A worrying thought about the SC judgment

There haven’t been any male groups campaigning against women using male loos as far as I know.

I think the next implication will be that passports will need to correctly state sex, with gender alongside if so desired.

Especially when they can whip out their government-issued identity documents - passports and driving licences - which declare that they are female.

But on the whole 'male presenting' females will understand why they are challenged and their stature, hand size, and voice will also indicate which sex they really are.
Male sex people can be challenged and asked to leave or the police called etc as was the case for decades until recently.
Or trans people can campaign for third spaces which is something I suspect most women would get behind.

ps I presume by 'gender at birth' you mean 'sex'.

if people can only use the toilets of their gender at birth then there will be a lot of male presenting people in the female toilets. This will be extremely easy for cis men to exploit by claiming they are trans male and therefore entitled to be there. This concerns me way more than the occasional trans woman in the cubicle next to me. The real issue here is cis men who are a risk to women and that is where the focus for change and protections should be

@WeeBisomthat is worrying

Asked an architect; built from scratch new builds it’s relatively easy to incorporate the right number of loos, including various sizes of disabled loos, that are fully contained with sinks. It’s also generally preferred by the client as most people do seem to prefer this. So going forward this may happen. You also make sure they can be unlocked from outside in the event of an emergency. (Often can be done with a coin. Tho potentially issues there?)

(We had a disagreement about how often someone may become seriously unwell in a loo and need help, if not a disabled loo. Would appreciate stats on that, though they’re going to be different moving forward as not all loos currently are fully contained height.)

his perspective is that a particular issue is the cleanliness, as men are much worse. Also, schools prefer single cubicles as less / no graffiti.

it’s near impossible and v expensive convert what’s already there space wise to fulfil correct requirements.

architect I spoke to was v surprised that places had just renamed what was already there as “all genders” as was adamant “you can’t do that.” (Consider him reeducated!)

It's not that easy to make facilities "gender neutral". If they are mixed sex, they need to comply with HSE requirements, i.e. toilets will need to be converted to fully-enclosed, self-contained (i.e. with washbasins) cubicles. That is going to cost an awful lot of money for (e.g.) a university to do all over its campus. Money that they don't have.

Indeed. So many organisations had (still have) policies that explicitly stated that employees were not allowed to question (e.g.) a man's presence in the female changing room.

Absolutely. Lazy language by me there. Apologies, I meant mixed sex.

What I'm concerned about is, looking on Linked In, there are lots of posts (from lawyers!) along the lines of 'this judgment doesn't change anything, transwomen (with or without. a GRC) can still access female only single sex spaces.' This is NOT what the judgment says. It says you can have a single sex only space so long as its a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim (so for example, you have a woman only shelter for reasons of safety, a woman only hospital ward for reasons of dignity and privacy etc.) And a service provider is entitled to exclude transwomen (with or without a GRC) and men so long as the single sex space is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. So long as the single sex female only space can be justified (and justification is very easy to achieve) you can exclude all males from that space.

People are fudging this by saying that the 'proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim' doesn't apply to the single sex space itself, but to the consideration of whether to allow transwomen into the space. So when considering whether to let a transwoman into the space you would have to apply a case by case analysis and consider whether the exclusion is proportionate and in pursuit of a legitimate aim. This would mean in some cases transwomen would be let into single sex spaces.

The black and white text of the Equality Act and the judgment makes it plain that you don't commit discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment if you don't let transwomen into a female only space, but already there is confusion being sown by people saying you would discriminate against transwomen if you didn't consider their individual case and whether it was proportionate to exclude them. The Equality Commission has said they will be publishing guidance which will basically say in all caps that transwomen won't be permitted into female only spaces, but I fear this will just be ignored.

The easiest, cheapest and most legally compliant option is to have one single sex female facility, and redesignate the men's facility to all gender.

This way, there are no issues with trans people having difficulty using a facility that they are not comfortable in and women have their facilities protected.

Men could argue sex discrimination, but imho they are more likely to object to trans women in their facilities than women or trans men and they would have to prove excluding women and trans men (but not trans women) is proportionate, appropriate and necessary.

No, I completely agree that provision for disabled people is absolutely awful and that all too often, the disabled toilet is seen as a free for all when it's not.

I'm just saying that I think this is how things will go because it's the easiest and cheapest path forwards.

A thread for @keeptoiletssafecertainly, hope you don’t mind the tag.

fully agree.

I also didn’t realise how easy it is to get a blue key. A friend does need one for a certain urinary condition but appears to have just bought one from a chemist.

they may quickly learn how expensive it will be to accommodate third spaces and it will all be dropped like a stone pdq.

I have a few concerns generally about wider implications, especially around backlash from various charities against this and stirring of hyperbole, in relation to the concept of “trans children.”

one thing I do know is that single sex contained loos take up more space but there’s asli certain ratio of service users per loo that can be hard to accommodate when planning / designing buildings.

this is what we will need to tackle next, case by case.

its been a lazy cheap work around to slap “all genders” on the women’s loos.

No they won't. The law doesn't say that trans people get their own space, just that they don't have the right to use the opposite sex provision.

There already is. It depends on their sex not their 'identity'.

As for men being nice, well on the odd occasion I've used the men's because the women's has been too busy they have been fine. One even 'guarded' the door for me so another man would not come in.

I wonder if the 'selfie in the ladies' will be tried in the gents?

I have some concerns about the impact on disabled people. I was a wheelchair user temporarily and then needed walking aids for quite a long time after a serious accident a few years ago and it really opened my eyes as to quite how shit provision for disabled people is. I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't really aware before I was in that position myself and I at least had the luxury of knowing that I was probably only going to have to put up with it for a few years, not for the rest of my life.
A lot of the discussions around this topic centre on the fact that transwomen's rights do not trump women's rights. They don't trump disabled people's rights either. There's enough abuse of facilities for the disabled already and "just use the disabled loo if you're not happy to use the facilities provided for people of your sex" is a slippery slope in my opinion.
(I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or not though, apologies if you are and I've misread you.)

Time to dust off this analysis from the Sunday Times? It was based on FOIs about sexual crimes at leisure centres. The article is from 2018, which isn't all that long ago, and can be said to represent "business-as-usual", with no pandemic effects.

Look at how disproportionate the rate of sexual harrassment, voyeurism, sexual assualt, etc. is in mixed-sex facilities, compared to single-sex!

Archive copy <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250417165607/www.thetimes.com/article/b6093ee6-ae19-11e8-bc16-e88ad6fee895" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20250417165607/www.thetimes.com/article/b6093ee6-ae19-11e8-bc16-e88ad6fee895

There were 134 complaints of sexual misconduct in sports centre and swimming pool changing rooms last year, councils said in their FoI responses. Of these, 120 related to incidents that took place in unisex changing rooms and 14 to incidents in single-sex changing rooms. As well as voyeurism, offences recorded in unisex facilities included harassment, sexual assault and rape.

In 46 more cases, councils said, sex incidents were reported in other parts of the premises, such as in or beside the pool, in sports halls, corridors or car parks or an area of the building they could not specify. Some of those not specified could also have been in changing rooms. Not all incidents were reported to police or resulted in prosecutions.

Councils said the vast majority of changing rooms for “dryside” activities, such as fitness training and court or pitch sports, were still single-sex. About half of “wetside” changing rooms, for swimming pools, were mixed.

In Cardiff a 1,000-signature petition has recently been collected against gender-neutral facilities at the new Star Hub leisure centre. Bernie Breen, who started the protest, said the sexes “need to be separate because there isn’t enough staff to keep an eye on everybody”.

The figures show that sports centres in the same city have big differences in sex incidents depending on their changing room arrangements, even where user numbers are similar. In Wolverhampton, two centres, Aldersley Leisure Village and the Central Baths, have only single-sex changing rooms. Between them they had 506,000 users last year and no reported sex incidents.

A third venue in the city, Wolverhampton Swimming & Fitness Centre, has a mixture of single-sex and unisex changing. It had 517,000 users last year and 11 reported sex incidents, all in the unisex changing area.

[edit: I've forgotten how to do links and can't it work! 🙄]

Presumably here 'gender neutral' is a euphamism for 'mixed sex'

Single sex facilities can be gender neutral as eg the womens can accept women whether they are just women or have an additional gender identity of transman, non binary, agender or flying pink flamingo.

Men who are now wailing that they can't go out in public if they can't use female toilets are saying the quiet part out loud.

From a pp above. Very succinct.