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Transsexual who fled to Britain sues for £500,000
A TRANSSEXUAL who moved to the UK because he feared persecution in his home town in America is seeking £500,000 compensation from his former British employers.
He says he was demoted in Britain after he underwent surgery to "feminise" his face and breasts.
Josh Bussert, 41, who now calls himself Jessica, is claiming for sex discrimination and victimisation against Hitachi Data Systems on the grounds that he was demoted from a senior information technology job.
"I am not a slacker," said Bussert. "I’m a hard worker and my change of sex does not affect my performance."
He is claiming £500,000 compensation in Britain in what is thought to be the largest discrimination claim to be launched over a sex change. The claim is expected to go to an employment tribunal within three months.
Bussert, who transferred from the American branch of the same technology firm two years ago, is also pursuing £2m damages against the company in a parallel claim in the US.
He earned £88,000 last year and moved to west London with his wife Sharon in April 2004 before starting his sex change.
In October 2004, physical changes due to hormone therapy, electrolysis to remove facial and body hair, and growing his hair longer, put pressure on him to reveal his new status as a "she". He is yet to have genital surgery.
He claims his boss, Steve Larkin, said he did not want any of "these people" working for him when Bussert broached the subject light-heartedly.
A European Court of Justice ruling 10 years ago made it unlawful to discriminate against transsexuals at work. The Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999 indicate that this covers employees who intend to undergo "gender reassignment" as well as those who have done so. There is no cap on damages that tribunals can award.
The Busserts formerly lived in Indiana. They lived with two of his three children from his first marriage and two girls the couple adopted from Haiti 12 years ago.
The couple, who have been married 18 years and say they are now closer than ever, moved to Britain believing it to be a more tolerant society.
Life in Indiana had become difficult when Bussert decided to change gender. A 19-year-old transsexual who was known to Bussert was murdered and set on fire. "That’s the kind of environment we were worried about," he says.
Bussert had started working for Hitachi in the US in January 2001. At the end of 2003 he was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person’s sex is at odds with his or her psychological gender. Bussert remembers wanting to be a girl from the age of four.
In April 2004, the couple moved to London and Bussert started work as principal consultant for European services.
Relations with Larkin, his new boss, started well, but in July 2004, on a business trip to Hamburg, Bussert told him jokingly he was thinking of a sex change.
He says Larkin replied: "Don’t do that to me, Josh. I had to work in an office with someone who did that once and it was weird." Bussert says he then told Larkin he was joking. He claims Larkin replied: "That’s good because it would be too strange. Don’t ever do that to me."
In 2004, he says, Larkin went over his head to make substantial changes to business agreements he had reached, destroying his credibility with colleagues. He says he was experiencing stress and decided to tell a human resources director, who seemed supportive.
Bussert said that after facial feminisation and breast surgery in America in March 2005 he took six weeks’ sick leave, out of the six months to which he was entitled.
He claims he was then effectively demoted. Although his salary remained the same — £88,000 a year — he no longer reported to Larkin but to a colleague who had been hired as his equal a few months earlier.
Two days after filing a discrimination claim with Hitachi last September, he says he had an appraisal with Larkin which he found so distressing he "went to the rest room and was physically ill".
He went on sick leave claiming "stress causing clinical depression, with anxiety and panic disorder". He says he returned to work in December but the company "made it difficult". He returned to sick leave and Hitachi stopped paying him in February.
According to Bussert, Hitachi claims he was not demoted but colleagues were promoted.
A spokeswoman for Hitachi UK said: "We don’t think it’s appropriate to comment, other than to say that we deny those allegations and will be defending them to the full extent."
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Gender-bending pollutants changing sex of clams, scientists say….
Wednesday April 26, 2006
Scientists working along the south-west coast of Britain have discovered widespread evidence of chemicals disrupting the sexual development of sensitive marine organisms.
In a study published today, the researchers report the first cases in which hormone-disrupting pollutants are believed to be responsible for a gender-bending effect on marine invertebrates living in British estuaries. The finding has caused alarm because the affected species are crucial for the health of the ecosytem, in some cases forming the staple diet of many larger animals.
Researchers at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth examined clams in estuaries from Southampton to the Severn and found that males at 17 of 23 sites suffered a condition called "intersex", where their testes contain both sperm and eggs. In some cases the male sexual organs contained thousands of eggs and up to 60% of clams were affected.
Some scientists fear that the species may become so badly malformed that they will be unable to reproduce. If that causes a significant drop in their numbers, there will be too little food for animals that feed on them, such as plovers, bar-tailed godwits and other wading birds.
Bill Langston, who led the study, said any knock-on effects could be hard to predict. "Invertebrates ... support the whole ecosystem by being at the bottom of the food chain. If something goes wrong at the bottom of the chain, there's a risk it could be serious for other species higher up," he said. One concern is that the clams concentrate the chemicals in their flesh, and so other animals eating them could also begin to show signs of feminisation.
Dr Langston's team became aware of the problem when they started to identify the sex of clams in the Devon Avon. The researchers chose the site in the hope that it would be free of chemicals that might interfere with tests on the organisms.
According to the study, published in the journal Biology Letters today, the most likely culprits are industrial hormone-mimicking chemicals, agricultural chemicals, pesticides or natural oestrogen that has found its way into estuaries after passing through sewage treatment works.
Tests conducted by the team show that exposing clams to estradiol, a natural female hormone, or ethinyl estradiol, a similar compound used in the female contraceptive pill, can trigger intersex.
Because there is little industry along the Avon estuary, Dr Langston said the effect might be caused by large amounts of hormones excreted by cattle grazing alongside estuaries.
Alastair Grant, director of the centre for ecology, evolution and conservation at the University of East Anglia, said: "Something as significant as large-scale sex change in an important estuarine organism makes you think there are other effects on other organisms which we haven't picked up yet. The worry is that it is the tip of the iceberg."