Now civil servants threaten strike in trans toilets row
CIVIL servants are threatening legal action and strikes over what they claim is the ‘segregation’ of transgender people in Government toilets and changing rooms.
Activists in Whitehall’s biggest trade union are calling for ‘possible industrial, legal and human rights challenges’ to guidance which had the effect of ‘segregating our trans and non-binary members in the workplace’.
They want to ‘ensure’ such guidance is ‘vigorously opposed’, after the Government said transgender women would have to use male facilities in accordance with the Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces.
Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union also oppose ‘the segregation’
‘Depths of extreme gender ideology ’
of trans women in sport, in light of governing bodies including the Football Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board banning those born male from female teams. Delegates at its annual conference later this month will be asked to agree with the statement that: ‘Conference rejects biological essentialism and reductionism. Conference believes LGBT+ and women’s liberation are interlinked and that our bodies do not define who we are, who we love or what we are capable of.
‘Conference believes any Cabinet Office guidance which prevents trans and gender non-conforming workers from fully accessing their workplace should be opposed in coordination with other civil service unions.’
The motion also states the Cass Review into gender treatment for children used ‘highly flawed methodology’ which led to ‘apparently politically motivated and predetermined conclusions’. And it opposes Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s ‘confirmation of the Tory puberty blocker ban’.
It was tabled by the Sheffield branch of the Department for Work and Pensions, led by transgender activist Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, who the Mail revealed had linked women’s rights groups to the far-Right. It also emerged staff had complained that Tweedale, co-chairman of the LGBT Civil Service Network, wears ‘gothic’ clothes to work which some likened to ‘fetish gear’.
A second motion, tabled by a DWP branch in Edinburgh, calls on delegates to agree ‘trans and non-binary people should have equal access to all services and facilities according to their gender identity’. It also calls for people to ‘determine their own legal gender without having to endure any costs, invasive medical processes or bureaucratic hurdles’.
Helen Joyce, from the charity Sex Matters, said: ‘If PCS members pass a motion that denies the biological fact there are two sexes, it will indicate the union has descended into the depths of extreme gender ideology. Describing single-sex facilities as segregation is grossly offensive, suggesting women’s need for safety and privacy from men is comparable to the horrors of apartheid.’