Transwomen and pregnancy

[oldtiredcyclist]

The human rights commissioner for Australia, Dr Anna Cody, says that an employer must assume that a transwoman can get pregnant.

That is not an entirely correct statement - Cody doesn’t say anyone must assume a TW can be pregnant.

This is about discrimination by association - someone assumes you have a protected characteristic and discriminates against you even if you don’t.

eg you dont have to be gay to be protected from homophobia.

Cody is idiotic talking about pregnancy tho!

If a bloke isn't offered a job because he has said at interview that he does plan/want to get pregnant, the grounds for not employing him are obvious: he is mad, and they don't want to employ a mad person because of possible further manifestations of insanity being bad for the workplace.

(Being mad isn't a protected characteristic, is it? Or does it come under disability?)

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime I expect you'd be safe rejecting an applicant with a mental disability which made it impossible to do the job - such as dementia. Dunno if 'deluded' or 'misogynistic' counts as a mental disability these days when it's so widespread.

They're tieing themselves in knots because they won't say , if an employer mistook a transwoman for an actual/biological woman

They can't risk being accused of thinking that transwomen aren't really women

Exactly this, but we must not say this out loud, or even think it in Australia...

She didn't really say that though. If she had said, if you don't know the person is trans and you think they're a woman, and you discriminate on the basis that she might become pregnant then that's wrong.

But they didn't spell it out. At all.

I'm assuming it's because they didn't want to actually even acknowledge that the hypothetical person is male.

They won't even give it out as a possibility!

There has to be ructions right across Australia about this. Or if there isn't, there will be.

it's really difficult to believe how they can't see what absolute fucking idiots they look.

Oh spanna, you said it first. I missed your comment.

it’s almost comical, a bit like a French and Saunders sketch, if it weren’t for real.