Thread 2: Why can't people respect the rules around toilets!?!?

I would like to get past it and we ought to be able to.

At the end of the day shouting back at forth at each other "transwomen are women", no "transwomen are men", is just pointless.

What I would like to understand from you is if you accept that there is any difference at all between a "trans woman" and a "man"?

If you answer "no" to this question, then you are essentially refusing to accept that being trans is a real, meaningful category of human existence. You are erasing trans women and their experience. And then of course we are never going to get anywhere with this conversation - how could we? Because I am trying to have a conversation about how we should treat a category of person who you don't think even exist!

If you answer "yes" to this question, then we ought to be able to move forward despite our disagreements about language. We can come up with an alternative , neutral word - a 'safe word' if you like lol - which we can use to describe the category of persons that are trans women, and then we can have a meaningful conversation about how we should deal with this category of person in law and policy.

Changed my user name for this simply because I've seen how these threads can go.

None of us want testosterone driven angry men in the women's toilets.

BUT...

What about those transwomen (old school transexuals I guess they were called) who transitioned 30+ years ago and are NOW being told to not use the toilet they have used their entire adult lives...?

Are we really expecting them to now start using the mens toilets?

I know a couple of transwomen in this situation and I've seen their world change from living a productive, unnoticed, quiet life...to now being judged and labelled as being as awful as the most extreme, violent and criminal of the TRAs.

Both of these transexual women did everything asked of them by the establishment; in terms of therapy, real life tests, psychiatry, medical interventions, paperworks.

So I don't know what they are (realistically) supposed to do now...

So, a law that mandates the exclusion of transwomen who's physical appearance isn't sufficiently womanly is OK?

Much more comfortable with that that than with an interpretation that says that law mandates the exclusion of trans women in all cases where men and women are treated differently. Absolutely I am. There is for this interpretation a legitimate logic.

these examples are not two separate things at all!! they are all about exactly the same thing/ they are about the application of sex exemptions under the law- not whether trans women are women and can or cannot ever be treated as such in situations where men and women are treated differently.

If a service provider wishes to make use of single sex exemptions to exclude one sex from a service or provision then that is all based on bio sex

Nope because they can also exclude trans men on the basis that they appear to be men and that would be detrimental to the operation of the service as intended as a single sex provision.

There’s no reason at all to say a service can’t be for women and trans women, excluding men because of the sex exemption. People say that unlawfully discriminates against men, but of course you can argue it doesn’t, using exactly the same argument as the court uses in the former case: because although men are excluded because their presence would be detrimental to the operation of the service, trans women appear to be women and therefore their presence is not detrimental to the operation of the service as intended as a single sex service , therefore the discrimination still has a legitimate aim (and is proportionate).

The court clarified that single sex provision for women may lawfully exclude trans women, not that they are required to do so. That is the key point.

Anyway as I said I’ve got better things to do with my time.

And are you comfortable with that? To argue that interpretation excludes a lot of TW for the sake of the passing few.

you allow TW in on those grounds you'd be discriminating against the ones who don't pass or who choose not to present in a stereotypically feminine way, surely?

If that were the case you could make the same argument that you were discriminating against trans men for excluding them for presenting in too much of a masculine way. This discrimination is perceived as legitimate in the context of the single sex service provided; so it must therefore be for trans women who don’t pass .

What about TW who aren't percieved to be women though? If you allow TW in on those grounds you'd be discriminating against the ones who don't pass or who choose not to present in a stereotypically feminine way, surely?

these examples are not two separate things at all!! they are all about exactly the same thing/ they are about the application of sex exemptions under the law- not whether trans women are women and can or cannot ever be treated as such in situations where men and women are treated differently.

If a service provider wishes to make use of single sex exemptions to exclude one sex from a service or provision then that is all based on bio sex

Nope because they can also exclude trans men on the basis that they appear to be men and that would be detrimental to the operation of the service as intended as a single sex provision.

There’s no reason at all to say a service can’t be for women and trans women, excluding men because of the sex exemption. People say that unlawfully discriminates against men, but of course you can argue it doesn’t, using exactly the same argument as the court uses in the former case: because although men are excluded because their presence would be detrimental to the operation of the service, trans women appear to be women and therefore their presence is not detrimental to the operation of the service as intended as a single sex service , therefore the discrimination still has a legitimate aim (and is proportionate).

The court clarified that single sex provision for women may lawfully exclude trans women, not that they are required to do so. That is the key point.

Anyway as I said I’ve got better things to do with my time.

People have widely interpreted this to mean that trans women can never lawfully be treated as women in society. The judgement says the opposite!!

It doesn't say the opposite, you are conflating two different things.

Thing 1. If a service provider wishes to make use of single sex exemptions to exclude one sex from a service or provision then that is all based on bio sex

Thing 2. You are protected from discrimination due to your actual or perceived protected chararacteristic

parag 250

Applied in the context of a discrimination claim made by a trans woman (a biological male with or without a GRC), the claimant can claim sex discrimination because she is perceived as a woman and can compare her treatment with that of a person not perceived to be a woman (whether that is a biological male or a trans man perceived to be male). There is no need for her to declare her true biological sex. There is nothing disadvantageous about this approach. Neither a biological woman nor a trans woman “bring a claim of direct sex discrimination as a woman” (as the EHRC suggests). That is not how the EA 2010 operates: a person brings a claim alleging sex discrimination because of a protected characteristic of sex.

If someone thinks a heterosexual person is gay and discriminates against them based on this perception it doesn't make that heterosexual person gay.

If someone discriminates against a man they perceive to be a women it doesn't make that man a woman.

The judgement was pretty damned clear, even to a non-legal reader. It laid out nice and clearly what a man and a woman is under the law.

Not what it did at all.

😖

The judgement was pretty damned clear, even to a non-legal reader. It laid out nice and clearly what a man and a woman is under the law.

It made single sex exemptions crystal clear - a transwoman is not a woman and is therefore excluded from female only spaces. Allowing a transwoman in and not any other man would be discriminating against that other man. Therefore anything intended for women excludes transwomen.

They even clarified that a transman might be excluded from both male and female services if they pass sufficiently as male to alarm users of female facilities, the poor sods, and would have to seek out third spaces. (as usual it's transmen getting the rough deal, not transwomen. Plus ça change and all that)

I've read it through more than once, and it's very clear.

What you still haven't addressed in any of your posts is, if we accept your position that a transwoman is 'not a man', why on earth should that person use women's facilities. A woman isn't just 'not a man'.

Can you please post the wording? Not your interpretation, but the actual SC judgement words?

I'm not doubting that they said something, just doubting whether it would imply treating trans women as women in a meaningful real world situation.

Eg a ladies hairdresser might legitimately choose to say TW are women, but then again probably wouldn't refuse to cut a long haired man's hair so not really an EA exemption.

I am saying that the SC judgement has been widely and maliciously over-interpreted to mean much more than what the judges said.

when it comes to any meaningful real world situation where you treat men and women differently, you treat them as men.

Nope. They did not say that at all. In fact, to the very contrary, they acknowledged some circumstances in which trans women may be treated as women, and trans men may be treated as men.

I've spent countless hours trying to do this.

Explain what being trans is.
Explain why it matters.
Explain what sex development is
Explain why that matters.
Explain how and why the EHRC guidance is an overreach/ over-interpretation of the judgement
Explain how if passed it would be both unenforceable and be widely intrusive and discriminatory not just for trans people. Etc.

Having wasted all this time I have come to understand that there is no point in explaining things to people with the kind of extreme and unwavering beliefs expressed by yourself and other users I am well acquainted with on this topic. You simply aren't interested in listening or considering anything that falls outside of your ideology. All you want to do is to argue. I'm not interested in that.

I joined this thread to respond to the OP who asked me a specific question around children's rights/ safeguarding.

And what is the scope of the EA Tandora?

Because I think it is the act that sets up as a general rule that providers and employers cannot discriminate or separate by sex unless they are able to show it meets the EA criteria for exemption.

And that means that while you can say trans women are women to your heart's content and while you can believe it to be true in every fibre of your ciswoman's gentle, kind, empathic soul, and truly no one can ever take that away from you, when it comes to any meaningful real world situation where you treat men and wonen differently, you treat them as men.

And for women who care about women, it's that real world result that matters.

Do I have to explain this again?

The judges didn't 'define' 'a woman' , or whether 'a man can become a woman'.

The judgement was specifically and only about the meaning of the words 'sex', 'women', 'men' in the specific context of the EA 2010, for interpreting protections from discrimination on the basis of 'sex' in the Act.

The judgement found that where these words appear in the act they refer to a person's sex at birth, so should be interpreted as applying to people on the basis of their birth sex. However, they also identified some circumstances where due to gender transition protections for women may apply to trans women, or exclude trans men.

That's all the judgement said.