Trans women ban in single sex spaces

I don't know why they used the phrase 'for all purposes' when its clear that nothing has changed in the moment the GRC is issued. If a medical study needs women, the now female GRC holder won't be of any use.

I think the assumption was that these men are reasonable and wouldn't insert themselves into inappropriate situations and that they want to pass, therefore would avoid being outed.

But David Lammy was involved, so who knows?

The idea that a man is sufficiently not male enough that he must be female, and we all have to play along, is a bonkers thing for parliament to spend time on. No wonder none of it makes sense.

Yes.

The Equality Act sets out lawful exceptions and previous guidance specifically mentioned things like changing rooms. Didn't the Supreme Court ruling meand that GRC doesn't over-ride sex-based rights?

I reject the idea that TW are "banned" that implies that they have done something wrong and are being punnished, rather than the truth which is that they were never permitted in the first place.

I also disagree about changing birth certificates. They are a record of a birth, not a descripition of a persons identity.

I think there is some flexibility in Drivers Licences/Passports having a qualifying marker for TG, either TGW or TGM. I think this would be very helpful in a lot of cases especially if medical treatment is required after an accident.

GRA is 🐂💩. A male is still far more likely to be violent, abusive and perverted, a bit of paper, just like a bad taste frock , lippy, size 12 stilettos and fishnets changes nothing. Male pattern behaviour never changes.

The Bona Dea wouldn't have had any truck with men claiming to be women

Same would apply, of course, if you had a religious group that was women only in either membership or leadership. I can't think of any UK based examples, but of course in the US it was the Dianic Wiccans who were an early target of the TRAs.

One of the funny things about the GRA is that it says you become the target sex "for all purposes" on receiving a GRC, then it goes on to list exceptions. Including sports!

I don't remember a religious carveout in the GRA as such - I think the applicable legislation is Schedule 23 of the Equality Act, but (being a 2010 law) it's mostly about protecting churches that don't want to perform same sex marriages.

But I think in terms of religious bodies, and we're talking here about churches that believe only men can be ordained, that it cuts both ways - in that position, you wouldn't want to lay yourself open to litigation from a transman who rocks up wanting to be ordained, but you would also want, in the event of a male priest taking a trip to Malaga Airport, to have the ability to shuffle him out of his position. I can't remember any court cases testing this.

Generally I think the EqA puts far too many pettifogging restrictions on freedom of association, and some sensible rewriting would improve it, but good luck convincing Labour MPs of this.

Yes, "all purposes" actually means "all purposes except where this would disadvantage biological males".

It's amusing how the TRAs crow about ALL PURPOSES when the primogeniture rules blatantly show that's not true. As always they ignore inconvenient things such as the truth and reality

Good call on primogeniture. If the GRA can’t be repealed and the TIM vandals want access to all of women’s services those clauses should be struck out of the GRA. All purposes means all purposes, right? If I recall, there’s a religious carve out as well. That should go too.

It doesn't exclude men who hold a GRC. Until that is addressed we have not got our spaces back. No men, not even if they have a GRC.
I am not at all hopeful that the Supreme Court will rule in FWS's favour re biological sex.

Well quite. Except that the trans lobby has such power (or the lawmakers were so feeble minded) that they could cause such blindingly obvious facts to be deemed ‘private information’.

So you can have an obvious man stood in front of you and no one is allowed to say he’s a man or exclude him from a female space or require him to adhere to normal safeguarding practices like not wandering around in the girls changing rooms at a swimming competition.

Why should birth sex be considered personal, private information? An adult's sex is publicly visible information in almost all interactions. And when sex is relevant it is one of the most important issues in that interaction.

Yes, this is a massive problem, although not the one that tomorrow's decision is about, exactly.

We are allowed to take birth sex into account sometimes, but how can we if it's personal private information, as set out in the GRA? (And if it's ppp for GRC-holders that makes it ppp for everyone. )

It works where there's an authority with the power to get the information (prison authorities, sporting regulators), but not for Jane public trying to keep a man out of her changing room (or social club, if we win).

Doesn't this mean, though, that the sex marker on the birth certificate is now meaningless for all of us, because it doesn't have to match bio sex? We can't use legal documents to prove bio sex any more because they can be legally falsified.

How do you exclude a man from a female space when you can't prove he's a man (I mean you can, it's easy, but there's now no agreed method of doing so)

That’s what most TRAs want. It isn’t a genuine desire to be accepted for the most part. It’s a power trip. So no concession will or ever can be enough. It doesn’t bear thinking about where it would end.

It will refreshing if we get current legislation that we could rely on that focuses on safety.

As it stands in the current DfE secondary school specification there are no toilet designs suitable for children with invisible disabilities such as diabetes, heart conditions and epilepsy who are more at risk of collapsing. Nor for poor mental health. Public/school toilet cubicles need a degree of visibility which they should have as a (very) reasonable adjustment. If an Equality Impact Assessment had been done this should have picked this up. Children are being harmed, particularly girls. The risk assessments should have picked up that, due to the amount of sexual abuse in schools, including reported rapes every school day, that mixed-sex private spaces aren’t a good idea either.

When I discussed their 2023 specification with them, the DfE referenced Health and Safety at Work legislation from 1974!
Over 50 years old.

Too late to edit, but...

Another problem is that every space ends up trans-inclusive, whereas everyone's needs could have been met with a mixture of types of space (given that some women don't mind). But nothing short of 100% compliance will satisfy the TRAs, and they constantly misrepresent the mere existence of genuinely single-sex spaces (even if surrounded by a sea of trans-friendly alternatives) as Denying Their Existence 😡

I am perplexed that your confident omniscience has deserted you wrt 2 simple words. Particularly when you seem to be falling to explain your superior grasp of complexities and nuance to other reasonably experienced and informed posters. Yet simultaneously deprecating your reliability and ascribing this to me.

In which case, I can’t assist you. I resist overtures to textbook transactional analysis exchanges as they’re rarely helpful and usually end with incivility.

Exactly.

Does the Equality Act expressly specify anywhere that women have the right to single sex services?

No: to construct this right, we have to cobble together several things. Say, workplace regulations, or the Prisons Act, and the fact that the EA permits trans-exclusion, and the fact that trans-inclusion = sex-discrimination against women. Its a right Heath-Robinson affair.

...can be excluded...

Can be, that's the problem. IIUC the Equality Act expressly permits men to be excluded from women's single sex services under certain circumstances. This exclusion is a permitted exception.

Does the Equality Act expressly specify anywhere that women have the right to single sex services?

If people/organisations/businesses/funders choose not to exercise this permitted exception, do women have any right in law to demand it?

Obviously it is unethical to expect women to be available for men who wish to see them undressing, hear them weeing, share their prison cells etc. But that's not what I'm referring to.

I've always thought, when you have a document like a GRC, the obvious question is, what rights does it confer? Does it enable the holder to do something that a person without a GRC cannot? And it seems the answer to that has always been unclear. So now, will this judgment clarify that, one way or another?

Only around 9,500 GRC have been issued - 6,000 to men.

Which indicates that most transpeople don't need or want them, and repealing now wouldn't be insurmountable.