Can anyone help me complain about this?

[sunflowersandtomatoes]

This is my first post on the Feminism board, but I've been reading you all for years, and have so much respect for you, and now I'm hoping you can help me deal with my first example of gender craziness in the wild. I've NCed for this, sorry about that, I just don't want any of this to be traced back to me.

So I'm doing a course - the first step towards training to be a counsellor. I'm not sure if I will do the subsequent levels. It's a course where you have to do a lot of soul searching, and a lot of it is about getting to know yourself, and talking about your own motivations and barriers and stuff. Interesting, although I find it a bit much sometimes.

A small part of last week's big assignment was to think about whether there was anyone we would find it difficult to listen to or help. I thought, and wrote, carefully, and I came up with this:

"I see gender as a social construct and I don’t believe that someone can change sex, so I don’t believe that transwomen are women. I espouse and defend people’s right to identify however they like, and I would always be respectful of chosen names and pronouns. However, I would find it difficult to listen to a transwoman talking about their struggles with their gender identity, and I don’t agree that affirmation is the best way of helping a young person who experiences gender dysphoria. Ultimately, I just don’t think I could be hugely helpful to someone with those kinds of issues, and I wonder whether that will be a problem in the future."

I think it's respectful and honest, but my tutor chose, in her feedback, to focus exclusively on this paragraph, to the exclusion of the other 1900 words I wrote, and sent me this:

"I acknowledge that you have identified a specific area that you would find it difficult to work with – gender identity. It is good and ethical to identify this so that when you work with clients you have the relevant experience and skill set and are giving them what they need. There is some interesting material on different websites around this subject: Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids and Stonewall, to name a few, which may broaden your understanding and research around this. It is worth mentioning here that gender identity is one of the nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 and as such it is unlawful to discriminate against someone on the grounds of their gender identity just as it would be to discriminate against race, religion or disability to name three others on the list."

I am so angered by this, which is why I'm finding it difficult to respond! I am very well read on the subject (although not as well read as some of you), and I find her suggestion that I should read those bullshit websites (again) to "broaden my understanding" very fucking insulting. It's also not her place to lecture me. If she wants to recommend literature about counselling, I'll be happy to hear it, but anything else (gender issues, the war in Ukraine, what colours suit me best, how to raise my children) just isn't in her remit. And thirdly, what, is she suggesting I might also be a racist, because I've said that men can't be women? It feels like another example of unthinking people talking shit about something they haven't really thought about, and it's SO damaging.

Honestly, I know a lot of you have faced much bigger injustices around this issue, and I salute you. Any advice you can give me about how to respond (complain, if we're honest) would help me to take the heat out of it. Or maybe you think I should just leave it - happy to hear that too.

Thanks for reading.

No, we do get it. We get it from a woman's point of view.
Bloody hell 😂
Since when do all women have the same point of view?!
Forgot we're supposed to be a hive mind and all think the same. 🙄

Counselling service does support transwomen - some individual counsellors do not. They refer on.

Thats the discrimination right there. Individual counsellors refusing all trans women and the charity is enabling them. Sorry but I could not work there. How is that any different from individual counsellors referring on all Muslims or all Asian people? Ethically and morally bankrupt.

Depends on which service they were trying to access. We tend to ask the extant client group, and be guided by them - as we do when approached by transwomen. We don't have a blanket position on transmen because we have don't have a majority response. We had a 100% negative response to transwomen asking to access female single sex services, counselling and residential.

Our partner organisations who provide for men do much the same and their service users make similar decisions. They have never turned away a transwoman, or any transman who asked to use their services rather than women's services - though they have ended support based on an individual's behaviour.

I see you've chosen to ignore my post above about compulsion, which is what you seem to be suggesting.

The majority of people don't share your gender ideology beliefs. Some therapists do, a great many don't and an increasing number are feeling able to speak out about it. Transpeople will be referred to those who do. Why not train as a therapist, all those of you so agitated about this? I hear it can be pretty lucrative and you seem to think there's a market.

So, you won't open your ears and listen, or read anything offered?

OK! Don't be sorry.

And talking about strawmen... who but you has brought up ethnicity? That is different and is so is dealt with differently. According to the EA2010 and other legislation.

@SamphirethePogoingStickerist
And judicious use of the referral system is essential.

Judicious use explicitly means use of sound judgement when making a decision. There is nothing sound about individual counsellors abusing the referral system to discriminate against an entire class of people, in this case to always and without exception refer on transwomen because they are trans.

Just a reminder that you're on the FWR board, internationally-famous as a centre of UK GC opinion and information and, according to some, the reason why the UK hasn't fallen for gender woo.

Maybe suggest your tutor should read up a bit more on the Equalities Act 2010 as Gender identity isn’t a protected characteristic

Saying that someone cannot change sex is a biological fact.

Saying I don’t agree that affirmation is the best way of helping a young person who experiences gender dysphoria is perfectly valid given the number who decide to de transition. Only they have done permanent damage to their bodies by this stage.

No surgeon after one appointment would not amputate an adults healthy limb just because someone told them they had Body Identity Dysphoria.
Why do Mermaids and Stonewall advocate for puberty blockers in children after one appointment.

The work was to say what I would struggle with.
Not to be then told I need to do more work to change my beliefs.

Beliefs are a protected characteristic in the Equalities Act 2010

would amputate

Why not train as a therapist, all those of you so agitated about this? I hear it can be pretty lucrative and you seem to think there's a market.

I've just looked back at our stats. Not in Brighton or London so our numbers reflect that.

We have had a total of 3 trans individuals access our services this year. Many more would be considered 'non binary' I think. All have been offered, and accepted a wide range of services and all have been supported into independent living, jobs etc. As they do often send us letters, are always asked to reflect upon the services, we do know that they are happy. It's not as if we fail them.

You can say that as often as you like. You will still be misrepresenting the issues - and ill still be wrong!

Ethnicity was first brought up in the OP:
”It is worth mentioning here that gender identity is one of the nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 and as such it is unlawful to discriminate against someone on the grounds of their gender identity just as it would be to discriminate against race, religion or disability to name three others on the list."

It is this passage from the tutors feedback that I have been discussing with you in regards to discrimination.

@Pluvia
The majority of people don't share your gender ideology beliefs. Some therapists do, a great many don't and an increasing number are feeling able to speak out about it. Transpeople will be referred to those who do.

You don’t have to share beliefs to respect them in others. Counselling is at root mental healthcare. Whether you as a professional provide or refuse a person needed mental healthcare shouldn’t be governed by whether or not you hold the same personal beliefs as your patient. It’s a basic ethical concept.

Oh! I see, yes, that is exactly the same isn't it? OP says see EA2010 and I say see EA2010 and you say "but what about Muslim people. Morally bankrupt"

It’s a basic ethical concept.

Yes, and is enshrined in the ethical need to refer not abandon.

You seem to imagine that all therapists work in a vacuum.

I remember when in mental health care someone would say that they were the Pope or Joan of arc or the Queen, we would say that we know that’s what you believe but it might cause you trouble in the real world if you insist that others have to believe what you believe…

It would be equally ridiculous if i as a doctor rejected all Christian patients as their god is their doctor.

If you were a doctor who was against abortion, you would be perfectly entitled to say that you couldn't help a woman requesting one, and referring her elsewhere.

I don't see why this is so different.

Trying to read more deeply, it seems as though the OPs tutor has bought the TWAW/Stonewall ideology wholesale without thinking, and doesn't seem to know the law.