Incorrect guidance on single-sex spaces and gender self-identification - gov.uk asking for examples

But that's the thing, it's not written down or tested in law so no precedent exists for whether excluding trans people from same sex spaces is discrimination - legally that is. The EA protects trans people from discrimination and treating someone differently (not letting them choose a toilet) because of thier gender reassignment could be discrimination because that's the sole reason they're being treated differently.

So allowing trans people to use facilities for a particular sex is legal. As is not allowing it because there is an exemption.

I know self-id to change legal sex is not law and a GRC is required.

Kidspartytroll

Self-ID is not the law in the UK. Neither the EA nor the GRA make self-ID the law. The judgements in the cases involving For Women Scotland confirm this.

The EA protects people with the characteristic of Gender Reassignment from discrimination. That is, they may not be treated less favourably than other people of the same sex. It does not confer the right of a person with the PC of GR to use opposite sex spaces. Even when the man has a GRC with an acquired gender of female, he can be excluded from women's single-sex spaces if the exceptions in the EA are engaged - ie if to do so would infringe the human rights of women to privacy, dignity and safety.

Organisations can choose to infringe women's human rights and discriminate against women, but if they do they are liable. It just needs someone to take them to court.

Gawd that was a good answer by Kemi!

Can someone explain what the actual law is here though?

I thought that the EA states that gender reassignment is a protected characteristic. And 'gender reassignment means proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex.' - so really, self-ID.

Therefore under the Equality Act, the default provision is to not limit trans people and therefore the policy, by default, is to allow trans people to use any space they like based on self-ID. This is the legal default - and therefore all the policies you mention are not illegal.

However, the EA has an exemption where organisations can legally exclude trans people from single-sex spaces - toilets, changing rooms etc. are commonly accepted examples.

The crux of it here is... orgs can choose whether to allow self-ID or not. There's no legal or illegal about it? It's down to the organisation to choose. It's not illegal to exclude trans people from single-sex space, it just seems most don't.

That's the law whether you agree or not?

Happily will hear other interpretations.

Would some of the companies who use Stonewall policies be worth sharing?

Is it worth putting this on AIBU
I seem to remember some parents having concerns about their young girls not going to the toilet all day to avoid the mixed sex toilets at school.

@RhymesWithOrange @RedToothBrush I've just gone back to the council policy I shared and at the bottom there are links to Gendered Intelligence and Stonewall. It really does all seem to trace back to them advising lots of people wrongly and then that metastasized by people copying and pasting other organisation's policies rather than writing their own.

It reminds me of the work the Cass Report did tracing back all the standards of care and finding that lots of them copied and pasted each other, or all traced back to one document but referred to each other as evidence of wide-spread consensus when in fact they were all just based on the same single source.

This is the kind of thing I am reporting - from the website of a private sector organisation that does schools & teacher training. From their "how to be an inclusive school"

"Introduce gender-neutral facilities at school. For example, instead of only having male and female bathrooms or changing rooms, create at least one facility that can be used by everyone. Whilst it can be important to have single-sex spaces, it’s also vital that trans students are able to use the facility in which they feel most comfortable. If your school decides to do this, then make sure all students are educated about it."

Sounds illegal to me.

@RedToothBrush i think they manufactured the virus in their gender lab but once they infected other organisations it just kept replicating itself and other organisations have repeated that advice without reference to Stonewall.

To my shame I used to lead an organisation in ED&I and my experience was that my peers were generally lazy, hard of thinking and fiercely protective of the halos our roles conferred. So much easier to copy and paste another organisation’s equality policy than write your own and actually do the thinking. Equality Impact Assessments are hardly ever worth the paper they are written on.

In (our) defence, the training we got was shocking, total capture. For example, there was one memorable example that said if a woman in a burqa wanted to play hockey or coach a children’s football team (still wearing her burqa) then the players and their parents should be educated about her faith. Nothing about health and safety or safeguarding.

Is this really about Stonewall?

I have looked at the Rainbow Badge Assessment of nearly every trust that took part in the project last year.
The entire project is evidence of Stonewall imposing the law as they would like it rather than the actual law on the NHS.

I hope they'll be happy with a few examples or this may prove rather time consuming to complete.

Saving it for the weekend.

Thanks for the heads up and discussion.

Yes @JanesLittleGirl I have focused on exactly that. Examples where it says that it is illegal to exclude males from female spaces and vice versa if they are “trans” (trans is sometimes defined, sometimes not).

Please read what is being asked for? The request is for examples of incorrect interpretations of the EA2010 excemptions by advisory bodies. They are looking for examples of where an advisory body has advised that it is illegal under EA2010 to exclude people from single sex services or provisions because they have the PC of gender reassignment.

All the examples of service providers who allow opposite sex users into what the vast majority of us would regard as single sex aren't relevant to this research. They are looking for the organisations that say that it is illegal to prohibit trans identifying people from single sex services and spaces.

I’ve a feeling they are going to have a deluge of responses 😂

I've had such fun with this today. I've found half a dozen universities, some schools and colleges, local authorities, hospitals, charities (including the NSPCC), sports organisations... The Met Police was pretty shocking given their recent performance. I also learned a new word, "endosex" - coined in 2000 as an attempt to have an antonym for intersex. It didn't catch on (much).

There seems to be common origins - The Brighton and Hove toolkit, Gendered Intelligence and of course Stonewall.

I've also noticed that organisations are waking up to the fact that their policies are incorrect, there are quite a few that are missing or have been very recently withdrawn. I've downloaded or screenshotted where I can for evidence.

Keep going everyone.

Wow. So many of these examples have been posted on mumsnet.

My council had a list of the protected characteristics that included "gender" and "trans inclusion" instead of sex and GR. It wasn't actually marked as a list of the PCs but the remainder of the list was straight out of the EA 2010 so age, religion & belief, disability etc so the substitution of gender for sex was very obvious. This was just listed on a page on their website so I submitted it with a link to the page.

I would say so, Signalbox. And their definition of Dignity is a collection of characteristics which does not replicate the wording in the EA (which may not be mandatory, I suppose), and omits both sex and gender reassignment - which suggests to me a conflation, especially given their policy on accommodating tg patients according to presentation and pronouns.

To treat someone with dignity is to treat them as being of worth, in a way that is respectful of them as valued individuals, being of equal value and worth irrespective of differences such as age, race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, social background, health or marital status, disability, religion or political conviction.

The Royal Surrey Hospital have a contradictory policy. They have a single-sex accommodation policy for dignity and privacy but then go on to say they will house transgender people according to what clothes they wear and their pronouns. Is this the sort of thing we should be reporting?

https://www.royalsurrey.nhs.uk/download.cfm?doc=docm93jijm4n3754

@HermioneWeasley definitely report it using the link in the guidance above, it's a very easy reporting process. You just paste that link in on the first page, on the second page you have a box to say where the guidance is wrong/doesn't follow the law (so you say something like "see section 5.4 which states that toilets and changing rooms are to be classified by gender identity"), and then there are a few tickboxes to say what kind of organisation CIPD is. Easy as pie and no need to fill in any personal info of your own at all.

The CIPD guidance potentially impacts every workplace in the UK and definitely needs reporting!

https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/guides/2023-pdfs/2023-transgender-non-binary-edi-workplace-8363.pdf

I'm just pleased they are asking. I will do this tomorrow (I work for the council and the mandatory EDI training included transwomen using female toilets)

I appreciate it's annoying but this is the govt asking. They won't have seen what you highlighted previously unless you sent those examples to the Minister.

I also caught the end of Kemi on Radio 4. To paraphrase "I'm not going to not do my job just because someone might say I might be transphobic." Was it Rachel Reeves on after? I didn't have time to hear whether she was similarly harangued by Sarah.

I heard that, Kemi was generally excellent. She was also clear that it would be very helpful if people could send her examples of where the law is not being followed (and I’m sure examples of resulting harm would also be useful)

I do wonder if a direct, concise email might be better than using the civil service portal - which may filter out some contributions