Telegraph article: ‘We’re not transphobic, we just want privacy’

Yes, as I recall, girls who objected to the arrangement would be disciplined. I think that they complied in silence and parents who complained were shut down a bigoted idiots.

I realise your last sentence is probably rhetorical, but it’s a real reminder for me regarding the enormous pressure on girls to feel shame for wanting boundaries. Very much “We’re going to make an example of any girl who doesn’t shut up and comply,” to which the only response that will have an effect depends on all, or at least an inconvenient majority, of the girls having the courage to stand together to oppose it. Very few young school girls would have the strength of character to be the first to stick her neck out and lots of others wouldn’t support her openly, out of fear. It’s an incredible act of bullying.

GladAllOver · 03/10/2024 21:47

But in this case they are not being told to. They have been offered an alternative (but unsatisfactory) place to change.

The first instance I read of this, several years ago, was in a school changing room, where any girl not happy in the presence of the boy posing as a girl could use a cupboard. Quite why the girls should have to queue up to use an unsuitable place, when the boy could have managed fine on his own was ad still is beyond me.

What @Catsmere said.

It was hideously wrong from the start. Male crossdressers have always done this to deceive and break women's boundaries and get their sexual thrills from it. What's worse now is that it's a male supremacy movement that has governments and corporations salivating to support it.

And personal opinions are fine.

If some women want to believe that some men are women because they said so, and have not yet personally experienced the things that make this problematic to put it very mildly, bully for them. I'm glad they've been so lucky and privileged and I hope their eyes are never opened by personal experience. Although they could try being equally as kind and keen to listen to other women as they are to men.

If some women consent to go and take their clothes off with random men to validate a man's inner self (and support his sexual experience) then their body, their choice, they can have a third space and go nuts and I hope they feel lovely for doing so.

But when this opinion is used as a basis to tell women strip and give him use of your body and shut up, or be shunned and excluded? Or threatened with sexual violence and murder? And actual MPs are standing under signs about this grinning?

Then it's gone hideously wrong.

People are perfectly free to opt into this belief as they like, no one's stopping them. They cannot require others to genuflect at that altar with them.

I and my immediate galpals would agree. Many many people of my age (20) wouldn't.
Personally - definitely a personal opinion - I think it is an affront (to people like me with Vs) for people without Vs to call themselves women - personal opinion!

Agree

Ereshkigalangcleg - that was such a bizarre case. The ruling of the tribunal was perverse, to put it mildly. It was a shame that the employer didn't contest it. Like SnowyPeaks I'm hoping that the NHS doesn't settle in this case, so that it can go to tribunal and be debated in open court. This stuff needs to be thrashed out in the open so people can see what's really at stake and how mad it all is.

Yes, me too.

Then they need to say so out loud so everyone can hear it.

And it's so often expressed with such enjoyment.

Since we're not allowed to check people's GRCs or even ask whether they have one, doesn't this in practice mean that women are no longer entitled to safety and dignity just because some men have obtained magical pieces of paper, but we don't know which ones?

Yes, I certainly think this is how trans activists see it.

If the legal answer hinges on whether Rose has a GRC or not, we all need to be asking ourselves some serious questions. Namely:

1. Why should women's right to safety and dignity be conditional on a man not having obtained a magical piece of paper?
2. Since we're not allowed to check people's GRCs or even ask whether they have one, doesn't this in practice mean that women are no longer entitled to safety and dignity just because some men have obtained magical pieces of paper, but we don't know which ones?

Yes @Snowypeaks I hope they don't settle because we need sunlight.

IANAL
IMO, what will actually happen is that the NHS will settle, this time at least. Because their lawyers will tell them that they don't have a leg to stand on. Even if Rose did have a GRC, there is nothing in the GRA or the EA which gives him the right to be in communal single sex spaces where women may be vulnerable or in a state of undress. This is because the women's Article 8 rights to privacy, dignity and safety are absolute and don't have to be balanced against the MCW's preferences. The EA allows the NHS to discriminate on the grounds of Sex and on the grounds of GR in these circumstances.
So I really have no idea what their lawyers would try to argue!
(The EHRC guidance says, in the case of a male with a GRC, it could be different if there was a women's block with separate changing cubicles, or where the loos were all single-user and self-contained, for example.)

It might sound odd, but I hope they don't settle, because a settlement on this case would be a much weaker precedent than a full judgement of an appeal tribunal.

Which is about this case www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4593138-transwoman-wins-employment-discrimination-case-against-nhs-for-being-treated-differently-from-women-in-changing-room

The only argument I can see is that Rose has a gender recognition certificate and is therefore legally female - but I don't know whether Rose does have a GRC or not. (And even then it hinges on whether the definition of 'sex' in the Equality Act is understood to be biological sex, or includes those with a GRC.)

This wasn't the case in this case

https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2022/08/07/false-equivalence-a-guest-blog-by-barrister-anya-palmer/

It seems to me the problem outlined in that comment by the police superintendent is that the rules and the direction they have is confused and inconsistent. So it's going to inhibit them from taking action in a useful way.

I don't necessarily think that's an unfair statement from the police, I am not sure that's where the problem really is.

Great post.

Well, this is the million dollar question.

Why can't he get changed in the cupboard?

It's funny how often people like DadJoke accuse us of not knowing any transwomen. Yet for many of us it's precisely because we have lived with, or had to change near, transwomen that we have experience of transwomen being just as bad as any other men.

I often think of Hannah Mouncey's Australian team mates who were all cheerleaders for thinking that 'transwomen are women' until they actually had to experience being in the shower with a fully in tact 6 foot 4 transwoman.

To that point, Rose needs to be offered an alternative place to change - that's the EHRC guidance. Assuming the hospital plays along with his nonsense, which they shouldn't, but here we are. It would be interesting to see see how long he keeps this up if he isn't allowed in the women's toilets or changing rooms.

In reality there's no need to make special accommodations for Rose at all - he can carry on using the facilities he's been using all his life without exploding or turning into dust.