Should gender reassignment remain a protected characteristic?

[toyl9876]

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

I don’t need to provide an argument for this. Parliament already did that when it included gender reassignment in the Equality Act. You want to remove a protection that has existed for 16 years, so you need to justify why this should be done.

In a thread full of people saying that they believe gender reassignment should be removed as a protected characteristic from the Equality Act, my post gets deleted because I said that I think it should be removed as a protected characteristic...

I would rather hope that after someone has given birth she is no longer protected in law from discrimination against her on the grounds of pregnancy! Otherwise any woman who has ever had a child (living or dead – would miscarriage count?) would continue to be protected against discrimination on the grounds of something which no longer existed, which would be absurd.

Likewise if someone ceases to be a Scientologist, say, or a flat-earther, or a Branch Davidian, they certainly ought no longer to be protected in law from discrimination on the grounds of their belief in something they no longer believe in.

I reserve the right to be put off someone pregnant who swears at my children and throws litter in the street, just as I feel entirely entitled to dislike and avoid a member of any religion who sidles up to me in a public place and asks me unctuously "are you saved?" (Or come to that knocks on my door when I am cleaning the bathroom upstairs and drags me from what I am doing in order to ask me a similar question. It isn't because of their religion that I wish them to Gehenna, it is because they are a pestilential bloody awful nuisance, and unctuous with it.)

My objection to mandating special consideration for one of a nebulous group of people who are in actuality impossible to define even in the abstract, let alone in a shop, remains the same: if I don't know someone, how can I manage not to do what every human being does automatically in any meeting with another human being she doesn't know, quickly judge that person as to whether he or she may present risk to me? I'm sure you discriminate at every single encounter with everyone, quite unconsciously: it this person drunk or not? Is this person angry? Does this person have a lovely smile? Is this person in distress? Does this person look lost and in need of help? Is this person clearly very strange, and worth giving a wide berth just in case? And so on and on, all in a split second.

Discriminating, after all, is not always a negative thing to do. When I was a child and wanted something my mother recognised as utterly inappropriate (a thick jumper on a hot day, for instance) she would say "oh, for heaven's sake show some discrimination!" The ability to discriminate between safe and dangerous is a survival trait.

I have not at any point suggested that firing someone for being trans is acceptable. Nor did I suggest that employment law should be changed to make it legal to fire a woman as soon as she gave birth. Stop with the DARVO nonsense, please.

Not employing someone trans for the same reasons one would not employ anyone of either sex, such as horrendous body odour for a public facing role, or a serious stammer for a newsreader, is entirely appropriate, though.

When someone has given birth they are no longer pregnant, just in case you are confused.

They are, however, still on maternity leave and are afforded some continuing protection (supposedly) against being sacked for not being available for work at that time. You could ask some actual women about how well that works out for some of us.

No-one is being stupid.

Firing a male person for wearing inappropriate sexualised female clothing and hanging around in the female staff toilets despite being asked to do neither of these things might be a reason to sack someone though.

It should be about behaviour.

Just so people know, I did not ask for toyl9876's post today at 14:16 to be deleted, and I am not at all sure why it was, unless accusing me of being a troll was pounced on in just over five minutes. It was still there when I replied to it.

I think we actually agree then? Firing someone for those examples isn’t illegal discrimination, but firing someone just on that basis of being transsexual would be wrong

The trouble might be that a transsexual person being fired for inappropriate behaviour might decide to take the employer to court and claim it had been done on the basis of their transsexuality rather than on the grounds of their behaviour.

That's a risk employers might prefer not to take, and might in fact lead to transsexuals not being employed in the first place, not because they were transsexual but because they might turn out to be an impossible employee who could not be got rid of.

Of course, not employing a transsexual because he or she might turn out to be an impossible employee for other reasons than the transsexuality could, almost certainly would, similarly be argued to be unlawful discrimination.

I don’t think that’s as big a problem as you make it out to be. The transsexual person bringing the claim is responsible for proving they were discriminated against because of gender reassignment

That's a risk employers might prefer not to take
The same thing could be said about any of the protected characteristic. It’s not worth defending a claim so I won’t fire/hire them.

Yes, obviously, that is not in dispute.

How do we feel about women being hounded out of their jobs or subject to disciplinary hearings for objecting to sharing female spaces (set up for the dignity of female people) with a male person who identifies as trans but is clearly male?

Because this has been a feature of a number of employment tribunals now.

Discrimination against women who want to be able to be perfectly polite and professional at work, but object to being used to validate someone’s trans identity by having to share intimate spaces with them.

I’m glad you don’t think it’s in dispute. It don’t think that goes for some of the other posters here.

Again, I think we agree here. No one should be disciplined at work for having valid boundaries.

The problem is that it is a pain in the wazoo to be forced to defend a nonsensical claim just as much as it is to have to defend a legitimate one. Whether the person bringing it wins or not, the employers have to devote time and money to defending themselves against it.

It wouldn't be whether it is worth defending a claim that's the decision-maker: it would be the likelihood or otherwise of the trans person being a pita who couldn't be got rid of. Very unfortunately, the behaviour of too many TRAs has caused trans people in general to be perceived by many as a monumental nuisance and possibly prone to violent expression of their feelings; this is not doing the trans people any favours whatever, and means it may well just be perceived as less trouble for the employers to go for the vanilla straight black person rather than the trans, or the satanist (a protected characteristic by religion) rather than the trans.

It is not about whether e.g. a woman has the right to take drugs to grow a beard. She has that right.
It is about whether she has the right not to be discriminated against because of her beard, so not being sacked from her job, or refused service in a restaurant, etc.

Same for men in dresses. They have the right not to be discriminated against at work, in restaurants, and in all other situations where their sex (male) is not relevant.

That person could equally also bring a claim for not being employed on the basis of gender reassignment, and would win if that is the reason they weren’t hired.

What are you suggesting here then? We get rid of the protected characteristic to actually protect trans people?

Very unfortunately, the behaviour of too many TRAs has caused trans people in general to be perceived by many as a monumental nuisance and possibly prone to violent expression of their feelings
I don’t think that is a widely held belief by most of the public. I certainly haven’t come across it when seeking employment

But what is unique about the gender reassignment quality that makes it worthy of specific protection where there are plenty of other characteristics subject to more real life discrimination but are not protected?

I don't have an opinion as to whether "beard growth" is a worthy enough characteristic to protect, my gut says probably not. Gender identity (or reassignment or whatever) is so nebulous and superficial I don't believe it is worthy.

Interesting point.
Why were the nine protected characteristics chosen? What did they all have in common in 2010?

@StandingDeskDisco

To be honest I'm not sure, other than that there were pre-existing anti-discrimination laws in place that were consolidated into the EA 2010.

Looking at it with hindsight there don't seem to be many similarities (some are mutable, others not, some are temporary others not).

I think it should be possible to reconsider both what we protect, and if we do whether some are more important than others.

So a man turning up dressed as Little Bo Peep at work would or would not have the right not to be sacked from their job for turning up to work with his frilly knickers showing?

If there was a dress code at work, it would be a matter for line management and HR to address: being unprofessional or not adhering to the dress code.

One at least was put in there as the result of considerable lobbying and pressure. The others, I don't know but I think they mostly had laws about them already and the idea was to put all the regs in one place for ease of reference and use.

Wikipedia lists "the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and three major statutory instruments protecting against discrimination in employment on grounds of sexual orientation, age, and religion or belief" as having been amalgamated.

What if they didn't, which they didn't?

If the employer doesn't have a dress code, or uniform, they would have to fall back on a clause about 'professional behaviour' or similar. There is bound to be something in the employee handbook or contract or whatever.

It would be very unusual (and sloppy) of an employer to have nothing in place to deal with piss-takers or disgruntled employees.

Well, again, they didn't. They let a man in his 50s walk round work, in a venue where schoolkids came almost every day of the week, dressed as Little Bo Peep for as long as he wanted to.