Please help me draft a response to my company's new stance on toilets

[Flamingo49]

The company I work for has just produced a "Commitment to Trans Equality" document, 99% of which I wholeheartedly agree with. We then come to the sticky issue of toilets, where the doc says "It is up to you to decide which gender toilet you wish to use" and then "The following are examples of unacceptable behaviour: objecting when a trans employee uses the toilet facilities of their affirmed gender".

I feel so annoyed and frustrated by this. Is it really "unacceptable behaviour" to open up a debate about why single sex spaces are so important for women? I feel like this has been written without any acknowledgement or appreciation of the women who have their own adverse life experiences and might find it incredibly threatening to find someone who looks and sounds like a man (regardless of how they identify), in what was a safe single sex space. I say this in the context of women historically being the ones to have to move aside and accommodate the feelings of others, to dismiss their own feelings of discomfort in order to placate others. I really struggle to put my feelings into words though. Can I have some help with how to respond? I work in a very forward thinking, socially inclusive environment and I don't think any challenge will go down well.

Tell them to please provide a clear definition on how to know when a person is a transwoman and when a man?

Then I would blatantly walk into the mens every single time just to fluff my hair.

I'd be asking them to clarify that the toilets are now in fact gender segregated rather than sex, and if so where those people without a gender should relieve themselves.

Its illegal. The Workplace (health safety and welfare) regulations 1992 make it a legal requirement for sufficient and separate toilet and changing facilities to be provided for men and women, unless they are a single self contained room intended for use by one person at a time.
Breach of these regs is a criminal offence with up to 2 years in prison and an unlimited fine.

A trans person without a GRC is legally their birth sex, however they identify. If your employer is permitting transpersons without a GRC to use the facilities intended for the opposite sex they are in criminal breach of the regulations. The person responsible ( and potentially going to prison) will usually be the person in overall charge of the business. So whoever came up with this policy will have to explain to the overall boss why it is necessary for them to risk being in criminal breach of the Workplace Regs.

Its perfectly acceptable to provide gender neutral facilities as long as its in addition to and not replacing sufficient single sex facilities.

Perhaps point this out and also say you will feel obliged to also bring it to the attention of the person in overall charge of the business (and the one in the firing line if the HSE finds that there has been a breach of the Regs) if you don't get anywhere?

If you don't get anywhere just dob them in to the HSE. You or anyone can do it anonymously.

Good luck

Unacceptable behaviour: having sex based needs and not quietly subjugating them to the needs of this specific group.

What would they like employees to do who for reasons of disability, faith, culture or trauma may be unable to access a mixed sex space? Obviously the company won't be putting their employees in the position of being forced to disclose highly sensitive and possibly traumatising information in order to be able to go to the loo?

What arrangements will they making for time needed/breaks for women employees who may need to go off site to use the toilet or change their clothes?

Obviously they have carefully taken advice and training in designing this policy - which women's organisations have they taken advice and training from in ensuring that women's sex based needs are not infringed in a way that may cause them issues?

Women having sex based needs is not unacceptable behaviour, and they need to find the line between transphobia and gynephobia. Women aren't second class citizens.

they will be in breach of the H&S regulations which specifies single sex toilets to be provided for men and women. There was a court case a few years ago where a transitioning person wanted to use the ladies toilets and (I think it was the Post Office, but I can't find the details now) and the female employees objected and won.

I would make the point that no female employee should ever have to disclose a rape or trauma to enable them to have their legal right to single sex facilities and also point out that it leaves them open to a discrimination claim from ladies of particular religious beliefs.

This article may also be helpful. There are a number of threads on here with help on tackling this issue but a key point to remember is that despite popular misconception, the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment does not automatically confer rights to access spaces of the opposite sex. It protects trans people against discrimination when compared with other male people (in a transwoman's case) but it does not prevent them from being lawfully excluded from single sex female spaces.

here are the specific examples of exceptions where it is lawful to discriminate against people on the basis of their sex ie. exclude male people from a female space or service.

good luck, tread carefully.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7

womansplaceuk.org/2020/02/29/women-have-right-single-sex-toilets/

www.hse.gov.uk/contact/faqs/toilets.htm

As sex is a protected characteristic as part of the EA2010, ask them where the womens toilets will be located.

Tbh, I would turn to Fair Play for Women for help, as I'm sure they've approached employers for women in this position before.

This is going to have to go to court under employment law. Otherwise women who cannot subjugate their own faith/disability/trauma/insert other sex based need here to the better interest of someone of the opposite sex will just be driven out of the workplace.

You lot are completely amazing. Thank you thank you thank you. Feeling a little less alone now.

Issues like this make me so cross for the women who have to put up with them from 'progressive' organisations.

Could you ask them where the single SEX toilets will be, if they are going for single gender ie mixed sex when trans employees are using them?

I am not suggesting that trans employee's needs (wants?) shouldn't be accommodated, but if they want equality, then women who want single SEX toilets should also be heard.

ANd how are they determining affirmed gender? Is it just based on presentation in which case sanluca's question is a good one.

I think they will argue that there are individual disabled cubicles that women (or anyone) can use. But reading the responses here it sounds like they can't get away with that?

Ask them how they intend to avoid the issues that have been occurring at the home office?

Frankly if there are disabled cubicles available for women to use who cannot access mixed sex facilities then that may be a possible alternative, but will of course depend on whether this disadvantages disabled employees.

There is also the interesting question that it has been discussed before that trans advocacy groups tend to say it is not acceptable to ask a trans person to use a disabled cubicle because of the 'stigma' this involves. So is that the same for women employees? (Disabled employees may want input on that too.) And doesn't that 'out' women who for whatever reason cannot access mixed sex spaces in a way that a) could be seen as a disclosure of something they should not have to share in the workplace or b) may from the wording you've quoted OP, be perceived as an indicator of an unacceptably behaving woman causing social consequences?

I doubt the company has really thought about how complicated this is.

Also how many trans employees are effected to how many women employees? What is the proportional effect in deciding who should be using a single room cubicle?

If it's going to be a case of twenty plus women now needing to share one disabled loo with disabled employees has queuing time etc been thought of?

If they're behind this then they need to invest in some single room occupancy gender neutral/mixed sex toilets in addition to the current provision.

The health and safety law referred to provides minimum quotas for male and female provision. I would hazard a guess that the number of disabled cubicles won't meet that requirement (something like 4 for every 20 women).

The 1992 law is exactly the legislation that you should refer to but they may also push back on the definition of single sex. For this you should refer to the equality act and the additional guidance from EHRC.

"In UK law, ‘sex’ is understood as binary, with a person’s legal sex being determined by what is recorded on their birth certificate. A trans person can change their legal sex by obtaining a GRC. A trans person who does not have a GRC retains the sex recorded on their birth certificate for legal purposes"

There are additional notes to the equality act that also make clear that toilets and changing rooms
are exactly what they had it mind for single sex spaces (in case they argue it is only for things like shelters/refuges).

Self ID is not the law and employers should not be putting in policies to that effect.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/our-statement-sex-and-gender-reassignment-legal-protections-and-language

www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/womens-right-work-toilet-bathroom-victorian-london-wwi-factory-protest

Looks like we're rolling back to the Victorian era.

Is this a public sector employer? Then they need to look at an Equalities impact assessment, in particular the impact on women, religious minorities and the disabled.

Proposing that up to 50% (maybe more) of the workforce start using the disabled cubicles because they made all the communal ones mixed sex is not okay for those colleagues that rely on that provision.

I suppose the first basic question to ask is "has an impact assessment been considered here?"

They're under no obligation to do one but its generally considered a good practice way of making sure new actions don't accidentally mess up the Equality Act obligations and lay them open to claims under employment law.

Sorry, cross post with Cherry

Are they going to put sanitary waste bins in all the cubicles in the men's toilets? Cos some trans men might have periods.

Did they happen to say what the consequences would be for anyone who committed the “unacceptable behaviour” of objecting to having a member of the opposite sex in your toilet?

Good luck. Due to return to work next week and I’m terrified that I will have to explain my trauma if the loos are mixed sex.

An updated trans policy has just come out at my workplace this morning. It says that anyone who does not want to share toilets should be directed to disabled or accessible toilets, and be given access to awareness training.

Public sector organisation, it says an equality impact assessment has been done but I can't find it on our intranet and I'm too cowardly to ask for it.

Thoroughly depressing.

Awareness training is not going to overcome a history of rape, a disability or change a faith and culture, is it?

Basically 'awareness training' means, 'put other people first - yes, those people who do not give a crap about you in turn'.

Fuck that.

HR need to be reminded that this is creating a hostile environment to vulnerable, protected groups, and that no woman should be forced to disclose vulnerable, personal or traumatising information because they have personally been unable to put a transwoman's needs before their own. This is not merely a choice.

Also suggest to HR they imagine saying, equally, to transwomen, "use the disabled loos" and "access awareness training" if they have a problem?

They wouldn't dare!

So how do HR explain their whopping great huge sex based inequality of process and care for employees there?

Michelle, thanks for replying to me and you are, as always, 100% correct. I'm absolutely fuming, although I've been expecting this.

It's got the fingerprints of SW all over it, and I've seen similar mealy-mouthed, self-contradictory garbled language over other policies that people have posted on here. And of course yes - we are a SW champion as an employer.

Please give me the strength to ask for the equality impact assessment. Especially as I am in an area with a high Muslim population, and I really can't see my Muslim women fellow employees being very happy with this.

I'm absolutely raging.

Plus they have got some of the legal aspects wrong. I'm just an employee, this has come from HR - how can they get this so wrong?