Okay. So, I've mentioned "Angry Lechers" in the past who was an in-house solicitor with [area] Police and how she advised the Force to get a male officer to search a pre-operative transsexual's bottom half and a female officer to search their top half upon arrest and detention in case seeing the last turkey in the shop breached the female officer's human rights.
I haven't mentioned the other thing she regaled us all with on that fateful day. Which was about, are you surprised, toilets.
So, there AL is, stood up in her seat, dressed up to the nines like an Apprentice contestant. Tight pencil skirt, tight white shirt, makeup applied with a trowel, skirt long enough to be professional but short enough to flash her stocking tops when she bent over to pick up a pencil she'd dropped within eyeshot of the Chief Constable, you know the sort of thing. I am a serious professional, not some cutsie well-bosomed desk ornament, while looking for all the world like the latter.
Anyhow. She tells us about how at [area] Police, they were presented with a dilemma. If a trans woman officer is made to go into the gents' toilets because she still has a pickle, that's transphobic and wrong. But if she goes into the women's toilets, other cis women officers might catch sight of her purple headed yoghurt warrior, and their human rights might be breached (even though I'm sure your average officer with [area] Police sees worse on Saturday night in [city] after the pubs chuck out, or when [football team] lose at home.) Her predecessor, who she says with great scorn as if to imply that they were a FUCKING WHITE MALE and worthy only of disdain and reproval, had come to a "compromise" by having transgender police officers go to the disabled toilets, and had advised that every Police station in [area] have a little transgender symbol painted on the disabled bogs' doors. But no! said AL. This was transphobic by equating transgenderism with a disability!
Her advice? Designate additional toilet cubicles for transgender people only, aside from the disabled cubicles. Even though this would mean fewer cubicles for everyone else while a whole run of cubicles had no use at all.
I was tempted to stir the pot by saying that this would mean that one gender or another's toilet provision would be affected by this and by not affording equal numbers of toilets they were engaging in direct sex discrimination. However I didn't. I did, though, put my hand up and ask that surely, why would women officers be offended or sexually harassed by a trans woman using their toilet facilities? Women's toilets are all cubicles anyhow so they'll not see any genitals of questionable provenance unless they're Peeping Tom-ing.
AL looked at me daggers and sat down. She clearly hadn't thought of that and I'd shown her up in front of people she was keen to impress.
