Leaked document includes ‘terrifying’ anti-trans guidance for UK civil servants

[IwantToRetire]

New draft policies for the UK’s 500,000 civil servants would block some trans staff from using single-sex spaces such as toilets, and force staff to accept transphobic views in the workplace.

Senior civil servants have told VICE News that they are “terrified” by the proposed plans, which were leaked to them.

The 39-page document produced by the Cabinet Office and the Government People Group is expected to be published within weeks.

The document outlines proposed changes to the UK Civil Service’s “Gender Identity and Intersex policies”. There are around half a million UK Civil Service employees – they are politically impartial officials who support the functioning of central government departments, such as probation officers, who are a part of the Ministry of Justice, or Jobcentre staff, who work for the Department for Work and Pensions.

The new policies state civil servants should equally recognise “gender critical beliefs” and “gender identity beliefs” – meaning that employees can openly share controversial views on trans lives without being penalised.

Responding to this policy, a trans civil servant – who did not want to be identified in fear of losing their job – told VICE News: “My existence is not a belief. How can my safety be just as important as someone’s belief that I shouldn’t be safe? This feels like it was written by someone gender critical, just to give transphobes more clout.”

The leaked document also proposes “changes on access to toilets'', so that only trans people with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) can use single-sex facilities.

Article continues at https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aka9y/leaked-document-exposes-transphobic-draft-guidelines-for-uk-civil-servants

This, if true, seems to contrast with guidance for Parliamentary staff https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4805464-parliamentary-staff-urged-to-police-pronouns-and-identify-transphobia

Wow, that's bleak. I'm genuinely shocked.

My heart goes out to anyone working in the civil service who is about to be caught in the blast radius of this.

This sounds great.
I’m not sure about the part of allowing people with a GRC to use the opposite sex toilets though. Surely as far as the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) regulations 1992 are concerned, the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ would refer to biological sex, not legal sex?

It sounds more like ‘women’s toilets to be mostly kept for just women (sorry, not always, but, hey, women are used to budging up) and women hopefully not allowed to be completely publically vilified and / or sacked for wanting this to be the case.’

Shocking.

You’re right Butterfly, the backlash of violence against women as men are told they must no longer use women’s spaces is going to be fairly unpleasant, but it will happen at some point.

If only cross dressers and transvestites had not been welcomed under the trans umbrella, and self-ID pushed so hard that male prisoners and others began to abuse it, then perhaps this could all have been avoided.

But I believe there’s another thread about this that reveals most of this Vice article is hyperbolic nonsense and doesn’t remotely resemble what’s actually in the document, so women are going to have to wait a bit longer until their rights are restored, but in the meantime must put up with the additional backlash, violence and unpleasantness from angry men who claim they are women that such hyperbolic articles will inevitably invoke.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4847635-uk-civil-service-to-recognise-and-protect-staff-with-gender-critical-views?page=1

would block some trans staff from using single-sex spaces such as toilets

Words mean something.

Anyone can use single sex facilities. Just those corresponding with their sex.

You put it a lot better than me.

Basically - women experience another backlash for trying to to recover basic rights even though they haven’t yet done so.

If trans people are genuinely terrified of using their sex-appropriate facilities then why don’t they
a) fight against the prejudice and behaviours that cause this and/or
b) fight for 3rd spaces?
We’d all be right behind them!
Why isn’t it obvious to transwomen that allowing any man to declare himself a transwoman and access women’s spaces will not solve their problems?

Why are these things always terrifying, we regularly have men threatening and committing actual violence against women, yet going to the bathroom of your sex in buildings owned by the government where someone being horrible to you will at the very least get a disciplinary can reduce grown men to a gibbering wreck apparently.

Being told no you can't do somewhat the rest of the population manage perfectly well is hardly bleak. If women having privacy and dignity is so terrifying then that's their problem not ours. Toddlers amd dogs can cope with being told no. I'm sure a grown adult can.

How is it ‘bleak’?

The source is just completely hyperbolic and ridiculous. Nothing in there is about denying they personally exist (people not agreeing with your beliefs is not denying your existence).

No one believes that person ‘shouldn’t be safe’. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t be ‘safe’ because people aren’t forced to adopt their preferred worldview.

An important post. It's a leak but it seems to be a highly selective one, designed to create an impression that isn't backed up by the document itself.

Lol, you're not allowed to tell people if a person has a GRC. This advice wants to shout it from the rooftops and discriminate against those without one.

They don't know what they're talking about.

The interpretation of this policy by Vice is astonishing. The policy actually states that people can use the facilities that match their gender identity rather than their biological sex and that people with gender critical views need to keep quite for fear of offending people.

There’s a big backlash agiainst this policy from GC people in the civil service for this very reason. The policy essentially opens up female only spaces (toilets, showers and changing rooms) to anyone who says they’re female.

Because they don’t give a shiny about women forgot - they aren’t actually listening to a damn thing we say because it’s just background noise. They are Main Characters & any mild inconvenience to them is a trauma, a tragedy, & due to an act of deliberate cruelty & spite by an oppressor. Other people don’t get to have needs.

I think there is something in this.

I suspect that too many TRA types have grown up playing video games and somehow almost genuinely believe that most people are ‘nonplayable characters’.

So-called TERFs are just particularly annoying NPCs to them. They’re like the various characters that get in your way in super mario and won’t just disappear when you jump on their head.

The worst thing that can happen to a male in the women's toilets is that they're asked to leave.

The worst thing that can happen to a female in the women's toilets is that they're attacked, raped and impregnated.

Which do you think is more "bleak"?

The document doesn’t even say that the terrified trans woman will be made to use the men’s. At worst they’ll be offered the use of the disabled toilets.

Because there’s another protected characteristic that’s less important than the 2020’s most fashionable minority group.

The draft doc also states that it’s best practice to treat a trans person without a GRC, exactly the same as a trans person with a GRC…..which makes no sense as that’s effectively self ID. It goes on to lump males with a GRC into the same category as Women, which is madness as women exist in their own category separately to males (no matter what paperwork such males obtain.) there is also a statement along the lines of, people must refer to trans people in the manner the trans person wishes….compelled speech then! This document is simply not workable.

This makes the notion it's "terrifying" what it is. Transparent. A leak that has to have been designed to garner sympathy.

Imagine having lived your life in such a safe little bubble that you are terrified by the mere thought of people having a different worldview from you.

Swap terrified with outraged and a lot of people on here won't need to imagine.

There’s a lot in that too.

These kinds of arguments like to present anger as fear because it allows them to claim victimhood (rather than presenting as an aggressor).

They won’t say they are outraged that people won’t just toe the line and do and think what they want them to. So instead they say they are terrified - and make claims of erasure or being in danger that bear no relation to the reality.

people are much less likely to challenge someone who is presenting their anger so well disguised as victimhood.

People who want to live their lives pretending stuff and trying to force others to go along with it are going to find themselves in constant conflict

the solution is surely to stop pretending to yourself and others that humans can change sex.

So be ridiculous.

Men being told not to go into the ladies isn't 'terrifying'.

It's completely normal.