Kelly v Leonardo Employment Tribunal Thread 3

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Ms BM Kelly v Leonardo UK Limited Employment Tribunal – hearing Case number: 8001497/2024

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Abbreviations:
C or MK - Claimant, Maria Kelly
NC - Naomi Cunningham, barrister for C
KW - Katy Wedderburn, solicitor for C
R or L - Respondent. Leonardo UK
ST - Susanne Tanner KC, barrister for R
J - Judge
P - Panel member
GC - gender critical
GI - gender identity
AL - Andrew R Letton VP People Shared Services Leonardo - respondent witness

Tribunal Tweets coverage here

https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/kelly-vs-leonardo-uk-ltd

Thread 1 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5416903-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-29th-september-10am?page=1

Thread 2 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5420656-kelly-v-leonardo-employment-tribunal-thread-2?page=1

Worst thing is when you've deleted one pro tem and then find it was the court link

Anyone without a disability or accessibility requirements who uses the disabled/accessible toilets is beneath pond scum (in my opinion).

Anyone who is happy to offer up disabled/accessible spaces as an alternative option to deluded individuals who deny their biological reality is unconscionably cruel and hypocritical.

Honestly, anyone who proffers this as a solution or even an ‘unfortunate but necessary workaround’ to the issue of males in female facilities (or vice versa), needs to spend 10 minutes in the position of a disabled person to fully comprehend what non-disabled people are actually proposing to do to us.

It’s not ok to identify an issue as serious as TIMs in female spaces, and then propose and celebrate a solution that is the biggest “Fuck You” to disabled people there could be.

Just when it seems the world finally sees, empathises with and truly respects disabled people, something like this happens and people show their absolute contempt for people with disabilities, and their struggles.

Accessible/disabled facilities are a major reason some of us aren’t confined to our homes or hospitals, and are able to participate in society. It is unbelievably appalling that some seriously see pushing the whole problem off onto DISABLED people as a reasonable idea.

WTFAustralia I do agree with you in general, but in a particular workplace, letting trans people used the disabled toilet could be a sensible solution. Say the workplace has 2 accessible toilets, 1 disabled employee, and 2 trans employees. For this employer it would be perfectly reasonable (imho), to let the trans employees use the accessible toilets.

So that's that until the judgement, which i think will be held back from the public for a week after the relevant parties are informed.

When TT post the tweets tomorrow, I will update the thread.

Right, I can concentrate on the Darling Nurses case now, even though I am a woman, I did not do well multi tasking between to the two Tribunals today.

From what I’ve seen on here (I wasn’t watching it) it seems like the argument re accessible toilets is that you need 1 accessible toilet for every x staff members on site. So the question is, if there are more than the required number, could some of them become individual use toilets? That way, the company could comply with the law on single sex toilets and accessible toilets, while also giving another option for trans identified people. Clearly, there is a downside to that because it could mean that someone could have to travel further to an accessible toilet (instead of a nearer toilet that is changed to an individual use toilet), but the court would only be looking at whether the company could have easily made changes that made them compliant with the law.

Rather than create 5th spaces (theres also ambulant toilets) I think a solution would be to have extra disabled cubicles with door gaps within single sex accommodation! How lovely for disabled men and women to have the health and safety advantages of a single sex space. Of course, when you have a sink in a cubicle the average time is increased so that’s a disadvantage if an able bodied person is using it.

Ambulant toilets are the ones you see at the end of a cubicle row and are a useful cross-over with handrails, outward opening doors and usually bigger.

Anyone who is happy to offer up disabled/accessible spaces as an alternative option to deluded individuals who deny their biological reality is unconscionably cruel and hypocritical.

Hardly. People with mental illness and other disabilities are allowed to use disabled toilets to meet their needs same as anyone with physical disability. Gender dysphoria is a recognised mental illness.

Gender dysphoria is a recognised mental illness.

Is it, though? Only when it suits, it seems to me.

I was worried for a moment that ambulant toilets meant they walked about 🤣

Ambulant autocorrects to ambulance so it’s a pain writing it! I bet ambulance workers would love ambulance loos!

When I had a bad ankle I loved a well designed ambulant toilet. I could hold on to the handrail while I hovered.

Apologies if I'm reading the question wrong, I've read it twice, but I want to stick my two pennies worth in here.

I am autistic, and DS is autistic, and we avoid communal toilets like the plague because there is a constant ringing of the hand dryers, flushing, people gathering in them having a good chin wag, sinks running, soap dispensers creaking etc. There is so much overwhelm in those toilets that I have actually just wet myself before because the anxiety of using those toilets forces me to withhold until there's leakage.

Accessible toilets IMO absolutely need to be separate provision from the rest.

From a carers perspective too, I will probably always need to assist my son in some way. I will need to be there to help or instruct to wipe, and guide him to wash his hands, and be there for him if he gets overwhelmed from the water or noise within a self contained unit as can occasionally happen.

For people who do caring for a living, especially assisted living support workers who's job means that they have to support autonomy in and out of the house, they will also need to support their service users, and there isn't always an ideal ratio of male and female staff to provide same-sex intimate care.

Carers for our elderly, whether employed or family also need to be able to go into the same cubicles. If some lady is taking her dad with dementia out, or some man is taking his wife in a wheelchair out, they deserve a spacious enclosed space to provide that care.

It's just not possible from a disability perspective to keep things single sex without further restricting accessibility.

A article in the Times summing things up

https://archive.ph/rAfxG

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/engineer-gaslighted-as-employer-followed-herd-on-trans-ruling-nk05q23r5

Completely irrelevant but that sign behind Maria Kelly could really use a buff.

There's a guy in Switzerland being jailed for saying that it is, in addition to claiming skeletons can’t change sex.

We've been very lucky in Terf Island thanks to some brave and principled people, mostly women.

Yes it is in DSM-5*.

Some transgender people will indeed not consider it a disorder. Neither do many autistic individuals, however some of those need to use disabled loos because of sensory overwhelm in open plan toilets.

(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5 Book by American Psychiatric Association.).

Extra Edit: technically not sure if it is a disorder, illness or what but regardless gender dysphoria is in DSM-5.

It's a disorder or a mental illness when it comes to not having to pay for cosmetic treatment, but totally normal and fine otherwise. Is my impression. Hence your confusion.

That would be handy - the toilet comes to you instead of you going to the toilet😃

Or you could hail one, like a passing taxi 😁

Like one of those robot vacuum cleaners. As long as it was discreet, though. No beeping and flashing lights as it zigzagged its way through a throng of shoppers in a busy shopping mall, shouting, "Marie! Marie! Where are you, love? Don't panic, I'm on my way!"

I think I read somewhere that in some parts of the Ancient World there were ambulatory chamber pot men who would put up a screen around you whilst you did your business and then dispose of the contents ready for the next person in need. Just can't remember where though.....

Talking of techno-loos, can anyone else remember these horrors?
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/gallery/hulls-superloos-truth-behind-nightmarish-8611659

This quote always gets me: Matt Felmingham recalled: “If you ran at them hard enough on the right angle, you could open them with someone inside them.” How did they get to work that out!?!

A Loo-ber 🤣

For me this is personal, and difficult, because it hurts to see women fighting for fair access to loos, and then using the accessible facilities to solve the problem. I am just as much of a woman despite my disability, and it feels as if I'm being excluded or discarded by other women.

There aren't enough accessible loos and they're routinely abused so an official abuse of them seems to me to be saying 'oh disabled people don't matter Transgender people are much more important. Women who don't want to share toilets with men are much more important. Mums with kids are much more important. People who 'only nipped in and you don't look disabled' are much more important.' In fact, as the recent attempt to cut disability payments and the ongoing public attitude that you're not actually disabled at all and it's all a con shows, I know that I'm not important at all.

Getting it recognised that trans women are not women is hard too, which is why the solution cannot be to take from people who already don't have enough.

I understand that this is an emotive subject, but I don't think anyone is suggesting giving up accessible facilities to trans people, at least not on a wholesale basis. However, I think we would all agree that some trans people would have a legitimate use of such facilities?

I would expect an employer to consider what level of provision they need for their staff demographics. Of course, this requires companies to properly record this sort of thing, and that's where everything will fall apart. NC said that there was an over provision of accessible toilets, I unfortunately didn't catch if that was within this one workplace, Leonardo as a whole, or a more general statement, but I would expect that such a statement would need to be backed up by something in the background.