Transwoman wins employment discrimination case against NHS for being treated differently from women in changing room

[Clymene]

I thought there was a thread on this but I can't find it. Maybe it was deleted? I shall choose my words very carefully.

The court found that the unnamed employee had been discriminated against because they were asked questions that a woman would not have been about whether they had been undressed in the communal women's changing area.

Judge Davies said: 'A concern about the woman's state of undress in the changing rooms was likely to be connected with the fact that she is a transgender woman.
'This was a communal changing room with a shower cubicle. It did not seem to the Tribunal likely that there would have been a concern about a cisgender woman in a state of undress while changing in such a changing room.
'The Tribunal therefore concluded that [the manager] asked the questions because of a concern that the woman as a transgender woman might be in a state of undress in the female changing room.
There were also several serious allegations against several female co-workers but while the Trust accepts these incidents happened, no perpetrators were ever identified.

There were a number of other complaints but they were dismissed by the Court.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11027471/Trans-NHS-worker-wins-discrimination-case-confronted-underwear.html

I am sure I'm not alone in finding this story very disturbing.

I would draw your attention to remarks by employment barrister Robin White:

RMW has a tendency to interpret the law as RMW would like it to be. A bit like Stonewall.

I would draw your attention to remarks by employment barrister Robin White:

😂

@Clymene I've read this post a few times now - I'm fairly sure I'm being insulted, but beyond that can't see what point you are making. Is part of your first paragraph quoting another post? Would you mind clarifying?

I've now read the full judgement. Good grief.

The claimant was looking for problems from the start, before they even started working. They sound like a complete nightmare, even aside from the wringing knickers conversation.

I feel very sorry for the management staff having to deal with them.

The claimant absolutely does not sound like the victim in this case.

Lol lol lol at robin moira white being quoted. 😂😂

I agree it's not the central tenet of this case.

For many of us who've been in this discussion for quite a few years, we may be more interested in the wider picture this very detailed tribunal gives.

And there's an elephant in the room, in terms of patterns of behaviour, that none of us can name on this forum for 'reasons', but we're recognising the elephant and some posters may be breaking it down to focus on its tail, foot, or changing-room trunk.

When you build it back up, it's still the very familiar elephant we all know- he's sitting there, in the corner, all grey and wrinkly.

We see it.

I agree with lookleft. I can’t find an actual account of the claimant being naked in the changing room.

The claimant was questioned about whether she normally wore underwear, and about whether she had been naked in the changing room. This line of questioning was found discriminatory. As far as I can tell the questioning was not in relation to actually being naked in the changing room, but rather a propos of the rather odd conversation, initiated by the claimant, that she was so hot she had taken her underwear off.

Then there was the claimants account of the conversation in the changing room that she overheard, which mentioned (I paraphrase) that the claimant had been naked and the women in question didn’t like it.

This conversation was agreed, for the purposes of the hearing, to have happened.

No actual person has admitted having that conversation. It is unclear whether the conversation was referring to an actual or hypothetical occurrence of the claimant being naked.

Just because this judge made this judgement doesn’t mean that the same Tribunal, indeed the same judge, couldn’t also have found that the women were discriminated against by not being given a single sex space to change in. No woman made such a claim, so no such question was asked.

@lookleft - I'm referencing the fact that the claimant made 61 allegations of discrimination (at my count), only two of which were upheld.

I'm also referencing the fact that they were found to be an unreliable witness and that a multitude of their complaints were dismissed on the grounds of 'did not happen'.

The fact that your post said I can well imagine that the TW was excessively grilled on their underwear because of their trans status). made me laugh in a case where a surfeit of imagination hasn't borne as much fruit as the complainant has undoubtedly hoped.

It’s para 150.2. It’s mentioned in passing because, as @lookleft rightly says, it didn’t impact meaningfully on the decisions before the tribunal.

Para 150.2 for the hard of reading.

She added that another colleague had said the day before that the Claimant had been in the changing room “naked from the waist down”.

it didn’t impact meaningfully on the decisions before the tribunal.

By my reading it did, in precisely the wrong way. The fact that this person's colleagues were concerned at this behaviour is used by the EJ as evidence that they were discriminating in the formal meeting where underwear was mentioned.

Women aren't allowed to want transwomen to put their dick away.

Here you go:

Are you an employment barrister, out of interest?

Thank you.

I agree that the comparator is important here.

However I do not think that this judgement, which boils down to ‘you would not have asked a woman these questions’ is the same as ‘you are not allowed to complain about males being naked in female changing rooms’.

Sorry. I meant whether or not the incident happened wasn’t determinative. It was simply accepted on the bid that there has been a complaint to that effect, which the managers were aware of. The truth or otherwise of that complaint wasn’t at issue.

(Sort of analogous to the approach to the abusive notes, actually. Whether they were real or not wasn’t the issue. The issue was how management dealt with the complaint about them.)

Women objecting to a male person being naked in female changing rooms was used as evidence that they were discriminating against said male, by an Employment Judge. You may be correct that 'can be used as evidence against you in an Employment Tribunal' != 'not allowed' but I feel that's splitting hairs.

Women aren't allowed to want transwomen to put their dick away.

There we have it.

Women aren’t allowed boundaries. We aren’t allowed privacy from the male sex. We aren’t allowed freedom from exhibitionism/voyeurism.

And we aren’t allowed to be distressed or angry about this situation; we aren’t allowed to express our feelings about it - unless perhaps we do so in ways that are at all times respectful of and deferential to the penis-owners who are taking our boundaries away.

This is 2022. This is the state of women’s “rights” in 2022.

Sorry. I meant whether or not the incident happened wasn’t determinative. It was simply accepted on the bid that there has been a complaint to that effect, which the managers were aware of.

Got it, that makes sense. Though as you can see I'm shook by the way in which the EJ interpreted the managers' response to it.

"We aren’t allowed freedom from exhibitionism/voyeurism."

Getting changed in a changing room is not voyeurism or exhibitionism.

Are you an employment barrister, out of interest?

They might identify as one?

Don't be barristerphobic!

As for RMW (who pops up here now and again) lurkers might want to Google their career and especially reviews of their book.

Getting changed in a changing room is not voyeurism or exhibitionism.

Then why didn't this person change in a cubicle as them had previously agreed to do?

On the nod not on the bid a few posts up. Stupid auto carrot.

Actually let's not talk about the claimant. We've done that to death.

Let's talk about their female colleagues. Who were told before this person even started that they would be using the women's changing rooms. And that they were going through transitioning but no one was allowed to mention it.

I mean,that's pretty extraordinary isn't it? A new starter - who is only working two days a week - is able to dictate their working T&Cs to such an extent

It really isn't because trans women have been legally using women's space for years.

It is neither legal nor illegal for males to use women's spaces. AFAIK there is no legislation specifying this one way or the other. However it is legal for males to be excluded from women's spaces. There is legislation specifically dealing with this. It is called the Equality Act 2010.

If it were banned under the EA then they would have had to have stop using them when it passed in 2010.

Most institutions have been captured by Stonewall's guidance on the EA, where they have chosen to deliberately misrepresent the Act in a way that benefits Tw to the disadvantage of the people it was designed to protect.

I probably am splitting hairs. But because the claimant dropped the claim against the specific women who were at first thought to have had the conversation, the judge never really got into that bit. I know the judge remarked that the remarks were unacceptable, but that could relate to the specific language used rather then the objection to males in female spaces itself.