Remember that Nicola Sturgeon once said she was “a feminist to my fingertips”. Perhaps she should check what feminism actually is. It’s about ensuring equality of the sexes rather than prioritising men, even those that think they’re women.
The Sex Matters article on the NHS employment case is very much worth a read. It seems that the Employment Tribunal feel into error because the NHS didn’t rely upon the legal defence available to it under the Equality Act 2010. Why not? Because, following Stonewall instructions, it believed such a defence itself to be transphobic.
It is! They almost seem to have chosen not to give a defence in other words. It is an unusual way for the NHS to act. Many people don't even know what the Equality Act is (or a few other protections). Everything is inherently magically transphobic innit. Trees are so transphobic. Why can't we identify as trees if we want to.
The detail of the case is even weirder - the 'NHS angel' (V) was a law graduate who applied for a job as a catering assistant at the Sheffield Hospital Trust’s Central Production Unit in January 2020 after a long period of poor mental health and unemployment. Although the job had been advertised as a full-time post, V insisted on working only two or three days a week and the Trust agreed. And you are not allowed to be 'posh' now - I assume that just means well-spoken, or educated and not obliging this man's delusions. Of course the women who were nastywasty were 'opinionated'. Opinionated women, tut tut. So was this happening when the pandemic was just kicking off? No time for hissy fits there was work to be done.
So can we do that now? Just choose our employment terms? I am all for people getting back to work and work helps to keep good mental health but my mind boggles. ME ME ME seems another key feature of this case and I wonder how HR allowed it right from the start. Imagine the chaos that one person caused? That one person who has now decided not to be an NHS angel in Sheffield. I pity the next place or team that isn't suitable adhering to the invented new rules.
I just don't get it. I do not get how anyone in the ACLU can think they did the "right" thing letting males into female prisons just on the basis of self ID. It is not ok that they now removed the man who doesn;t apparently know how to live as a man (really?), and left the other males there. It is not ok that those two women are now pregnant. And it is not ok that those kids may grow up knowing that they were the result of a poorly thought out social experiment perpetuated by do-gooders who can;t discern reality from fantasy.
And the NHS getting sued for discrimination for asking a man whether he wore underwear? FFS. Surely anyone who is not being disingenuous can see that that male was getting his rocks off exposing himself to women in their "safe" space. As a rule, not even women walk around in changing rooms calling attention to their nakedness because they are "so hot". Take your bloody top off then! You don't see men walking aorund supermarkets when it's hot with their trousers and pants off, you see them with no top on! The other way round is so obviously predatory that I am utterly bewildered how any tribunal could rule in their favour. But then this all seems very in line with KJK being warned by Wilts police for being "untoward" about paedos.
I am so utterly sick and tired and so incredibly angry about all this frikkin' nonsence. Every single day I am confronted with idiots at work with their pronouns proudly on display, often with little links or exhortations encouraging others to do the same and I wamt to scream at them - "How can you support this? Do you even look up from your self satisfied virtuousness to see the harm being done?" and I am the one that feels like I need to watch my back. I feel excluded because work has been ideologically captured. I need the support of the disability network but I can't join it because it is run by the woke mob and comes under D&I. I resigned from the womens network when they decided to become the inclusive network and let in men (so a pointless body as it's not just trans people but males too). I feel utterly disenfranchised.
Head up BlackieKat, keep angry, keep strong and look after yourself. It's relentless and hard to keep plugging away but you've got a lot of support from others here and many other places. It would be interesting to know how you could highlight how existing employee support groups or policies are not suitable for you, without coming under attack for that of course. I know it's exhausting to tread carefully in shifting sands.
And I'm not whooping, skipping and waving my knickers round my head like a football scarf or 'wringing them out' as I'm so hot when I go to change in women's loos or bathrooms. I must be womaning wrong again. I wonder how the women on the bench generally view access to their changing areas. Maybe we should start calling them something like 'withdrawing' rooms again.
One explanation for the bizarre decisions in the NHS and government, legal or employment systems is that people are distracted but that's never an excuse I will accept.
Thanks ThoughSheBeButLittle. I've thought about it long and hard but seeing as the organisation is still tied to Stonewall and HR is plugging the rhetoric, it gives me little room to maneouvre without being seriously at risk from formal action up to and including being fired. And you are right, it IS exhausting. I have worked in male dominated places most of my life but this is the most threatened and unsafe I have ever felt.
I think a lot of us must be "womaning" wrong - men are so much betetr at it it seems. I have never removed my underwear in a communal area exclaiming how hot it is or stood in front of a mirror groping my own breasts. I've never filmed anyone in a changing area or got aroused at wearing clothes or being in the ladies loos. But this sort of thing never happens, right?
And youa re right, distraction is no excuse. Not when this amount of harm is being done.
It's really easy for others to tell us to speak up and take a stand. That must be up to each of us to decide, and in our our time and at our own pace - it's just not as easy for many or even safe to do. I do take courage from those that do as the risks are high.
I'm wondering if there was a whistleblowing policy or organisation that might help (even to know it's there). Policy, schmolicy I know, but it might help you feel less alone. I have worked with whistleblowers - it's still something that I'm undecided about to be fair. It's a fundamental part of good systems. We know it's needed, we know the value, and it might be good for others, but it is more than tough to go through for individuals, so I tend to approach it with caution.
I can say what I like here, but you need to feel supported by your colleagues. Maybe keep your own counsel for now.
The Metropolitan police officer was given a remarkably lenient sentence for making and possessing child pornography. He is a very dangerous man and should be put in prison for a long time. And he should never ever be allowed to be an officer for the law again. There's something deeply wrong with the court system when it comes to child abuse. The lack of recognition of the deep harm it does to individuals and to society is disturbing. We're still in the dark ages.
Can't say I'm on board with the statement that a man invading the women's staff changing rooms is experiencing abuse or harassment if he overhears the women present discussing him in negative terms. He is the one subjecting these women to harassment, by invading their private space and undressing his male body in their presence. If they have something negative to say about him, he can suck it up.
There is on evidence these supposed overhead comments ever took place. Also am intrigued by the descriptions of the 'posh' and 'opinianated' voices? What does that even mean, for goodness sake? Why were these descriptions not even challenged?
The 'posh' comment is odd and fits with someone who's capitalising on some class warfare divisive theory. Like assuming someone with an accent is stupid.
Now to be educated or intelligent or hard working or any characteristic at all can be seen as the somehow insulting colonialism of the consistently deliberately thick amongst us.
I can't understand any man having the gall to call himself transgender and then walk around in women's areas. It's beyond embarrassment. It's beyond excrutiating. It's mortifying. And for such a man to go through this behaviour without any sense of shame signifies either a mental illness or a supremely cunning predator.
The only way it makes sense is if you look at what is in it for him. A decent man would feel the things you described, but someone who gets their sexual high from asserting power over another, or exposing themselves without being challenged would be thrilled, empowered and er... stimulated.
Because we very oddly still seem to be at the how many of the things-that-never-happen stage. As they never happen, who cares how many times they are not happening or to whom.
Even this series of events and behaviours has been dressed up by the tribunal which is an odd misreading of pretty much everything that happened. Looking forward to hearing what happens next. And if the NHS ever make the connection to why so many people are deciding to not make it their workplace.
Sadly, they will never see whjat they don't want to see. Their rhetoric is "most maginalised and oppressed" so how can anyone else be worse off? It's not the true believers we need to target, it is the ignorant and uninformed folk who do not hear most of these things as the media do not share them or they spin them.
Also, I am not surprised about authorities letting men into womens spaces. Women are rarely taken seriously when they report sexual harassment or sex crimes anyway. Women are often blamed for them in fact, so it's no surprise when womens safe spaces are opened up to men when the rhetoric is that they just want to pee (no threat) and that these things never happen (no threat) as the societal belief is still very much that women are to blame when men abuse them (and women are just as bad as judging women who are victims as men are).
It's fascinating how suggestible we are. And then how many of us are being coerced into this. This mass propagandizing delusion that Edward Bernays might be feeling foolish for missing a trick over.
Someone states 'I'm most marginalised and vulnerable', then you are told 'they are most marginalised and vulnerable' and your mobile phone pops up with a notification on who is 'most marginalised and vulnerable'. Your child comes back from school to tell you who are most marginalised and vulnerable. It's new research so keep up. They are chastised by their teachers, so please, wake up mum and understand. Your oldest friend argues with you for 'not getting this' and being bigoted and cruel. Then another news provider reminds you in passing that, of course they are most marginalised and vulnerable. A colleague gives a presentation. We are invited to training. We are asked to read a report. We write a report on the brief of most marginalised and vulnerable and addressing their needs. We are congratulated for this and receive a promotion. The person in our team who challenged this is moved to another project, then they leave.
An ad for a helpline wants you to call them if you are most marginalised and vulnerable. Then someone quotes research about the most marginalised and vulnerable and then someone reminds you, don't we all know of course, that that incident that we should have known about was caused by a victim who is most marginalised and vulnerable. It's encouraged to be properly educated about this new most marginalised and vulnerable.
Then your bank asks you if there is anything they can do to help you and can you please identify if you are most marginalised and vulnerable.
You are too busy to report that muffled screaming and shouting you heard again as you passed your neighbour's house on the way home or in a break from virtual team meetings, haven't replied to your ill relative or visited them or your elderly parent, but it's ok, your time is better spent on the true most marginalised and vulnerable.
Remember that Nicola Sturgeon once said she was “a feminist to my fingertips”. Perhaps she should check what feminism actually is. It’s about ensuring equality of the sexes rather than prioritising men, even those that think they’re women.
The Sex Matters article on the NHS employment case is very much worth a read. It seems that the Employment Tribunal feel into error because the NHS didn’t rely upon the legal defence available to it under the Equality Act 2010. Why not? Because, following Stonewall instructions, it believed such a defence itself to be transphobic.
I hope this gets appealed. I would donate to any crowdfunder
Thing is, the only party with any standing to appeal is almost certainly the NHS. There will be nobody you could help crowdfund.
I read somewhere the women involved might be able to appeal it?
It is! They almost seem to have chosen not to give a defence in other words. It is an unusual way for the NHS to act. Many people don't even know what the Equality Act is (or a few other protections). Everything is inherently magically transphobic innit. Trees are so transphobic. Why can't we identify as trees if we want to.
The detail of the case is even weirder - the 'NHS angel' (V) was a law graduate who applied for a job as a catering assistant at the Sheffield Hospital Trust’s Central Production Unit in January 2020 after a long period of poor mental health and unemployment. Although the job had been advertised as a full-time post, V insisted on working only two or three days a week and the Trust agreed. And you are not allowed to be 'posh' now - I assume that just means well-spoken, or educated and not obliging this man's delusions. Of course the women who were nastywasty were 'opinionated'. Opinionated women, tut tut. So was this happening when the pandemic was just kicking off? No time for hissy fits there was work to be done.
So can we do that now? Just choose our employment terms? I am all for people getting back to work and work helps to keep good mental health but my mind boggles. ME ME ME seems another key feature of this case and I wonder how HR allowed it right from the start. Imagine the chaos that one person caused? That one person who has now decided not to be an NHS angel in Sheffield. I pity the next place or team that isn't suitable adhering to the invented new rules.
I just don't get it. I do not get how anyone in the ACLU can think they did the "right" thing letting males into female prisons just on the basis of self ID. It is not ok that they now removed the man who doesn;t apparently know how to live as a man (really?), and left the other males there. It is not ok that those two women are now pregnant. And it is not ok that those kids may grow up knowing that they were the result of a poorly thought out social experiment perpetuated by do-gooders who can;t discern reality from fantasy.
And the NHS getting sued for discrimination for asking a man whether he wore underwear? FFS. Surely anyone who is not being disingenuous can see that that male was getting his rocks off exposing himself to women in their "safe" space. As a rule, not even women walk around in changing rooms calling attention to their nakedness because they are "so hot". Take your bloody top off then! You don't see men walking aorund supermarkets when it's hot with their trousers and pants off, you see them with no top on! The other way round is so obviously predatory that I am utterly bewildered how any tribunal could rule in their favour. But then this all seems very in line with KJK being warned by Wilts police for being "untoward" about paedos.
I am so utterly sick and tired and so incredibly angry about all this frikkin' nonsence. Every single day I am confronted with idiots at work with their pronouns proudly on display, often with little links or exhortations encouraging others to do the same and I wamt to scream at them - "How can you support this? Do you even look up from your self satisfied virtuousness to see the harm being done?" and I am the one that feels like I need to watch my back. I feel excluded because work has been ideologically captured. I need the support of the disability network but I can't join it because it is run by the woke mob and comes under D&I. I resigned from the womens network when they decided to become the inclusive network and let in men (so a pointless body as it's not just trans people but males too). I feel utterly disenfranchised.
Head up BlackieKat, keep angry, keep strong and look after yourself. It's relentless and hard to keep plugging away but you've got a lot of support from others here and many other places. It would be interesting to know how you could highlight how existing employee support groups or policies are not suitable for you, without coming under attack for that of course. I know it's exhausting to tread carefully in shifting sands.
And I'm not whooping, skipping and waving my knickers round my head like a football scarf or 'wringing them out' as I'm so hot when I go to change in women's loos or bathrooms. I must be womaning wrong again. I wonder how the women on the bench generally view access to their changing areas. Maybe we should start calling them something like 'withdrawing' rooms again.
One explanation for the bizarre decisions in the NHS and government, legal or employment systems is that people are distracted but that's never an excuse I will accept.
Thanks ThoughSheBeButLittle. I've thought about it long and hard but seeing as the organisation is still tied to Stonewall and HR is plugging the rhetoric, it gives me little room to maneouvre without being seriously at risk from formal action up to and including being fired. And you are right, it IS exhausting. I have worked in male dominated places most of my life but this is the most threatened and unsafe I have ever felt.
I think a lot of us must be "womaning" wrong - men are so much betetr at it it seems. I have never removed my underwear in a communal area exclaiming how hot it is or stood in front of a mirror groping my own breasts. I've never filmed anyone in a changing area or got aroused at wearing clothes or being in the ladies loos. But this sort of thing never happens, right?
And youa re right, distraction is no excuse. Not when this amount of harm is being done.
It's really easy for others to tell us to speak up and take a stand. That must be up to each of us to decide, and in our our time and at our own pace - it's just not as easy for many or even safe to do. I do take courage from those that do as the risks are high.
I'm wondering if there was a whistleblowing policy or organisation that might help (even to know it's there). Policy, schmolicy I know, but it might help you feel less alone. I have worked with whistleblowers - it's still something that I'm undecided about to be fair. It's a fundamental part of good systems. We know it's needed, we know the value, and it might be good for others, but it is more than tough to go through for individuals, so I tend to approach it with caution.
I can say what I like here, but you need to feel supported by your colleagues. Maybe keep your own counsel for now.
The Metropolitan police officer was given a remarkably lenient sentence for making and possessing child pornography. He is a very dangerous man and should be put in prison for a long time. And he should never ever be allowed to be an officer for the law again. There's something deeply wrong with the court system when it comes to child abuse. The lack of recognition of the deep harm it does to individuals and to society is disturbing. We're still in the dark ages.
“I don't know what it’s like to live as a man”
Look down at your willy, Demetrius, and you’ll get an idea of what it’s like.
He just impregnated two women. It doesn't get any more "living like a man" than that socially or biologically.
Well, quite!
Can't say I'm on board with the statement that a man invading the women's staff changing rooms is experiencing abuse or harassment if he overhears the women present discussing him in negative terms. He is the one subjecting these women to harassment, by invading their private space and undressing his male body in their presence. If they have something negative to say about him, he can suck it up.
There is on evidence these supposed overhead comments ever took place. Also am intrigued by the descriptions of the 'posh' and 'opinianated' voices? What does that even mean, for goodness sake? Why were these descriptions not even challenged?
I have my doubts about the veracity of his stories. Even the dialogue EL James writes isn't so appallingly clumsy and stilted!
...meant to read "No evidence" ...
The 'posh' comment is odd and fits with someone who's capitalising on some class warfare divisive theory. Like assuming someone with an accent is stupid.
Now to be educated or intelligent or hard working or any characteristic at all can be seen as the somehow insulting colonialism of the consistently deliberately thick amongst us.
She’s a mystery Elizabeth. What is her motive? Has she got her eye on a global
job where wokism seems to her prerequisite? I cannot fathom her.
I can't understand any man having the gall to call himself transgender and then walk around in women's areas. It's beyond embarrassment. It's beyond excrutiating. It's mortifying. And for such a man to go through this behaviour without any sense of shame signifies either a mental illness or a supremely cunning predator.
The only way it makes sense is if you look at what is in it for him. A decent man would feel the things you described, but someone who gets their sexual high from asserting power over another, or exposing themselves without being challenged would be thrilled, empowered and er... stimulated.
Because we very oddly still seem to be at the how many of the things-that-never-happen stage. As they never happen, who cares how many times they are not happening or to whom.
Even this series of events and behaviours has been dressed up by the tribunal which is an odd misreading of pretty much everything that happened. Looking forward to hearing what happens next. And if the NHS ever make the connection to why so many people are deciding to not make it their workplace.
Sadly, they will never see whjat they don't want to see. Their rhetoric is "most maginalised and oppressed" so how can anyone else be worse off? It's not the true believers we need to target, it is the ignorant and uninformed folk who do not hear most of these things as the media do not share them or they spin them.
Also, I am not surprised about authorities letting men into womens spaces. Women are rarely taken seriously when they report sexual harassment or sex crimes anyway. Women are often blamed for them in fact, so it's no surprise when womens safe spaces are opened up to men when the rhetoric is that they just want to pee (no threat) and that these things never happen (no threat) as the societal belief is still very much that women are to blame when men abuse them (and women are just as bad as judging women who are victims as men are).
It's fascinating how suggestible we are. And then how many of us are being coerced into this. This mass propagandizing delusion that Edward Bernays might be feeling foolish for missing a trick over.
Someone states 'I'm most marginalised and vulnerable', then you are told 'they are most marginalised and vulnerable' and your mobile phone pops up with a notification on who is 'most marginalised and vulnerable'. Your child comes back from school to tell you who are most marginalised and vulnerable. It's new research so keep up. They are chastised by their teachers, so please, wake up mum and understand. Your oldest friend argues with you for 'not getting this' and being bigoted and cruel. Then another news provider reminds you in passing that, of course they are most marginalised and vulnerable. A colleague gives a presentation. We are invited to training. We are asked to read a report. We write a report on the brief of most marginalised and vulnerable and addressing their needs. We are congratulated for this and receive a promotion. The person in our team who challenged this is moved to another project, then they leave.
An ad for a helpline wants you to call them if you are most marginalised and vulnerable. Then someone quotes research about the most marginalised and vulnerable and then someone reminds you, don't we all know of course, that that incident that we should have known about was caused by a victim who is most marginalised and vulnerable. It's encouraged to be properly educated about this new most marginalised and vulnerable.
Then your bank asks you if there is anything they can do to help you and can you please identify if you are most marginalised and vulnerable.
You are too busy to report that muffled screaming and shouting you heard again as you passed your neighbour's house on the way home or in a break from virtual team meetings, haven't replied to your ill relative or visited them or your elderly parent, but it's ok, your time is better spent on the true most marginalised and vulnerable.