Keep Prison Single Sex closing

Good grief. This needs a thread of its own.
It's grim thought that men determined to erode women's safety and privacy from men are in such senior positions in the police and the law that they're able to influence practice in this way.

No, I don't think I did say that.

I don't think that's the answer.

In several threads now I've said that once sex is confirmed as always intended to be biological then the threat of legal action goes away.

Kemi Badenoch said this a week or so ago. She also talked about making it absolutely clear in the guidance but that's for assistance in formulating policy.

I don't believe the supreme court will judge that biological sex is not protected in the Equality Act and that the words female of any age mean female in your imagination of any age.

Once biological sex is spelled out, imaginary sex becomes something left leaning service providers that are disposed towards not disappointing men will continue to serve, but that's what left wing voters will be voting for. The opposition to that will continue to grow through the networks now appearing within the public sector (SEEN).

Honestly look at this shit. This is why we need KPSS and their no nonsense approach.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13511543/Fury-police-chiefs-fail-stop-transgender-officers-born-male-identify-female-permitted-strip-search-women.html

So out of interest what else do you think is needed? Up thread you said that “more hard-hitting statutory guidance might be the answer”. But if the SC find that men can be legally women (as per the current situation with the Haldane judgment) then men will continue to count as women for some purposes and there is no will be no way to exclude them. For instance as far I’ve read associations cannot use the exceptions in the EA to exclude men who have a GRC. Also men with a GRC are counted for the purpose of Gender Representation on Public Boards Act (Scotland).

Neither have I.

I haven't said that statutory guidance is al that's needed.

I'd really like to see @Hepwo and @illinivich and others who agree that statuatory guidance is all that's needed respond to @ResisterRex's thought experiment - it's 2003 [(except somehow also 2013 so same sex marriage is legistlated for)], explain why we need to introduce a GRA or add GR to equal rights legislation?
I guess I'm curious to know if others think the current legal setup is good so long as better guidance is issued, or if that's a comprimise, because this is where we've ended up so let's make the best of a bad situation.
I think I've probably defaulted to a "balance of rights" position, thinking the problem is that the balance is way too far in one direction now. But more recently I'm more fully understanding the arguments of people like Coleman.
I think horrifying outcomes like disenfranchised women being locked in prisons with sexually violent men shift the focus so much to stopping that from happening with a patch, rather than looking at the madness of the underlying situation of having something as nebulous as "gender" written into legislation.
Imagine if there was legislation which outlined how Births, Deaths and Marriages could issue certificates of full exorcism, which proves that the recipient is no longer possessed by demons. I think that's where I'm at with "gender" now. There isn't a stable, tangible condition of being in need of gender reassignment. There are a host of human experiences including sex-atypical personalitites, body-based distress, fetishes, responses to trauma, strongly valued identity categories. Some of these things are disabilities, some are beliefs worthy of respect. But they don't fit together in a new, coherent category that needs its own legislation.
(Grammar edit)

Yes I know.

The supreme court will remove the uncertainty about biological sex.

The status quo will change, labour will be upholding the EQA which is now clarified in the same way as Kemi Badenoch proposed last week.

Ah yes it's vs the Scottish government. I got muddled. I also thought there was something about that case that had somehow stopped the UK government from doing something about sex in the EQA. There was: x.com/kemibadenoch/status/1797707541691957401?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ But probably my getting these things mixed up

This quote is taken from the daily mail regarding male police officers searching women. No mention of SSE laws, just engagement with stakeholders. Its using the idea of balancing rights, not safeguarding and dignity to inform policy. If the police are unwilling or unable to follow SSE, who can be?

An NPCC spokesman said last night that the review of the guidance on custody searches carried out by transgender staff 'includes engagement with colleagues across policing and partner organisations, community groups and associations. The review is ongoing, and no decisions have yet been made'.

All law is meaningless if there is no mechanism for enforcement.

The right to single sex spaces is only an exception for a provider to provide one. It isn't enforceable as the prisons judicial review showed. If a provider washes their hands of it because of cost and time, all you can do is for each affected individual build a case for sex discrimination which is expensive and takes forever. Meanwhile women and girls suffer.

Why do you think SM want to clarify the meaning of sex in the EA? It’s because the current situation is uncertain. Uncertainty does not make for good law. Even the lawyers do not agree which is why this will end up in the SC. Labour putting out guidance will change nothing because the law is interpreted by the courts not the government.

I’m sorry you’ve completely lost me. Sonia’s article makes perfect sense to me. What’s more Michael Foran commented that she has a firm grasp on the issues and had explained the complexities of the current situation very clearly.

Exactly, so Sonia''s analysis you quoted is muddled and misleading.

Labour claims that the law in this area is clear, despite the fact it is so unclear that, as the result of a judicial review that has made its way through the Scottish courts, in the next year or so the supreme court will have to try to interpret what parliament meant by “sex” in the Equality Act. Labour will argue that the problem can be fixed through statutory guidance, which is nonsense: guidance cannot change the law; only parliament can. As one lawyer I spoke to said, Labour’s position is to uphold the problematic status quo. If it goes ahead with its plans to make a GRC easier to get without first clarifying the law, it will make things worse.”

Why can't she properly explain this?

Labour have nothing to do with this case. FWR are appealing the Haldane Judgment in the UK Supreme Court. The initial JR was against the Scottish Government.

Plus afaik you can’t prevent a a case from proceeding by not defending it. It would just carry on regardless without you.

Isn't @Hepwo more asking if, if Labour win, they'll stop defending the case and it will not go to the Supreme Court? I might be wrong but that's how I read it.

No. It’s the FWS appeal case re what does sex mean in the EA. Labour can make all the guidance it likes but it’ll be the outcome of that case that matters.

Are Labour going to the UK supreme Court to argue that @Signalbox ?

The problem with services not using the exception allowed in the EA is that it's easier not to. If they don’t have to, they won’t. We need to make it obligatory to provide women only facilities, rather than leave it optional.

They know men will complain if they can’t have access wherever they want. For Malaga related reasons, or just out of spite because men don’t like being told ‘no’.

Another issue is the ‘sex positive’ ‘boundary negative’ direction of lib fem travel over the last many decades, that has too many individuals, businesses and institutions convinced that having fewer boundaries around women’s bodies is super progressive.

We have to change the culture around women’s facilities as well as repeal the GRA. even with the GRA gone it would still be too common to see men using women’s toilets, changing rooms etc. Repeal would solve the problem in places where women are admitted on the basis of legal id, such as hospitals and prisons, but we still have a fight on our hands in less formal settings.

Why is anyone telling males that they can be women? It’s rediculous. We don’t collude with people suffering from anorexia, that they are fat & need to lose weight…..why should we collude with males who think they should have been born female?

I agree! And those sexist clinicians obviously think so little of women, as being people in their own right, that they believe giving men hormones and/or surgery makes them women in some way 🤬

I think I prefer Sonia Sodha’s analysis.

“Labour claims that the law in this area is clear, despite the fact it is so unclear that, as the result of a judicial review that has made its way through the Scottish courts, in the next year or so the supreme court will have to try to interpret what parliament meant by “sex” in the Equality Act. Labour will argue that the problem can be fixed through statutory guidance, which is nonsense: guidance cannot change the law; only parliament can. As one lawyer I spoke to said, Labour’s position is to uphold the problematic status quo. If it goes ahead with its plans to make a GRC easier to get without first clarifying the law, it will make things worse.”

A lot of the problem stems from the practice the sex change clinicians adopted which was to use the use of women's facilities as a transition stage. The act of walking through a door marked for the opposite sex IS transition. That's all it is. Men have been told to practice this in women's clothing before being approved for surgery.

It's an astonishingly sexist practice, for clinicians to use women as a medical service for men. Without bothering to consider that women actually had the right to not be used by men for men in this way.

The problem for service users is that although we know that providers can exclude male grc holders from the womens spaces, we don't know if they do. Or even if they attemp to, but cannot because of the mess around sex recorded on identification.

Its easier to check sex and gender when admitting someone into hospital than it is into an open plan changing room at a swimming pool.

A lot of the problem is major politicians not explicitly saying that womens public toilet, for example, exclude those men with GRC and PC of GR. They talk about safe spaces or rape crisis centers and rarely the everyday women only spaces.

Threaten to attack legally I should say.

The main reason public sector services are so hard to get to use the exemptions is because they are stuffed full of waffly prevaricators that are completely risk averse and will always escalate decision making right up to the top where the leadership can blame lawyers for telling them "there's a risk" or are genuinely stupid enough to believe men are women because "hermaphrodites".