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

Trans identifying males brain patterns all fall within the male range and none fall within female ranges.
There is literally nothing female about trans identifying males.

Males who claim a trans identity are male in every way possible and every reliable piece of scientific research says that they are not different from any other male

In my example, Sam doesn't have a choice about voice coaching. He had a stroke and lost his voice. Erica's voice works, but Erica doesn't like having a tenor pitch and wants to make his voice sound higher to resemble that of a woman.

I'm absolutely going to judge Erica as far less in need of paid time off.

Define 'living as another gender'.

You can't change sex.

So what are you doing differently?

Why should other people lose their rights to accommodate this?

How do we define someone who is legitimately transitioning from someone who has nefarious intentions?

it's cruel to force someone to live their life as the other.

For the umptybillionth time, what does this mean? What is living life “as” a woman?

Giving gender reassignment its own super-special and extremely generous policy is grossly unfair to everyone else.

Carers won't get 13 weeks per year every year. Jury service is a legal obligation, but even then, your employer has the right to stop paying you and you have to then claim back lost earnings from the courts service.

If Sam ‘doesn’t have a voice’ then there’s a strong chance Sam is on long term sick leave. Stroke survivors don’t have ‘voice coaching’, they have speech therapy. Your comparison is meaningless, you created it so you could express your disdain for a trans person. That’s fine, your opinion, but it says nothing to the policy.

But not when we are autistic:

A 2017 study in JAMA Psychiatry imaged the brains of 98 individuals ages 8 to 22 with autism spectrum disorder and 98 control subjects. Both groups contained roughly equal numbers of male and female subjects. The study confirmed earlier research showing that the pattern of variation in the thickness of the brain’s cortex differed between males and females. But the great majority of female subjects with ASD, the researchers found, had cortical-thickness variation profiles similar to those of typical non-ASD males.

In other words, having a typical male brain structure, whether you’re a boy or a girl, is a substantial risk factor for ASD. By definition, more boys’ than girls’ brains have this profile, possibly helping explain ASD’s four- to fivefold preponderance among boys compared with girls.

Yet, despite not feeling like a girl, I know that I am female and I leave my body alone even though I don't like its sexed features. Nothing stops these men from doing the same. So why don't they? It's because most of them are autogynophile fetishists, not "female brained". We know this because of "normalise the bulge" and the other numerous displays of exhibitionist behaviours.

Men should not be getting paid time off to indulge their fetishes.

They are getting taught how to use their vocal folds, yes? The job title of the teacher doesn't matter so much.

Sam will get absence warnings and Erica won't. This is just not on.

Disdain for a fictional trans-identifying person. Fictional, used to illustrate an example of a policy being unfair. I absolutely am going to be disdainful about that. If I have to take singing lessons outside of work hours, so trans-identifying people can take voice lessons outside of working hours. Neither of us is disabled without them, whereas Sam is disabled by his stroke robbing him of his voice.

Almost all surgery is elective. Non elective surgery is stuff that happens to someone in immediate danger of dying or severe harm (stopping bleeding after an accident, say), emergency caesarean etc.

Sam would also be in half and then zero pay, Erica would not.

It seems that the Civil service have acknowledged this created discriminatatory treatment of none trans employees

The provision was removed after analysis of equality law “in mitigation of potential discrimination in respect of different provisions for other employees”

Trans activists are always making the point that some of the treatments, therapies, surgeries that cis (for want of a better word) people have are “gender affirming” so they absolutely should get time of for their gender affirming care!

eg when men go to Turkey for hair implants!

Stand by for a long detour but this is detail I know and I want it on the record because it matters to me. If you’re less interested, jump to the last paragraph.

Transgender voice work (and more recently, non binary voice work) is typically an aspect of speech and language therapy, done by qualified SALTs who have postgraduate training in voice. Speech therapy for stroke survivors is usually done by SALTs who specialise in neurology rehab, and the most likely cause of ‘not having a voice’ in that case will in fact be aphasia, or a problem using language. However, if the stroke affects the function of the voice box (which can sometimes happen) the survivor will probably be referred in to a SALT voice therapist or ideally into voice clinic (joint clinic between ENT and SALT).

Transgender voice is officially a core part of NHS commissioned services, and has been since about the early 2000s. In reality, a lot of NHS teams are closed to new referrals because there is minimal clinical risk to not doing the work (no symptoms likely to deteriorate, no additional cancer risk, no swallowing risk, the voice itself is unimpaired). Also there are increasing online resources, self-help voice networks, private SALT services and non-SALT voice therapists (may have a background in performance or singing for example). There certainly used to be SALTs attached to the regional gender clinics including the Charing Cross gender service which was the first in the UK, but I don’t know the current provision there.

Transgender voice, from a practical point of view, can be extremely hard work for the patient with lots of appointments, often group appointments, and if the person is motivated and has the mental resources to tackle it, it can be very effective. I would argue, however, that all that is nothing compared to the effort required by stroke survivors with aphasia, who often can and do go back to work because they need to, like anyone else, with a particularly complex new disability for which they may well require workplace adjustments, including reduced hours or periods of sick leave, for which they get less pay or sickness management, like anyone else…?

Until I see science indicating otherwise, and frankly, I don't care if it's biological or mental/thoughts only: if you 'feel' like (or believe) you are one gender: it's cruel to force someone to live their life as the other. Try it yourself. And I don't know if curing it ('changing' gender in their minds) is less horrific than changing their bodies. Lesser of two.

Or what is the solution to ease their suffering? Talking about it in therapy won't work.

Evidence that therapy won't work? Before the Dutch changed their treatment of children with gender issues to the affirmation model that's caused so much damage around the world since, the standard treatment for children and teenagers everywhere was 'watchful waiting', because research showed that the vast majority of those children came to terms with their natal sex once they were through puberty. Prior to that, therapy for the child and the whole family was important in making sure that other mental health issues were identified and treated and also in trying to help the whole family grasp that there is no right or wrong way to be a boy or to be a girl, you just are a boy or a girl because of your body type. Everything else is personality and stereotypes.

I think it’s ridiculous to continue pandering to your rubbish analogy, but I’ll have one more try.

It is not necessary to have disdain for anyone, it’s only necessary to have a lawful and appropriate policy that suits the workplace.

Exactly. This is why the Civil Service is getting rid of this policy because they have decided it is not lawful, not appropriate and doesn't suit the workplace.

You literally said: Your attempts to demean ‘Erica’s’ choices as less valid than ‘Sam’s’ undermines any idea of fairness.

This is why trans people are losing support. Very few 'normies' are going to rate Erica's choice (to sound a bit more womanly) as equally valid to Sam's 'choice' (to try to regain some function that he lost in a stroke). You have a distorted idea of what is fair.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I know about SALT for aphasia, but not about voice coaching for trans (or any other) people. My ex husband had to stop work due to aphasia, his work were very good but he could not have done his job, and it was impossible for him to find another when he was almost completely unable to talk or write.

I agree that non-essential activity should be done outside of work. I agree that voice coaching is non-essential. I disagree with setting up silly straw man comparisons to have the opportunity to express an opinion about trans people, who are legally protected by law like anyone else. That sort of posturing hasn’t helped women, it’s just self serving and it winds me up.

I think it’s fair to treat people with respect, even if you don’t agree with their choices. I think it’s essential to treat them lawfully in the workplace. The pp made clear that she would not respect a trans person in the workplace and would pit them against others. Nothing to be proud of there and no benefit to anyone other than herself either.

No, she didn't. We can all read the thread you know. You are wriggling because you said something really ridiculous. One in a long list of ridiculous claims and demands that transactivists make, that are losing trans-identified people the support that they actually had before the activists took over.

The Welsh CS policy I looked at gave carers one week of unpaid leave per year.

Exactly. So need for people to make up silly characters to prove a point.

Not sure why you switched to children.. I am only talking about adults. If an adult reaches their 20s, 30s and older and still feels like the opposite gender, then they are transgender. You won't talk them out of it. Something more drastic is needed.

Or, maybe you disagree. Is that the solution? Force therapy until they change their minds or pretend they did. Okay, that's one way to go. Not sure it will help prevent suicide in that community.

This policy is not lawful, by CS's own recent review, and it isn't appropriate. My "rubbish" analogy was an attempt to give an example circumstance illustrating why it is neither lawful nor appropriate.

It doesn't say anything about surgery.

In the recent (and still ongoing) ET brought by transwoman Samantha Tempest, after he had had a long period of sick leave for "distress" caused by having to coexist with the DEFRA SEEN network, he went back to work just in time not to have to go onto half pay. But not before he'd already tried demanding that he be put on special leave. Fortunately HR/his manager actually showed some guts and refused.