Another legal attack on the Equality Act

[christinarossetti19]

www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/gender-fluid-non-binary-workers-protected-under-equality-act-landmark-ruling-shows?utm_source

Of course this employee shouldn't have been subjected to abusive jokes and insults, but equally the organisation should have dealt with this under harassment policies.

Instead, the Equality Act has been interpreted in Employment Law to include non-binary and gender fluid because even the govt agrees that 'gender is a spectrum'.

Barrister is Robin Moira White, a transgender person.

It’s regrettable that JLR seem to have caved in and say they will improve - rather than appealing.

Why any tribunal would accept that non-binary or gender fluid is covered by gender reassignment is beyond me - since the Equality Act specifies it in terms of changing ones attributes of sex - not gender identity.

It should have been appealed. At least being merely a tribunal it doesn’t set legal precedent (as far as I am aware).

It's fairly meaningless really.

I don't get the bit about awarding higher compensation "because of respondent’s complete failure to comply with the Acas Code of Practice in relation to the claimant’s grievance about short-term measures to assist her transitioning,”

There isn't "a transition", as such, is there? Do they think the claimant is undergoing some sort of process that has any kind of end point? That's not my understanding of gender fluid and non binary, but maybe I have the wrong idea.

It is only the bottom end of an Employment tribunal so will not form any precedent. You have to take the point of law through the court system for that. It is just a judgement on a case, that the employer just doesn't think it financially worthwhile to pursue it any further through the legal system.

Unfortunately, I don't think it is fairly meaningless.

It's another misuse of the Equality Act to extend its protections to men.

I don’t understand why this wouldn’t be covered by plain old sex discrimination law. A woman could wear trousers to work some days and a skirt on others, make-up some days and not on others and no one would think twice about it - so why shouldn’t a man do the same?

Scout2016 this is one of the problems stemming from the wording of the 2010 Act - it says "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."

Within gender ideology, 'attributes of sex' has come to include men wearing a dress, make-ups, heels etc.

The terms non-binary and gender fluid are, I would say, almost the opposite to gender reassignment (if you're non-binary or flit between different gender identities, what on earth to you transition from and to), which did in the 2010 EA acknowledge the reality of there being two sexes.

But ten years of gender ideology has made us lose sight of that.

More quiet backdoorism?

This is a male wearing female clothing at work. The minutae of preferred identity label is neither here nor there and the judge hasn't awarded damages on the basis of a label. The failure to deal with insults and abuse by the employer is the reason for the damages and rightly so.

This is men not being happy working with their peers who are wearing unapproved clothing.

Yes.

Of course this employee shouldn't have been subjected to abusive jokes and insults, but equally the organisation should have dealt with this under harassment policies.

Agreed. Of course such behaviour shouldn't happen. But..as usual this has been gone about the wrong way.

Robin Moira White posts on FWR sometimes.
Lots of non-binary people do consider themselves to have transitioned to this gender identity (some wear binders, change name etc) so I don't see in those cases why it's really any different from mtf or ftm gender reassignment.

The issue, as always, is in the definitions used around "gender" and what constitutes 'living as a woman/ man' etc.

There are supposed to be hundreds of genders/ gender identities, so i don't see why you can't transition between them if you accept you can transition from mtf etc.

It's muddled and I think this shows it.

Btw therexs an existing thread on it here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4025528-Non-binary-people-are-now-protected-from-discrimination-under-the-UK-Equality-Act

DeaconBoo ah thanks I hadn't seen that thread. I'll have a look.

The issue is the capture gender ideologists have had since 2010. The EA explicitly references 'reassigning the person's sex'. Obviously from one sex to the other as there are only two.

The EA also explicitly states that reassignment refers to 'reassigning the person's sex to changing physiological or other attributes of sex'. Your name, your clothes, your accessories, your beliefs about yourself clearly aren't attributes of sex.

The EA wasn't particularly confusing in 2010 tbh. The fact that there are two biological sexes and that transitioning must logically involve being one sex and changing attributes of your sexed body (and social manifestations) to better fit the sex that you chose to identify as isn't confusing.

that transitioning must logically involve being one sex and changing attributes of your sexed body (and social manifestations) to better fit the sex that you chose to identify as isn't confusing

I mean, you'd think, right?
But are you saying this was intended to mean genital surgery only? Which I think is dodgy ground. Would a double mastectomy count? What about binding? What even is a presentation that is neither feminine nor masculine - fairly limited, if you can associate lots of styles with one or the other, I'd say!

Ultimately your sex is your chromosomes and i don't think anyone intended to say that that's the only attribute of sex one can change to count as gender reassignment. But what does?

Earlier thread on this here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4025528-Non-binary-people-are-now-protected-from-discrimination-under-the-UK-Equality-Act

Its whether an employment tribunal can set a precedent for how UK law is intrepreted.

I think someone said this is the same issue the Maya Forstater is crowdfunding for.

I just wonder who on earth came up with the wording for the EA and thought the vagueness was going to be fine.

It f*#king well isn't fine

The Claimant was a longstanding engineer working in Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) plant. In 2017, Ms Taylor identified as gender fluid / non-binary, from which time she usually dressed in women’s clothing

Usually dressed in the opposite sex clothing. So the label is irrelevant really. The bullying was of a male in female clothing, not a male in androgynous clothes, as no-one would notice. The lawyers argument over labels is irrelevant. An enbie not dressing as the opposite sex won't be in this situation as you can't anything different to normal people in their every day clothes. this is about men bullying men, not about fluid or non binary .

@DeaconBoo

that transitioning must logically involve being one sex and changing attributes of your sexed body (and social manifestations) to better fit the sex that you chose to identify as isn't confusing

I mean, you'd think, right?
But are you saying this was intended to mean genital surgery only? Which I think is dodgy ground. Would a double mastectomy count? What about binding? What even is a presentation that is neither feminine nor masculine - fairly limited, if you can associate lots of styles with one or the other, I'd say!

Ultimately your sex is your chromosomes and i don't think anyone intended to say that that's the only attribute of sex one can change to count as gender reassignment. But what does?

In the pre-GRA days of 2010, there was a common understanding that 'gender reassignment' - sometimes still referred to as a 'sex change' - meant people who experienced some degree of dysmorphia or dysphoria or otherwise extreme discomfort with their sexed body and took steps to change it to be less like its birth sex and more like the opposite sex.

So hormones, possible mastectomies, possible genital surgery for FtM, hormones, possible implants and possible genital surgery for MtF.

This done in the context of the medical/psychiatric system which provided some sort of support and monitoring.

Expected to directly affect about 5,000 people.

@DeaconBoo

Robin Moira White posts on FWR sometimes. Lots of non-binary people do consider themselves to have transitioned to this gender identity (some wear binders, change name etc) so I don't see in those cases why it's really any different from mtf or ftm gender reassignment.

The issue, as always, is in the definitions used around "gender" and what constitutes 'living as a woman/ man' etc.

There are supposed to be hundreds of genders/ gender identities, so i don't see why you can't transition between them if you accept you can transition from mtf etc.

It's muddled and I think this shows it.

Good Evening.

Virtually all posts on this thread misinterpret Or misstate the tribunal’s findings. On the novel legal point these look back to the statements made in parliament by the then Solicitor-General, Vera Baird, when piloting the Equality Act through the Commons In 2009. The relevant Hansard extracts were quoted to And considered by the tribunal.

A short-form note of the relevant part of the oral judgment given by the tribunal on 17 September (made by a junior member of my Chambers) appears on Chambers’ (Old Square) website - look in the ‘news’ section.

The full reasons produced by the tribunal will be available in a few weeks. These will not only set out the tribunal’s consideration of the novel point of law about gender fluid / non-binary individuals but will also set out (at length) what happened in the workplace.

Given that the remedy hearing is yet to be held, it is Professionally inappropriate for me to engage in discussion of the case until after then, so forgive me if I do not respond to questions. But I hope these signposts to what is now available and will become available are helpful.

Thanks Robin, always best to look at the actual documentation where possible rather than relying on media interpretation!

Ignore me if you feel it's inappropriate to answer this but as you're on the thread Robin, I see you said this " I see no reason why this ruling should not extend to other complex gender identities such as a-gender and gender queer.”"

Could you settle for me whether a-gender means someone who feels they have no gender, or (as a trans man on here suggested but wasn't sure) "more like dysphoria but not wanting to be the other sex, just kind of wanting to be not anything"? Or something else?

@DeaconBoo

Ignore me if you feel it's inappropriate to answer this but as you're on the thread Robin, I see you said this " I see no reason why this ruling should not extend to other complex gender identities such as a-gender and gender queer.”"

Could you settle for me whether a-gender means someone who feels they have no gender, or (as a trans man on here suggested but wasn't sure) "more like dysphoria but not wanting to be the other sex, just kind of wanting to be not anything"? Or something else?

That seems to be a perfectly adequate description of A-gender.

Robin

Thanks, that's what I would assume, but never good to assume!

Which has precisely nothing to do with the original terminology of the Equality Act.

In 2010, the definitions of gender reassignment were squarely linked to sex ie routed in biological reality of there being two sexes. Hence, the widely understood if inaccurate usage of 'sex change' at the time.

Any 'novel part of law about gender binary and gender fluid individuals' runs the risk of undermining the reality of there being two sexes.

Given that the case is ongoing, I think it's quite unprofessional of a legal representative to be commenting on it in a public domain tbh./ It's almost as if you have to suppress any viewpoint that identifies the attack on women's legal rights which seems to be the primary purpose of this obsession with gender ideology.