A worrying thought about the SC judgment

Thanks, but what if the toilet is not for women? What if it is expressly labelled as for women and transwomen, and next door to a toilet expressly labelled as for men and transmen - is this discrimination?

Thanks @Talkinpeace , that makes sense, but in the situation I described (the situation towards which everything seemed to be tending) men were not being given more facilities than women. They were being given exactly the same facilities.

This goes against Document T (2024).
If there’s any type of refurbishment they should now be single sex. With the option of a universal one if there’s room.

Gender reassignment is the wrong protected characteristic in this case.

The toilet is for women, therefore the protected characteristic is sex, woman = any adult human female whether they have the PC of gender reassignment or not. Therefore woman's toilet = women and women who are pretending to be men, who may call themselves transmen.

If men who are pretending to be women are allowed in the women's toilet, the relevant characteristic is sex, and therefore this would discriminate against other men who are not allowed to use the women's toilet.

PC of gender reassignment is irrelevant

@CherryFlan
Men no matter how they identify cannot be given more facilities than women.
That is sex discrimination

Presumably the SC ruling means that anyone has the right to object to the presence of someone they think shouldn't be in a single-sex space - a right which used to be acknowledged but which we were told we had lost.

Could anyone please point to the relevant part of the judgment? I'm struggling to get my head around this.

If an organisation offers one toilet for women and transwomen (legally men with the characteristic of gender reassignment) and another for men and transmen (legally women with the characteristic of gender reassignment) then who is being discriminated against, bearing in mind the definition of discrimination for statutory purposes? Are women not being treated in the same way as men? I can see all sorts of problems, but I still can't see (even taking onboard the new interpretation of sex for EA purposes) why anyone is being discriminated against under the EA.

Several people have said the SC judgment explains, but I can't see where.

Just like at work where all the staff loos are unisex. Every bloody time I use them there is piss everywhere and skid marks in the loo and they smell like a well used litter tray.

Went to night school last night and every toilet had a new sign with men/women icons printed on paper over the previous single sex sign.

They all all closed rooms though with their own basins.

Just now you have to deal with raised toilet lids and piss everywhere.

Mixed sex toilets are called Universal Toilets in Document T (2024). They are not illegal. But they are not the safest design as they are fully enclosed. So if you are ill or attacked you have less chance of being rescued. To put it bluntly - they have a ‘safety’ mechanism of rejigging the door so it opens outwards -because a body stops the door opening. So these designs are never properly ‘secure’. The enclosed designs are also more likely to be smelly and dirty and give you an airborne disease.

Good luck with EIAs!

The DfE enclosed the design of all secondary school toilets. Even single sex ones.
The reason this is dangerous is that there are groups of vulnerable children in each school with invisible disabilities like diabetes, epilepsy, heart conditions etc who are more likely to collapse. They should be covered under Disability and given reasonable adjustments. An emergency cord is not safe when pupils pre-collapse don’t have the ability or awareness to pull it. In fact all children need to be kept safe in a medical emergency, rather than out of sight. I asked for the EIA under a FOI. The DfE don’t have that information and referred me back to 1974 Health and Safety legislation. School toilet manufacturers, designers etc are following 2023 DfE guidance on toilets (the toilet section mentions ‘privacy’ multiple times but not ‘safety’) not 1974 legislation.

In schools and in public toilets, enclosed designs affect women and children more because they are more likely to be assaulted in them. Unfortunately that includes disabled toilets - because they are private and mixed sex.

Mixed sex toilets and changing rooms remain illegal under the 1992 Workplace regulations

(see Sandie Peggie and Darlington)

I think the judgement is clear that certain single sex facilities are required for the privacy and dignity of each sex, plus some are required for specific purposes (like domestic violence or rape counselling)
So I think the people suggesting simply have unisex or gendered facilities have not read the judgement. Having unisex or gendered facilities leads to direct or indirect discrimination.
I am on my phone, so I cannot give specific paragraphs but from what I have read so far (to para 223), this seemed to me what it was saying.

This is the key point - the safety issue only goes one way! Female bodies are never an equivalent danger in a male space.

It’s the plainest of plain facts.

This is our strongest ammunition . We must raise awareness of this.

You can keep banging on about it, but no one’s buying it. There are two sexes (not gender at birth, whatever you mean by that) and they are male and female. Everyone uses the facilities of their sex. Or, if they are available, and they want, they can use mixed sex facilities. Or stay home. I don’t care. I also don’t care whether you would prefer a bloke in a dress in your loo vs a bloke in trousers. Plenty of women do care, and they’ve said No - and the law is on their side.
Do you think the rate of offending is higher in one group of men vs another group of men btw? There is. But probably not in the way you’re attempting to assert.

Theres a difference between an official mixed sex ward, and a ward that is female only but includes men.

Neither is optimal, but if everyone is aware - staff and patients that the ward is mixed, they can be aware of the dangers and mitigate for them - more staff present, having both male and female toilets.

If everyone believes its single sex and the ward is set up for only one sex, those extra protections may not be in place.

People talk as if changing the signs on doors from women only to everyone solves the problem. It doesnt. Mixed sex means that the organisation of the space is different, and hospitals have a duty to keep everyone safe.

Oh no, are you suggesting that men might lie in order to gain access to female spaces? I thought that didn’t happen ..?

All these people suddenly concerned that men might lie about being trans men, after dismissing endlessly the suggestion that they might lie about being trans women.

IMO, women who take extreme lengths to hide their femaleness need to stay out of certain single-sex spaces. Places like public toilets, changing rooms and other facilities people use without any vetting from officials. Testosterone is a powerful masculiniser. It can cause females, at least in casual interactions, to look like men. A woman who goes down the route of using it to hide her femaleness needs to accept her presence will cause distress in the ladies’ and refrain from using it.

Unfortunately, men and women are not equal in any society. Women are not as strong physically and have less power in general, so it is still reasonable to have a policy for access to single-sex spaces that isn’t exactly the same for males and females. That is, males cannot use female single-sex spaces but in some circumstances, females can use male single-sex spaces.

Quite. The point is that this ruling allows people to challenge. Transmen might 'pass' more often than transwomen,but they still very rarely do imo. Hence posters always wheeling out pictures of the same couple of well-known ones when they want to claim that transmen pass. In real life, in close proximity, they will pass even less.

Yes there will be some transmen that pass using the women's toilets. There will be a lot more transmen and nonbinary women who are very androgynous or read as female there too (the transmen i know are all in this category). Along with all the 'masc' young women I see insisting that they are frequently mistaken for men but who look entirely female to me. Hopefully we will all once more come to understand that being female is not about how you look or how you 'present'. It's not at all complicated.

Public toilets are self policed and ultimately there isn't a way to stop people who choose to use one not designed for them from doing so. The limitations of public toilet provision for women is one of the reasons that male people insisting on using them, when they could avoid doing so, is so infuriating. I just expect that the vast majority of people will follow both law and convention. Since trans people are just like everyone else, same for them. And I do expect everyone to stay out of the accessible toilets if they have another option.

Transwomen are men, and women are statistically at a high risk of violence from both.

Transmen are women, and women are not, statistically, at risk of violence from them. High or otherwise.

Like I said previously I would far rather a trans women in the ladies than risk cis men
For the sake of argument though. What is the difference between the two? Do you think transwomen have had surgery or use castration chemicals? What is the difference between a biological man saying he is a woman, and a biological man saying he is a man? Because that is all it is in the majority of cases.

Not that you’re generalising at all, of course.

that’s your personal opinion, not objective fact which the law is based on. And it’s not just about toilets.

This covers female only carers for disabled women and girls. Who are the group who suffer the most sexual abuse of any description. As perpetrators know who to target. They are far more vulnerable than TW.

They’ve now got cast iron protection for their female rights; equal pay and maternity rights.

They’re highly unlikely to be challenged in male toilets.

hopefully they’ll support their trans siblings in campaigning for safe third spaces.

from what i understand many trans identified females who have had phalloplasty have significant urinary issues, as do many on testosterone who haven’t. Urinary incontinence can be considered a disability.