Should gender reassignment remain a protected characteristic?

[toyl9876]

Should gender reassignment be a protected characteristic? If no, why?

And there was Dame Edna Everage. Barry Humphries was a genius.

I regarded drag and pantomime dames in much the same way as each other: stage performance. Or indeed any acting: a man did not become the part that he played in King Lear, and wasn't really pretending that he was, he was assuming a rôle, and putting it away and going home at the end of the evening. They were not real life any more than Tinkerbell or Mickey Mouse. And one felt desperately sorry for the few actors who got so caught up in the rôles they played that the fantasy took over.

I think we need to go back to using the original terminology, and scrap the concept of gender completely. We need to clarify that sex is physical, and gender is an outdated stereotyping concept rooted in patriarchy that benefits no one and actually harms everyone. Once we’ve resolved that everyone can wear whatever the fuck they want irrespective of their genitalia or XX/XY/XYZ status, and those who have surgery and take cross-sex hormones are once again referred to as transsexual, and no one uses single sex spaces according to what they ‘identify’ as.

Somehow I can’t see the TRAs going for that though.

I think it should be removed, I think it’s incompatible with women’s rights

I think it should remain in the equality act. Trans people do suffer discrimination so they need to have the protected characteristic. Sex has been clarified now so I don’t see what removed the characteristic would achieve.

@ALovelyPinkUnicorn did you try to reply to my message?

apologies if I upset you and had it deleted, I’d asked what was seen as being discrimination.

I didn’t even see your comment before it was deleted. I see discrimination as refusing to hire someone or serve them at a business just because they’re trans. It could also be firing someone just because they plan to transition.

I posted this earlier but got zero response...

What if they were a male prison guard and their job was to strip search for example male inmates. But then out of the blue refused to strip search males as they were 'proposing to undertake something something who knows what that is to transition' they then wanted to strip search women?

What would you do with a man who refuses to do his job?

If someone's protected characteristic makes them actually unwilling or unable to do the job they're in, then it doesn't constitute illegal discrimination to sack them. You'd see first to what extent that was a necessary part of the job, whether there was a similar role they could do within the organisation that didn't require the contested part. For example you could employ a police officer on the front desk or out responding to incidents instead of in the custody suite. (I don't know if that works in terms of how the police operate but that kind of thing.) But you're not required to employ/keep on someone in a wheelchair as a tree surgeon for example.

I think it should remain in the equality act. Trans people do suffer discrimination so they need to have the protected characteristic. Sex has been clarified now so I don’t see what removed the characteristic would achieve.

Lots of people are discriminated against because of their accent, class or education. They are not protected characteristics. It doesn't follow that all discrimination needs to be a PC.

The problem with the PC of GR is it protects people 'proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex' which makes no sense because its impossible to reassign sex.

Its this confusion thats the problem. A man with the PC of GR is still male and a man. If the PC was rewritten clearly, there wouldn't be confusion around SSE and we would be having a different discussion.

This makes me think that the protected characteristic should be something wider like "Gender Nonconformity" - though possibly a better term than this exists - an umbrella term that would include everyone who identifies as trans but also plenty who don't, but isn't about the invisible ideas in someone's head about whether they are "really" the opposite sex (which is a matter of faith) but a general protection for anyone who doesn't conform to the cultural stereotypes for their sex, regardless of what their gender beliefs might be. So it upholds the right for males to wear dresses and makeup and wigs and not be ridiculed or discriminated against because of it, and the rights of boys to enjoy ballet and barbie dolls if that's their choice, and similarly in mirror for women and girls.

What cannot be perceived cannot be discriminated against, what is discriminated against is that which is perceived and disapproved of, so it is the outward manifestations of being gender non-conforming that elicits discrimination that should be protected against - and that is suffered by a wider group than those who claim a trans identity.

A butch lesbian with a masculine presentation is subject to a greater and different kind of discrimination than a lesbian who presents in a more feminine way. Someone who is going to be discriminatory in this way is not going to differentiate in their hatred between the butch lesbian and a transman because the internal identity of whether they consider themselves to be a woman or a man is not what is perceived

Lots of people are discriminated against because of their accent, class or education. They are not protected characteristics. It doesn't follow that all discrimination needs to be a PC.
You’re right, it doesn’t follow that a PC is necessary for all discrimination, but it has already been decided that gender reassignment should be a protected characteristic. Why do you think trans people don’t need a protected characteristic?

RareGoalsVerge

Makiing a term like "Gender Nonconformity" a pc would make the system more of a mockery than it already is.

Ah, the loaded question argument.

Everyone should be protected, but how can people be protected when reassigning their sex, when its impossible to reassign sex?

Who are we protecting and what are they doing?

Are we protecting men to perform drag at work?

Use a woman's name?

Hide their sex on documents?

Pressure companies to remove SSE because they need to balance rights of these men with women.

Stop people laughing when a man uses 'woman' voice?

Stop people from saying they are a man?

When people claim its about access to work, they are only talking about half the story because its not only about recruitment, its about how other people are expected to relate to them.

Its about MrJohn Smith being able to change his name to Miss Jessica Smith, even when they are a school teacher.

Is there any other area of the law where something so batshit crazy is a PC?

Gender is meaningless, sex is important and how we sometimes need to categorise people, to provide single sex spaces for women and girls.

Gender cannot be reassigned....everyone has a personality and they can express it-but they cannot change their sex.

Nobody thinks protection against discrimination should be extended to men who larp as Napoleon, why should it to those who larp as women?

It’s not a loaded argument. If you’re saying trans people don’t need a protected characteristic that I have to ask why you think that and what level of discrimination you think is acceptable.

The PC exists and it protects trans people. The SC went to great lengths in the FWS judgement to explain how trans people were still protected and had lost no rights, so the SC seems to think reassigning sex is possible enough to have the protected characteristic.

In your ideal world, who would be protected and what would/wouldn’t be covered?

What is your definition of a trans person and what protect do you want them to have?

Should every or any male school teacher have the right under GR to be call Miss with she/her pronouns while teaching children?

It seems to me that the definition of a trans person within the context of that law is "anyone who says that is what he or she is", because it doesn't require anything more specific than an intention to do something to alter the individual's appearance or even body parts – which may remain indefinitely as an aspiration, and never in fact be fulfilled.

The Act says "A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex."

(The muddle about there being or not being a difference between sex and gender is already within that section of the Act.)

"proposing to undergo" is nebulous and impossible to prove or disprove. Anybody can propose to do any damn thing under the sun and not get round to doing it.

That is why I feel that this ought not to be law: as worded, it relies on an individual being honest, and I don't see how that honesty can be proven or disproven since it is entirely in the mind of that individual.

No one can change their sex. So no one can be protected while they undergo sex reassignment.

The PC of GR is to protect men while they pretend to be women. And the definition of 'woman' is whatever that man wants it to be.

As others have suggested, there is no need for a special protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment when unfair discrimination would be due to one or more of the following, which are all already covered by other Protected Characteristics:

1) Sex Discrimination by Perception

• for the vanishingly few people who mimic the opposite sex so successfully that they may actually be mistaken for the opposite sex.

2) Sexual Orientation Discrimination

• because homophobia is the real reason for a lot of prejudice against "trans people" - particularly lesbophobia, affecting the majority of females who attempt to present as male, and homophobia affecting HSTS perceived to be "effeminate gay males".

3) Disability Discrimination

• physical issues requiring time off work for treatment of (self-imposed) medical problems but time off for purely cosmetic procedures should be excluded, in the same way that no one should expect to be given paid sick leave or "special leave" to get a tattoo or a piercing
• detransition treatments would be covered as medical issues arising from iatrogenic harm
• mental health issues, to the same extent as any other employee

4) Belief Discrimination

• where this does not impinge on the rights of others, eg. pressure on others to use wrong-sex pronouns would not be covered.

The concept of "reasonable accommodation" would apply under Disability Discrimination and would prevent employers being bullied or coerced into believing that they have to capitulate to egregiously excessive demands.

For example, it would obviously not be reasonable to "accommodate" people with "Multiple Personality Disorder" aka "Dissociative Identity Disorder" by allowing or enabling them to have all their "alters" manifest in the workplace with different names, sexes, skills, personalities, etc. The same would apply to people who claim to be "gender fluid" and who are currently permitted by some insane Police Forces to have two "gender identities" with different warrant cards, numbers, names and uniforms - "because trans".

I think that many who are sceptical of the value of a PC of GR could be forgiven for thinking that the impact of having a separate Protected Characteristic of Gender Reassignment does not seem a million miles away from Family Guy's, "Do whatever you want all the time".

Should we also get rid of religion and belief as a protected characteristic? You have to rely on the person being honest and it can’t be proven either as it’s in their mind.

All that would do is make it harder for trans people to bring a discrimination claim. Right now we have the catch-all category of gender reassignment discrimination, but in your world we’d have to shoehorn the situation to fit one of the existing characteristics.

If we’re covered in the same way by the other characteristics, what difference does it make to leave gender reassignment as a PC?

We would be having a different conversation if the PC was of gender non conformity. But for that to make sense, a man would have to claim discrimination for being a GNC man or being perceived as a GNC man.

What the current law is suggesting is that a man could be discriminated against if they have to use the toilets or changing rooms with any other man.

Toilets and changing rooms are separated by sex, not gender. A GNC man doesn't need separate facilities to gender conforming men. Neither does a man who has reassigned his gender.

Somewhere in the PC of GR we are protecting men from being treated as men.