Of course women will be safer

This ruling has nothing to do with toilets, or changing rooms etc. This law does not make it impossible for trans people to go into those spaces. This law doesn’t, in itself, protect single sex spaces.

The ruling means that organisations must now re-draft policies to ensure both women and transgender people are included in provision.

The ruling means if you want to hire a woman for a job using the exclusions within the equality act, you don’t have to consider a trans woman for the role.

So many posts on this and people (on both sides) shouting about winning and losing yet it seems so few people actually understand what the ruling is.

I requested a woman when arranging my smear test. I should be able to do that and be confident that they won't have a penis. I should have the right to make that decision about my own body without being accused of being a bigot.

Whether you want to get changed in a cubicle or not has no bearing on what other female people want or need.

Many gyms and sports facilities or even the NHS have communal single sex changing areas. Just because you don't want to use them, why should the space be configured around your preferences. Sometimes the shower cubicles are too wet to get changed in. Sometimes there simply isn't enough cubicles for the number of female people needing them at the time.

It doesn't matter. The spaces are there and if they are designated as single sex, they should be. It is irrelevant that you don't want to use them.

Reading this like this over the last few days has left me wondering what it was like when it was made law that women couldn't be beaten or raped by their husband's. Clear legislation matters.

There is a fallacy of absolutism that some people have tried to used to convince women that they should not be campaigning to have their single sex spaces remain single sex. It is based on the premise that if you cannot prevent ALL male people who may harm females from entering, why should we even try.

It also revolves around 'policing' entry. Hence you get those thought terminating statements about 'genital inspections', usually followed by the equally thought terminating accusation about obsession about genitals when they were the one who introduced it into the discussion.

Before there was this re-education process started by organisations, governments and media, female people felt confident that there were options available to any female person if they encountered a male person in a female single sex space. We could ask them if they were in the right toilet if we felt safe to do so. We could turn around and leave. We could announce to all in the toilet that a male was there so every one knew. We could stand at the doorway and say to women and girls 'There is a man in there at the moment'. We could get security. We could call the police.

Then the re-education process started. Including signs in the toilets telling female people that they have to make male people welcome because it is not up to us to know whether someone is a woman or not. There was even a university who put in their campus toilets that any micro aggression towards a male person in the female toilets would be considered 'hate'. I mean, that is rather threatening in itself.

Then came the news reports of male people being so sad and aggrieved because some one didn't allow them to use the female changing or fitting room. All written to evoke sympathy for that male person. Or when a male person has exposed themselves or has been caught watching women and girls, it was all just a normal part of using the changing rooms.

And of course, women who complained were suspended from their jobs, or were the ones asked to leave the venue.

Now female people don't feel confident about what they can do. Now some younger female people have been educated that this new male freedom is righteous and should be considered normal. We have a generation of young people, both male and female, who have very low personal boundaries and they don't know that they do. They have been educated that these low boundaries are normal.

So, yes. Women and girls knowing that if they enter a female single sex space that has been designated as such under the EA they should only find female people will make them safer. We can start having confidence again that we can act as we did in the past.

Will there still be male people entering who should not be there? Yes. Of course there will be. I don't know one person who has campaigned for female single sex spaces who believes that there will be this miraculous gate that will prevent those male people from entering. We never had that gate in the past, we cannot expect that gate in the future. It was never about the gate.

It is about giving female people to the confidence to act if a male person enters. It also sends a very clear message to those male people who want to act within the law now that this is expected of them.

There are nurses who would like to get changed in privacy, but unlike you and your cubicle, they can't because of men invading their changing areas. They deserve the dignity and respect they give their patients. Don't you agree?

Try reading up on what is happening to nurses in Darlington and in Fife. HTH.

No I’ve visited 2 gyms in the last week ( a Village and a council run gym) and both had open plan changing rooms. Both had shower cubicles with curtain / door but then I had to get changed in the open.

i can 100% guarantee you my elderly mother would request for a female nurse for intimate care - this matters greatly to her

You've even used too tall as a way of telling a man from a woman FFS!

Because the vast majority of men are taller than most women. Hope that helps.

Most of the women on Mumsnet who talk about trans issues are in some vein aligned with being "gender critical" and feminist though. So yes, you would say masculine/butcher women won't have an issue, because that's part of the feminism. I think sometimes people forget that there are swathes of women in the world who don't align with this and who absolutely do judge masculine and butch women and are hostile towards them. It's not necessarily you or the women here who will be demanding to know they are "really female" or not.

I spent a lot of teen years being called a boy by people with narrow views of feminity. Of course it happens.

But don't you get changed in a cubicle? I dont want anyone seeing me naked frankly All nurses provide intimate care regardless of their sexuality

Exactly. I had some bright spark say to me re transmen: 'How do you feel that someone who looks like a man can now use women's toilets'?

Because, for the millionth time... they have a VAGINA!!! Seriously... how loudly do we have to say it for the people at the back!?!? 🤦‍♀️

Utter bullshit.

It’s not just about sexual assault.

I don’t want to get changed in front of men. When I shower at the gym, I don’t want any blokes around, I would be uncomfortable.

I don’t want my elderly mother to be nursed by a male who will be providing her with intimate care.

I don’t want my pubescent daughter to have to deal with sanitary rustling in a cubicle with a man next door.

All of these situations now won’t happen due to the ruling.

Remember the video…. Consent is a cup of tea….. I don’t consent to men in my female spaces! That’s it and that should be enough!

BATSHIT.

As per my last post, this rhetoric is frankly bullshit. Masculine looking women are just that. And transmen are biological women, however they present. Hope that helps.

Women will not be safer, this puts more women at risk my friend is very tall, has fairly masculine features. She will be questioned, ridiculed and asked to use men's spaces while any male predators will still be predators

Totally agree with you OP.

I've seen the most bizarre rhetoric from fiercely intelligent women about how this is 'another attempt by the patriarchy to control us'. Er... sorry... WHAT!? How is banning biological men from women's spaces a 'win' for biological men?

Also, I've noticed how, as a counter argument, people are now whatabout-ing about transmen... how women have now 'shot themselves in the foot' because transmen will now be forced to use the female bathroom. Firstly, they won't. And, secondly, even if they are, they are biological females, so would be totally welcome. Obviously.

And do not get me started on the absolute bile I've seen online from transwomen towards women. Just so nasty and perfectly highlighting WHY women don't want them in their spaces!!

Why is it amazing? Why are you surprised at people discussing people they know on threads about them? Mumsnet has 8 million monthly users according to their own stats. 10 posters is a tiny proportion of those.

I was thinking of starting a poll of how many MNers have:

A transwoman friend who is 5'4 has had 'all the surgeries' and the poster didn't even realise was transwoman until they were told;

Or, a transman friend who is over 6 foot and muscle bound and is indistinguishable from a man;

Or, a teenage DD/DDs friend who is over 5'10 and androgynous and is constantly being accused of being a man in public toilets;

Or, a butch lesbian friend who is constantly being accused of being a man in public toilets.

I'm up to at least 10 since Wednesday. It's amazing.

how many threads are you going to spam this post to? It doesn't make it any truer the more times you post it.

Would you like to point me to video footage of an actual woman who wants to be treated as a woman but is not clearly female when seen in person?

However men can just say ‘I’m a trans man’ and enter female spaces, this just makes it easier for the actually dangerous men now.

And if Stonewall had used this common sense around trans inclusion and had boundaries and limitations and campaigned for 'open' facilities / sports teams etc it could have been very different. It wasn't long ago that Stonewall probably did agree with all these but it got more and more unreasonable.

They have to listen to actual real women now.

Why don't we make all children's nursery's accessible to anyone. I mean a paedophile will find a way to assault a child so why try to stop them?