Kevin Lister: teacher refused to use wrong sex pronouns, sacked: tribunal appeal

[MyAmpleSheep]

Is anyone following this case? The EAT hearing was yesterday and today.

tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/k-lister-vs-new-college-swindon-dbs

The more I heard the more my eyes roll, this girl cannot be a boy, and all those around her who are supporting her in her delusions are not helping her one little bit.

It sounds like group mentality, all designed to force this teacher to comply, and as he's seems to be the only one who was willing to tell this girl the truth, he isn't the one who should be have been punished.

The fact that he lacked diplomacy is neither here nor there, there is no way to tell the truth politely to someone who doesn't want to hear it, they'll always complain about 'bullying' when they are confronted with reality.

He may well have done himself no favours by trying to point out some obvious facts to her, perhaps he thought that was a good way to help her, it was clumsy and too 'real' for her to deal with.

He should have saved his breath, but if we all turn our back on people who need help, especially when they don't realise they do need help, we'd be a poorer society.

Doesn't sound like the student threw a tantrum at all - 16 and 17 year old students should never have been in a position where they had to politely request an adult man isn't a bully in class.
He should have taught maths and kept his beliefs to himself - and not made anti-gay posts on twitter in his real name.

It doesn't matter which beliefs are correct. This teacher's conduct was negatively impacting on the student's education, he's not a suitable person to teach in a college.

I do not know the facts of this case, but
no one can afford to believe in going along with authority no matter what.

Of course not!
The don't need to call students anything like that, they just need to address them by their name as it appears on the school register, and by the pronoun appropriate to the student's sex as recorded.
Objective, neutral and official, and fair to all the students, not just the one making demands.

The latter is important in a school setting as the school is responsible for making sure that students only use the single-sex facilities designated for their sex.

As I've said before, I'm interested in the bigger picture of the underlying issue of obliging people to act against their WORIADS beliefs in workplaces such as schools, not in this individual teacher.

ETA: deleted, just read @Manxexile's explanation as to what happened.

Did the teacher dispute what the students reported?

Sorry, I edited it after reading Manx's post.

I take it I am the 'almost' in your 'almost to a woman'?

I've been considering the underlying issue, rather than arguing about what the child reported/teacher did.

The question is - given that nobody can change sex, and nobody who operates in the realm of fact (which one would hope includes all teachers) believes that anyone can change sex, how can it be right to oblige a teacher to act and speak as if a girl had done the impossible, i.e. become a boy?

I don't think it should be left to individuals to work it out in the classroom - badly, as it appears in the case of KL.

I'd like it to be clarified that nobody should be obliged to go along with someone's claim that they have changed sex, and I think it would be useful if schools only used names and sex as they appear on the register, not whatever a child decides they'd like at any given time.

edited cos the post I quoted was edited, I don't know where that leaves us now🤔

In this teacher's workplace it was clarified that he needed to use the student's preferred name and pronoun, keep his personal views to himself and teach some maths. Which he failed to do.

I take it I am the 'almost' in your 'almost to a woman'?

I'm not sure as I've not memorised your posts.

If you would blindly accept what a child reported about a teacher's behaviour and kick off at the school without investigating, then I suppose so!

And the question is whether enforcing wrong sex pronouns is discrimination in relation to a protected belief. Just because you tell somebody to do something, doesn't mean you have the legal right to do so without it being discriminatory.

It's not. He was just being a dick.

Thank you for your legal analysis.

You're welcome. Go live the rest of your life without fear of pronouns.

If this was the teacher's first shift at the coal face of dealing with the trans issue i can't really blame him if he dealt with it badly. He must have felt like everyone around him had gone stark raving bonkers. He's speaking what five minutes ago were uncontroversial truths, like it's impossible to change sex, and somehow that makes him the bad guy. Reminds me of how Glinner described feeling when he first encountered it.

And yet he refused to acknowledge the name change as per the guidance you've quoted. Such a simple thing that doesn't imply accept a change in gender unless you have extremely rigid views about what names are acceptable for men/women.

Well yes - that's the whole point!
Should an employer be allowed to tell an employee that he needs to act as if he accepts something he knows to be untrue, i.e. someone claiming to have changed sex?
This is especially relevant in an educational setting, where students have a right to expect that their teachers understand and accept basic biological facts - not 'personal views', note, verifiaable facts.

But that's what I believe needs to be sorted out a a higher level than individual encounters in a classroom - clarifying the law about respecting WORIADS speech, and school regulations about using students' official names would be helpful in avoiding situations like this case.

FYI: I didn't.

I'm really confused why we're even having this conversation to be honest!

Should a Catholic school be allowed to tell it's teachers that they need to act as if they accept God exists?

Yes me too, I'm going to stop now

ah the pupils banding together against the non believer… Salem lives on!

Providing they put forward his noodly appendage (the only god available in supermarkets worldwide, so must be the one true being), r'amen.

Yes, because there are such things as religious schools.
They are nonetheless supposed to stick to established scientific facts when teaching topics like biology.

It is an established scientific fact that girls cannot become boys, nor vice versa, so what kind of school would oblige a teacher to act as if they accepted that children in their classes can change sex?

Enforcing the practice of a specific belief is an Article 9 infringement if done by a state. If done by an employer, it could be illegal discrimination as to belief, if the complement of the enforced belief (ie the employee's own corresponding beliefs, or lack of belief) is Grainger-compliant.

Although, at the moment, a lot of employers could argue that the employee should have known, from the employer's declared practices, policies, and rules, that transgenderist belief is, and always was, an occupational requirement for the post(?)

Unfortunately this claimant has made a hash of things, so the judgment is unlikely to contain the sort of elegant exposition of protected belief law that we would love to see.

GC thinkers really need some better language for dealing with this issue, to put across up front that they don't share the belief, and don't wish to practise it, but respect believers and their right to practise it as long as they don't harm others.

In the long run, if the other harms of transgenderism are properly mitigated, I for one would be amenable to employers insisting on preferred name and pronoun use for adult colleagues and clients purely as a courtesy (minors are a different matter). I know others disagree, and I do fear that it will be a very long run indeed: we all know what Keynes had to say about that!