Government Announcement

I actually don’t mean being attacked by a transperson - I mean attacked by a man who has used the unisex facilities which were previously single sex.

So for example let’s say my gym has single sex change rooms now. That is for my safety and the safety of the women around me. Staff or other gym users can challenge a man going into those changing rooms and again that’s another layer of safeguarding. I feel confident that the gym is doing all they can to keep me safe on their premises. They have fulfilled their duty of care there - just like they have one to provide safe gym kit and put a ‘wet floor’ sign down as needed.

So now the changing rooms have changed to unisex. A man (not a transperson, just a man) comes in, staff see them go in but don’t challenge and attacks a woman in that space.

Could that woman argue that by making the space unisex and by removing right of challenge, the gym has not fulfilled its duty of care to her. ? She’s been forced to change in what is effectively an unsafe space?

I’m keen to keep transpeople out of the scenario- I want people to think about the unintended consequence of men accessing areas, not imply that transpeople are a danger per se.

I know that organisations have liability insurance. I assume that part of that process is a risk assessment based on what that organisation does and the likelihood of them being sued.

So how does this affect that?

Could women sue service providers who have actively endangered them with this practice?

It would be difficult. I think the only circumstances where it might be possible would be in public sector services where the service provider was aware the person was trans. They’d also have to prove that being trans was a factor in the attack otherwise it would be treated legally like any other attack. If a Granny got attacked by a 6ft 200lb transwoman in her hospital bed or a 5ft 7st prisoner in her prison cell it might well be possible.

But in terms of private sector things like changing rooms or toilets it would be almost impossible as they cannot check or police the sex of people using their facilities.

I am not legally minded, but the only thing I can compare it to is when I had an accident when being driven in a taxi. Apart from the usual compensation, I was awarded an amount of money as the taxi company had a 'duty of care'. I guess if you are in a shop changing room and are attacked, you could try to prove the shop didn't uphold it's duty of care.

All the rigmarole around Health and Safety and signs for wet floors and even bloody steps, yet they allow men in the women's changing area if they identify as women. I would rather trip over a step than be attacked in a curtained off area. Not badly trip, you understand, I don't want to break any bones!

Can any of the legally minded on here answer this one:

Would an organisation that had previously provided single sex spaces but had changed to unisex be legally liable in any way if a service user was harmed as a result?
For example if a woman is changing in a unisex space and is attacked, leading to economic loss etc?

Could women sue service providers who have actively endangered them with this practice?

Snappity
Can you hear yourself. A group of people whose identity is based solely on their feelings are to be given the right to completely ride roughshod over the feelings of another group. If feelings are enough to get you into a single sex space why are feelings not good enough to set boundaries. Why is only one group to be medicalised.

So let me get this straight @Snappity*, under self-id, males will be trusted to self-id as trans, but you suggest a third space for women who will have to prove that they have a mental disorder to escape from intact male-bodied trans women? And if we don't want to tell our GPs our rape history, we just have to suck it up or stay at home? And what do we do whilst waiting for a referral to a psychologist, because that's what you need to get a PTSD diagnosis? The waiting list last time for me was six months.

This is misogyny writ large. This is what male privilege looks like: males being believed whilst women are presumed to be liars until they prove themselves truthful.*

YY to both of these comments. The hypocrisy is staggering and malignant.

I'm not underestimating the difficulty in fighting a protracted legal battle, mancheeze, in terms of financial cost, the distraction from core service delivery and huge emotional drain. In some ways a landmark case in the UK, similar to the Van Rape Relief case, might be helpful to flush the issues out in the open and demonstrate to organisations that it is OK to be single sex (when it can be justified), but I wouldn't wish that burden upon any of the wonderful women's charities out there, many of whom are already running on a shoe string budget

In most cases it isn't an onerous task. If an organisation isn't able to make a convincing case, then either they don't actually have a case to exclude people or they have employed the wrong people to think about their policies and practices

I beg to differ since what we have now is a bunch of men, autogynephilic men, who are a walking/talking Duluth model and they never take NO for an answer.

The woman only service that attempts to say no is more than likely going to have fight for it. The arguments have already been made here in Vancouver. All the women's org needs to do is follow Van Rape Relief's arguments. They were air tight arguments.

This is why I've made videos in the past on Van Rape Relief's arguments. There is no way a man could win access if those same arguments were used in ANY court, unless the judges are biased.

then who decides who gets in?

Humans are really very good telling which sex you are. And yes, it would be biological sex class.

Issue is, some women only group is going to have to go to court and literally be bogged down in a legal process because we know that men won't take 'no' for an answer. Look what happened to my local rape crisis center Van Rape Relief. Twelve years and thousands upon thousands of dollars. They won though!

Leah - when I said "it's easy to say", I literally meant "it's easy to say". As in, it might seem like a statement of simple fact, but when a body is looking to use a legal exemption that's not enough (and nor should it be, IMHO)

If any organisation wants to exclude a group with a protected characteristic, I don't have a problem with requiring them to demonstrate that they have thought about the impact of that decision, whether it's a DV shelter wanting to restrict access to women only, or a youth group in inner London wanting to target black men under 25 or a disability support group wanting to limit facilities to people with Down's Syndrome. In most cases it isn't an onerous task. If an organisation isn't able to make a convincing case, then either they don't actually have a case to exclude people or they have employed the wrong people to think about their policies and practices

Interesting that the legal requirement that employers provide lockable sex segregated loos is one of the few laws that the EA did not repeal. The laws seem to contradict what people say they say.

Where did you get one? You don’t even have to have two toilets unless you have more employees, let alone male and female.

We are talking about changing the law. Counsel’s opinion is based on current law is it not? If the law changes then her opinion would change

What they’re saying at the moment is no, it won’t, that it is covered by the EA so no change is needed.

Snappity
Can you hear yourself. A group of people whose identity is based solely on their feelings are to be given the right to completely ride roughshod over the feelings of another group. If feelings are enough to get you into a single sex space why are feelings not good enough to set boundaries. Why is only one group to be medicalised.

Interesting that the legal requirement that employers provide lockable sex segregated loos is one of the few laws that the EA did not repeal. The laws seem to contradict what people say they say.

women are presumed to be liars until they prove themselves truthful.

females are presumed to be liars until they prove themselves truthful. For the pedantic.

That is PTSD and your remarks are mocking and offensive to those of us who have PTSD.

It certainly is a pisser when someone carelessly identifies into your oppressed reality isn't it? God. Is there anything that could be analogous to? Wait...

So let me get this straight @Snappity, under self-id, males will be trusted to self-id as trans, but you suggest a third space for women who will have to prove that they have a mental disorder to escape from intact male-bodied trans women? And if we don't want to tell our GPs our rape history, we just have to suck it up or stay at home? And what do we do whilst waiting for a referral to a psychologist, because that's what you need to get a PTSD diagnosis? The waiting list last time for me was six months.

This is misogyny writ large. This is what male privilege looks like: males being believed whilst women are presumed to be liars until they prove themselves truthful.

Leah

We are talking about changing the law. Counsel’s opinion is based on current law is it not? If the law changes then her opinion would change

Well in that case I've got PTSD and so does DD. And my mum, my sister, my mate Catherine, all the women on the school run, my neighbour, her kids...

I find that very offensive. I have PTSD from a stalker. I had to go somewhere today where he harassed me. I broke down in tears hardly able to move. That is PTSD and your remarks are mocking and offensive to those of us who have PTSD.

Okay, Mrs Beaujangles. You might not think it. But the expert legal counsel the government has taken strongly disagrees with you and advises it would almost certainly be illegal. And she is just a little bit more qualified than you to advise:

www.chambersandpartners.com/UK-Bar/person/234926/claire-mccann

I don’t think anyone would think it proportionate to allow a 20 stone, 6 foot 4, male bodied transwomen with a beard into the counselling session because they hold a certificate.
However, it does seem wrong to discriminate against some transwomen because of their size, appearance or surgery.
That is why it seems far better to make a rule that specific services should be determined by natal sex. This is clear cut and objective

And oleanna, you probably have a very myopic view working in the public sector where ‘impact statements’ and reams of paperwork are completed every time somebody wants to take a shit and the cost is accepted.

Refuges and many victims services are charities which are extremely poorly funded and many are closing anyway. It’s an extra expense they can’t afford. Waving an impact statement at litigious TRAs is not going to protect them from the expense of legal action either. TRAs can and will use that to shut down refuges & charity services they deem non-compliant.

And only very prosperous companies can afford to do that sort of best practice. Some of the others will manage to absorb the expense. But most of them will just fold to what the TRAs want. Ditto for the thousands of small businesses and charities up and down the country who just won’t have the time, money and resources to do that. They will just by default stop any sex segregation.

For example, it's easy enough for a women's refuge to say "we are a single sex space and we won't employ men or allow men to access our facilities. The same approach will be extended to transwomen, whether or not they have a GRC. Our clients are all vulnerable women, the vast majority of whom have suffered abuse by men"

Oleanna that is not correct. It can only be used in a ‘proportionate way’ regarding the equalities act 2010 and it’s the definition of ‘proportionate’ which is the issue. The passage I quoted above is from expert legal counsel to the government. It discusses an example given by the 2010 equality act which is:

A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful.

Which sounds great, but the expert legal advice (From Claire McCann) given on it was as follows:

Ms McCann advised us that “this example is drafted too categorically”. While it demonstrates a “legitimate aim”, it gives “insufficient information […] to show that the exclusion of trans people is appropriate and reasonably necessary (i.e. proportionate) to meet that aim”. She further suggested that in the instance cited it may only be lawful to exclude trans people if they do not hold a GRC:

I would doubt that a service-provider of single-sex or separate services could turn away a trans service-user who holds a GRC because this is unlikely to be proportionate.

According to the governments own legal advice it would not be ‘proportionate’ to ban someone with a GRC from a group counselling session if they had a GRC.

So the government is telling us that we will be protected by the equality act. But their own advice on the EA is that it’s not proportionate or legal to use exemptions on people with GRC.

And they’re likely to make it much, much easier to get GRCs including if someone still has intact male genitals.

So if they were being honest they would have added to their statement that they understood women needed safe spaces where the EA exemptions would apply the caveat:

But we’re going to make damn sure you can almost never use them.

No Oleanna it doesn’t because that will not protect them from legal action. Even if they do all those things they can still be sued by TRAs for excluding end they will be forced to justify.

Of course the paperwork doesn't stop them being sued, but it can help stop them being sued successfully

I've written gazillions of equality impact assessments over the years, and although they can be a PITA they are actually really helpful in thinking through the issues in a systematic way. My background is the public sector, where they have been mandatory for a while now, but the private sector has been doing similar as best practice too.

For example, it's easy enough for a women's refuge to say "we are a single sex space and we won't employ men or allow men to access our facilities. The same approach will be extended to transwomen, whether or not they have a GRC. Our clients are all vulnerable women, the vast majority of whom have suffered abuse by men"

On the surface that looks sufficient, but a) if they only make the policy once and never review it it becomes poor policy; and b) the more absolutionist the policy is, the more effort needs to be put in to justify it. So a blanket rule on not employing men or transwomen could actually be a blanket rule on not employing men or transwomen who have need to access the premises, but employing men or transwomen in roles such as their IT support or accountant who will work remotely.

Case law is helpful because it helps provide a yardstick against which other organisations can judge themselves and consider whether they are acting lawfully or whether they are vulnerable to a successful legal challenge. But even without it lawyers can give a decent assessment of whether a person or body is acting lawfully

TRAs are trying to force a gender based definition only
A completely subjective definition of woman

Only males can be trans women
If you use a gender based definition then trans women are women
If you use a sex based definition then trans women are males