Labour councillor quits in row over facilities for trans people - The Times

[ReappearingWoman]

Anne Sinnot, Labour councillor (Cambridge) has resigned.

"Ann Sinnott stood down from Cambridge council claiming that the authority was treating women with contempt and was acting in “dereliction of the law”. She said a policy that resulted in single-sex facilities, such as toilets or changing rooms, being “abolished at a stroke” was undermining women’s rights and was a breach of the equality act."

I don't have a clicky link or share token. Hopefully someone else will add?

Oh, I'm just being testy. I think I have something to say but by the time I have scrolled past all the nonsense and nonsense-indulging, I just can't be arsed. Ignore me moaning.

Single sex spaces and services have already passed the litmus test to be able to exist under The Equality Act. They exist because they are needed.

Anyone with a shred of empathy would recognise that.

I totally agree with this. We see you, TRAs.

@Bowlofbabelfish

How wouldn’t that be medical gatekeeping?

Diagnoses for GD don’t grow on magic gender trees.

If a patient is on the NHS route it will involve seeing two different Gender specialists at least twice, months apart, before a diagnosis is delivered and hormones are prescribed (to which their own GP has to agree to shared care with the GIC).

It’s also worth pointing out that not all patients referred to GICs get diagnosed - hence this is gatekeeping.

If the patient is progressing onto SRS that’s at least another two consultations followed by a consultation with the surgeon.
This process, not including initial wait times can take upwards of two years.

If you’ve spent all that time seeing medical professionals face to face and have their written diagnoses and paperwork then why should a panel who have never met you decide if you are ‘trans enough’???

2 single consultations is no where near enough for a man to be able to enter female only spaces. I would prefer multiple consultations, at least a year of discussions with a psychology exploring gender stereotypes and alternatives to the trans lifestyle AND genital surgery before males get near female spaces. Yes I want it to be very difficult.

Also the suggestion that complex medical diagnosis is, well, lengthy and complex shouldn't be a massive surprise.

Many people are affected by such things and to be honest from my POV 2 years is nothing. It took me 10 years of red tape and assessment to get an autism diagnosis and support for my child and I still have to fight to get that support applied correctly. My case is far from unusual too, many parents, children and adults are let down by the system.

Two years doesn't seem an unreasonable amount of time to spend assessing and treating something that is majorly life changing.

Well, yes, an enormous change of life, possibly involving surgery and hormones, from a position of some social privilege and likely physical advantage, which will then confer some access to certain spaces which exist for the safety and dignity of the vulnerable - why, in the name of Vlod, would anyone think that there shouldn't be some pretty damn intense gatekeeping for that?!

Because I want what I want and I want it now!

(Stamps TRA foot)

Its made the DM
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6012089/Labour-councillor-68-quits-transgender-plans.html

I wonder if someone will link into yesterday's Jess Bradley story in the comments.

Comments pretty much unanimous in support, and article very calm and reasonable. Starting to feel like the tide has turned, isn't it?

Two years is nothing for a serious medical issue. Both my DS have complex health problems and both of them took a lot longer to sort out.

When considering issuing a GRC there are a lot of different areas to consider, from the physical aspects of transition, to the motivations and expectations of the patient and their understanding of the process. Plus for clinicians to sign off on a legal change of sex they should be sure they're not enabling someone to pursue sexually motivated behaviours, i.e paraphilias.

It should be an arduous process, for everyone's sake.

"Ms Sinnott said that based on national figures there were between four and 37 transgender people in the city."

On her twitter feed she points out that this should be between 4 and 37 people who have had gender re-assignment/transexual.

Procrastinator - no need to add a link to the JB story in the comments - the Mail’s website is already doing it for us!

Screenshot:

Ann Sinnott's timing is impeccable.

These two news stories - Ann resigning and Jess Bradley's suspension - side by side in the Mail, for all to see.

Thank you Ann.

I expect the surprising number of councils that were discriminating against women based on fraudulent Equality Act policies is what prompted the Equality and Human Rights Commission to open an inquiry.
www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-powers/inquiries-investigations-and-wider-powers

Thank you AAK. It would be a shame if the Daily Mail readers missed Jess' Sunday mail story

I’ve had more than two consultations and a massive fight on my hands over aspects of giving birth, also referred to a panel (twice) who have never met me and I was. It allowed to speak to.

It’s fairly routine for panels to decide stuff. We do it at work - I’m the science input, we have a psychiatrist and a specialist medic and we discuss stuff before giving our recommendations. Queries come back to us and we’ve sometimes met three or four times before giving recommendations.

I’ve also had it before being given the correct asthma medication, and sorting out correct birth control that wouldn’t massively increase my risk of stroke.

None of those affect anyone else. If you want a certificate that allows you into spaces where women are vulnerable it should not be a tick box excercise. It HAS to be rigorous.

June 2018 Womans Place UK statement

'Grassroots women’s pressure forces local authorities to comply with the law over sex and gender'

"Local councils around Britain have been forced to change legally inaccurate equalities information on their websites by women’s rights campaigners. Many authorities have been found to be in breach of the Equalities Act by stating that “gender” is a protected characteristic, as opposed to “sex,” and some authorities have listed the two terms interchangeably, which they have sought to rectify due to sustained campaigning.

Supported and encouraged by grassroots campaign group Women’s Place UK and others, women from across Britain are now writing to their local councils to ensure that they have the correct list of nine protected characteristics.

Clackmannanshire initially replied to queries by saying ‘Hi, we talk about gender discrimination rather then sex discrimination as it’s more inclusive.”

twitter.com/ClacksCouncil/status/1005104288253861892

But after being challenged by campaigners have corrected their guidance

twitter.com/ClacksCouncil/status/1006109396491960321

Derbyshire County Council were also initially defiant in the incorrect use of their terms

twitter.com/Derbyshirecc/status/1006103009695293440

but after lots of women contacted them to challenge this position they agreed to change the wording

twitter.com/Derbyshirecc/status/1007226036667473920

Some of the other councils who have corrected their guidance after lobbying by campaigners are Nottinghamshire, Stockport, West Oxfordshire, Wigan, Bournemouth, Salford, Winchester, Manchester City, Luton, Lambeth and Kensington & Chelsea, Pembrokeshire, Wrexham and Rhondda Cynon Taff.

The Welsh Government has also made the changes after being contacted by campaigners.

Women across the UK will continue to challenge councils and other organisations who are getting equality law wrong.

The 9 protected characteristics are

Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Marriage & civil partnership
Pregnancy & Maternity
Race
Religion or belief
Sex
Sexual orientation
A WPUK spokeswoman said, “So far we have found many policies that fail to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and ignore that sex should be protected by equality law. The reason we feel strongly about this is that it particularly impacts on the perception of what legal protections women have and the extent of the duties organisations have towards women. Some organisations are implying they will protect the concept of gender which most feminists think is a stereotypical notion of what being a woman is. The Equality Act protects those undergoing gender reassignment but this is a different category than that of sex.”

Whilst doing the audit of public sector equality policies WPUK found that the Equality and Human Rights Commission utilise the term sex/gender interchangeably which WPUK said, “This is worrying in that they make the climate for other organisations to follow and if they do not understand the importance of ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic how can others?”

Other organisations have acknowledged and apologised for their error and have begun changing their policies. Woman’s Place UK said “We are pleased by those organisations being willing to change. We hope this starts a national discussion about why the Equality Act 2010 exists and the importance of ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic. Women still have a long way to go before we have equal rights”.

#sexmatters
#sexnotgender

END
[https://womansplaceuk.org/grassroots-womens-pressure-forces-local-authorities-to-comply-with-the-law-over-sex-and-gender/]]

Mumsnet threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3271841-does-your-local-authority-equality-policy-exclude-sex-as-a-protected-characteristic

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3272580-Spreadsheet-of-local-authorities-that-record-sex-not-gender-lets-complete-it-together

it would be worthwhile checking your children's school Diversity & Equality policies. Many of these will have be based in good faith on what were believed to be reliable sources eg their Local Authority

apologies, clicky link to WPUK statement above: womansplaceuk.org/grassroots-womens-pressure-forces-local-authorities-to-comply-with-the-law-over-sex-and-gender/

That was very interesting, R0wantrees. Thank you.

I’ve sent you a pm, R0wantrees

The people arguing for a return to medical gatekeeping need to understand that there's little to no gatekeeping within medicine when it comes to gender identity these days.

Trans activists run WPATH, the professional body that oversees standards for transitioning. They've rewritten the DSM definition and criteria on 'gender dysphoria' and redefined it so that it's no longer considered an illness or psychiatric condition of any kind, all the while managing to expand the surgical procedures and drugs that governments and health insurers have to pay for to 'fix' a condition that supposedly isn't a medical condition at all.

Private gender clinics are everywhere. Parents are telling of how their minor children are being diagnosed as 'trans' and prescribed cross-sex hormones after one or two appointments at such clinics. There are aggressive activist clinicians who are pushing to be allowed to perform ever more radical procedures on children diagnosed as trans', while the few doctors who question any of this are hounded and smeared.

Medical gatekeeping barely exists anymore, so I can't see the use in trying to get the government to enforce it as a standard for falsifying one's legal sex. Rather, I think we need to challenge the institutionalisation of this falsification at the roots, and argue for the necessity of the government to recognise biological sex as a category that can't be overridden by 'gender identity'.

The GRA needs to be repealed as it is evidently no longer fit for purpose. It was written at a time when there were only about 5000 transsexuals in the UK, before trans activists managed to bully the medical profession into redefining 'trans' and effectively doing away with gatekeeping, and before 'transgender' became a massive cultural phenomenon. But I recognise that's probably an unrealistic goal at this time.

So rather than focus on the GRA, I think feminists should instead campaign for laws which enshrine bio sex as an important legal category for the purposes of segregation in certain spaces and activities, and for the collection of crime statistics and other social metrics. We should argue that sex must be sovereign over 'gender identity' for these purposes, because what matters in these areas are people's sexed bodies, not their feelings about themselves.

Sex is a material reality and gender identity is a subjective feeling. It doesn't make sense for the law to prioritise feeling-states over physical reality. Politicians need to be confronted with the fact that this is what they are doing when they write laws that replace sex with 'gender identity', and it is both dangerous and absurd.

This gives the government a workaround, in effect: by focusing on sex as a category, you don't have to actually amend or even talk much about the laws on 'gender identity'. They can stay, they just won't be given precedence over sex in when it comes to the above mentioned areas.

As an addendum: I understand that the protected category at the moment is 'gender reassignment' not 'gender identity'. However, given that there is little to no medical gatekeeping anymore and you don't actually have to undergo any medical procedures to get a GRC, 'gender reassignment' is already in effect 'gender identity'.

@DonkeySkin

Thanks for really cheering me up.

I haven’t laughed as much for a long time.