't object on the basis that they haven't had surgery.

So you have to return to the very beginning of the argument that says transwomen aren't women. Then you have to go into all the reasons why women don't want men in their bathrooms.

Because no isn't enough. Consent is considered immaterial.

There was talk of new toilets, ( 3 years ago when we moved in ) one employee has mobility problems but luckily work downstairs, is male and their loos are ground floor with good access. One of the women warehouse workers has sciatica at the moment and it's 3 lots of stairs to the ladies loos.
Seeing as we had no hot water for over a month when the boiler broke, I doubt they will build new loos any time soon!

I have issues with aggressive TAs and "woman" and "female" being redifined to nothing tangible - but I wouldn't jump in here with one individual. I'd sit back and see how it unfolds and how this individual deals with it.

You don't have any facts though. You don't know whether this person intends to have bottom surgery or not and you have no right to ask.

If this person goes through two years of committed transition, then most people are likely to say 'fair enough'. With penises it would be 'don't ask, don't tell'.

My facts are that surgery is not a requirement for a GRC and that once a GRC is given, new ID in the chosen sex means that no one is allowed to question why someone who looks male is sharing a womens bathroom.
People don't know this.
Hell, most people don't even know that a new birth certificate is issued in the chosen sex and that person never has to disclose their previous details.
This has made me wonder if there has been an upsurge in people applying for GRC, looking at the ONS data, @4000 people have been granted GRCs since 2004, 75% of them men.
The future of statistics and data preserving looks very uncertain, I wonder how many sex offenders have GRC and if that information is even collated?

This is an ideological issue that involves much bigger structures (i.e. legal definitions of what it is to be a woman) that can't be fairly levied at one individual. The vast majority of trans people just want to rationalise their own internal understanding of themselves. What more can they do by going through the current model of medical transition and workplace HR processes? My issues with women only spaces is that it is actually female only space that is required, for me it's not really about whether a trans woman has had bottom surgery or not as they are still male, but want to be sociologically read as a woman/female.

I don't think having SRS has anything to do with legitimising being trans as it is such extensive, life/function altering surgery that comes with so many complications, I'd prefer if people were able to go through medical management that rationalised how they felt without it. Female only spaces exist for to protect privacy, safety and dignity; in my small workplace where I know all my colleagues, I don't think this would be infringed by a colleague who was trans, but sex-neutral facilities would be a better all-encompassing solution. I completely understand that this can't be correlated with mixed sex wards/public toilets/changing rooms/crisis centres et al, though.

It's terrible that the current trans activists narrative of trans women = women = females and seemingly uptake of this by Government is putting trans people and feminists against one another.