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Trans rights and the supreme court
Unions now have a meeting on Thursday with the Pro-VC, senior HR and EDI people. I'm going to be attending on behalf of UCU, along with our Equalities Officer Amanda. Our main requests are better communication of actual practical support for staff and students, not changing policies without consultation based on the rushed EHRC interim guidance, and asking for them to contribute to the consultation. There's a lot more subtle stuff involved, but that's kind of the absolute minimum.
It turns out I'm now having trouble getting back to sleep if I wake in the night, because I'm too busy thinking about how the hell we communicate this properly, and what our chances of success are in ensuring trans, intersex and non-binary people continue to be treated with dignity and respect and remain safe at work. Because that feels like a really basic thing to be asking for when you put it like that.
My HoD finally got back to me yesterday, to reiterate support, but it's meaningless if it's only said to *me*, and not to all staff and students.
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Yes, getting senior people to say things to all staff not just the ones who are making a fuss, is the issue. I believe my department has no intention to change anything based on EHRC interim guidance, but SLT haven't said so plainly. We have multiple openly trans staff, which makes the lack of comms worse.
Thank you for your work on this, and best wishes for the meeting on Thursday.
(My own very small daily action is to have added a trans pride wristband to my daily outfit and added progress pride and trans pride badges to my bag straps. I've also got a progress pride badge on my emergency "academic smart" jacket for meetings and presentations. But I need to make time to write to my MP.)
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I've added a trans flag pin back onto my existing progress pride lanyard. Not sure yet whether to go with this Tshirt for the Teams meeting:
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1250941393/pride-progress-tshirt-rainbow-heart
Or go smarter and just wear pins on my jacket (it already has a progress pride one too!)
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I would be inclined to go smarter with the jacket and pins.