Pronouns

[Pratchet]

How far will I get at work if I refuse use incorrect pronouns because it is discrimination to force me to support an ideology which is harmful to me? Serious question. Anybody who can help, that would be great.

Also, does anyone at all have an opinion on whether my stance would be strengthened by me saying that forcing me to use incorrect pronouns is disrespectful
A. To me as a woman or
B. To my identity as a woman

Looking for all views. (You're probably all gardening or at the beach while I'm at work refreshing my phone!)

The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission has advised in guidance that it is harassment:

Harassment is when someone makes you feel humiliated, offended or degraded because you are transsexual.

For example a transsexual woman is having a drink in a pub with friends. The landlord keeps calling her ‘Sir’ and ‘he’ when serving drinks, despite her complaining about it.
Harassment can never be justified. However, if an organisation or employer can show it did everything it could to prevent people who work for it from behaving like that, you will not be able to make a claim for harassment against it, although you could make a claim against the harasser.

As have the Parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee:

279.Further, under the Equality Act 2010, all organisations (including employers and public bodies, such as the NHS) must respect a trans person’s acquired / affirmed gender and any associated change of name. Failure to change pronouns, names and gender markers (including honorifics and pronouns) on records in respect of a trans person would (with a few exceptions)281 constitute unlawful direct discrimination under the Act.

I feel harassed and degraded by being forced to accept there is such a thing as 'womanbrain', supermatch. Still, what do you care. Women don't count.

I also find compelled speech deeply upsetting.

It is a forced lie. What about autistic people, my husband cannot lie, it causes distress, why should he be forced to confirm someones sexist religious beliefs?

Women do count. Not sure this legislation or guidance is saying there is 'womanbrain', but anyway.

Is this all hypothetical or do you actually work with a trans person?
Ally is a regular poster on here and those comments to her were pretty out of order I think.

Thanks Ally. What I don't understand is why forcing me, a woman, to submit to using incorrect pronouns (self ID) is not harassment.

IMO if you wanted to argue harassment you'd do it on the basis of the protected characteristic of belief (ie as a gender critical feminist who believes it is impossible for people to change sex) rather than the protected characteristic of sex because you have to show that the unwanted behaviour relates to the protected characteristic. I think the difficulty that you'd face is showing that your employer is either A) violating your dignity or B) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for you, particularly given that you have the option of trying to avoid pronouns. I think even if you could make some kind of case out (which as I say I think would be difficult), my gut feeling is that the Court/Tribunal would say that it's worse for the trans person/more important to them to have people use the correct pronouns so in the end they wouldn't find in your favour.

Ally also: doesn't the single sex provision also apply to school toilets if the schools decide so?

It does. There was a recent case of that school in Essex where they are letting the trans pupil use the girls' bathroom. It seems that they received advice from a pro-trans organisation and IMO that advice was wrong. The EHRC guidance gives the example of changing rooms and suggests the pupil should change in a private room. IMO the same logic should apply to bathrooms (eg let the pupil use the staff toilet if that's in a room on its own). The problem that we face as feminists is it's not easy to stop schools and service providers etc when they don't choose to apply the exceptions.

There's no general provision in law saying that women are entitled to separate services where they are intimate in nature, and in fact we don't generally have a right to know if another user or provider of a service is trans. So as things stand you can have transwomen providing smear tests and the patient can't be asked if they are OK with this (even if they have specifically asked for a female nurse) because to do so would out the trans nurse.

Schools are interesting because they have a statutory duty to provide single sex bathrooms. We'll have to wait and see how this plays out.

Sorry that should have said:
more important to the trans person to have people use the pronouns which they want.

Thanks Ally. There's advice on the BBC website that says the Human Rights Act protects trans' children's rights to use opposite sex bathrooms. So that isn't true?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/XZjhcLhQW08Ylw5b0p9xgH/gender-dysphoria-transgender This is what I mean. Is this incorrect?

I'm completely bombarding you now and as I was rude before, it's nice of you to keep responding. 💐

Supermatch: obviously it says there's such a thing as womanbrain.

I do wonder if forced recognition and deferrment to a mythical concept that contradicts one's personal beliefs (and reality) is grounds for a test case eventually.

If you don't believe in invisible internal gender then you should not be forced to refer to a third party's 'gender' in place of their objective sex.

Their sex is a matter of material fact.
Conventions in language acknowledge material sex.
Forcing use of words that imply the opposite sex is being perceived is so like punishable blasphemy.

I think so too but a pp said earlier the interesting point is: bringing a test case at the wrong time could result in pronoun submission being confirmed by legal precedent.

I'm so sorry I can't find who it was. But looking back I'm actually very embarrassed at how know it all and rude I was. I'm so sorry Ally.

Thanks Ally. There's advice on the BBC website that says the Human Rights Act protects trans' children's rights to use opposite sex bathrooms. So that isn't true?

Not in my opinion. There isn't anything specific about trans rights in the Human Rights Act (HRA). The HRA just contains fairly broad rights - eg right to life, right to vote, right to marry etc. The trans rights that have been inferred from those broad rights through case law (eg right to a GRC) tend to arise out of the right to privacy. To my knowledge there hasn't been any case law specifically on trans pupils rights under the HRA. Any rights that trans pupils have will currently just be governed by the Equality Act. The EHRC have interpreted the Equality Act as giving trans pupils the right to private changing rooms but importantly not the right to use the opposite sex's changing rooms. As above, IMO the same logic applies to bathrooms which are not completely private (it would probably be OK if the school just has single enclosed bathrooms, but cubicles should be kept single sex).

Is it this article?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-43462823
because what is said there seems to be based on the (IMO incorrect) guidance that Transpire are giving out.

If not, do you have a link?

It was this Radio One online article from dux months ago which looks like 'official legal advice', a sort of fact checker, and it's worrying to me because that's where kids and parents would look. Also they would trust the BBC more. That's pretty bad of the beeb not to check.

Six not Dux!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/XZjhcLhQW08Ylw5b0p9xgH/gender-dysphoria-transgender
This is what I mean. Is this incorrect?

Thanks for posting that - my post above was a cross post. Yes, IMO this is incorrect. I expect the BBC have probably had something from a pro trans organisation and borrowed from it without questioning it. There's also been some info recently about how many trans people there are working at the BBC so they might have a bit of a vested interest.

I'm so sorry I can't find who it was. But looking back I'm actually very embarrassed at how know it all and rude I was. I'm so sorry Ally.

Ah no worries, genuinely. I'm kind of used to it at work if that makes sense. I've been working in a different area of law recently but one where the clients really hate the relevant legislation. I always bring a copy of the legislation along to meetings and make a big point of pointing to it and saying 'This legislation is rubbish and if I'd written it then I would have made it a lot better, but I didn't so all I can say is that if you do X then Y will have the right to sue you and they will probably win'. It's otherwise generally assumed that lawyers support whatever the law is, and I think a lot of it is very flawed.

BBC Advice factfiles are here to help young people with a broad range of issues. They're based on advice from medical professionals, government bodies, charities and other relevant groups.

This is at the bottom of that article. So yes probably something from a pro-trans charity. I haven't looked through what guidance Mermaids are putting out for example.

Yes that's the one. I supposed they assumed Mermaids would be accurate and neutral.

Or Gires or whoever they went to

I have used the female pronouns that my MtF trans colleagues preferred. I didn’t mind doing that out of politeness. I really felt uncomfortable and humiliated sharing the workplace women’s toilets with male bodied people though. (Some of these workplace toilets also have a shower room which under these circumstances I would not have used in a month of Sundays, so biking to work is this ruled out for me..)
It’s humiliating the lack of privacy while dealing with my periods etc, which I can deal with with other women about.
Dealing with periods is not always something you can contain in the stalls if you have a leak and need to wash something, or if you want to use a mooncup type of thing though. Most work toilet stalls are not floor to ceiling enclosed, so everything is audible. It’s just not something I want Male-bodied colleagues hearing.
I particularly didn’t like sharing space with someone I suspected was AGP.
No discussion of this with other staff with HR Dept, i was too scared to raise it or mention it to my colleagues for fear of repercussion. If there was a known GRC obviously I would need to just get on with it, but I think in those cases there should be some kind of Communication from HR team to say that there IS a GRC or at least that staff should feel fine to ask HR about that privately AND that employers should always offer a gender neutral toilet AND make sure women’s toilets are fully enclosed stalls with a sink and drying facilities inside.
Otherwise it really restricts choice for women at work (of travel to work and methods of dealing with periods). I don’t think it’s reasonable that I have to be restricted like that for validation or employers’ money saving purposes.

The stupidity of the law and how it's interpreted in the current climate isn't Ally's fault.

Sorry I missed that you had apologised Pratchet! I would use pronouns if I needed to so as not to lose my job, but I would find it hard if it were someone who obnoxiously enjoyed the power as a PP said and I would probably have to leave.

I think so too but a pp said earlier the interesting point is: bringing a test case at the wrong time could result in pronoun submission being confirmed by legal precedent.

And YY.

"it seems I was unnecessarily arsey"

this has made it into my top ten list of next potential usernames.:)

itseemsiwasunnecessarilyarsey