No debate is over at the Guardian

I can’t even wrap my head around the person who doesn’t want anybody trans in their aerobics class...
How can anybody be so monumentally STUPID?

And get paid for it?

[quote ColouringPencils]@terryleather I was thinking exactly the same about Zoe Williams. I used to love her writing when I was in my early twenties and trying to be a cool girl. Now I am in my early forties and she must be nearly 50, and she's still trying to be the cool girl. It's pretty tiring. I'd love her to write something she actually believed in, but please no more of this trying to spin an argument out of thin air (and no more about Mr Z either!)[/quote]
Yes, this.

Loved her Anti-natal series, which appeared as I was having babies. That felt honest, and funny.

This is try-hard and tiresome. Laurie Penny, 20 years on.

Men swim over the top of women they wish to overtake?

Bloody hell.

I just can't imagine that it would be possible to be so unaware that there are lots of single sex gyms or classes, I guess - and a journalist might do 5 minutes of googling to check before writing that it is so.

I think most people imagine they are sex specific, but it would be legally very difficult to enforce that.

But in the general consciousness there are lots of women who are keen on women only gyms. I think out largest chain is GoodLife and their gyms always have a women only section.

Lots of women just seem to prefer that to the very masculine body building sort of place. It's not that they aren't allowed to or even would always be against sharing space with men in a fitness setting.

So ZW, as a fitness writer, thinks that concern about Trans athletes in women’s events is ‘confected’ ?

Amidst the sound and fury I do feel for the ‘ordinary’ trans person just trying to get on with their life amidst doubtless frequent prejudice.

But we make our laws, rules and social understandings based on the small chances. Very few men are rapists, but we build our protections around the minority who are. Otherwise why have women’s prisons at all? The eye rolling accusation that GC feminists believe that all, most or even significant numbers of Transwomen are perverts and rapists is unfair and designed to undermine the point that women’s safe spaces are there to protect the small minority of offenders.

And tbf, offending (incl sexual) amongst Transwomen is at the same rate as men. Not the same rate as women.

But we know very well that ‘some Transwomen offend” is not the same as “Transwomen are a threat because they are Transwomen” or “Transwomen are criminals”.

The TRAs have done by far the most damaging ‘confecting’

There is a women-only session at my pool, and a men-only one. I haven't seen the men's, but the women's is a busy session and seems to particularly attract women from minority ethnic groups. I liked going too, but I mainly go swimming with my DC one of whom is male. Luckily, the only two sessions in the week we can't go to together are the women-only and men-only ones.

@terryleather I was thinking exactly the same about Zoe Williams. I used to love her writing when I was in my early twenties and trying to be a cool girl. Now I am in my early forties and she must be nearly 50, and she's still trying to be the cool girl. It's pretty tiring. I'd love her to write something she actually believed in, but please no more of this trying to spin an argument out of thin air (and no more about Mr Z either!)

And either Zoe a) has not read the guidance properly; b) not understood it; or c) has deliberately misrepresented it to make her point.

Given she was educated at one of the best private girls schools in the country and then Oxford, I think it's unlikely to be b). And she's a journalist, so one would hope that a) applies.

In which case, we're left with the sorry c).

Zoe says in her article: "Legitimate justifications” now include female-only fitness classes and the toilets of places of worship where it may offend people, on religious grounds, to have inclusive spaces. I can’t even wrap my head around the person who doesn’t want anybody trans in their aerobics class

In the guidance, the leisure centre example is: A leisure centre introduces some female only fitness classes. It decides to exclude trans women because of the degree of physical contact involved in such classes.

So, not aerobics but a class where there is a high degree of physical contact between participants, meaning women could get hurt.

But obviously that doesn't fit Zoe's narrative so she's reduced to making up shit lies.

It's unfortunate that she thinks her readership is stupid and ill-informed. But I think that's all she's got because her main argument seems to be 'however crap Keir and Co are, please vote for them because otherwise we're stuck with Boris'.

I'm not sure why they continue to pay her but I'm glad I've not given any money to the guardian for many years.

I think more people will agree with Rustin's piece, because it's so reasonable. I know I'm biased, but really, what is there to disagree with?Even ignoring the debate about single-sex spaces, the fact that politicians are shrieking about expelling people with particular views from the party makes them look unhinged.

Williams's article is nuts. Difficult to believe she lives in one of the world's great multicultural cities and has never come across minority women who need single-sex spaces.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/fit-in-my-40s

She has no understanding of what it is like to have been consistently engaged in sports for the love of it, nor of competition.

She can do one.

I doubt La Williams has ever been involved in any sporting competition in her life or has any understanding of what sport means to those women who are.

Oh god
some men ‘feels’ like a woman

Need sleep

I also carried on fast lane swimming whilst very pregnant, and could still out swim most of the men if I went to a mixed session. However, the risks of a kick to the belly were very real. Another reason for the need for single sex sessions is that many women find swimming the only form of relief and exercise during pregnancy. I've been a several times a week swimmer for 30 years, all in public pools. Women just do not pose the same sort of physical risk as men in terms of getting badly kicked, hit or crashed into.

male lifeguard

Careful Zoe. Your middle class privilege is showing. I think this article tells you everything you need to know about privately educated Zoe.

www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/thanet-guardian-writer-gobsmacked-after-4660432

I will admit to not knowing what a cervix was, and not knowing I had one. English is not my first language.
I can also confirm that men swim over you, even when it is not a competition.

I taught refugees for a while; both language and swimming, actually.
The swimming lessons were segregated by sex both because of religious reasons AND because of widespread experiences of rape and sexual abuse. I will never forget when a guard had forgotten something in the office and accidently came in (very briefly and with a haste retreat) during one of the women’s lessons.
Already they were swimming fully dressed, but just spotting this man out of the corner of the eye many of them threw themselves onto the floor or behind walls. The panic was palpable.

It is so shocking to read that people think this is of no consequence because someone ‘feels’ like a woman. What a luxury for them, and what a completely imbesilic worldview.

I'd almost forgotten about the ghastly Riley J Dennis. Which is a bit unkind because he actually peaked me way back.

"Well, for one, i think it's absolute horseshit to imagine some class of "vulnerable" women who won't attend their smear test unless they're specifically invited as women. I'd go as far as to say everyone with a cervix knows they have one. So, for two, I think you're doing that >> thing again, where you ventriloquise your view onto some imagined "weak" woman who needs the ferocity of your protection. And I just think it's in really bad faith."

So she didn't equate having a cervix to being a woman (just to clarify the language).
I disagree with her, obviously, though. I think loads of people wouldn't know they had a cervix unless they'd already had a smear, been pregnant etc, particularly if they're young and being told that anyone can be either sex. It's not like it's an easy body part to check yourself.

Just after the EHRC released its guidance, she was asking Jolyon Maugham on twitter for advice on a legal challenge to the guidance. If she were an honest journalist she'd be asking a number of Equalities specialist lawyers,

She might even have considered any of the Legal Feminists on Twitter like Anya Palmer or Naomi Cunningham, or women with an above average knowledge of Human Rights, such as Rosa Freedman. Sean Jones QC is a less partial specialist Employment and Sports Law silk that Williams might have approached…

@Abra1d1 , this was what changed my mind. I used to think this was about poor souls who had mutilated themselves to feel better about themselves. Nope. Not that. Apart from poor lesbians conned into being transmen to treat dysphoria.