Trans rights and the supreme court

[lnr]

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.

Comments

[vyvyanx]

Thank you again for all your support on this - I am so grateful that there are cis people out there who care enough about our lives even to say something, let alone doing all the work you have done. I'm sorry it's been giving you sleepless nights (I've had plenty myself over this issue during the last month or so - and in the past when trans stuff was in the news for other awful reasons e.g. the Cass report).

On Sunday, my MP wrote me a very encouraging letter in response to my long missive, and asked me to meet him to discuss it further at one of his surgeries. So I will!

[rmc28]

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.)

[hilarita]

It's a pity Rachel Padman's retired.

[barakta]

Our work is doing the "don't make us talk and we don't change anything" line and apparently meeting with staff LGBTQ+ group but keeping their head down.

We have a good ally cis gay man in HR who is good at "playing the game" while having some integrity (how long he'll last I don't know) and he is reminding work how unenforceable policies should not be put in place and hoping work will feed back to EHRC that the policy is unworkable as well as inequitable and the ruling was "May" not "must" and EHRC must not demand that people should be transphobic.

So much for this reputed clarity eh?

[lnr]

Amanda and I spent a couple of hours today looking at the proposed code of conduct changes the EHRC are consulting on. It was hard going.

13.3.19 If a service provider (or a person providing a service in the exercise of public functions) admits trans people to a service intended for the opposite biological sex, then it can no longer rely on the exceptions set out at paragraphs 13.2.3 to 13.2.22. This means that if a service is provided only to women and trans women or only to men and trans men, it is not a separate-sex or single-sex service under the Equality Act 2010. A service like this is very likely to amount to unlawful sex discrimination against the people of the opposite sex who are not allowed to use it. A service which is provided to women and trans women could also be unlawful sex discrimination or lead to unlawful harassment against women who use the service. Similar considerations would apply to a service provided for men and trans men.

13.3.20 Similarly, if a service provider (including a person providing a service in the exercise of public functions) decides only to provide a service on a mixed-sex basis, without any separate or single-sex option, this could be direct or indirect sex discrimination against women who use the service or lead to unlawful harassment against them. This is most likely in contexts like those referred to in paragraph 13.3.4.

I cannot see how they can in all conscience write this stuff down and not see how *wrong* it is. It is *obviously* not in line with the intentions of the Equality Act 2010 at the time it was written. I'm fairly certainly a lot of what is in this Code of Practice is also directly against things which were said in the Supreme Court judgement itself, but I've not yet got the tuits to look up the relevant paragraphs. This is not yet guidance, it is proposed guidance for consultation, but I am sickened by it.

[doseybat]

Thank you for doing this work!