New EHRC guidance for schools

[emzvalentine]

The EHRC has produced new guidance for transitioning pupils in Scottish schools, with English guidance to follow shortly.

Despite the recent calls for statutory codes for implementing the exceptions in the Equality Act, the EHRC has, once again, repeated a policy that fails to take into account the needs of girls, and defers to the trans organisations.

Details and link to the guidance document are on this thread:
twitter.com/VicM2019/status/1166808190983577608

Thanks for that. Absolutely terrible. It's the old guidelines all over again, zero consideration for the rights and needs of girls. Also seriously misrepresenting the EqA. And completely ignores the Children's Rights Impact Assessment from Women and Girls in Scotland.

Is this statutory guidance?

Why are you posting this?

This should not be posted, it could compromise the process for the groups that have been sent this guidance in Scotland. The post itself says only a few groups were sent it, this is not helpful.

So yup, a lot of women are working very hard to change these policies, and leaking guidance sent to only a few groups for feedback, with no knowledge at all of how that leak itself, or how it has been framed, will impact these groups, particularly if only one or two groups are making these points, is threatening their work, and potentially undermining everything they have done to build the trust needed for organisations like the EHRC to consult them on this. Because of this leak any groups making these points may never be consulted with again. Anyone who wants to support such groups, please don't engage in undermining them like this.

AFAIK the EHRC has not consulted with women's groups on this.

Where did the document come from then? That's clearly not true, given what's been posted already.

It could have come from a TRA group? (Not seen the tweets)

Whoever posted this here & on twitter clearly hasn’t thought through the implications this will have on those who are working on it. If the OP is the same person who posted this on twitter, they’d do the decent thing & delete both threads.

What implications? The EHRC hasn't consulted any women's groups in Scotland. So they cannot be held responsible for a leak.

And you know that how?

The tweets aren't by a TRA. I don't think they'd have leaked it because they would want it to go through as quietly as possible without anyone noticing how the EA is being misrepresented.

If the EHRC has sent this the draft out for feedback btw, it will also have been sent to schools, teachers, trans rights organisations, lawyers, children's rights organisations etc etc. That would mean the number of possible leakers is huge.

As for trust - if the EHRC had built up any kind of relationship with women's rights groups, they would have consulted with them before drawing up guidelines that once again ignore the needs and rights of girls. Sending this draft out for feedback now is not a consultation.

The effect this will have - even just the suspicion of where the leak has come from will slam shut doors that have taken months to open up. If this is what the OP here & on twitter is hoping to achieve, then that's a pretty shitty thing to do. If it's not what they're looking to do, then I'd suggest they delete this & the twitter thread.

Alternatively, women’s groups have not been consulted, there is no trust in them and by leaking it EHRC failures are being made public. Deleting it could simply play into the hands of those who want this sneaked in without notice.

It’s already been stated that this will undermine & threaten work being done. This isn’t ‘sneaking’ through without notice if there are groups, undermined by this, working on it.

The horses have bolted now anyway. Deleting at this point will not help dispel any suspicion that may befall all of those that the EHRC may have sent this to for feedback.

And given that women's rights organisations are likely not going to be complimentary about this, it's completely naive to think the EHRC would only have asked women's rights organisations to look over the draft. There's going to be quite a few more orgs, groups and individuals involved. Having seen now how bad these guidelines are again, I'm not surprised someone wanted to bring this to much wider attention.

It is if the wider public don’t know. I get you point to some extent but if the source of the leak is not known it may be nothing to do with women’s groups and everything to do with someone unhappy in some other organisation (possibly one that is otherwise woke). But in the context of dodgy deals being done behind closed doors to deprive women of their rights, I am twitchy of any suggestions that we should not known stuff.

Me too Birdfoottrefoil. Having seen my friend involved in a policy change in the NHS which involved publishing draft proposals to the affected population for feedback, then meeting over a thousand individuals and umpteen stakeholder groups and politicians in countless public (and publicised) meetings, I know which approach I prefer.

So screw those whose work is undermined by this? Got it.

I didn't leak it. Deleting at this point will not undo the leak. That is the point of a leak. Whatever was contained is now no longer.

And quite frankly,

a) the EHRC should be ashamed of producing these guidelines, they could do with a whole lot of public shaming for being base enough to write this and

b) if a leak by an unknown means that the EHRC (who inexplicably repeated the mistakes from the previous guidelines that a number of excellent, publicly available and well publicised critiques highlighted) will ignore criticism of their guidelines, then they were never earnest about working with women's rights groups to begin with.

This has been shared with women's groups, that much I can say, and it has only been shared with a very small number of groups in Scotland which the leaker has said themselves in that thread, and this leak may well impact the trust that the EHRC has shown to who they have sent this to, and may mean that groups that provide important challenge to the EHRC are not trusted to be involved again, and possibly will no longer be engaged with throughout this process. As such, this leak potentially undermines the very hard work undertaken by any affected groups, as well as the relationships these groups have worked very hard to build. Only women's groups challenging this guidance would be making the points made in that thread, and as we all know most groups - be they women's, children's orgs or LGBT groups - will not actually challenge this guidance, so the EHRC may well believe that it can easily pinpoint the likely source of the leak, and as I say, may choose to longer engage with them.

The person who shared this has done a massive disservice to those groups and the work they do, as are those defending it. This should be deleted to minimise the damage. If it isn't, then it is clear that the poster really could not give a crap about the impact this has on those doing the hard graft of challenging this guidance, and those aren't motives I think anyone should give any airing to.

Final point: when anyone comes across anything like this, i.e. anything confidential that has even potentially gone to GC women's groups for feedback/where GC women's groups can have some kind of influence, understand that you have NO IDEA how it will affect those groups if you decide to leak it, and therefore if you do decide to leak it you are knowingly making a decision that may well have an adverse impact on the groups involved and on the process itself. This is inarguable. So just be clear that is what you are doing if you choose to do something like this, and it is what you are actually defending if you defend leaks like this.

So, let me get this clear: are women being told to keep their gobs shut and avert their eyes, yet again? In case things turn out worse for us? (And they will, if we fail to keep our gobs shut and our eyes averted. Men will make sure of that.)

I do understand what pp are saying about trust and leaks but I'm so uncomfortable with damming OP (of twitter as well) - these type of policies HAVE been sneaked through and without the tenacity of women these would have been pushed through. Women are nervous, scared and down right pissed off and we all want our say.