Single sex spaces

A relative, now retired, used to plan public buildings. About 10 years ago he was in charge of a refurb of a university. He was told to put in all gender neutral washrooms and loos.
He ignored that as he thought it ridiculous and put in 3 lots in each space. Male, female and mixed. Such an obvious solution.

The reality of the situation is that if you are requiring female people to compromise (by which you do actually seem to mean just to give up and not use that service at all if need be) then TW can be required to compromise too.

Which is what this guidance says, in that some services, resources and facilities can be kept as female only, with alternative and additional services provided for TQ+ people.

This has been necessary because as you demonstrate in your post: TQ+ people are never willing to care or compromise to meet female need and it has become necessary for legal protections for females to be clarified so they are not bounced out of their spaces by their being mixed sex. This may work for you but it does not work for all females . Who are as human as you are and not lower than you in the pecking order.

This.

And it wowouldn'be abger because youbare trans . It woyld be anger because you lied. Most of the issues claimed to be faced are because of self created situations. If trans people were honest about who they were, and respected the boundaries of others there wouldn't be a problem.

Instead they create the victim hood required to bolster their " case" by deliberately doing things like acting as of consent doesn't matter , cheating at sport, just so they have a sob story to justify it all .

We see it. We don't buy it. Your emotional blackmail will not work. They are your problems to solve not ours. Take responsibility

The cognitive distortion being used here is ‘catastrophising.’ Butterfly is using it to overplay the effects of asking all transitioned males to respect female single sex spaces and turn it into a life threatening (the theme of that entire post) request.

What's the aim? Elimination of trans women from single sex spaces. (Or protection of sex-based rights, if you prefer to use the dogwhistle). Is it proportionate? You tell me. I've only lived here for a couple of decades. Are there other reasonable alternatives? Yes. You could...not?

Butterfly

What is the aim?

To provide females with single sex spaces that are 100% female only when they are needed (except those male children). Not almost 100% because it includes some males over about 8 years old.

Why? Read the many threads and posts why it is needed. Traumatised women and girls, religious needs, or just for women and girls who want privacy away from any male. And I use women and girls here exclusively for those who are female.

Or protection of sex-based rights, if you prefer to use the dogwhistle)

Let the denigration begin!!

Here is another activist tactic. A negative generalisation cognitive distortion around denigrating any one using the term ‘sex based rights’ (which I have been using since my uni days in the 90s, not a new term at all) as ‘dog whistling’.

No, butterfly. I am not virtue signaling or any other kind of ‘signaling’. I will leave that to you. I am discussing the rights of females.

Are there other reasonable alternatives? Yes. You could...not?

And this is projection.

To use your own words butterfly,

Yes. You could…. Not?

We happen to know some transitioned males who do use the male or mixed sex spaces provided.

And do so without any negative repercussions.

What makes them different to you in your mind?

Are penises the problem, are Y chromosomes the problem, is male socialisation the problem, or is there some fundamental essence of maleness that inherently taints all it touches with a single drop?

The problem is males. You cannot extract different parts of the whole to asses what is the actual problem.

Men assault, rape and harass women at an alarming rate. In studies many more men have said they would rape women if they thought they could get away with it. Until males stop behaving like this, and putting females at risk by their behaviour, single sex spaces are needed.

Especially as so many men actually get NO PUNISHMENT for their crimes, because the system is more worried about a male's reputation and future than the female whose reputation and future he just destroyed.

And why is using a toilet set aside fir males damaging to your mental.health?

I've had to go into male toilets for cleaning purposes. Little girls go in with their fathers . Literally mentally nothing happens.

Its not our fault you lied to everyone at work for years and are now scared of them finding out. I actually think they would have a right to be a bit angry at you fir that and you should have the guts to face it.

So I take it that this:

With EA2010 in place, however, this guidance appears to be self-contradictory and unenforcable. I think it would largely depend on how self-destructive I was feeling on a daily basis whether I would either bother to challenge it, resign myself to an existence where the dream of not being harrassed daily is just a memory, or just stop existing in public anymore.

Was the answer to:

When a mixed sex toilet provision is made, and a clearly signed ‘female single sex' toilet is available for the females, will a transitioned male disrespect the needs of those females by entering into that toilet?

And if they do respect it and stay out of the female toilet, what would we be policing if all toilets are configured in such a way, ie. That signage states female only clearly. Surely no ‘policing’ is needed because no males would enter unless they had ill intent

So… that is a maybe? Maybe some days?

That is telling us that if there was a mixed sex provision also there that you would feel that it is ‘self destructive’ for you to even consider using the mixed sex provision and to leave the female single sex space for those who are female (not just had their documents legally changed to reflect that) out of respect to those females knowing you are not female but a male except on some legal documents.

Just to clarify, forgetting all the emotional distraction you tried to throw at my question - you know your presence would cause some female’s distress but you will not use a mixed sex provision out of respect because you consider this ‘self destructive’?

Thanks for answering.

But they aren't your spages butterfly

They never were. The answer is just no.

Is forcing me to humiliatingly and potentially life-threateningly dangerously out myself to every single person in a public space every time I need to go for a piss, at great cost to my own mental health and wellbeing, a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim?

Your hyperbole and emotional manipulation is right off the charts I can see.

As is your complete lack of self awareness and empathy.

So, we are back talking in circles with you Butterfly. I don’t doubt you think dialing up the emotional manipulation will be a winning argument with readers.

It completely misses the fact that you believe you pass, there will be women and girls who will identify you as male and your presence in a female single sex space will be distressing to them.

But as last year, you only focus on your distress with no thought of the collective group you wish to be acknowledged as. There is a difference.

[quote ButterflyHatched]@Runningupthecurtains I'm really sorry that this is a daily struggle your mum has to go through. It sounds very difficult for her.

I have no idea how best to help her deal with the reality that there are somewhere between 13,000 and 200,000 trans people living in the UK. It might be the case that there is just no way to balance her needs with the reality of the situation without compromise.

I'm not sure it helps, but if I was working in a patient-facing healthcare environment I would (if it were a realistic and reasonable request) hand over to a non-trans female colleague in such a situation, as I acknowledge my ability to judge my own passability - while borne out by decades of interactions with some extremely unsavoury characters who would not have hesitated to comment over the slightest suspicion - isn't flawless.

I've seen plenty of cis people be 'accused' of being trans over the years, however, so even then false positives must be so hard for your mother to deal with.[/quote]
The reality of the situation is that if you are requiring female people to compromise (by which you do actually seem to mean just to give up and not use that service at all if need be) then TW can be required to compromise too.

Which is what this guidance says, in that some services, resources and facilities can be kept as female only, with alternative and additional services provided for TQ+ people.

This has been necessary because as you demonstrate in your post: TQ+ people are never willing to care or compromise to meet female need and it has become necessary for legal protections for females to be clarified so they are not bounced out of their spaces by their being mixed sex. This may work for you but it does not work for all females . Who are as human as you are and not lower than you in the pecking order.

I get that you would prefer for it to go on working for you at the expense, exclusion and distress of females which has no cost to you personally, but you know what? That is not an acceptable solution. Their distress is as great as yours. Their need is as great as yours. Compromise has to go two ways. Some female service users will only ever be able to have their needs met in a female only provision.

They matter just as much.

Third spaces do solve all the problems, I totally agree.
If TRAs had started campaigning for this a few years ago, instead of this insane idea that people can actually physically change sex, everywhere would have male, female and unisex facilities by now. What a waste of time and money it’s been, and the only outcome is that people are now MORE wary of trans people, whereas before this whole debacle, most people would have just turned a blind eye to trans people in their facilities.

Ugh god that's absolutely rotten. I'm so sorry for her.

I don't want to invade or erode anyone else's spaces. Just exist in mine, which I have done all my adult life and most of my teenage years too.

I think I've already said more than a lifetime's worth on the subject of nipping to the loo at a service station, and it's pretty depressing to discuss the best way to go about eliminating us from public life, so I think we done for now unless there are any more questions?

Third spaces are the clear answer, along with open categories for sport. Any trans person still wanting to access female spaces, I would assume had a nefarious reason for wanting to be there.
I would have used third spaces occasionally if I was out with my young sons before I felt comfortable sending them into the men’s bathrooms (luckily I don’t have to in Australia as we have unisex parents rooms), so it wouldn’t “out” anyone (though honestly, it’s fairly obvious and no “outing” would normally be necessary)

@ButterflyHatched

I have no idea how best to help her deal with the reality that there are somewhere between 13,000 and 200,000 trans people living in the UK. It might be the case that there is just no way to balance her needs with the reality of the situation without compromise.

She doesn't have an issue with the fact that trans people exist, she doesn't have a problem with them living in the UK, she isn't some small minded bigot - she has a problem with meeting male bodies in female spaces, she has a problem with asking for care from a female and getting a male instead because it is traumatic for her because she was assaulted in her own bathroom by her own father. Third spaces are the compromise. You still haven't answered why this solution isn't being pushed for. You still haven't said why your need to feel safe trumps her need to feel safe. If the compromise is someone's sense of safety why does yours count more than hers? And that of rape victims? And women from cultural/religious backgrounds that don't allow them to be in intimate setting with strange men? You told us why you think it's not OK for you to use a men's toilet but by opening women's toilets to men that's exactly what you are asking my mother to do. So why is it OK for her to lose the option of a single sex environment when it's not OK for you? Why should every scared, traumatized woman kiss goodbye to their safe spaces so you can keep yours? Why do you get to win and they get to lose?

Are there other reasonable alternatives? Yes. You could...not?

Don't want to use the men's and can't you the ladies then why not use accessable toilets where available and campaign for third spaces?
Again across several threads you haven't told us why third spaces are not a viable compromise? Why should Muslims and rape victims and frightened old ladies stay at home so you can go out? Why are you more important than them?

@Runningupthecurtains I'm really sorry that this is a daily struggle your mum has to go through. It sounds very difficult for her.

I have no idea how best to help her deal with the reality that there are somewhere between 13,000 and 200,000 trans people living in the UK. It might be the case that there is just no way to balance her needs with the reality of the situation without compromise.

I'm not sure it helps, but if I was working in a patient-facing healthcare environment I would (if it were a realistic and reasonable request) hand over to a non-trans female colleague in such a situation, as I acknowledge my ability to judge my own passability - while borne out by decades of interactions with some extremely unsavoury characters who would not have hesitated to comment over the slightest suspicion - isn't flawless.

I've seen plenty of cis people be 'accused' of being trans over the years, however, so even then false positives must be so hard for your mother to deal with.

Oof. Ok, firstly, not angry. Just scared and bewildered, and a little lacking in bandwidth right now. The last few weeks have been a bit much.

On the op's proposal re: surgery thresholds i.e. 'you must be this transitioned to use the facilities':

I don't think trying to split us into good trans and bad trans people will help in any meaningful, lasting way - this kind of 'hierarchy of acceptable deviance' just seems to create more unhelpful ways for scared people to lash out at those around them in order to claw some temporary respectability points, and drives dissonance and rivalry within marginalised groups.

The key dilemma for any such proposal remains: What is the actual purpose here? What problem does it solve?

Are penises the problem, are Y chromosomes the problem, is male socialisation the problem, or is there some fundamental essence of maleness that inherently taints all it touches with a single drop?

@Helleofabore - you seem to be asking if trans women would enter a space that has been marked by request in line with recent EHRC guidance to exclude them? The recently issued EHRC guidance reiterates that this is acceptable if a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim.

Is forcing me to humiliatingly and potentially life-threateningly dangerously out myself to every single person in a public space every time I need to go for a piss, at great cost to my own mental health and wellbeing, a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim?

What's the aim? Elimination of trans women from single sex spaces. (Or protection of sex-based rights, if you prefer to use the dogwhistle).
Is it proportionate? You tell me. I've only lived here for a couple of decades.
Are there other reasonable alternatives? Yes. You could...not?

I suppose if the Equality Act 2010 didn't exist then there would no issue here (we'd just be back to having basically no rights or protections) - maybe you ought to campaign against that one next - couple more years of Daily Mail, Telegraph, Times and Guardian headlines under your belt and I reckon you'd manage to force the overton window far enough along to be able to manage it.

With EA2010 in place, however, this guidance appears to be self-contradictory and unenforcable. I think it would largely depend on how self-destructive I was feeling on a daily basis whether I would either bother to challenge it, resign myself to an existence where the dream of not being harrassed daily is just a memory, or just stop existing in public anymore.

They're all pretty grim, really.

You can't choose a sex. We just are whichever sex we are. The rest is just dressing.

I'm now terrified of leaving the house and going anywhere that involves visiting public services. I'm dreading journeys of more than a couple of hours.

@ButterflyHatched this how my elderly mother feels. She now won't travel to visit her children and grandchildren as we all live several hours journey away and she is too frightened to use public toilets. She has refused surgery that would potentially vastly improve her quality of life and significantly reduced the pain she is constantly in because she is worried that if she asks for a female nurse she will be labelled a bigot (the surgery would leave her incapacitated and in need of intimate care for several days) she worries that she might be tended by a transwoman or that one might be placed in the ward with her.

I am genuinely sorry that you feel scared but I not prepared for my Mum's feelings to be the price that is paid for you not to feel that way. Can you explain why a frail old lady should be frightened so that you aren't? Why is her fear, her pain acceptable? Why do the wants of transwomen trump those of natal women? Third spaces would make you feel safe and my mum feel safe so why aren't TRAs pressing for them? Why is the preferred solution one that make more people scared rather than the one that makes fewer people scared?

I do have some confusion. If we make all spaces mixed sex, as the TRA want, could any man who is denied access to a space sue for discrimination on reason of gender? If we are allowing some males in a space, surely denying others due to their gender identity is discrimination?

ButterflyHatched - is there any reason why you wouldn't support the proposal outlined upthread?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a4523860-Single-sex-spaces?msgid=116446702

Also, wouldn't it be useful in this discussion to be able to use terms 'transsexual' and 'transvestite' for clarity, and wasn't that removed after a concerted campaign by Christine Burns? The fact that the law written explicitly for transsexuals got incorrectly applied to some sort of 'umbrella' is the issue, plus the fact the GRA was made deliberately woolly, by the same campaigning group and others. We may not need to repeal the GRA, secondary legislation with 'for sex read gender throughout' might be good though.

Hear hear Helleof!

Let's have mixed sex option, alongside single sex, not instead of.

And let's have transitioned male show just how much they respect females by using the mixed sex options and leaving female only single sex provisions for all females who want to use them.

Totally agree Artichokes, that is the way forward, as it always has been. It is not 'othering', it's providing what females need. Let's have mixed sex option, alongside single sex, not instead of.

The next and inclusive step is to start saying to all work places and services that gender neutral spaces must be there for accessibility alongside sex based spaces. And many people will use them, there are plenty of women and men who often say they are lucky enough not to be restricted to a single sex space, parents with opposite sex children, NB people, they will not be in any way outing. Actual accessibility.

And going to a workplace and saying have you seen this guidance, have you thought this through, where is our accessible gender neutral space is not outing anyone either as it is a good and positive inclusion step and something anyone who cares about real diversity and inclusion should be behind.