My complaint to Glasgow Life re sports centres

[ImNotNigel]

( NC for obvious reasons )

Glasgow Life are the Council organisation that run sports centres in Glasgow. They have been in the papers about their policy of allowing men into women only facilities

www.heraldscotland.com/news/17588777.cross-dress-males-to-be-allowed-in-women-only-gym-sessions-in-glasgow/?ref=twtrec

I am a member so I went tonight to complaint to the manager at the local centre. He was a young man of around 30.

It took about 5 mins of patient questioning from me for him to admit it was indeed council policy. He kept maintaining that there were no mixed sex or unisex facilities, but eventually he acknowledged it.

So I asked him if I could go right then and use the male changing room, ( I’m an XX person for the avoidance of doubt ).

He told me no, because I wasn’t “going through the process of gender change”. Now the council policy specifically says this is not required, but decided not to argue this further.

I told him that I indentified as agender, which counted as trans. He looked very perplexed by this, and questioned me for another 5 mins, arguing that I wasn’t. Although he agreed that if I was, I could use the Male changing room.

He waxed lyrical about the individual cubicles for showers and changing ( within the Male changing room ). I checked that their was no requirement on me ( since I was identifying as male tonight ) to use these and I could walk around naked in the men’s changing room if I wanted to, and would this be fine.

He said “ We were told in our training that that would never happen, because you would be ashamed of your body”. So I asked if he was suggesting that I should be ashamed of my body.

He knew he was in a hole but he kept on digging.

Then he went for the sympathy vote, pointlessly appealing to my female socialisation . He tilted his head and declared

“ You know it’s hard for people like you and me to understand what it feels like to be trans and how hard it must be. So the council has to allowed them access, it’s the law”.

[ feeble attempt at forced teaming there too ]

I reminded him that I was trans myself and asked which law. He replied “ Well you know more that me as you have read up on it “ .

I asked about their Equality Impact Assessment and the about the effects on other centre users, who didn’t want to share showers and changing areas with a person of the opposite sex. He said “ Well they wouldn’t be the opposite sex would they ? “.

I guessed that was in his training too.

By the end he was losing his temper, so ( perhaps wisely ) said “ I’m not talking to you anymore, you need to speak to someone in legal”.

He went to reception to look up a number and said to his two female colleagues ( who were trying not to snigger ) “ For fucks sake, now she’s telling me she’s trans “.

I said “ I can’t believe you are questioning my gender identity. Please stop saying that, it’s very offensive “.

He threw a paper at me with a number and stormed off.

It was entertaining but rather unsatisfactory. I think I can guess who did their training.

So it’s the Council Legal Services tomorrow, that should be better.

And of course I will complain about being told that I’m not trans. Repeatedly.

I guess the training didn’t cover that bit.

Well done! Bloody well done. Hopefully they’ll get a lot of this. Absolute fuckwit numpties.

Wow, you've got to have some sympathy for the guy - have you complained to the policy makers?

Wow, well done NotNigel. I can visualise exactly the tone of that conversation.

But what can have made him so cross I wonder, when just being asked simple policy questions?

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

ImNotNigel You are a complete super

NotNigel taking up the mantle from the awesome ManFriday and running with it...right into the male changing rooms in Glasgow.

Acceptance without exception unless you're our notNige who's agender (aka Genderfree) status our Gym Man doesn't feel comfortable with.

good work, and good luck with the follow up complaint

I do actually feel a bit sorry for the frontline staff dealing with this shit.

Good luck with legal. I suspect you’ll get a whole load of word salad.

I'm curious how the complaints process with an ALEO works - it's also technically a charity so I wonder if theres a route to take there.

Wow. It doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, does it?

Thank you. I was a bit confused at first when he repeatedly denied there was any such policy.

Especially as the member of staff I spoke to first said it WAS the policy but they only got told about it yesterday so didn’t know much. And she thought they might have one mixed changing area and the others single sex.

And the second person said it was just a proposal and not policy yet, but they didn’t know much, that I should speak to The Manager because he had been on The Training.

Of course they were both XX people and not managers, so they understood my point straight away. It was only the XY person who struggled for some reason.

He said “ We were told in our training that that would never happen, because you would be ashamed of your body”

Ah another one of those This Will Never Happen scenarios. These seem to be an important part of the safeguarding in this brave new world...………

(yes, I feel sorry for the front line staff too - this is not their doing - but they are in the front of it.)

Wonderful work, NotNigel!

A particular highlight:
I said “ I can’t believe you are questioning my gender identity. Please stop saying that, it’s very offensive “.

to you.

Well done! Very well done. And thank you.

He went to reception to look up a number and said to his two female colleagues ( who were trying not to snigger ) “ For fucks sake, now she’s telling me she’s trans

Thus perfectly illustrating that they know fine well the whole policy is nonsense. But they will still enforce it nonetheless, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience men that is.

He said “ We were told in our training that that would never happen, because you would be ashamed of your body”

I found this comment especially worrying. We all know that there are men (and indeed, it's them we fear will take advantage of such policies) who particularly want to be naked around women. That the 'training' has told staff it 'won't happen because people are ashamed of their bodies' is the most disingenuous (do I mean that? Or do I mean deliberately false?) bit of the entire piece.

The policy isn't his fault though, is it? Presumably he's just doing his job!

Awesome. KOKO.

Very well done Nigel.

I increasingly believe that the answer to this is for xx's to stand under the trans umbrella and stroll into the male changing rooms and this is exactly what I shall also do when they roll this out my way.

Thank you for blazing the trail.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Adaline - that's NEVER a good enough reason to treat people badly it CERTAINLY isn't a good enough reason to compromise people's safety.

He went to reception to look up a number and said to his two female colleagues ( who were trying not to snigger ) “ For fucks sake, now she’s telling me she’s trans

Can you imagine the outrage and lawsuit threats if this had been said about a TW?

Bravo OP.

LOL!

The policy isn't his fault though, is it? Presumably he's just doing his job!

Correct, but NotNigel (who is a customer) spoke with the manager, and it is the manager's job to deal professionally with customers and changes affecting them.

Hopefully, the manager will have a think about this, and recognise the ridiculousness of the situation, and provide feedback up the chain to their own managers about how customers, the public, feel about these changes.

For fucks sake, now she’s telling me she’s trans

Do you think the policy was "sensitively explained" to you?