(UK) Teaching union will fight for trans access to female lavatories

[Jessica_Rose]

Teaching union will fight for trans access to female lavatories

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/teaching-union-will-fight-for-trans-access-to-female-lavatories/ar-AA1ECgoN?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=f007bef308c64583db68eb74d252388d&ei=83

Story by Poppy Wood (12 May 2025)

The UK's largest teaching union will defy the Supreme Court's ruling on gender and campaign to allow trans teachers to keep using women's lavatories.

The National Education Union (NEU), which represents about 500,000 teachers in the UK, passed a motion over the weekend calling for guidance issued after the ruling last month to be withdrawn.

Britain's most senior judges concluded in April that the terms "woman" and "sex" in the 2010 Equality Act "refer to a biological woman and biological sex".

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) subsequently released interim guidance stating that "it is compulsory to provide sufficient single-sex toilets" and changing-facilities in workplaces.

It also said that in services open to the public, such as hospitals, shops and restaurants, "trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women's facilities".

But the NEU's national executive body voted on Saturday to "urgently... call on employers to support the right to use gendered facilities which match gender identities".

It said that the EHRC guidance was "incoherent [and] unclear" and "contradicts current practices, which allow all staff to use gendered spaces appropriate to them".

It means that the NEU may now intervene to provide legal assistance for trans teachers if they are barred from female toilets or girls' changing rooms, The Mail on Sunday reported.

[Tills]

Good for them! Bravo. How brilliant to stand up to this thuggery, although I daresay that the Mail on Sunday had a thing or two to say about this!!

I still think there's a massive bone of contention here around the definition of 'biological sex'. A narrow interpretation limits this to XX vs XY and penis vs vagina. As we know, there is so much more to biology than that. From alleles, to myriad hormones, from brain signals, to glands. There are multiple bodily functions that defy narrowly-conceived reductionism.

And yet we have ceded this ground with barely a whimper. This reductionist approach to biology was always the peg on which the TERFs would hang their hats and it's an area that is increasingly worth our while unravelling.

Aside from that, how on earth are they going to police their definition? If you defy them and state that you were born a biological woman with XX chromosomes, how exactly are they going to disprove it on the spot? I accept that it's harder if you are pre-op, but if you're a post-op female I don't see what they are going to do to prove you aren't what you say you are.*

I think all of us who have transitioned or who aren't transitioning can make a biological case otherwise, why would we put ourselves through this? The TERFs of course rant that it's because all MtF's are closet abusers, which is an argument that ought to be driven out of all quarters.

(As it happens I have a chromosome mutation and there are a number of members on this forum who have various varieties of intersex natal status. What of us in this dystopian country?)

[Lori Dee]

And yet we have ceded this ground with barely a whimper. This reductionist approach to biology was always the peg on which the TERFs would hang their hats and it's an area that is increasingly worth our while unravelling.

What I find "interesting" is that out of over 25 professional medical associations, none appear to be challenging this definition. They all recognize that sex and gender are on a non-binary spectrum and the appropriate medical treatments for these conditions, yet they remain silent.