Sonia Sodha puts it very well.
Some things are plain common sense. Female employees should not be expected to share changing rooms with male colleagues. They shouldn’t be socially shamed into undressing around them, or being in spaces where male colleagues get undressed in front of them.
Common sense, but at the same time, transphobic and evil and yet another bad thing women do.
…most people don’t need to read accounts of how uncomfortable mixed-sex changing facilities make some women feel, or statistics showing that voyeurism and exposure are two of the most common male sex crimes, to understand how wrong this would be.
But not managers at NHS Fife, it would seem. Despite the law of the land enshrining that commonsense insight – that employers are obliged to provide separate changing facilities for their male and female employees – female staff working for this Scottish health board have been expected to share changing rooms with a male doctor who identifies as female.
How is that even possible? Easy. Just insist that “trans women are women” and that it’s morally abhorrent to point out they are men. Job done! Suddenly the intruding men are the victims and the women who want to avoid them are the evil demons.
There is no circumstance in which it could have been appropriate for NHS Fife to put Peggie in this position. The attempted justification is that everyone must adopt the minority belief system that someone’s sex is not a scientific fact but a matter of their gender identity, or some sort of gendered soul. As a personal worldview, that’s someone’s own business, but it is wrong – and, in a work context, unprofessional – to try to force it on others in relation to single-sex spaces, services and sports.
It seems so simple and so obvious. And yet…