Respond to the EHRC Consultation; Sex Matters Guidance is out. Deadline is 30th June

[MsGoodenough]

Apologies if there's a thread already but I couldn't see one. It's incredibly important that lots of people who understand sex respond to the consultation as there will be lots of responses from the other side! Sex Matters have issued guidance here

This could be a place to discuss our responses as well. Deadline Monday 30th June.

BUMP

Please read and provide feedback on the EHRC guidance. You will be more than disappointed if the draft guidance goes through unchanged. You only have a few hours before the deadline.

I have just done it. Thanks for the reminder. I used my own words assisted by the Sex Matters guidance

Bump

Bump. There's still time, just. It's not that hard to say something - we don't all have to be comprehensive.

Done earlier this afternoon

Great to see lots of responses. 6 and a half hours to go!

Just done mine. Wasn't too bad, and the Sex Matters guidance was VG.

Having just read through the proposed wordings so as to give responses, I cant help but feel for the ordinary day to day person or service provider, or whatever, this will be as clear as mud.

Lets assume the final guidance has all those examples, etc., does anyone think most people will get beyond the first sentences?

Or am I being too pessimistic?

I can't be bothered to go back and get examples, but it was as if different examples were written by people with different interpretations.

Surely its not difficult to say the PC of GR does not change a persons PC of Sex. Therefore, if a service is provide as single sex, a person with PC of GR cannot use the service for the opposition sex.

Just sitting down to do mine now, reminder for anyone else who’s not done it yet.

Agreed. In my response I was often repeating that the examples made a simple thing seem complicated, whether that is by accident or design I am not sure. The repeated use of 'he/him' for transmen in the examples was very jarring and confusing as well. A document that is meant to clarify matters is doing the opposite.

The reality is that the TRA response to this invites the EHRC to ignore the SC judgment - which they cannot do. The legal illiteracy is astounding.

Done mine as well. Found the layout really easy to follow and to read the relevant sections.

Bump :)

I've got an active court case against an NHS organisation. My employment tribunal complaint seeks to end my employer's policy where they allow males who 'identify' as women use women's facilities. This is a separate case from the Darlington and Fife cases. My employer is waiting for EHRC guidance.

I would be grateful for your support. A bulk of legal work needs to be undertaken in July. The best way to support is by sharing the link on your social media platforms, especially on FB as I'm not active there.

You can find the case by searching for Faye Russell-Caldicott on crowdjustice.com. Pls share the link!

Last chance! I just finished mine.

Done

Closes at 11.59pm

Done!

As I said up thread, I got quite baffled by the language and probably spent too long trying to make it make sense.

So will own up that I skipped the sections on Sport as I am less well informed (other than it is complete bullshit) but thought once it was cooler I would give it a last minute go.

Only to find I have pressed submit.

But felt many on here will have put in many valid points, in a well articulated way.

So dont feel too guilty, just silly.

Done in the nick of time! I found Michael Foran's EHRC submission useful too. Sometimes I agreed with him but mostly with Sex Matters when they differed.

Have had a bit of a break from being online because of other things, but carved out time to do this this afternoon. I thought as currently written it's terrible, will cause more confusion and will undermine the law even more.

Why did they use wrong sex pronouns for trans identified people? It is very easy to simply avoid pronouns altogether or use 'trans identified man' or 'trans identified woman' every time. It's not politically neutral to use non-standard wrong-sex English pronouns, it's not clear and it undermines the law. The SC ruling is clear that for the purposes of the EA 2010 the terms 'woman' and 'man' refer to biological sex, so why are they muddying the waters?

Someone said to me recently that the EA 2010 needs to go as it only serves to make society worse in every conceivable way and after reading this I'm beginning to see his point of view on that.

Nothing about safeguarding, pretty much nothing about why we have sex-segregation - it's to protect against actual harm and reduce the risk of harmful criminal acts (voyeurism, flashing, rape, sexual assault) as well as privacy and dignity. Nothing about the interrelation of EA2010 and other laws. E.g. if a TIM wants to go into a changing room where young girls are changing (like that swimming bloke a while back) then if a service provider observes he's male they shouldn't allow him to use spaces labelled as single sex not only because of the EA2010 but also because you should safeguard those girls and you know if you let him in the risk of the crime of indecent exposure (at least) being committed against children is very high. This is the type of thing businesses will be dealing with. Not to what extent they need to balance hurty feelings.

All the crap about not being able to tell someone's sex which we know is simply not true 99.9999999% of the time in the real world. It's intellectual wankery not rooted at all in real world problems and not at all useful for anyone trying to run a real world business. Luxury beliefs that punch down on working class people and make their jobs impossible.

Am tired and going to bed.

I read the sex matters and foran comments after I did my own. I’m happy that I took the time to comment independently. I had plenty of overlap with their comments, but also many differences of substance & perspective. I’m not a lawyer, so this may have affected my perception of the clarity of the guidance. I agree with previous poster that the overall quality of the proposed update was low. Does anyone know if they will do another consultation after incorporating the feedback from this one?

I wrote my own responses to some questions and copy and pasted from Sex Matters guidance for others. Finally submitted about ten to midnight. Phew!

I understand that responses with straight copy and paste responses from campaign groups are sometimes discounted or generally don’t carry as much weight.

Does anyone know if this applies to responses to individual questions or to the submission as a whole?

I.e. If your submission includes some genuine personal responses (not just tweaking a word or two when copy and pasting) does that mean all of your responses will then be counted, or just the ones you wrote in your own words?

I’m sure there’s an easier way to phrase that, but my brain is frazzled after staying up and writing in this heat!

I understand that responses with straight copy and paste responses from campaign groups are sometimes discounted or generally don’t carry as much weight.

I think its more that its not a referendum. They are looking at how practical and accessible the guidance is. If 80,000 people say exactly the same thing, 79,999 people aren't adding anything new. They are more interested in the responses that highlight where there is lack of clarity or confusion in particular situations.