.Jeddah Walo Kuch Sharam kro

Sometimes when I read a news item I think "what is all the fuss about". This week Labour MP Kerry McCarthy has spoken out in Parliament about house of commons security staff calling trans women "sir". OK it is annoying and it happens to me about once a week on average but I have never considered approaching my MP to have questions raised in parliament about it. And my first reaction was that this is going to get all the trolls out in force.
And of course that has happened with lots of transphobes using this as an opportunity to have a poke at us generally. However as I read the various reports the real story started to emerge - and that, I believe, is a story of blatant transphobic harassment by security staff employed by the metropolitan police.
Anwen Muston and Sophia Botha, both officers for LGBT Labour, attended an LGBT History Month event at the house of commons. On separate occasions each was called sir by a member of the security staff and quietly corrected them. On both occasions the security staff continued to repeatedly addressed them as sir and according to a commenter who was also there, one security guard then said "I call everyone sir" - which was blatantly not true as he had just addressed a woman as madam.
The definition of harassment in the Equality Act is very clear
Harassment occurs when someone engages in unwanted behaviour which is related to a relevant protected characteristic and which has the purpose or effect of:
violating a persons dignity or
creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the person.
What the security guards seem to have been doing was to attempt to humiliate the trans women in public or make fun of them, and that is quite clearly harassment.
I was conducting a Transgender Awareness Workshop recently where a trans employee had complained that staff were repeatedly using the wrong pronouns and previous name when referring to him. The other staff have always argued that because they have know the trans man for many years they do find it difficult to change, but that they seldom make this mistake. During the workshop I brought this topic up and in the course of the following 15 minute discussion the trans man was referred to by the correct pronouns only once. When I drew their attention to this, the staff admitted that they had not even realised they were doing it.




.Jeddah Walo Kuch Sharam kro ..... by malomaat