Scottish women - write to your MSPs!

[ArabellaScott]

https://x.com/ForWomenScot/status/1891870136774095089

Fab footage from Tess White (Scottish conservatives) with a very helpful and clear intervention from Jackie Baillie (Scottish Labour) on the need for clear statement from Ministers on the subject of single sex rights and single sex spaces, based on biological sex.

TW talks about huge public interest. We know that letters to representatives have real impact.

Now's the time!

https://www.writetothem.com/

Just add postcode and select MSPs.

You can keep it short - even just an expression of support for Sandie Peggie will get the message across.

Suggested text to give you a start - feel free to adapt/expand:

I write with regards to the ongoing Employment Tribunal involving Nurse Sandie Peggie and NHS Fife/Dr Beth Upton.

Women are entitled to privacy, dignity and safety, and this includes the right to single sex spaces including changing rooms.

Further to this, the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 stipulate employers must provide employees with changing facilities, separated by sex.

NHS Fife have failed to protect the rights of Sandie Peggie, and they are failing women.

Please confirm that you acknowledge the rights of women to single sex spaces based on biological sex, as enshrined in the Equality Act 2010, as described in the Single Sex Exemptions. The EHRC specifically cites changing rooms as an example in the guidance for where this is a proportionate means to a reasonable aim.

So why is NHS Scotland not upholding the law?

Women fought long and hard for their rights, and I ask you as my political representatives to urge the Scottish Government to ensure that NHS Scotland, and all public bodies, uphold the law.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance

If anyone has ideas for other things to add or raise please do.share them here, too. Let the politicians know you care!

Long time lurker here, very grateful for all the practical info and resources and for the sanity. I've written to my MSPs, thank you. I've also written to my local health board (NHS Highland) as follows and await their response which should come within 5-10 working days:

Dear NHS Highland Board members
Within NHS Highland, if I ask for a female doctor for intimate care will I get a female doctor or might I get a male doctor who identifies as female? If the latter, what would happen if I asked for an actual female doctor - would I be accused of transphobia? Of course I cannot check the BMA registrations as they allow a change of recorded sex.

I'd be grateful for your response and a copy of the Board's policy on this.

You will of course realise that these questions arise from the current Employment Tribunal of Sandie Peggie and NHS Fife / a trans identified male doctor, which I am following with great interest.

Best regards

Done, thanks for the link etc @ArabellaScott

@WomeninaDrawingRoom , I'm in the Highlands as well, would be interested to hear what they come back to you with.

Well done, WomaninaDrawingRoom!

Brilliant idea to write to local health boards.

I'll do the same.

In fact it would be good to do FOIs for all the boards, to ask questions about doctors, single sex spaces, requesting a female HCP, and gender critical beliefs.

http://www.foi.directory/nhs-boards-scotland/

@OswaldCobblepot you'll find NHS Highland's EqIA review of the Supporting Trans and Non-Binary Staff Guidance here: www.nhshighland.scot.nhs.uk/about/publications-and-public-records/equality-and-diversity/equality-impact-assessments-and-reports/ Contains much of the usual stuff ... It states re toilets: "With regard to redesignation of toilet facilities, the importance of single sex spaces is well recognised in conjunction with the
rights of all people to access toilets without stress or fear of harm ... Given the high proportion of
female workforce in NHS Highland, it may be of potential benefit to women to have more toileting options in the form of both
gender neutral and female single sex toilets." Doesn't mention policy if a trans identified male wants to use the female toilets. Will track down the Guidance for which this is the EqIA.

I believe Health Boards generally publish EqIAs (as do Local Authorities) so it might be worth others checking their own Board.

Noting it also says "This work will have a substantial positive impact on trans and non-binary employees with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and their managers." Not sure that managers in NHS Fife would agree!

@ArabellaScott @WomeninaDrawingRoom Done and circulated. Thank you for your help and eloquence

My rage message sent:

Dear Ben Macpherson,
As a constituent in a same sex marriage I have found the treatment of women by the SNP/Green coalition cavalier to the extreme.
Sandie Peggie’s tribunal has writ large the issues re gender ideology and has taken us to its inevitable conclusions. The invasion of women’s safe spaces by men under a state sanctioned delusion that they are women has come to pass. Women are now being treated as perpetrators of bullying and DARVO seems to be the currency of NHS Fife and other government and government funded bodies. All because some women have the courage to state they have boundaries for their privacy, dignity and well-being.
The message to my teenage daughter is stark. You are to put up and shut up or we will do everything possible to make you do so. The universities are equally complicit having thrown out the fundamental requirement of critical thinking and arguing their cases with rationality and tested evidence. The appeal to feelings and subjectivities have allowed a men’s right movement and its misogynistic agenda to wreck our confidence in our public services and that the Scottish government will adequately protect the interests of women as a sex class.
Well done for sneering, ignoring and general name-calling women with legitimate concerns. This issue and the treatment of women in public services and our trade unions has turned a moderate empathetic mother into a raging TERF. We will no longer be ignored for some niche interest group holding half the population to emotional ransom based on half-garbled thinking but mostly threats legal social and financial underpinned by an extraordinary sense of entitlement.
I suggest the government get their departments in line or you will see the how far the extent of our objections has aligned with the rest of the Scottish population at the ballot box. Starting with a full apology to Sandie Peggie all NHS Staff chilled by this Orwellian atmosphere and the abandonment of the indefensible position held by the Board of NHS Fife.
Yours sincerely,
woollyhatter (PhD in incandescent)

Blistering, woolly.

Ooft fantastic @woollyhatter.

My old MSP Deidre Brock ignored my email re gender ideology quelle surprise so we'll see what Vicky Nicolson has to say. Won't hold my breath.

I write to all my MSPs and MP at the weekend. No answer of yet.

I'm so bloody angry at the way Sandie Peggie and other nurses have been treated.

I've had a reply from Douglas Ross (think he's a bit fired up about this 😀) and what looks like an automated reply from Rhoda Grant.

Same Oswald! I see Rhoda states outright she doesn't bother answering constituents and we should check her website for any response she deigns to give.

@ArabellaScott yes she's not gained a fan here. I read it three times and I'm still not sure whether I'm to expect a reply.

I'd hazard a guess no. It's a poor sign when an MP or MSP won't even bother to respond to constituents as a matter of course.

That is epic woollyhatter, brilliant.

Enough of the bollocks about transwomen being oh so vulnerable and oppressed, the bottom line is simple - women must undress in front of men because otherwise it makes them very, very sad and that will never do.

Douglas Ross has replied and yes indeed is fired up. Ariane Burgess (Greens) has replied saying she won't comment because it's a live ET. I've replied asking her to respond to just this bit of my original email "Please confirm that you acknowledge the rights of women to single sex spaces based on biological sex, as enshrined in the Equality Act 2010 as described in the Single Sex Exemptions." So we'll see what that brings.