Equality and Diversity — sex no longer a protected characteristic

[Shockedandbefuddled]

I know I was late to the party and this has been mentioned elsewhere but I hadn’t realised sex had already been scrapped as a protected characteristic.

Looked at my local council and the Home Office and both have replaced sex with gender. Home Office is a Stonewall top employer.

It’s worse than I thought.

It’s bad isn’t it. How is this happening? I’m going to challenge my council over this too.

It hasn’t been scrapped as a protected characteristic. They are using stonewall law rather than the actual law. Write & tell them

I han't realised the Home Office had done it! But my council was the same. I rang them and informed them of their mistake and it was immediately changed to Sex (Gender) which was a bit half hearted, but better than nothing.

I shall be writing to a number of organisations this weekend.

I hadn’t understood how far biology was already being erased.

Kit19 - my wording was clumsy. I know it’s legally protected but it seems I’m in a minority if even government departments don’t acknowledge it.

It’s every bloody organisation that I look at - private and public - how did this happen?

Diversity training.

I expect they have been told that the word Gender is more Inclusive than the word Sex or some such guff. It doesn't say much for the organisations involved that they didn't bother to actually check what the Equality Act has as protected characteristics, though and just accepted what they were told by the 'experts'

its dystopian isnt it Shocked

they've 100% been stonewalled and told gender is right rather than sex plus I think there is a cultural squeamish in the UK about using the word sex. You can almost hear people sniggering "oooooh they said sex"

Stonewall Law isn’t it? (Ie not true). When you see it, speak to them and point it out.

Point out the mistake anywhere you see it. They should change it to comply with THE actual law, not Stonewall law.

Can I let you know that the doctors regulatory body allows you to search for a doctors registration status by gender but not by sex. I am a doctor so feel unable to push it too far but have corresponded with them pointing out many patients would want to Know the sex of their doctor. Please could you guys contact them to raise the issue too.

Oh dear god.

My council has Sex and Gender reassignment.
They had gone fuzzy but changed back during the last push that FPFW or WPUK had done on Twitter.

If you're not on Twitter, pm me your local council and I can add them to the thread.

Yeh, I had to write to my local council to pull them up on this.

There are some template letters on womansplaceuk.org/

Just checked and they've reverted back to gender.

Today 08:02Shockedandbefuddled said.....

"It’s every bloody organisation that I look at - private and public - how did this happen?"

Do you remember the first time you heard about intersectionality. You thought, what a great idea! You were inside the tent with all the alphabet crowd pissing out on mostly white male conservatives. What wasn't to like?
Well what wasn't to like was that this lead to bullying of practically every major organisation, governmental(including right-wing ones that were by their nature against this) charities, commercial organisations ect were bullied into compliance as they didn't want to be outside the tent getting called a racist/sexist/transphobe (depending on what group had taken offence that day) by the left.
The disaster happened when you found yourself at odds with a fellow alphabet group that for whatever reason were placed higher on the podium in the victim olympics. The fact that you are right and everyone else in the tent was wrong unfortunately counts for nothing and now you are outside the tent getting pissed on too.
In a few years when, please God, people wake up from this lunacy and you find yourselves being invited back into the tent, take a minute to remember who was shitting all over you, doxxing you and your family and trying to get you sacked.

Tell them they can't just change an Act of Parliament to suit themselves! The Equality Act 2010 came into being in 2010. It has not been changed. No, it hasn't been 'updated' (the clue is in the numbers in the title of the Act).

They are wilfully misrepresenting the law of the land and undermining Parliament to suit themselves. Do they also think that 70 isn't the top speed limit for cars on motorways because their car is really fast and they like driving it fast? It's nonsense.

How would I know if they have replaced sex with gender?

Where should I look?

The Women And Equalities Committee is at it as well, its changed the protected characteristic of 'gender reassignment' to 'gender identity'.

committees.parliament.uk/committee/328/women-and-equalities-committee/role/

Email: [email protected]

Address:
Women and Equalities Committee
Committee Office
House of Commons
Palace of Westminster
SW1A 0AA

The Women And Equalities Committee is at it as well, its changed the protected characteristic of 'gender reassignment' to 'gender identity'.

Unbelievable.
When this keeps happening in government institutions that should bloody well know the law, one has to assume that it's deliberate, and not an error or the result of some dodgy training delivered by Stonewall or whoever.

And so the question is - who in Whitehall is doing this?

The Equality Act 2010 was established through an Act of Parliament and it takes another Act of Parliament to change its wording. Councils are therefore misrepresenting the law if they do not list the protected characteristics as set up in the Equality Act and exactly as written there. So by law they must have Sex not Gender, not Sex/Gender, not Sex (Gender), not Sex and Gender or anything else they might think of. If they do not do this, they may well be failing in their public sector equality duty.

Of course, councils can add characteristics they wish to also focus on, in addition to the nine mandated in law. Some councils focus on economic disadvantage (it may be listed as "poverty" or "class" for instance.)

I challenged mine, which had Sex/Gender and was told that they had done this to "be more inclusive". When I advised them that the council couldn't just decide to rewrite a law, they told me to contact the EHRC and claimed they had advised the change.

So I did. And the EHRC (Scotland office) told me that they did not and would not advise any council to change the wording of a law as that would lead to illegal practices. Which I told my council. And they then changed at least the list of protected characteristics back to reflecting the law.

Gender has, of course, been written into all of their written policies, but that's the next step in the fight.

Our school has an assembly today on UNCRC Article two today which is here:

“1. States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status.

1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, legal guardians, or family members.“

Guess what was missed off this list of characteristics and what was added?

Did anyone not say anything? Kids will believe this.

It was PowerPoint slides for home learning. Race and colour was missing too. The followup was a link to ‘The flamingo who didn’t want to be pink’. Pretty much did a swerve of the whole thing and had a look at the actual UNCRC instead.

Several instances of people on this board checking their local councils, letting them know they had it wrong, and the guidance subsequently being changed.