Staniland Question is so good. Can we think of others?

I expect because most trans people hope they never end up in prison or have to resort to refuge, and not all trans people want to go swimming or to the gym, and even if they do many self exclude. You can't really opt out of needing the toilet though.

But women are constantly told that if they don't want to share toilets with transwomen they can just choose not to use them. I posted upthread about my daughter holding on all day because she was so frightened to find a man in the ladies toilets when she was just a child. You seemed fine with that.

Do female sexed people have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with ...other female sexed people?

Of course!

If you're a member of the female sex, and it's a communal room provided for that sex to undress and shower, you're entitled to use it. Whilst other female people of various ages are also using it. Hence, communal. How is that confusing?!

No member of the female sex can enter a communal changing area and subsequently expect to forbid other female people from undressing there! We can't, and don't, attempt to limit the rights of other women and girls to use a communal room for the purpose it was intended.

Every woman or girl who voluntarily steps over the threshold into a female-only communal space has done so on the basis that the other female people have the right to be there too.

Even teenage girls understand that they can't shower in a communal changing room and expect to prohibit other women or girls from doing the same. It wouldn't cross their minds.

It's almost as if I'm hearing a man's voice saying out loud "If I can't shower with women and girls, then women and girls must be banned from sharing communal space with each other entirely"

How extraordinary that some should find this difficult to understand.

Why should we lose out on that ?

Because lots of women hate them, they are discriminatory towards some minority religions and trans people and they are a safeguarding risk in the days that everyone has a video camera in their pockets.

Funny how gender critical barrister Karon Monaghan QC didn't seem to think blanket bans on trans women from all women's spaces were legal when questioned by the WESC the other day.

Just catching up and slightly gobsmacked that
the communal ladies and gents changing rooms would be forced to close
just to pander to a few angry Transwomen.

The only Transwoman I see there still goes in the mens because they were a member for years before they changed their name and clothes
and its where their friends for a chat after the shower.

The communal changing areas have LITERALLY been life savers for members
(spotting anorexia, spotting domestic abuse, spotting cancers on other people backs, comparing notes about mastectomy surgeons)

Why should we lose out on that ?

I expect because most trans people hope they never end up in prison or have to resort to refuge, and not all trans people want to go swimming or to the gym, and even if they do many self exclude. You can't really opt out of needing the toilet though.

I'm happy to go back to questions though and perhaps look at it from the other side:

Should a teenage trans girl, with a vagina, be forced to undress and shower in a communal changing room with naked men?

In terms of questions, the one question I always ask but never get a proper response to is:

What features or characteristics do all women and 'transwomen' share that are not shared by any men or 'transmen'?

The only answer I ever received was to tell me that there wasn't an answer and that I needed to stop being so binary in my view of the world.

Funnily enough, I didn't find that a satisfactory response.

Disgusted

Gyms such as Virgin Active and Fitness First have communal changing rooms. Usually girls from the age of 16 are allowed to attend the gym. In some cases, 14 year old girls are also allowed to use the facilities.

This is not about adult women walking into girls' school changing rooms. However, for the record, I would not be happy with a mtf transitioner teacher in the girls' changing room, although I would be fine with a female teacher.

Sometimes on this board I think people lack imagination to consider scenarios outside their own direct experience.

Question

If a female patient is complaining because she is being asked to share a room with a male bodied person, should a nurse lie to her by saying " that person is a woman" if the male bodied person in question has said they identify as a woman?

No I agree. I don't want males in women's spaces regardless of surgery, so as long as they respect the consent of women and girls and stay out I have no issues with what they do or do not do with their bodies.

I am reminded of that Australian handball (?) player who as a transwoman, so male, not only wanted and was allowed to play in the womens team but when the women didn't want to share their changing rooms and showers with them, they threw a hissy fit. Luckily that also blocked their participation in the womens team for the Olympics.

Oh and there was that lawsuit in the US where a transgender male child was allowed to use the girls changing room to change for swimming, even though separate cubicles had been offered. Child gleeful and boasting they had won, girl swimmer in tears because what now?

Anyway, how can you exclude any male from female single sex spaces? Then you would be treating transgender males differently to men males and that is not allowed. You can't say you can come in because you say you should be allowed to and you can't even though you say you should be allowed as well....

There speaks someone who is completely unaware or unbothered about the risks that men pose towards women and girls in terms of sex offences...

Well no, as most girl schools will tell you. What is this obsession with adult women wanting the protected right to undress in front of girls in communal changing areas as though its normal? Wouldn't the Equality Act allow for this to be a protected space if its trueand a problem? I am not aware of any trans people who have demanded or exercised the right to change in communal areas in front of young girls yet it seems to be something that feminists want to do or am I reading this wrong?

jj - it doesn't matter how much you and your Stonewall chums lie about the law, it doesn't alter what the law actually is.

But not toilets and changing rooms with cubicles.

#fakenews #StonewallLaw

The EHRC actually removed wording from some of their guidance which said that it was unlawful to require MTF trans people to use a different facility to women, following pressure by feminist campaign group Fair Play for Women, as it is untrue.

The EHRC has already begun to step back from some of their previous advice on this. On October 5th 2018 following correspondence from Fair Play For Women it updated its guidance document “What Equality Law Means for your Business”s”_ removing the statement “Where someone has a gender recognition certificate they should be treated in their acquired gender for all purposes and therefore should not be excluded from single sex services”^. It also removed the statement that a pub should not refuse a transgender person “access to the toilets appropriate to the sex in which they present”

Interestingly they've taken the whole document down now.

https://fairplayforwomen.com/single-sex/

jj, I have pointed out on other threads the various disadvantages of replacing all communal changing rooms with individual cubicles. I won't rehearse them here, suffice to say that it would be expensive and would provide far less space overall than communal changing rooms, which would have an impact on eg the time it might take you to change.

I am perfectly happy for a few individual cubicles to be created for those who need them. I don't have an issue if a small amount of space is taken from the men's and women's changing rooms equally to provide for this solution, provided that they are separate from the single-sex facilities.

Why is this not a solution? Is it that this doesn't provide the validation of womenhood that some mtf transitioners seem to want, or is something else? Why the insistence on getting rid of single-sex spaces entirely?

That's a good one.

Another possible question:

Should a female police officer be forced to strip search a male prisoner with intact genitalia , if that prisoner demands a female officer because they say they identify as a woman?

A reminder that the Staniland question itself is about intact male sexed people using female changing rooms naked with women and girls also potentially naked, not about toilets, which are a different issue.

And that recent YouGov polling indicates that most U.K. women don't consent to sharing toilets and changing rooms with males if they have not had gender reassignment surgery ie penis is still intact. Which is by far the majority of MTF trans people, many of whom don't have any intention to have surgery.

I expect more people would mind actual men being in women's changing rooms. Yet this is ridiculous to object to.

Quite. It is, and always has been, an unconvincing argument that we can't object to males being in single sex women's spaces because there is a tiny minority of female people who look like men. And very dependent on people "passing". Which most trans people don't. Change the record.

Why does it always come back to toilets, jj? Is that because that is the one that can derail a thread the easiest?

Shall we just leave toilets for what they are, a gray area and go bsck to the really good other questions on this thread?

This is quite interesting and relevent. The majority of people think it's okay for someone to use the toilets of the opposite sex if they really need to go:

The majority (56%) believe it is acceptable for a woman who badly needs to urinate and might otherwise wet themselves to use the men’s toilets. Only 29% disagree. The figures are almost the same if the situation were reversed and a man needed to go in the women’s toilets – 52% think this would be ok and 32% do not. In both scenarios, men and women are united in their views.

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/20/potty-parity-would-it-be-fairer-make-womens-toilet

Should male custom officers be allowed to stripsearch female suspects if those custom officers say they identify as women?

We have the right to say no to having men in our spaces, both for privacy and for safety.

In cases where it is proportionate and legitimate you do have a concession to the right of equal treatment which permits discrimination against trans women in some cases. But not toilets and changing rooms with cubicles. The law is the law.