Stats on attack on women by men self identifying as women?

Nobody is denying the exclusions exist. That does not mean they could be applied in any and every situation relating to single sex spaces. If they could the provision would be largely pointless, as would every other provision in the Equality Act. What would stop a religious person refusing to employ a gay person because they considered not upsetting their religious customers to be a legitimate aim? What you are arguing for is the de facto destruction of the Equality Act, for everyone.

EHRC have nt changed their position incidentally. They are quite clear in that statement a GRC is not required to bring a claim 8Under the Act, the protection from gender reassignment discrimination applies to all trans people who are proposing to go, are undergoing or have undergone (part of) a process of gender reassignment. There are some exceptions permitting different treatment on the basis of gender reassignment, for example the exceptions related to single-sex services and associations. These exceptions do not hinge on whether or not an individual has a GRC. Any use of the exceptions permitting different treatment must be objectively justified, meaning that it must be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, and will therefore depend on the particular circumstances. While an individual’s possession, or not, of a GRC may be part of the evidence a court would consider in a gender reassignment discrimination case, it is unlikely to be a determining factor. *

A trans person could not make a claim for sex discrimination unless they had a GRC, they could still make a claim of the basis of gender reassignment.

And again, please stop misrepresenting what we say.

I've already explained that a Bathroom Bill cannot be passed in the UK because it is impossible under the Equality Act. I have also stated - every single time - that I reject the concept behind such bills. So I'll do it again, now: a person who identifies as trans must not be forced to use the facilities provided for their own sex. Alternative facilities should be provided.

And alternative solutions should be provided because single-sex facilities must not be turned into mixed-sex ones by admitting people of the opposite sex who identify as trans.

There are very many different ways of achieving this solution. It is therefore possible to simultaneously protect people who identify as trans and maintain female-only provisions.

As for the third spaces I suggest as a solution, I would have used them very happily when my boys were small and I felt they were too young to go to male facilities without me.

[quote jj1968]**@CharlieParley* Once again, assumed rights of access are not legal rights. The only males who identify as trans who have to be considered when deciding the access rights of males to female-only spaces, services and provisions are those with a GRC. All others are blanket excluded if males are blanket excluded.*

The right of people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment to use services inline with their aquired gender except in some very limited cases are clearly laid out in the statutory guidance from EHRC.

If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present.

Any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.

How on earth can you read that and think that definitely doesn't give trans people any rights, or that trans people have somehow deceptively pretended this gives them the right to be treated according to their presenting gender when it doesn't. It's spelled out in guidance which is used to inform tribunal opinion. That's why whatever Truss says will make no difference, organisations will not risk litigation even if they want to exclude trans women, which most don't. I really don't understand why you aren't calling for the law to be changed, and the only conclusion I can think of is that you know that a bathroom bill is unlikely to go down well so you are attempting to misrepresent the law as it stands with the hope of creating a culture of trans exclusion that defies the law.[/quote]
Once again, jj1968 the EHRC cannot override the Equality Act, which makes clear in Schedule 3, Part 7, Paragraphs 26 to 28 not only that single-sex provisions are legal, but also that those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment can be excluded from opposite-sex provisions.

The Equality Act is a complicated piece of legislation. It brought together a number of different previous equality rights laws. Conflicts between the interests of different protected characteristics are common. Navigating these conflicts can be very difficult. That's why over a thousand explanatory notes were published as an official part of the legislation. But that still wasn't enough, so the UK Government set up a regulator to help explain the law and support people whose rights under the EqA have been breached. That's the purpose of the EHRC, its whole reason for being.
Nothing the EHRC says can ever take precedence over the Equality Act itself. If what the Equality Act says and what the EHRC says the Equality Act means are not in alignment, the Equality Act takes precedence.

It's the actual law that says that, not Liz Truss btw. And a regulator created to implement a law has no power to override the law. They can of course - as happened here - misrepresent the law, but once that was pointed out to them, they changed their position. Which is as follows:

This means that a trans woman who does not hold a GRC and is therefore legally male would be treated as male for the purposes of the sex discrimination provisions, and a trans woman with a GRC would be treated as female. The sex discrimination exceptions in the Equality Act therefore apply differently to a trans person with a GRC or without a GRC.

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/our-statement-sex-and-gender-reassignment-legal-protections-and-language

The EHRC produced the guidance you quote in 2011, while taking advice from trans rights organisations (and only from them), consequently and consistently misrepresented the law in this guidance but in 2018, after their false interpretation of the Equality Act was pointed out to them, published a statement confirming that only those people who identify as trans and who have a GRC have to be considered when access rights are decided.

Because the protected characteristic of sex and the protected characteristic of gender reassignment exist alongside one another. The latter cannot override the former in situations where provisions are created for people sharing the protected characteristic of sex.

All of the limitations set out in the Equality Act continue to apply. You cannot just arbitrarily decide to exclude people on any basis, but where it is a legitimate aim (for instance, giving females dignity, privacy and safety in single-sex spaces, fairness and safety in sports or allowing female victims to recover from the trauma caused by male violence in a female-only therapeutic environment meet this threshold) and where the option chosen is a proportionate means of achieving this aim, excluding all people who identify as trans, including GRC-holders, is lawful.

That the EHRC states that they should be included does not mean they cannot be excluded. And your quote goes on to say just that.

How many of those assaults were committed by trans men or non binary (afab) people?

Oh that stat was -

In response to a Parliamentary question from former Labour Party General Secretary Baroness McDonagh, Ministers have revealed there have been several other sexual assaults by trans prisoners.

The Ministry of Justice said: 'Since 2010, out of the 124 sexual assaults that occurred in the female estate a total of seven of those were sexual assaults against females in custody perpetrated by transgender individuals.'

Bearing in mind that anyone can say that they are now a transwomen with male body parts or not. Therefore all the kit to go but identifying as a woman. Karen White did that - a male prisoner decided to become a woman and prior to any surgery etc was transferred to a woman's prison and assaulting several women -it's am often quoted case.

@KingFredsTache
Also, thinking about non-binary people, such as Travis Alabanza. Travis is a very obvious male who essentially appears to have an eccentric dress sense, but believe that he should be able to use female changing rooms if he wants to, because if his trans status. Where does he stand?

Travis believed that they were entitled to use the changing room of their choice because that was Topshop's stated policy at the time. It's really unfair to blame individual trans people who are simply following the law as they understand it or asking why a business isn;t upholding their policies. If you don't like the law, or don't like what Topshop have done with their changing rooms you should blame the Government or Topshop, not pick on individuals. It was disgraceful the way some people treated Travis.

But also an interesting case to bring up because I remember seeing it discussed on here, along with horrifying portents of doom that Topshop changing rooms would now be full of predatory men, that the shops would become defacto no go zones for women, that huge numbers of girls were going to be assaulted and that customers would abandon the stores in droves.

None of those things happened did they.

And I suspect the reason Topshop adopted that policy is because they focus tested their customers, found a growing trend for more diverse gender expressions and didn't want to alienate the trans, non binary and gender nonconforming customers and their friends who make up a large part of their customer base, Young people don't seem to care about all this stuff. Times are changing.

@CharlieParley Once again, assumed rights of access are not legal rights. The only males who identify as trans who have to be considered when deciding the access rights of males to female-only spaces, services and provisions are those with a GRC. All others are blanket excluded if males are blanket excluded.

The right of people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment to use services inline with their aquired gender except in some very limited cases are clearly laid out in the statutory guidance from EHRC.

If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present.

Any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.

How on earth can you read that and think that definitely doesn't give trans people any rights, or that trans people have somehow deceptively pretended this gives them the right to be treated according to their presenting gender when it doesn't. It's spelled out in guidance which is used to inform tribunal opinion. That's why whatever Truss says will make no difference, organisations will not risk litigation even if they want to exclude trans women, which most don't. I really don't understand why you aren't calling for the law to be changed, and the only conclusion I can think of is that you know that a bathroom bill is unlikely to go down well so you are attempting to misrepresent the law as it stands with the hope of creating a culture of trans exclusion that defies the law.

No not self ID. People who are going through some sort of medically/ socially supervised transition. There are about 120,000 in the U.K. I believe. According to the research.

Travis is a gender non conforming male. They can campaign for their own spaces if they feel it necessary. Hayley Cropper was always a bit of a diversion anyway being played by a female actress, not really what anyone saw as a ‘transsexual’.

I think Caroline Cossey, April Whatshername, Jan Morris, India Willoughby, Stephen Whittle and Rebekah Shelton are more what are thought of as genuine accepted cases that people are more sympathetic towards.

On the original topic, I just came across this collection if OP is interested. Not stats but incident reports about unisex spaces or men dressed as women in women's spaces. Also a section on voyeurism/cameras.

womanmeanssomething.com/violencedatabase/

Also, thinking about non-binary people, such as Travis Alabanza. Travis is a very obvious male who essentially appears to have an eccentric dress sense, but believe that he should be able to use female changing rooms if he wants to, because if his trans status. Where does he stand?

We are not talking about Hayley Cropper types here, that ship seems to have sailed a long time ago.

Most domestic abuse accommodation is now self contained units with private bathrooms so TW inclusion is not seen as problematic for the majority of the sector.

Any man including cross dressers can claim trans status in prison. The numbers don’t really tell us anything which is what the BBC article concluded but this part seems to be glossed over here:

That means that it's unlikely that as many as half of all transgender prisoners have been convicted of a sexual offence - once you take into account those trans prisoners who weren't surveyed.

Do people seriously think society is going to want to stop trans people from using the toilets that are appropriate to their transition? It’s not a view compatible with human dignity and civilisation.

Sports yes I agree if there is an unfair advantage or safety risk and it seems reasonable to think there is and this is mentioned in the GRA.

Changing rooms I think most people are going to go by the genitalia, or surgically altered version, and the situation. No woman should have to see penis in a changing room. Pre op will have to have alternative arrangements.

Hospitals will have to make a decision based on what will cause least issues. A very female looking post op trans woman on a male ward will likely cause more problems than if she was accommodated on a female ward.

In that Swedish study an increase in crime amongst trans men was also observed. Both cohorts were for transitions over 30 years ago. It doesn’t tell us much. For today, if you’re going to include every cross dresser and part time late ‘transitioner’ etc. then yes not a surprise there will be a higher level of sex crimes compared to natal women. Because most of them are men.

Sensible decisions will have to be made about prisons. Clearly someone like Karen White should never have been housed in the female estate in the first place, it doesn’t take a genius to work that out.

There are a (comparatively) small number of male and female transitioners that as a society we do them the courtesy of treating them for most purposes as their transitioned sex in line with the GRA, human rights and medical opinion. I don’t think most people have a problem with this.

If this is true, and given trans inclusion stretches back decades and is pretty much the norm in most parts of the world then why haven't there been more incidents in women's spaces? Let's guess on the lowerside and say there's probably around 50,000 trans women using women's spaces every single day just in the UK, and hundreds of thousands more elsewhere. If trans women represented the same threat as men then why hasn't this caused any problems?

Well surely, for starters, it depends on how one defines 'transwoman'? Traditionally the type of transwoman who would use female toilets was the old school 'transsexual', who had had full SRS and tended not to spend the time they weren't in the loo on Twitter abusing women. Women accepted these people as a courtesy.

Now 'tranwoman' and indeed 'woman' is literally any male who says he feels like a woman, which would be further cemented by a change in the GRA. This means that basically any male, very obvious males, would be able to saunter into female spaces and it would be difficult to challenge him without risking entering a bloody minefield. And it does seems weird that since the 'bandwidth of woman' has started to open up, so have all these so called 'female' attacks in toilets, prisons etc.

So what is your definition of 'transwoman'?At what point does a male stop being male and in the high risk class of male, and become a woman and go into the low risk class of female?

And even putting the risk thing aside. What if women just don't want to share the spaces that they fought for with males, with people who are very obviously male? Why should a woman's level of comfort or anxiety, what she is allowed to feel, be entirely dependent on how a man happens to feel at that time? That's just misogyny to me. Men have always told women what they can and can't do, and how they are and aren't allowed to feel, this is just the same - men dictating to women what they should feel. Not only is a woman not allowed to feel anxious when in a vulnerable position in close proximity to a male, she may actually be a bigot for feeling that way, entirely depending on how the man feels. Progress eh?

Like a PP said, this thread feels like a lot of words for basically saying 'women accept it, men's feelings first, your feelings way down the list'.

Thanks a fucking lot.

I'd like to echo Arabella in my admiration of the indefatigable and immensely patient posters who laid out so throughly and eloquently the clear evidence here.

I RTWT last night, so late to the party. I don't think I'd have had the patience you wims displayed with such good grace.

And thank you ANewCreation for linking to that thread and for reminding me about HaXXor. I'd forgotten all about it, but that thread turned into an excellent explanation and exploration of how and why our existing safeguarding works as well as it does (albeit not perfectly).

Incidentally, and for all the lurkers afraid to join in, those were the days when I would at most put a tiny comment up and then stand back as others shared their knowledge. And watched them argue their points patiently. I was just awed at how brilliant they were.

I learned so much from the women on that thread. I hadn't realised how much I miss those who are no longer on MN.

It was the equally fabulous HaXXor who was so good at tirelessly explaining the Swiss Cheese model

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3271463-The-Simple-Problem-with-Those-Anti-Trans-Protesters-Big-Stunts?pg=3

Thanks so much to everyone (and particularly to CharlieParley ) for persevering in centering the needs of women and girls over this thread.

We sadly have ample evidence that predatory people, regardless of how they identify, will always seek to exploit weaknesses in Safeguarding frameworks.

Toilets, changing rooms, sport, refuges etc all require single-sex provision as part of existing safeguarding frameworks.

Relaxing the social conventions around who gets to go into a particular female single-sex space (and the confidence with which a male can potentially be asked to leave by the rightful inhabitants of that space without fear of being called transphobic) removes a vital layer of the Swiss Cheese protection.

by removing trans rights of access to women's spaces then you create a safeguarding risk for vulnerable trans adults and trans girls.

Once again, assumed rights of access are not legal rights. The only males who identify as trans who have to be considered when deciding the access rights of males to female-only spaces, services and provisions are those with a GRC. All others are blanket excluded if males are blanket excluded.

Correcting the by now common misconception that a right exists when it doesn't does not constitute the removal of rights.

The situation as it stands now is that a trans girl could legally use womens toilets and changing.

A male juvenile who identifies as trans cannot legally acquire a GRC in the UK. That right is reserved to adults. No such juvenile male therefore has a legal right to use female-only spaces.

You seem to be happy with that trans girl being expected to go and share with the men.

Since I have each and every time suggested an alternative solution to this problem, this is a bad tempered and above all unwarranted attack on my character.

That is a major safe guarding risk.

So was sending my petite boy into the gents after he was too old for the ladies. I mitigated that risk by sending him in the company of older males whenever possible and standing very obviously outside the toilets when it wasn't. But the responsibility for any harm caused to him would have been the perpetrator's, not mine. As the responsibility for any harm that befalls gender-non-conforming males in the gents lies with the males attacking them. Not the women and girls saying no to males in female spaces.

So the actual examples given in the act as appropriate cases where discrimination is legal have to be challenged first in the court?

Yes, this is the new spiel.

That's what we (the group I mentioned) were told by the service directors we met.

Unless the law has first been tested in the court, it cannot legally be applied. Even though literally - in the truest sense of the word - the particular situation we talked about is explicitly defined as legal in the fucking text of the fucking law.

And obviously no law works like that. We'd be in serious trouble if it did.

I cannot adequately express my reaction to that brazen lie. There just are not enough hours in the day and swear words in the English language. Or any other.

Imagine saying that to the very women your service is funded to support and not dying from shame inside.

Like a certain President of the US who uses this same tactic, continually repeating that " trans inclusion.. has not been demonstrated to be a safeguarding risk" does not make it true.

You seem to be happy with that trans girl being expected to go and share with the men.

You don't mitigate that risk by opening up women's spaces. What you do is you work out a solution that does not remove women's rights to single sex spaces.
Women will support trans people who campaign for their own spaces. We will resist any attempt to take ours away.

So the actual examples given in the act as appropriate cases where discrimination is legal have to be challenged first in the court? Why on earth would that be necessary? Members of the male sex can be excluded per the act from these female spaces, transwomen are also members of the male sex ergo they are also excluded.

That is a major safe guarding risk.

Really? Why on earth would it be? Do you have any evidence of the risk?

There is no way the government can tell providers single sex provisions which exclude trans people are always legal because only the courts can decide that. It would be wholly irresponsible, and undemocratic, for the government to pre-empt any possible legal action brought under the EA.

Why do you insist on twisting words?

I did not state that the government is going to tell providers single sex provisions which exclude trans people are always legal.

I am talking about the government advising companies that they can lawfully apply the sex-based exemptions as they are set out in - and limited by - the Equality Act. As opposed to some trans rights organisations that have advised companies that they cannot ever apply them.

As for the rest - it is not undemocratic if the government decides to change this law, as the way Acts of Parliament are changed in the UK are via another Act of Parliament which by definition are a democratic process. We would hope that the outcome is what we desire. Alas, democracy does not always work in our favour. But however flawed, that is how it's done.

What Arabella said - thank you for taking on a massive and thankless task here.