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 is amazing how easy it was to subvert the law to their own purposes.
Widely circulate an official looking fraudulent copy of the EA2010 replacing sex as a protected characteristic with gender identity.
Demand your gender identity rights under the false provisions of the fake EA2010 you provided.
It's an old con, but a reliable one.

It is sex and gender reassignment because humans can't change sex. Otherwise it would've been sex reassignment.

The fucking home office has misquoted the law?

Fucking hell.

With schools etc I can see they have followed others/ been stonewalled etc

But the fucking home office? Jesus.

Home Office has link to EA2010 but the statement on there page is:

Sorry should say ‘their’ page!

I've complained.

If I don't receive an apology and if they don't rectify the webpage promptly, I shall be writing to my Tory MP and pointing out that she too is not protected under the Home Office's current policy.

I’ve also written. Shall be using the template from Women’s Place UK to write a few more letters - I have quite a list. Thank you for signposting me to them.

'Stonewall law' = the actual law ignored in favour of something you've made up because you like it better that way.

On my to do list now.
Thank you for the links

I've just had a response from my County Council in response to my message about this. Their diversity statements were a bit confused and recognised sex in some and gender in others including data collection. I wrote:
Organisations are increasingly recognising that information they have been fed from organisations like Stonewall are misleading at best, unlawful at worst, leading to several Councils rolling back on steps to remove women’s single-sex protections particularly in schools. I am delighted to see that Surrey County Council recognises and protects the rights of all its citizens, including trans men and trans women, without diluting the lawful rights of women laid out by the Equality & Human Rights Council to privacy and dignity in single-sex spaces, particularly where they might be vulnerable, for example shelters from domestic or sexual violence, prisons, hospitals and changing rooms.

I would urge the Council to continue to recognise sex as a protected characteristic, and not to conflate it with gender, especially when statistics are important – for example the recording of crimes, health data, equal pay and employment etc.

The Senior PA to the Leader and Deputy Leader just wrote back saying: Thank you for getting in contact. I will make sure the Leader sees this, and will liaise with HR Officers to check if any changes to our policy can be expected.

Please refer councils etc., to the UK Government web site where the law is spelled out:

The following characteristics are protected characteristics—
age;
disability;
gender reassignment;
marriage and civil partnership;
pregnancy and maternity;
race;
religion or belief;
sex;
sexual orientation.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4

In more detail:

Gender reassignment
(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.
(2)A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
(3)In relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment—
(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a transsexual person;
(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to transsexual persons.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7

And:

Sex
In relation to the protected characteristic of sex—
(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman;
(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same sex.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/11

@BlueBooby

The HT now thinks I'm a bigot and homophobe

I'm sorry that happened to you HandsOffMyRights. At least you know you did the right thing.

The HT knows that you have their number, that’s all.

They are dreading the day you are standing at the school gates, arms folded mouthing ‘I TOLD YOU SO’ - and that day will come (and in their heart if hearts they know it).

Thank you everyone! This has inspired me to look in to this and write to some of my own! x

[quote stumbledin]Please refer councils etc., to the UK Government web site where the law is spelled out:

The following characteristics are protected characteristics—
age;
disability;
gender reassignment;
marriage and civil partnership;
pregnancy and maternity;
race;
religion or belief;
sex;
sexual orientation.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4

In more detail:

Gender reassignment
(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.
(2)A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
(3)In relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment—
(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a transsexual person;
(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to transsexual persons.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/7

And:

Sex
In relation to the protected characteristic of sex—
(a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman;
(b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same sex.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/11[/quote]
Not only that but if decisions are taken on the basis of "gender" and not "sex" as per the law, this leaves public bodies open to legal challenge. You can't make a decision based on a law you have decided you like, only on the actual law. The Equality Act is the relevant legislation.

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

It's shocking isn't it? I mean why don't they just quote the law! It's so annoying. Someone must've made the decision to miss out "sex" and add in "gender/gender identity". I've just emailed them to ask how/why the decision was made.

I’ve checked my County Council and they have listed the Protected characteristics correctly, but then found this new policy.

This is the categories that they use for monitoring their equality impact assessments

Groups that this project or service will impact upon:
Group
Positive
Negative
Neutral
Age X - -
Disability X - -
Ethnicity X - -
Gender/Transgender X - -
Marital Status/Civil Partnership - - X
Pregnancy and Maternity X - -
Religion/Belief - - X
Sexual Orientation - - X
Other (carers, literacy, health, rurality, poverty) X - -

This cannot be correct, can it?

@StarintheMorning

I’ve checked my County Council and they have listed the Protected characteristics correctly, but then found this new policy.

This is the categories that they use for monitoring their equality impact assessments

Groups that this project or service will impact upon:
Group
Positive
Negative
Neutral
Age X - -
Disability X - -
Ethnicity X - -
Gender/Transgender X - -
Marital Status/Civil Partnership - - X
Pregnancy and Maternity X - -
Religion/Belief - - X
Sexual Orientation - - X
Other (carers, literacy, health, rurality, poverty) X - -

This cannot be correct, can it?

A lot of that list is wrong. Those are not protected characteristics:

Ethnicity should be race
Gender should be sex
Religion/belief should include non-belief
Transgender should be gender reassignment
Other - none of that should be there

Starinthemorning - and others

Its worth going to the link I gave and work your way through the various provisions, where they give examples.

But this is the best one. Am surprised the Government hasn't been accused of transphobia as they give an example of how as a result of biological sex men and women are different!!

Direct discrimination:

A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.

If the protected characteristic is sex—
(a)less favourable treatment of a woman includes less favourable treatment of her because she is breast-feeding;
(b)in a case where B is a man, no account is to be taken of special treatment afforded to a woman in connection with pregnancy or childbirth.

And yes beargrass you are right, but as we know in over the rainbow land, actual legal facts are an irrelevance.

All these Councils will have amonge their many employees people who specialise if making sure Councils cant be sued, but here they seem to have assumed that everyone has bought into the false reality of transgenderism being the ascendent yardstick.

@Thelnebriati Jeeso, that's unbelievable. I'll complain too.

I checked my council's website, and they have correctly used sex rather than gender, which is great.

Out of interest, I looked up the equality policy on my GP surgery's website, and they had listed gender rather than sex as a protected characteristic.

I wrote them an email challenging this a few weeks ago, and received my reply today. Not only have they corrected this on their website, but, after raising the issue with the CCG, gender has been replaced with sex on all surgery websites across my county.

Well done marplemead.

Great result

HandsOff

My concerns related to these unqualified adults teaching gender ideology as fact, describing homosexuality as 'medical' 🤔 and a whole alphabet soup of terminology.

I'd be interested to know how they do describe homosexuality? Do they mentioned anywhere that it's same-sex attraction?

That's brilliant about the surgeries.

I raised this with mine and just got shrugged shoulders.

I also challenged the out patient department of a hospital I attend and initially they asked what seemed positive questions (via email) and then they just didn't reply.

well done - I've just checked my gp surgery out of interest and they have both - one where the practice provides a comprehensive service to anyone where sex as the protected characteristic and then further down, patients have the right not to be discriminated against on grounds of gender.... hmm I might be writing an email. Especially as it is in the South West where the previously mentioned transwoman is guiding the policy on trans care in hospitals where there appears to be no regard to safeguarding or impact assessments for the care of women in the health service at all.