notes mean 1

This transphobe was on a roll.


A transgender law graduate representing themselves has won a claim for discrimination against the NHS after being quizzed by a manager about undressing at work.

'V', a transwoman, was employed as a catering assistant by the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust after spending several years out of employment due to anxiety over transitioning gender.

Before V started work, the Trust's staff were told by managers that V would be using female changing rooms, and that V did not want questions or comments about it. Bosses followed up with a reminder that the Trust celebrated diversity and would take decisive action if people were subjected to discrimination.

Staff were given extra training sessions dedicated to the issue by Sally Edwards, the Trust's head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Some employees "expressed concerns, mainly female members of staff worried about sharing the ladies changing room with a transgender woman", but Edwards told them there was "no evidence of transgender women being a threat or causing any issues in the workplace".

The tribunal praised Edwards' "well devised and well delivered" training as well as her "empathy", but V complained in court that the sessions did not go far enough, because Edwards failed to include statistics about transgender hate crime, or the fact that the Trust was a Stonewall Diversity Champion.

A week after beginning the job, V arrived at work "crying and shaking" because of "hate crime" outside the workplace, only to allegedly find a note in the female changing room that said, "Get out you tranny freak", which V destroyed before showing to anyone.

Later that day V was in a female cubicle and allegedly overheard a "posh", "English", and "arrogant" woman saying to another English woman, "I am sick to death of this bloke with a dick pretending to be a woman, who doesn’t even dress like a girl and has facial hair, that thing may rape me and we can drive it out of the department and maybe find a suitable leper colony for it". V said the other woman replied, "I agree but we need to do something but what can we do when management are sucking up to that thing", to which the first voice responded, "We will find a way".

V named two women as the culprits, both of whom denied the claims. When one of them began testifying at the tribunal it became apparent she was not a posh English woman, but came from the Philippines and spoke in heavily accented, broken English, at which point V withdrew the allegation after a query from the Employment Judge. 

A few days after the changing room incident, V reported finding a second transphobic note, this time written on a sanitary disposal bag, which said, "GET OUT TRANNY". When a staff member asked for a handwriting sample, V resigned, telling the Trust "she was shocked and surprised that she had been accused of writing the message herself".

The tribunal said V "had a tendency to misremember the detail of events" and gave evidence which was "clearly inconsistent". However, because the Trust had already accepted V's account, "although nobody provided any corroborating evidence", the tribunal said it "had no reason to doubt" V's version of events.

The tribunal said that in the law graduate's large number of discrimination claims, "not only does she complain about the original incidents, but also about very many of the things that happened to her afterwards, including the management of her absences and the conduct of her grievances". In an example, it said V claimed that managers tried to impose a return to full time work after one of the incidents, when the Trust actually granted three days of compassionate leave.

Although V's other claims failed, the tribunal found that a catering manager, Mrs Hawkshaw, did discriminate against V when she tried to question V about removing underwear at work.

V had asked a Catering Assistant, Mrs Townsend, for permission to go home as V felt hot, sweaty and ill. “At that point the Claimant told her she was so hot she had taken her underwear off, and made a wringing motion with her hands”, said the tribunal.

Townsend went to see Hawkshaw because she did not have the authority to allow V to go home, and recounted the conversation. Hawkshaw had also been informed that V had been in the female changing room "naked from the waist down".

The tribunal said that in a meeting with V to discuss absences and other incidents, Hawkshaw did not mention the changing room incident specifically, but asked V "personal and embarrassing questions" about removing underwear at work on a general basis. It said she only did so because of "a concern that the Claimant as a transgender woman might be in a state of undress in the female changing room", and it ruled that Hawkshaw "would not have asked the questions of a cisgender woman". It therefore found in favour of V.

Sex Matters, an organisation which campaigns to promote clarity about sex in public policy and law, said the tribunal's judgment was flawed on the basis that it should have asked if it would have been normal for Hawkshaw to question a male employee about undressing in the female changing room, not whether it would have been normal to question a female. The answer would have been "yes", said the organisation, because, "It is not normal to allow men to remove their underwear in women’s changing rooms (or even to be there). But managers well above Mrs Hawkshaw’s pay-grade had made the decision that V would use this space".

Stonewall's media team was unable to comment on V's victory, saying, "We don't have the capacity to comment on this at the moment".

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Comments

Anonymous 12 August 22 09:12

If you were hot, why on earth would you take your knickers off but keep your top covered?  And why would you feel the need to tell your manager about it?

Anonymous 12 August 22 09:40

I recommend reading the judgment. There's a good bit where V is reported for shouting in front of customers about how they are going to sue the trust, and Hawkshaw tells them off. 

Hawkshaw feels moved to apologise to V. V recorded it! And it was played to the tribunal. The transcript captures Hawkshaw's terror of causing offence: "I apologised all those weeks ago. I can only apologise. You took it not the way I thought you would...so I can only apologise for that. Just...I can’t take it back...it wasn’t meant in an offensive way".

Would that all our managers were so keen to make amends.

Jim 12 August 22 09:41

Woke gone too far.  If you have a penis, you should not be naked from the waist down in the women's changing rooms.

Anonymous 12 August 22 09:49

"If you were hot, why on earth would you take your knickers off but keep your top covered?  And why would you feel the need to tell your manager about it?"

It's impossible to say without speculating, isn't it?

On a cursory reading it sounds uncannily like exhibitionist behaviour of the kind that one might expect from someone who found pleasure and enjoyment in showing themselves off to strangers and also in telling people about how they had showed themselves off to strangers. A reverse voyeurism in which the thrill, perhaps even a sexual one, derived directly from obliging nonconsenting individuals to see or hear a display of nudity that they had no interest in or power to stop.

Narcissistic and attention seeking behaviour, you might think. Bordering on mental illness, perhaps.

But we can't know that of course, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions, because we weren't at the tribunal and we didn't hear V's testimony for ourselves which - even though it was 'clearly inconsistent' and came without corroborating evidence - would be vital for us to understand what was really going on in their mind.

I for one think that we should keep open in our own minds the possibility that they were, as they say, just a male-bodied woman trying to live their best and most authentic life, and not jump to the conclusion that their primary motivation in seeking access to a space in which women undress was to derive pleasure from exposing themselves.

Because of course if we did come to that conclusion then poor Mrs Edwards' wouldn't be able to keep blithely telling female employees who objected to undressing in front of men that there is "no evidence of transgender women being a threat or causing any issues in the workplace" and we'd have to ask ourselves if what was being permitted here was really any different to NHS management allowing any man who asked to enter the ladies changing room to flash at female employees.

So I think we should all keep open minds.

Anonymous 12 August 22 09:54

"Hawkshaw feels moved to apologise to V. V recorded it! And it was played to the tribunal. The transcript captures Hawkshaw's terror of causing offence"

I don't know what you're trying to say here.

I'm sure that what you mean is that 'V' belongs to one of the UK's (nay, the World's) 'most marginalised minorities' and needs us all to be allies in order to bring their oppression to an end.

Allyship in this instance meaning that we speak using the words they tell us to use and help them to lobby for whatever new rights and privileges they have decided they need in order to live as their authentic self.

It's very important to remember that, because if we don't then we run the risk of starting to see TRA's as a fringe pressure group who wield a disproportionate amount of power in Western society, which they routinely deploy to terrorise and intimidate anyone who they feel has wronged them or dared to disagree with any of their latest demands for special treatment.

Anonymous 12 August 22 09:54

On the knicker conversation, the tribunal said that V 'did have a tendency to blur appropriate boundaries, and perhaps to "overshare" with her colleagues.'

But: 'We have no doubt that it was meant in a light-hearted way, and was certainly not sexual in nature.' Phew!

And yet V complained that Townsend was transphobic when she told Hawkshaw about the knicker conversation, because V's view "seemed to be that because it was about underwear, it was sexual". 

Waffles 12 August 22 09:59

Dude should fit right in with the other identity politics driven cohort that is currently entering the workforce. The same people who believe not everyone deserve representation, guilty until proven innocent and that hurt feelings trump facts.

Anonymous 12 August 22 10:07

Interesting: V was technically time barred from bringing some claims, but although the tribunal said she "clearly has legal knowledge and knows about how to bring a Tribunal claim and the time limits for doing so", it decided to let her bring them anyway on the basis that she had "four, complex claims", "dyslexia and poor mental health", and the NHS had not argued "forcefully" against their inclusion. 

I didn't realise these rules were at the discretion of the tribunal, but sounds like no-one was complaining or enforcing them because they are all absolutely terrified.

Anonymous 12 August 22 10:13

"Just as I always suspected: everything is transphobic!"

Of course.

We have the power to magically transform ourselves from men to women and back again.

Why would we not also have the power to transform facts into transphobia? A waggle of our fingers, a yelp of anguish, the magic word 'victim', and the spell is cast.

We are today's wizards, and all reality must bend to our whims.

Anonymous 12 August 22 10:14

she had "four, complex claims", "dyslexia and poor mental health"

 

Well I think that we can all agree about that...

Camnow 12 August 22 10:16

Why give column space to Sex Matters? They weren’t connected to the case were they? There is no need to provide false balance by giving them room to make transphobic comment. 

Anonymous 12 August 22 10:21

Why give space to Sex Matters? Because it's balanced to include commentary from orgs on each side of an issue. That's common in news stories. They don't have to be directly involved - it's their expert commentary you're after. Eg people often seek quotes from Stonewall, like here, even when they are not directly involved, because of their presumed expertise. 

Anna's Support-Mother and Support-Dog 12 August 22 10:26

"Why give column space to Sex Matters? They weren’t connected to the case were they? There is no need to provide false balance by giving them room to make transphobic comment. "

Please could you help me to understand what is transphobic about Sex Matters comment?

They seem to be saying that a man with a penis should have been considered by the tribunal in the same way as another man with a penis. Rather than considering a man with a penis as if they were actually a woman with a vagina. Which they seem to be saying on the basis that the person in question was indeed a man with a penis.

Can you help me to see which part of their statement is transphobic? Because I don't think that I understand the issue with it.

Anon 12 August 22 10:32

This is a disgrace and shows how bad pro trans policy is for everyone. I feel bad that V was told that they could use the ladies facilities and then faced hostility when they did. EQUALLY, I feel bad that WOMEN are being told they MUST accept someone they perceive to be male in intimate and private spaces. If the NHS actually had a good policy (i.e. they provided seperate gender neutral facilities for trans people) then none of this woukd have happened. What a shit show.

Anonymous 12 August 22 11:35

"If you have a penis, you should not be naked from the waist down in the women's changing rooms."

Transphobe!

Hate Speech!

How dare you say such things! It's 2022! Go back to the Dark Ages with your awful views.

What is it about a woman's penis (which is definitely a not insane thing to talk about as if it were a real thing) that scares you so much?

Bigot!

Anonymous 12 August 22 11:41

I think I understand why stonewall wouldn’t want to comment. If companies realise this is the result of letting stonewall dictate their diversity policy, they wouldn’t let it anywhere near. 

Anonymous 12 August 22 11:50

Goodness, that judgment. If the trust had not felt bound to agree slavishly with everything V said because of its ‘values’, it surely would have won. That girl played them beautifully - she should consider taking up the law again!

Anonymous 12 August 22 13:58

The tribunal used the wrong comparator. The case of Green is unequivocal that the comparator for a trans woman without a GRC is a man without the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. This decision using a female comparator makes no sense - it's comparing apples with oranges and is detrimental to women's protections.

Anonymous 12 August 22 14:17

Maybe I'm too old but I don't understand what side some of these comments are on.  

Anonymous 12 August 22 14:46

"Maybe I'm too old but I don't understand what side some of these comments are on."

That is, in and of itself, transphobic.

Failure to identify - and stand as an ally against - transphobia is classic TERF behaviour.

Shame on you! Shame on you!

Anonymous 12 August 22 15:41

Maybe you should google what "phobia" means.  Finding some of these comments unclear and nonsensical doesn't mean you are "phobic" of the subject matter.

Your comment is, and of itself, and whole problem here - lots of people spout a lot of rubbish that they think sounds knowledgeable but actually is, and of itself, not.

Anonymous 12 August 22 16:16

"Your comment is, and of itself, and whole problem here - lots of people spout a lot of rubbish that they think sounds knowledgeable but actually is, and of itself, not."

Stop trying to gaslight transfolk and their allies.

Any voice raised in support of the rights of transfolk to live their lives free of persecution is automatically knowledgeable because that cause is objectively correct. There is no room for debate. This is the anti-apartheid movement of today. Be on the Right Side Of History.

Those who know what they are talking about acknowledge the fundamental decency of trans people and their right to identify as whatever sex, gender or object class they like (or need) to, the other are simply wrong and hold outdated bigoted views that don't belong in 2022. There is no argument about Human Rights. So don't try to call people like me who believe in decency unknowledgeable. 

What is not knowledgeable, and can never be knowledgeable, is reactionary TERFy views like yours which call into question a man's fundamental right to redefine themselves as a woman.

Trans Rights are Human Rights. And one of those rights is the right to turn into a woman. End of. Why are you so confused?

 

Or are you someone who doesn't believe in human rights?

 

Confused Employment Person 12 August 22 16:38

Honestly not sure what more the Trust could have done here to accommodate V.

 

They appear to be victims of their own desires to accommodate, which is disappointing because this article has brought out a lot of weirdos in the comments section.

Naomi Cunningham 12 August 22 17:47

There's an excellent commentary on the case by Anya Palmer, on the Legal Feminist blog, here:

https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions/v-v-sheffield-teaching-hospitals-nhs-foundation-trust-and-others-1806836-slash-2020-and-others

Anonymous 12 August 22 21:12

“Stonewall's media team was unable to comment on V's victory, saying, "We don't have the capacity to comment on this at the moment".”

Could this be because Stonewall is desperately trying to backpedal and arse-cover now the Tavistock clinic is being forced to close as a result of the Cass review and there is a proposed class action law suit of 1000 families suing Tavistock for wrongly medicating and mutilating their children in the name of unquestioningly “affirming” their gender?! 

Genuinely shocked 15 August 22 22:05

Tribunal seems to have used the wrong comparator which means this should easily get overturned on appeal - and the right verdict (and a victory for common sense) should be substituted (no discrimination).

 

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