Civil servants oppose plans to end trans reassignment leave policy

[Whattheflush]

Oh for gods SAKE. The tide is turning but it feels like the wane is ever so slow.

Civil servants fight plan to scrap trans ‘reassignment leave’

www.thetimes.com/article/8b46e972-e753-4e32-94ce-04dd09a1bbd5?shareToken=b264d0a693114f10740e3ee99ed1f882

It would depend on the employers policy. They couldn’t give full sick pay for normal sickness or illness and not for gender reassignment, but they could for cosmetic surgery. The EA is clear time of for gender reassignment is comparable to time off for sickness/illness, and doesn’t specify cosmetic surgery.

But you don’t.

Presumably you wouldn’t begrudge ‘genital surgery’ for someone who had a GU medical condition, on the basis that they ‘might get an infection’? Or someone who had a birth mark or scar corrected, even though that’s a psychological issue rather than a physical one.

The law requires the upholding of sex based rights and the rights of trans people. Get used to it.

All non emergency surgery is elective. Employers can set their sick leave policies to be more or less generous but they can’t specify which types of sickness they’ll cover (unlike insurers).

As per usual frankly: people with disabilities and long-term illness have been badly let down by the HR/ EDI focus on the easier and more performative actions in the workplace.

<sarcasm> Who wants to faff about doing occupational health assessments and reasonable workplace adjustments for their employees when you can just hang up some progressive bunting and have a middle-aged man in to tell his 'inspiring story' of wearing his female relatives' clothes from a young age. <end sarcasm>

Completely agree - plus the tax payers are paying twice; once for the NHS & the other since they’re a direct taxpayer funded employee!

Tell me you're not an autistic woman without telling me...

Female puberty was traumatic for me, with tits and body hair and bleeding and cramps and suddenly being sexual prey. Male puberty would have been traumatic for me, with testosterone surges and body hair and random erections. I still, in my forties, feel like my breasts are parasitic growths that aren't actually part of me.

At six, I asked my mother if cutting my hair short would make me a boy, because I wanted to be one as I could see even then that men and boys get an easier ride through life. If I'd been male, at least that would have provided me with some protection from sexual assault and immunity from pregnancy.

You really have no idea just how little women, eapecially autistic ones, have a sense of "gender identity", assuming that "gender identity" is even real, which I doubt.

If gender identity was a real biological thing, it would look the same throughout history and across cultures. Yet women in different cultures and periods in history behave and dress differently, as do men. I don't have tattoos on my chin, yet Maori women do. My male colleagues don't wear embroidered green velvet minidresses, yet Henry VIII did.

Nobody grows a penis after birth

These boys with 5 alpha 2 reductase deficiency would beg to differ...

CS employees with actual cancer get sickness absence warnings, despite being disabled by law from diagnosis. They don't get 13 weeks scot-free.

This change brings gender reassignment procedures into line with cancer patients. HTH.

When a male goes through puberty his penis grows and for boys who were born with a micro penis it may suddenly become visible or more obviously a penis.
This does not mean they are suddenly growing a penis that they didn't already have it just means that the one they already had has got bigger

Yeah, I'll accept that as a reasonable alternative description of how these lads develop.

The Dominicans perceive the lads as having vulvas.

Males piss out of a penis. It might be small but it's functionally not a female body part - it works differently and has multiple functions. Women have different anatomy which gets aroused in a different way and isn't used for pissing.

The understanding of how women's bit are massively different to men's bits is something that a lot of men are totally ignorant to. There's been some great threads on MN over the years where women have explained their partner's total ignorance of where they pee from and how as well as other basic biology knowledge which is massively lacking.

Theres a huge amount of this surrounding trans ideology. The post up thread about 'growing a penis' is hilariously one of these examples.

“Or fight tooth and nail because you "know" you're female.”

The issue is, that no male can ‘know’ what they are perceiving as themself being female. It is not an accurate statement. And vice versa. There is no possible way for them to have an accurate reference point.

Not one aspect of that person’s life has been experienced as the opposite sex, despite their self description that it has been.

It is all based on a personal subjective conceptualisation of how people of the opposite sex experience life and how they navigate the world with the sexed body they have.

Reposting @csturbjikbfd ’s post so that those championing the retention of 13 weeks (a quarter of the year every year) on top of normal sick leave limits for those with trans identities can comment on the lack of equity for those with disabilities, many of which will include recovery from surgery and cancer treatment.

If trans-identified people were being treated on a par with those with cancer/disabilities/etc, that would be one thing. But they are getting ten times as much. That is totally unacceptable. I cannot imagine how this appalling level of inequity was allowed to come about.

This was my understanding too. For one, I don't have time reveal to an employer what surgery I am having or why so they would have no idea if it elective or not and no idea whether it is cosmetic.

If you think anyone is going to repeatedly have surgery that seems possible to only have it done once, someone is certainly bonkers.

Reassignment treatment isn't just one surgery though. It covers a whole gambit of potentials. Genital surgery, implants, hair removal, hair transplants, facial surgery, voice coaching etc.

Trans people are treated more favourably for all of this, than a civil servant undergoing for example cancer treatment.

To be honest I'm surprised there hasn't been an ET on it from a member of staff disadvantaged by the policy

When the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2004, Parliament was assured by experts that only about 5000 people in the UK would qualify to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. When a few MPs and Lords attempted to point out obvious problems that would follow from making it possible to get your birth certificate reissued with the wrong sex on it they were told it didn't matter because the number of people it would affect was tiny. Well:

(a) it wasn't, because each of those people with a GRC goes out into the world and interacts with others, so the numbers affected are far higher than 5000

(b) in the end most trans-identified individuals have not bothered to apply for a GRC, so the legislation is now largely irrelevant - but

(c) the arrival of the internet, easy access to porn, social media and so on have led to a social contagion which has led a lot of troubled people to identify as trans or non-binary in the hope that it will solve all their problems, and has given a glorious opportunity to many fetishists (all male) to claim to be part of this persecuted minority and to ride roughshod over women's rights and safeguarding procedures introduced to protect children and other vulnerable groups.

Throughout this mad period, many people who really should know better have refused to look at the facts and are still behaving as if the numbers involved are that original 5000 with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. That's the only way I can explain this Civil Service policy - that it was drafted and approved by people who thought only a tiny handful of staff would be in a position to take advantage of it.

Of course, anyone attempting to point out the reality of the position has probably been disciplined and faced the possibility of being sidelined, demoted or sacked as a hateful bigot, so I imagine most Civil Servants have rolled their eyes and kept stum.

Oh, it's coming. My blood boils when I think about these poor-mainly autistic-people who actually needed intensive therapeutic support being so casually told 'oh sure, removing your testicles/breasts will make you feel like you were meant to be' These poor souls will live with the lifelong consequences that they couldn't possibly have imagined and never actually wanted. Because doctors completely ignored the 'first do no harm' principle.

‘I thought gender surgery would make me feel better. I was misled’

https://www.thetimes.com/article/60b9377e-aeba-4e02-9244-dc49098eab5a?shareToken=977468770bc72d78dd2687987bf1efd2

No but they could have a boob job 1 year, facial feminisation surgery the next, genital surgery the next year and then the multiple revision surgeries over subsequent years and then they'll need another boob job because those implants will need replacing even if he wants to keep his implant size instead of increasing them.
And thats before you talk about surgeries to deal with the medical consequences/side effects of taking cross sex hormones, such as vaginal and/or womb atrophy or kidney damage/death from having to process the wrong sex hormones, just to name a few.

I really don't think you realise quite how harmful gender transition "medicine" is or how quickly it leaves the victim disabled and a patient for life even if they detransition

That’s absolutely tragic what happened to that poor man. A case of therapists unquestioningly affirming him and surgeons jumping in to butcher him. Thanks for sharing this article.

None, but it should be in line with other sick leave. While it remains a treatment on the NHS then it has to be considered a valid medical treatment, but as a chronically sick civil servant, I don’t see why people with this one particular “illness/condition” should be given preferential time off.

Do the majority of trans people have all these surgeries?

The boob jobs are the most common followed by facial feminisation surgery thankfully relatively few get genital surgery but they always have complications when they do so often require multiple revision surgeries.
However even if only a 1 person has these or anything else and gets extra time off thats discrimination against everyone else who is not given extra time off for surgery

How many trans women get boobs job or facial surgery?

Paid for by the tax payer

and they have the nerve to say they need to raise taxes. No. Stop bloody wasting our hard earned money!