Reply from MP: sex segregated spaces.

UppityPuppity the point about babies under 1 being most at risk of assault and being killed is a good point when talking about who is most vulnerable. Do you know where we can get comparative stats?

Thanks

There's no such thing as 'cis' and how do we know which facilities this internal gender feeling bestows the right to use? I'm female bodied and use the women's toilets but do my internal feelings mean I'm in the wrong ones? Maybe I'll just piss myself, it's easier than trying to quantify it all.

Be blunt with your MP, she's there to serve not rule and needs telling straight how harmful and regressive this is imo.

Are you Bristol West, by any chance. An excellent MP, but she keeps her cards very close to her chest, publicly, on these issues. So, if it is her, this is interesting to hear.

A meeting with your MP (or Zoom call) seems a sensible suggestion, and especially given the comment about not adequately discussing it on social media.

I don't doubt the attacks on trans women- surely if you just call them women then you cannot get statistics or indeed if you just treat them as women and not recognise the difference, how can you deal with this and stop them?

From my experience, an actual meeting with the MP is more useful, but it can be nerve wracking and unpleasant.

Write a reply with the law correctly stated, and why single sex spaces are lawful/needed. Arrange a meeting with them. It’s much harder to dismiss valid concerns face to face / zoom to zoom.

I believe the black TW statistic relates to South American sex workers, where murder rates are similar to prostituted women in these countries - where femicide in general is endemic. They do not relate to the UK where we have increased rate of killings of women in this country. Luckily, TW have very low rates of actual harm ignore the thought police formSo provide some accurate stats.

Remember the group in society most at risk of assault and killing are babies under one, so adults going on about how they are most at risk, and deflecting the needs of the most vulnerable is, in
my view, reprehensible.

Also, there was a thread on that mentioned this before.

Get her to detail her red lines -

-should rapists (needs a penis under English law) be incarcerated with women (often the most vulnerable)

• should victims of rape have the right to chose the sex of the medical examiner post rape

-should teenage girls have the right - as she did as a girl - to undress and get change away from male bodied adults.

• As in another thread - if a TM and a TW have a baby together, should the TW get the maternity leave and the TM get two weeks paternity?

It's all nonsense though.

There are zillions of genders. Which genders can use a womens refuge? Only those who have an internal self ID of woman?

So many woman who does not have a gender id or has over but it's not woman, can't use the refuge?

What about a female who presents as a woman but feels male inside? Can she use it?

How can they tell who is which? If it's something no one can see than anyone can say they're anything.

How do they feel about prisons and sports?

How do they feel about women and girls being called menstruators and ovulators while men and called men?

I mean it's all rubbish. You can't base law and rules and protocols on something invisible that anyone can claim and switch in and out of.

I was of the understanding that the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment means that an individual (without a GRC) cannot be treated less favourably than anyone else OF THE SAME SEX.
The gender reassignment bit does not trump sex in terms of equality. A person with the pc of gender reassignment does not have the right to access spaces for their 'acquired gender' although this has been misrepresented by Stonewall and the EHRC, hence Ann Sinnott's judicial review coming up.

Your MP is confused. Gender identity is not a protected characteristic like sex or gender reassignment. Therefore gender identity doesn’t entitle male bodied people to use female single sex spaces.

It is really sad to read that female victims in refuges must let male bodied people share their safe space. It shows no true understanding of the fears and needs of women in these refuges.

The reply is quoting "Stonewall Law" which misrepresents the actual law.

In your reply state the equality act 2010 which specifically states women are lawfully entitled to a single sex service and trans people can be lawfully excluded from same sex spaces for not being the same sex.

Interesting. This is the standard response sent out by Labour MPs for at least two years (given what I know from another issue, it seems that MPs have once again been given a document with pre-written paragraphs to cut and paste into their constituency letters as they see fit, which is why these letters often have word-for-word identical paragraphs, if not wholly identical letters.

(Interesting because the previously standard paragraph about the MP's commitment to reform the Equality Act to better protect transgender people has been removed. The first sentence is new(ish), as is the last paragraph. This is a much softer stance than what they sent out in 2019.)

1. Misrepresents Equality Act
2. Misrepresents risk to transgender people
3. Uses offensive language (cis)
4. Does not commit to addressing the issue in a sensitive way that does not discriminate against women. (The genuine concern is only one way, otherwise the reassurance would be to address the issue in a way that upholds everyone's rights.)

From my experience, an actual meeting with the MP is more useful, but it can be nerve wracking and unpleasant.

Hi OP,

I would reply specifically to this point.

However, under the Act, it is lawful for single-sex services to provide a different service or refuse their service to someone who is undergoing, has undergone or is proposing to undergo ‘gender reassignment’, in circumstances where they can demonstrate that doing so constitutes a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’.

I would request that your MP specifically supports this EA Exception and insists it is upheld as it acts to protect vulnerable women from further trauma. I would ask your MP to reassure you that she will not back organisations such as Stonewall who wish to remove this exception.

I would directly quote Karen Ingala Smith:

Women experiencing trauma after violence and abuse will, like most of us – almost always instantly read someone who might be the most kind and gentle trans identified male in the world – as male; and they may experience a debilitating trauma response as a result. It’s not their fault, it’s not a choice and it’s not something they can be educated out of. It’s not hate. It’s not bigotry. It’s not transphobia. It is an impact of abuse and they need space, support and sometimes therapy – not increased confrontation with a trauma inducing trigger; not nowhere to go that offers a woman-only space.

Taken from: kareningalasmith.com/2020/07/08/trauma-informed-services-for-women-subjected-to-mens-violence-must-be-single-sex-services/

Good luck.

Thankyou for doing this on behalf of us who can't, yet.

Wow does she want some more fudge for that reply.

Part of your reply could be is yes there should be discussion but whilst women are harassed, threatened and discriminated against for putting forward a sex based rights view that cannot happen and we need mps to step up and say that degree of harassment is unacceptable.

The Fair Play for Women meetings to discuss the legal consultation to the GRA had to go to extraordinary lengths to go ahead.

The Millwall meeting had to change venue due to a level of threat they had never encountered. Millwall

The one Prof Freedman spoke at in Reading had men shouting and banging at the front. The men (and one female) protestors allowed only a tiny gap for the women to leave and at least one attendee was followed as she returned to her car (she had to double back to lose the follower). Prof Freedman found the protestors had urinated on her office door as well as threats or rape and murder.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6463947/Law-professor-blames-transgender-activists-campaign-harassment.html

but I think these concerns can, and should, be addressed in a sensitive way without discriminating against trans people.
This is the kind of meaningless platitude that gets rolled out...challenge them on it. How can these concerns be addressed? How exactly is maintaining the status quo discriminating against trans people?
Especially when they also trot out that trans people have been using bathrooms etc without incident for years. If that's the case, what's their issue??

Does she think that TWAW? If so how and why?

What a terrible response. Karen Ingala Smith has also written some excellent articles about the need for single sex refuges. I will find when I have time. (You don't live in SE London do you? I'm wondering if we have the same MP)

Surely WOMEN are more likely to be victim of an assault than a black trans-woman.

Doesn't sound like this MP is interested in supporting women at all.

Thinking about it actually I'd ask for a meeting. It is probably a C&P reply but she said she was listening. Ok, so ask for a phone call, have points prepared and see what she does. You can be blunt but it's easier with your voice than in emails.

Check out Karen Ingala Smith's NIA for the violence against women stats.

niaendingviolence.org.uk/

And the government's own data, she should know about that at the very least.

May also be useful to point out to her that it's important in her care not to be accused of transphobia she is not accidentally sounding gynephobic. Or unintentionally enabling gynephobic agendas.

Silly name calling often appears to make this kind of person run around in circles like a headless chicken; so when in Rome....

Indeed, under the Equality Act, trans people have the right to access single-sex services in line with their ‘acquired gender’, and they are not required to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate, or have undergone any form of medical intervention, to be eligible for support in these services.

I’m sorry to sound ignorant but I’m still learning. Is this correct? I know people holding a GRC are covered under the equality act, but isn’t the above simply self Id?

a) define the 'c**' word - why is she misgendering you???! Is she actually assuming your gender? Is she aware of how offensive many people find it as a word and why, never mind that she is enforcing a political identity on you without your consent or involvement. Kind of not following her own broadcasting of virtue there, she's not as woke as she thinks she is.

b) how does she intend to sensitively enable female people who cannot use mixed sex spaces to not be excluded from all the spaces so male people can take their preferred choice of all the spaces? What she says sounds all terribly nice, but how does excluding female people from any space make things better? What for example does she think about the Hampstead Ponds situation, and how sensitive that is to the female people now with no access at all while male people have a choice of three?

c) what statistics is she going from on this incredibly vulnerable group who are not safe in male spaces? And how is the risk improved by just making female spaces available to all males? Surely the risky ones are just going to walk right in after the vulnerable ones? She can't have it both ways.

You'll probably be wasting your time, but repeatedly trying to engage a bit of critical thinking is the only way forward.

sofakingg00d
I suppose it's a marginal improvement on the "die bigot" response that some of her (mostly) male colleagues would aim at voters? ... hopeful....