"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.

Your reply:
"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?"

If you were not replying to me, why direct your question at me and use my username?

It definitely came across that you were speaking directly to me, having misunderstood my post

Which I have admitted was poorly phrased which is why I explained it.

I don't think I'm the only person on the thread. What a weird thing to say.

I can see what you meant to say. I don't think that you've understood my point, which is that that is an incredibly offensive thing to say to someone who does have a religious belief and, in certain cases, it can be dangerous. Backtracking by saying 'clearly it isn't' and you didn't mean it doesn't alter the fact that you did ask it.

AFAIK it isn't compulsory to answer you and I won't be.

Not for me either, but I'd be interested to see the research that shows this because I think a lot of the problem is that gender is an Alice in Wonderland word that means whatever the user wants it to mean.

The Cambridge dictionary says it's a group of people in a society who share particular qualities or ways of behaving which that society associates with being male, female, or another identity:

Now all we have to do is define society and what these qualities are, which activists tend to do as 'people who agree with me' who always seem to be massively in the majority, with the implication that dissenters should shut up and do as they're told. I'm always suspicious of anyone who makes a claim like that without references to back it up.

Looking at comments pages in an unscientific sample that ranges from the Sun to the Mail, the Telegraph and the Guardian, I'd say most people think of sexual identification in terms of simple biology, using DNA tests in complex cases like intersex. Gender is a belief, and I don't think one person's beliefs should be forced on anyone else, no matter how loudly they shout or how often they say they'll kill themselves if they don't get their own way or how badly everyone is treating them.

My own distinction -

On forms, I answer when asked what my sex is. Because it could be relevant.
When asked what my gender is, I leave it blank as it's irrelevant.

The ones that only ask about gender, and it's a mandatory field, piss me off so much I think I may give myself an aneurism.

The ones which ask both, and only sex is mandatory, almost make me faint with surprise.

Years and years ago, I wrote to a foreign language dictionary asking why 'gender' was beginning to be used in the wild when the intended meaning was 'sex'. They answered saying that they'd notice that and I wasn't the only one asking, and that they'd be issuing a note on that after some research because it was a very good question.

Unfortunately, I don't know if it ever was issued. But I took comfort form knowing I wasn't the only one.

Years and years ago, I wrote to a foreign language dictionary asking why 'gender' was beginning to be used in the wild when the intended meaning was 'sex'.

Yes, and for those languages which only have male and female and every noun is male or female, having a word which is not sex for inanimate objects, i.e. gender, makes sense.

We have now virtually lost a useful distinction.

Oh Jesus wept.

You can throw a bloody tantrum over nothing if you want.

It was a general comment regardless, to make a point.

I'm not going to acknowledge a mistake because I didn't make one!

It was just a generalised comment. If you are going to get upset about that, I can't help you.

There was this thread which dealt with the German self ID law.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5048705-selfid-law-passed-in-german-parliament?page=1

In it, in reply to the observation "but it might have been that in German there are not separate words for sex and gender", a poster by the name of Delfin said
"Exactly. And the SBGG for the first time defines "Geschlecht". It says that it can be determined by every person itself (gender). Which basically explodes all laws that draw on the term "Geschlecht" without defining it. Which is all of the laws, including our constitution."

But there have also been conversations, I think, on how masculine nouns for jobs, for instance, had to have female equivalents coined, in order to avoid sexism. So you have adverts for "lehrer/in" = lehrer, male or lehrerin (female). But that's still male teacher and female teacher, so what about the enbies.

If I remember rightly Spanish was brought into the discussion where it's non binario fir male NB and non biniria for female NB 😆

Was that a Spanish woman under cx during the ERCC tribunal, iirc.

It was Italian.

The Italian for "a non-binary person" is "una persona non binaria".

'Persona' being grammatically feminine, and so also having the feminine form of the adjective, whatever the sex of the person in question.

And you have that reference in the Italian media to Eliot Sumner "l'attrice britannica non binaria".
'Actrice' being feminine and meaning 'actress' (the masculine equivalent is 'attore') and followed by the feminine forms of the adjectives meaning 'British' and 'non-binary'.

That's the one, thanks, @Chersfrozenface . There's certainly complications there in gendered languages.

Yes, it was one of the trustees in the Roz Adams vs Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre hearing

God I had forgotten about that shitshow tribunal

But there have also been conversations, I think, on how masculine nouns for jobs, for instance, had to have female equivalents coined, in order to avoid sexism. So you have adverts for "lehrer/in" = lehrer, male or lehrerin (female). But that's still male teacher and female teacher, so what about the enbies.

When I started to learn German 65 years ago, the use of "...in" at the end of the name of a trade or profession to denote a female practitioner was taken for granted and long predates any modern concept of sexism. It was certainly in use in the C19th German novels I had to read at university in the mid-60s.

What I think must be difficult for any trans-identifying people whose native language has gendered nouns and adjectival endings is to make the shift from using the masculine identifiers for oneself to the feminine and vice versa because it's not just a case of using different pronouns.

What I think must be difficult for any trans-identifying people whose native language has gendered nouns and adjectival endings is to make the shift from using the masculine identifiers for oneself to the feminine and vice versa because it's not just a case of using different pronouns.

Must be pretty brain-scrambling for other people who are persuaded/coerced into using wrong gendered nouns and adjectival endings, too.

I couldn't agree more.

I wasn't asking you or anyone other than the poster I was replying to. Nor did I expect a reply from you.

I mentioned that I hadn't had a reply from the poster I asked the question of.
I didn't bring up the conflation of a belief in God with a belief in gender - which I had described as a mental illness - she did and I was refuting it - albeit clumsily. I admit I phrased my initial question badly, which is why I explained it. I wasn't neccesarily expecting a response from you. Nor was what I said meant to be a general observation or open question - although I can see it looked that way because of the way I wrote it. So I'm sorry if I accidentally offended you.

If you say so 🙄

You have assumed I was attacking you. I frequently post in this manner. It's a general comment on a message. You have assumed my intention. You assumed I was disagreeing and being nasty.

I was not. I did not make a mistake and I object to you assuming that I did something that I didn't.

You have then demanded that I acknowledged a mistake I didn't make! I mean like wtf. There was no need for the demanding.

Just get over yourself. It wasn't remotely about you at any point.

To then go 'if you say so'

No. You have just misinterpreted and jumped to erroneous conclusions. And if anything owe me an apology but honestly I'm not really bothered because youve already decided I was out to get you somehow.

Perhaps you would like to actually like to give people the benefit of the doubt next time when they state their intention rather than making a big fucking drama over it.

Don't remember "demanding" anything. Just made a passing remark that you seemed to also have misunderstood me and had not acknowledged my reply.

I do not think that you were "out to get me" just that it appeared you had misunderstood my (admittedly badly written) post. You say you didn't. Ok I accept that.
I think if another poster hadn't jumped all over me for it, leading me to feel as if I was being misunderstood all round, I would probably have left it at that. I just wanted to explain what I actually meant - just as you have done here.
(and that I would never suggest something so horrendous).

I was definitely a bit upset at the idea that I was being thought to have said religious beliefs are a mental illness and probably overreacted to that poster who said that and dragged you into it by tagging you in my fuller explanation. So, sorry for that.

FWIW I think we agree on this which is all I originally intended to convey.

I was bloody agreeing with you in the first fucking place! Sometimes I quote and highlight a point TO BACK IT UP.

I do it a lot. It's my posting style.

It wasn't my mistake. It was yours.

And yes you did ruddy demand an acknowledgement that 'id made a mistake'.

Seriously.

I acknowledged that I had misunderstood you and apologised and accepted that you hadn't actually misunderstood me as another poster did.
There doesn't seem to be anything else to say.
Except I guess we can agree to ... er agree? 😂