"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 9

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct
Thread 4, 29-Oct to 31-Oct
Thread 5, 31-Oct to 04-Nov
Thread 6, 04-Nov to 05-Nov
Thread 7, 05-Nov to 11-Nov
Thread 8, 11-Nov to 16-Jan (last thread with the schedule and abbreviations)

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital filed a legal case against their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses objected to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The hearing was held between 20th October and 11th November and was live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have comprehensive information regarding this case on their substack, including archives of the twitter threads, lists of people involved and press releases.

At the time this thread was started, the judgment had not yet been published on the Courts website but was widely reported in the media that the NHS was found to have discriminated against the nurses, but the claims against Rose were not upheld.

Gender dysphoria is a mental health condition not an identity or a belief system or religion. On what basis is it a PC? You are not making any sense. No one has a gender identity in any real sense. It's not a real thing.

I thought Isla Bumba wasn’t sure if she was a man or a woman.

Isla Bumba knows she is a woman. She had to pretend she wasn't sure in order to uphold the ideological position she was advancing in her testimony.

No no no ! She knows she's a woman because that's her gender. She's unsure about her sex (aren't we all?) but it's of little consequence anyway. And she knows a midwife decided for some reason to put her down as a girl. Hence she's not trans

ETA sorry double with @nauticant

It is for this that the word 'beclowning' was invented🙄

@EmmyFr I am saying keep Gender reassignment pc making it clear you can’t change sex and add gender identity belief as part of the existing Religion and Belief pc. It would obviously include not having a GI and the right not to be discriminated against for not believing in GI.

I am not wedded to the actual words used to describe GI belief that is for those who write the legislation to consult on and decide.

@MistyGreenAndBlue is god real?

As Emmy said, you're still mixing up 2 (or 3) totally separate things - and 2 bits of legislation - and therefore proposing incoherent measures that you can't explain a need for.

Someone can hold a belief in 'gender identity' as a concept regardless of whether or not they believe they personally are 'trans'. Believing in gender ideology doesn't require having a gender identity. They may simply believe that some other people have one. The EA already protects people from being fired for their beliefs. No other belief gets any sort of government certificate. Why should this one?

Gender dysphoria/dysmorphia is a mental health condition related to other dysmorphias such as anorexia and people who believe they have the 'wrong' number of limbs. These may count as disabilities under the EA, but one of the people with other dysmorphias get a special category all of their own and a certificate. Why should this particular dysmorphia be treated differently?

Gender reassignment already has its own category (very poorly defined - that needs fixing) in the EA. The EA doesn't provide a mechanism for certificating this category. The GRA does, but does so by overriding the documentation of sex, because it was brought in as a stupid fudge to comply with European human rights law without allowing same-sex marriage. Now that we do have same-sex marriage the GRA has no practical effect other than making it impossible to check someone's sex.

I agree with you that the confusion over documentation of sex needs reversing. But you've not made a case for why documentation of gender is needed at all. You're starting from the assumption that it does, but why?

Cross posted. If you don't think any paperwork is needed, and are only proposing including gender ideology in the EA belief protection, that requires no legislative change. The EA doesn't set out a list of protected beliefs with definitions.

Someone simply has to bring a legal case - as Forstater did for GC belief - showing that GI belief meets the Grainger tests. This is for a believer to do, not government.

I'm more and more convinced that gender reassignment should not be a PC. mostly because, ATEOTD, it cannot be accurately defined in law. I can't imagine any scenario where that would happen, though. The govt isn't even brave enough to stand up to the relatively small amount of pushback to enforcing the law as it stands now; they certainly wouldn't take on the genderborg like that.

It maybe me using the term Gender Identity.

At the moment the GRA uses both sex and gender. If in all legislation sex is defined as biological, real and immutable then you need a legal definition of gender.

The GRA has granted c8000+ people a GRC they thought it was a sex change certificate. The FWS SC judgment effectively made it a gender change certificate.(Sad times) but didn’t define gender.

People can still apply for a GRC but after FWS no one has any idea what “gender” actually means because there is no legal definition.

FWS also made the gender reassignment pc very clearly not sex reassignment but gender reassignment. If gender doesn’t mean sex then you need a legal definition of gender that is not sex. Otherwise people can go “I am a transitioning to be a furry (sp?) and that’s my gender.”

I know a lot of people want the GRA and gender reassignment pc repealed. I genuinely cannot see that ever happening. So somewhere legislation will need to define gender. My suggestion is as Gender Identity Belief but there are other ways.

Not everyone believes in a religion or a belief that meets the granger test. Yes Gender/gender identity needs to be tested or parliament needs to put in a legal definition to confirm it is a belief.

Gender Identity Belief ( or appropriate words) is my suggestion for how to resolve it.

I am interested in how anyone else’s proposal for defining what gender means in relation to the GRA and gender reassignment pc if getting rid of them is not an option?

Edited to add a GRC is documentation identifying someone’s gender. Therefore documentation already exists.

Definitely. What worries me is that we need it, but transgender activists need the opposite and they're doing worryingly well at the moment. It reminds me of persuading a child to tidy their room. They're all "I'll do it in a minute," but they don't actually do it until there's an actual penalty for not doing it. (Or maybe everyone else's children are paragons of virtue. If so, then please start a new thread to explain your brilliance!)

Edited to add a GRC is documentation identifying someone’s gender. Therefore documentation already exists.

The GRA was meant, at the time, to make legal a change of sex. That was its purpose.

Hence the infamous Section 9, Subsection 9, 'Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman."

(Though, of course, there are exceptions to "for all purposes" in the GRA itself and in subsequent legislation).

But there is no legal definition of "gender". What the bloody stupid drafters of the GRA meant by "gender" was sex.

To be fair I don’t think in 2004 the drafters of the GRA foresaw the shit show we would have in 2026.

To be fair I don’t think in 2004 the drafters of the GRA foresaw the shit show we would have in 2026.

I am not sure that is the case. I think they deliberately fudged the issue, and just crossed their fingers in the hope that the perverts wouldn't cotton on to how much licence it gave them.

I think the GRA is a fudge that only works if you don't interrogate the logic. Nobody ever thought a GRC changed anyone's sex, but they did think it would be able to hide somebody's sex. The problem is that they didn't really grapple with the fact that sex is not a private matter and can't be hidden. (Possibly because the ECtHR didn't grapple with this either).

The problem with changing the GRA is that it opens up a can of worms and exposes all the inconsistencies.

If you define gender identity in the GRA, it follows that everyone has a gender identity. It is no more the governments job to assert or record that than it is to have a register of Christians and heretics.

@Peregrina I wouldn’t disagree - I may be being charitable.

@nicepotoftea I’m am
not necessarily saying the GRA needs to be changed. The EA2010 already has the religion and belief PCs you could add gender ?? as a belief. You don’t have to have a gender just like you don’t have to have a religion. Plus not believing in gender just like not believing in a religion would be protected.

This would also tie in with the gender reassignment pc.

I am just not convinced ETs, EATs, etc and the EHRC guidance when it is published will completely restore women’s rights. Having clear legislation that protects SSS and women’s rights based on biological sex may be needed.

You can’t do that without separating out gender and thinking through the implications for people with a GRC or protections under the gender reassignment pc.

If you read Hansard, the HoL debate did - Norman Tebbit of all people did a Mystic Meg and predicted some of it.

And they knew otherwise the primogeniture clause wouldn't be in there.

To be fair I don’t think in 2004 the drafters of the GRA foresaw the shit show we would have in 2026.

The drafters and promoters may not have done. But if you go back to Hansard - paticularly the debates in the Lords - plenty of people foresaw and pointed out the problems.

I’m am not necessarily saying the GRA needs to be changed

But by creating a different definition for gender it would change.

You don’t have to have a gender just like you don’t have to have a religion.

But religion is none of the state's business and the state does not issue religion certificates.

By recognising gender, they make it their business and imply that they are recognising everyone's gender - otherwise a GRC would just be stating a personal belief about gender and it's not clear what the point would be.

This all strikes me as seeing the need to hand out glittery things to the gender identity mob as a consolation prize for their ideology becoming discredited in the law and in the culture.

is God real?

Is believing in a God a mental health condition or a symptom of one?

Some did. (Saw the flaws and possible outcomes anyway) And they were warned. They ignored it and did it anyway.

If you believe in God you don't have to coerce nor bully others into going along and validating your identity as a God botherer. You don't ask them to call you Sister MistyGreenAndBlue now do you?

Religions that force others into compliance are not ok within liberal society because they are coercive and therefore act in ways which are unlawful.

So why are we trying to make a false equivalence???

@ThreeWordHarpy
But religion is none of the state's business and the state does not issue religion certificates.

The EA2010 includes religion as protected characteristics.i am suggesting that Gender could be treated more like religion and other beliefs.

You don’t have to have a GRC to be protected under the EA2010 gender reassignment pc.

c8000 people have a GRC and some of those can’t get their legal sex changed back. However, there are many times more people, including RH and DrU, who claim
protections under the gender reassignment pc. No need for a certificate, hormones, surgery just say I am thinking about changing my gender bingo! Following FWS judgment no clarity about what gender means except it’s not sex.

I take your point about the GRA but I have a feeling there will be legal cases that test what a GRC now means.

I agree with you.
I was answering @FWSsupporter Who asked me if God was real in response to an earlier comment of mine.

I don’t think you meant to tag me?