Is it safety or separation?

OP returns in a 'thread not in good faith' shocker

astonishing

I think the Supreme Court judgment is a threat to trans activism all over the world because it's a statement that trans identifying men are not women which cannot credibly be dismissed as far right rhetoric or blamed on Trump.

And there's a danger that where the UK leads, others will follow.

That's why people who don't live in and are not citizens of the UK are up in arms about British women having sex based rights. In case the women in their own countries decide they want them too.

I simply can’t have space where there is a man I don’t know on the other side of a closed door and I am alone on the other side of that door.

im sure I’m not the only woman to feel that way, for all sorts of reasons.

why is our safety so unimportant to so many people that they want to debate it as some sort of “thought experiment” rather than acknowledge our actual lives experiences that inform our decisions?

And why are all these trans women so keen to break the law in the U.K.?

Indeed RedToothBrush to look at the OP using sexed words

When opposing transgender people men and some women in women's spaces, are you¹ looking for safe spaces or² separate spaces?

They may overlap but are not the same thing, and while a lot of the discussion is focused on safety, the tone and some arguments hint that addressing safety won't be enough for many people women to feel comfortable. Instead, a place without males is sought.

I read one woman described it "At the club we used the women's bathroom to get a break from interacting with men".

¹you= implied its only women who care and
²or= implied women must choose between the two.

Turn the question on it's head.

Why are we being forced to have a conversation that it's either separation or safety?

The answer always comes back to this.

It's a Trojan horse.

It's a Trojan horse to try and draw parallels between the (American) civil rights movement and racial equality.

It's introducing a weasel word to undermine the principles of safeguarding.

By even asking the question, you question the legitimacy of safeguarding.

You then have to go on the backdoor and justify principles of safeguarding. Rather than those who believe males should enter female spaces being in a position where they have to do the running around to prove that it's safe for them to do so. Why have they done this? Because they know they can't demonstrate it's safe for men to enter women's spaces. Thus the only option open to them is to undermine safeguarding principles.

This of course allows access not just to nice males, but every other male who is a complete creep.

The other thing that's interesting is women make this argument that makes should not enter female spaces for a) safeguarding reasons AND b) privacy and dignity reasons.

You will see this reoccurring pattern where women talk about the subject mentioning just talking about privacy and dignity aspect of this, then you'll get a Bigfoot come wading in going "Why are you treating all transwomen as if they are dangerous and pervs?" And the women will say, actually we weren't talking about that we were saying we have different bodies we are self conscious about and have physical experiences which we find embarrassing and harder to deal with in the presence of men so just want some privacy away from them because they can't ever understand that humiliation aspect. Or because we don't want to be seen by males for various reasons (might be religious, might be due to previous trauma or even because they just don't like it without consent). In this conversation they haven't raised the safety concern.

But the point is the TRA turning the conversation back to safety debates, means the argument about privacy and dignity gets drowned out and ignored. Because they have no real way of arguing this one easily. Having said that, it is notable that we've started to see posts appearing lately twisting language in this department too. Describing women who walk around changing rooms naked as 'parading' or 'exhibitionist' and women who feel uncomfortable with this as 'voyeurs'. This is all about the process of delegitimising women's concerns and painting them as the same as creepy blokes. It's an attempt to normalise the criminal behaviour of men and to persuade women they should be tolerating it.

It's creating a narrative of the victimhood of the abuser, whilst disempowering women and gaslighting them into questioning whether their concerns about safety and dignity are actually legitimate.

It's psychological manipulation and it's about power and control.

Look at what's happening. It's centring on the males needs, time after time. It's not looking at matter objectively. It's poisoning the well of discussion of the very existence of safeguarding.

It's dishonest.

The example of separation v safety is particularly grim as it uses American political history - which isn't particularly relevant to the UK anyway, and weaponises racism against women to try and convince people that women asking for their safety, privacy and dignity is not ok.

None of this is feminism which centres women and their needs, feelings, lived experiences and what actual data says in terms of offending patterns against women.

Stop having the conversation these creeps want. Identify what they are doing and say,

"No we aren't having this conversation."

"The data on male pattern behaviour is all there. Which part of it do you think is problematic? Would you care to explain? What proof do you have that allowing males into female spaces will be safe?"

"How can women who have issues in this scenario, safely report this without the additional fear of being labelled transphobic? Can you explain how the current political climate and mass reporting of women to the police 'for harassment' wound fit with this? Wouldn't it actually to reduce reporting of legitimate crimes because women would have this additional new layer of fear?"

"How would current laws on vouyerism and flashing even better possible options for women, if a male can claim they were "just behaving like any other woman", and it's 'prejudiced' to suggest differently?"

"The answer is, and always will be, No."

They are trying to fuck with language again.

This entire thread is based on the premise of an egregious manipulation of good faith and desire to do the right thing, twisted by DAVRO in order to control and manipulate women by gaslighting.

@OneFlakyMaker I hope, if you are linking this thread for any others to read, they are able to read the whole thread for themselves.

You obviously haven’t read the posts as you are not making sense about toilets.

Attendants or chaperones are not feasible economically or practically in every out-of-home set of toilets in your country or here.

You appear to be from the US. Our toilets are different here. We don’t have the side gaps along the toilet doors and the gaps aren’t the huge ones that create a saloon bar door.

However, there have been some influences from American transactivist toilet designers that have a business called StalledOnline! These two are referenced in a uk government commissioned document to look at the toilet requirements for people with long term health conditions. Your phrasing and the ‘solutions’ you come up with remind me of their business.

You say ‘Essentially, safety concerns can be addressed with practical solutions, e.g. physical barriers (closed stalls) chaperons, monitoring. Segregation cannot be solved in any other way. I'd support public funding for safety solutions (e.g. grants to create single occupant stalls), since making people feel safe and diffusing this wedge issue is a worthy cause. But if separation is the goal, than that solution will be misguided.’

I agree safety concerns can be addressed with practical solutions and that means open cubicles leading into a single sex space. ‘Open’ by a 150mm gap floor to door, then a door not over 2000mmm in height and then a space above that to the ceiling. Same with partitions. This allows ventilation, the floors to be disinfected properly, supervision in case of a medical emergency, and in case two people are in the cubicle with one being assaulted, and to make sure that if there’s any misuse going on like using the toilets for drugs, hiding cameras or vandalism, it can be prevented as much as possible. One American mom called the design you appear to advocate for a ‘rape cubicle’ in a school setting.

Separation is not the goal. Safety is. And absolute safety is not a ‘feeling’ it’s a reality for everyone. The toilets you advocate for have not been safety tested against single sex designs. There are millions of Americans with heart conditions for example that would head to the loo if they felt ill and then be in a cubicle where no one would be alerted if they collapsed. A practical solution to this is to have all cubicle doors opening outwards (or have the ability to like building regs have here) but this is more a retrospective safety measure designed to be able to get a body out rather than preventative.

I doubt you will read this. But the above can be summed up by this if you’ve skipped to the end:

Why do we have a gap under public toilet doors? For health and safety
Why do we get rid of the gap when toilets are mixed sex? For privacy
What are we getting rid of by doing that? Health and Safety

@OneFlakyMaker 'single-occupant bathrooms are unsafe due to isolation'

You may be missing a crucial component of the argument regarding safety. I recommend you look out for the very informative posts (on other threads) by @Keeptoiletssafe . For both women and men, communal toilets are safer than single-use toilets because of the high likelihood of a medical emergency (e.g. heart attack, stroke) happening on the toilet. In cubicles with door gaps, it is easier to see from outside if the occupant has collapsed. Yes, there are particular medical emergencies specific to women (e.g. miscarriage), and yes, door gaps also make it more difficult to hide sexual assault. But overall, this safety issue is relevant to both sexes.

This is primarily why posters here get angry when we hear about institutions going to all the expense of ripping out their communal single-sex toilets and replacing them with (fewer) single-use toilets. It's unnecessary, it reduces overall provision of toilets, and it's less safe for all users. A better solution all round would be to keep the old communal single-sex toilets and provide a few additional single-use toilets.

BTW we don't socialise in toilets, so that's not our secret agenda in wanting them to remain single-sex. I just felt I ought to make that clear.

"I want a women-only space so I can feel more comfortable speaking": that makes sense. In the past 60 years, (US) society generaly accepts such arbitrary preferences in the private realm, but won't enforce such preferences in the public realm."

There are two words you use in the above that I think may justify closer examination.

"Arbitrary" is something of a weasel word. In the literal sense of groundless - without rational cause - it feels dismissive of a widely researched and well-recognised power imbalance.

Of the 31 conversations, 10 were between two men, 10 between two women, and 11 between and man and a woman. In the two same-sex groups combined, the authors found seven instances of interruption. In the male/female group, however, they found 48 interruptions, 46 of which were instances of a man interrupting a woman.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2017/01/03/gal-interrupted-why-men-interrupt-women-and-how-to-avert-this-in-the-workplace/

IANA(British or American!)Lawyer, but your brief qualifier of "generally" regarding the distinction between public v. private seems designed to shift focus away from the highly relevant exceptions that may blur this boundary eg. Title IX exemptions for eg. single-sex schools, sororities etc.?

After all, equalities law is so often (always, maybe?!) about exceptions to what is "generally" permitted precisely due to a recognised and far-from-"arbitrary" need.

My next bullshit bingo prediction: "Most women are harmed by men they know, not strangers, so there's no point taking steps to try and protect women against being harmed by strange men."

The depressing reality is that male predators are everywhere. The Dominique Pélicot case shows that in the starkest possible terms. The male work colleague you make polite small talk with at the coffee machine may turn out to have a secret life you don't know about, one in which he arranges with a stranger on the internet to come round and rape his drugged wife, or covertly films up teenagers' skirts on packed train carriages, or views images of child sexual abuse, or rapes his own wife or daughter.

The reason we need segregated toilets but not segregated workplaces is because this man is no danger to me in a team meeting, where I know his identity and we are surrounded by colleagues, and where I could talk in front of him or even contradict him without being at any risk of harm. In a professional environment, I might even be his boss, and have the power to get him to do things for me, even ultimately fire him for not doing what is required of him. But if I were to meet the same man in a mixed sex toilet, perhaps at 11pm in a motorway service station with no one else around, he is very much a danger to me.

I am waiting for the discussion to turn to ‘but whatabout the fact that we don’t have segregated workplaces’ and ‘you women demanded equality, well this is what equality looks like’ styled posts from the OP.

Same old, same old.

Yikes.

OK, so you're clearly not from the UK. That's OK but please bear in mind that you have come onto a UK based site where most users are from the UK and you have to be respectful of our culture. American cultural imperialism is not appreciated here.

are you looking for a space where men are absent as well as women, are are you looking for a communal space where women gather together but men are excluded

It depends on the context. When it comes to toilets and changing rooms, it's about safety and dignity. There is a much greater risk that we will be harmed in such spaces if men are present, and even if a man does not physically harm us, his presence may be distressing and cause many women to feel uncomfortable or self exclude.

The idea that such spaces should be segregated by sex is not actually controversial. It is the norm in basically all societies worldwide. It's why you now have so-called "bathroom bills" in your country. Because these sex segregated spaces exist everywhere and we all understand why people want and need them.

Until now, nobody has been suggesting that there is no need for these spaces to be single sex and they should all be made mixed sex, because the reality is that most people want them to remain single sex.

So what has changed?

Certainly not the safety and dignity aspect.

What has changed is that trans identifying men ("trans women") started demanding to be included in women's spaces, and now society is pushing back against that, the narrative is changing to "why do women even need their own spaces in the first place?"

Never mind that trans identifying men have been saying it is absolutely unthinkable for them to share such spaces with men. Now it is perfectly reasonable for everyone to share such spaces with men, apparently.

I can only conclude that the argument has shifted from, "If trans identifying men can't have women's spaces, women can't have them either."

I do find it interesting that you seem to think it is more legitimate for women to have spaces where they can speak and associate without men than to have spaces where they can use the toilet and get changed without men.

Firstly, I find this rather anti-feminist. As a strong, capable, confident woman, I have no problem talking to or speaking in front of men. But I don't generally want to take my clothes off in front of them.

And secondly, I assume you think that trans identifying men (trans women) should be included in such spaces along with women. Unfortunately, they have been socialised as men and they tend to dominate the conversation and mansplain as much as other men do. Including trans identifying men in a space designed for women to express themselves without being constantly talked over by men would very much defeat the point of that space existing.

Finally, I would say that as an American, you come from a profoundly misogynistic culture where women lack basic rights that they take for granted in the rest of the developed world. People who call themselves feminists in America do a lot of talking but never seem to achieve very much. So perhaps you should bear in mind that women in the UK have different expectations of feminism. The minimum level of basic respect and consideration that women believe they are entitled to is much higher in the UK than it is in the US. So before you judge British women for demanding things that you don't think women should be entitled to, perhaps consider the fact that you come from a country where most people don't consider women to be entitled to the most basic rights such as abortions and paid maternity leave, and consider whether perhaps it is American women who aren't demanding enough, rather than British women who are demanding too much.

@OneFlakyMaker

The "transgender people" wording: I was referring mostly to trans women, and most responders figured this out.

That would be biological men. Stick to facts then everyone knows what's being discussed.

I don’t think you have read the posts seeking to be informed @OneFlakyMaker . You seem to have read posts and superimposed your own bad faith interpretations or misinformed view point on them.

For instance:

”"women need single-sex spaces while men don't need them (that's a cornerstone of feminism": that's a problematic stance. It frames feminism as a separatist, if not a supremacy, movement. It renders anti-feminist rhetoric more plausible since the movement is inherently willing to create different classes of citizens.”

I have read the posts again, and I don’t believe that this statement represents what people were saying. There are many posts being clear about female people needing safety and privacy from male people. Where is there one stating that ‘men didn’t need them’ ?

If there are urinals, an economical option for many organisations, of course male people need and deserve privacy away from female people.

However, as the generally physically stronger sex, male people don’t have the same needs as female people on the safety side of the discussion. They don’t require space away from female people because female people do not pose a physical threat in general to male people whereas the opposite is true for male people being a significant threat towards female people.

I think you have misunderstood what people have meant when they speak about it being a feminist concept. They are referring to the protecting female people. Feminism centres female people to liberate women and girls from oppression. One of those aspects is to focus on what female people need and centre that. In this way, it will require ‘separation’, you could say it is a type of separatism if you oversimplify it.

But it is not a supremacy movement.

This looks like MRA tactics right here though.

“It renders anti-feminist rhetoric more plausible since the movement is inherently willing to create different classes of citizens.”

Err. No. Only if you don’t understand feminism, don’t understand safeguarding and are interpreting it all from a men’s rights activism stance.

There are two sex classes of ‘citizens’. Both sex classes have unique needs that need to be addressed for those groups to participate in society. That feminism only focuses on the needs of female people does seem to make some people uncomfortable and even angry. But it is needed because without it, female people are harmed. Either unintentionally or intentionally.

Saying feminism is creating different classes of people is like saying any advocacy movement is to be rejected because obviously they are only going to be advocating for the people in that group. And by doing so will create different classes of people.

By that argument should we assume that no groups of people should be advocating for their needs? For instance, should we not have disability advocacy groups? Because they are advocating separatism by demanding accommodations in society that only apply to them?

TLDR: Sounds like the OP really has made their aim with this thread clear with this discussion about feminist perspective on single sex provision.

@OneFlakyMaker
Rather than trying to summarise join the conversation.

Why should the State fund building works from public money?
Why not fund changing spaces?

https://www.changing-places.org/

(PS your MRA is showing)

First of all, TiM are men.

Obviously we want single sex spaces, partly, but not purely because they are safer for us. "Safe spaces" is a different concept.

Both men and women want single sex spaces in some circumstances. Both sexes need them for privacy and dignity but women have an additional need on the grounds of safety. How is having single sex facilities part of a supremacy movement if both sexes have them?

TiM are accommodated in male facilities. In cubicles or out of them. There is no reason at all to accommodate TiM in women's facilities. As women we have the same right as men to exclude the opposite sex from our single sex spaces.

Provision of cubicles within a communal changing space caters for a wider range of women's needs than an entirely communal area - space permitting, of course.

No attendant required. Just clear signage and indications from the service provider that the sex segregation must be observed and that there will be consequences if it is not.

Safety and privacy have to be balanced. An entirely private toilet stall or changing cubicle is unsafe (and unhygienic). A toilet cubicle with door gaps is much safer but less private. Ditto a changing cubicle with a curtain. Making these facilities communal increases safety - a woman who has collapsed behind a locked door or drawn curtain is visible from the outside, for example. And since the door to the communal facilities is round a corner, so that cubicles don't open onto an area used by the general public, toilet and changing cubicles within a communal area are more private. All this is known, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

Also, and most importantly, we don't have to justify ourselves to you.
We said no.

"single-occupant bathrooms are unsafe due to isolation": that sounds like post-hoc justification to avoid a solution that could accommodate trans women (or TIM, if that's your preferred term). If multi-occupancy is needed for safety, why are single-occupancy bathrooms allowed?”

It sounds more like you are not well informed or prepared to read the posts.

No, it is not a ‘post-hoc justification’. Unisex spaces have been written about in the media as being a safety issue for female people. This is not new.

Why are they allowed? They always were as it is a solution for small businesses. Why are they allowed when there is room for single sex provisions? Because a group of people believed it is a solution without bothering to ask women. Again.

If these unisex facilities are to supplied, then provide them as additional facilities.

You seem to have an agenda with this thread, but you don’t seem to bother to take the time to read and understand the posts. This seems all too familiar.

You have to pay mumsnet to gather data here do you not?

so you weren’t interested in discussing but in gathering data. Do you work for Ashton University?

Mumsnet is predominantly a U.K. based website. Most of the commenters here will answer from that viewpoint. I certainly did.

and here, it’s simple. The law says single sex means sex not gender.

I note with some disappointment that you have not replied to anyone, not just me, who discussed their trauma.

Makes a change from NAMALT.

yes, my gym. They are not banned because there are selfie spots in there and people do mirror selfies. The rule is if you want to take photos, you have to get a yes from everyone in there.

I get that some women have been the victims of both men and their female enablers and some just women. But that doesn't mean we have to allow men in our spaces.

Just to be clear: i want single sex spaces.
I welcome natal females in female spaces, whether or not they claim a trans (male) or non-binary identity.

Women in the women's, men in the men's.

Is it safety or separation??? Oh, now you’ve asked this incredibly intelligent thought-provoking question, OP, I’ve just had to stop polishing the coffee table while I sit stunned on the sofa at the sheer complexity of it all. Hell, you’ve got me questioning myself now? How stupid could I have been? I mean, which one is it? God, I can’t choose, so that must mean my poor lady-brain has malfunctioned in even thinking women should be allowed to have anything for themselves. Mea culpa!

Now - I need to think. What was my reason? Was it safety? Separation? Sunscreen? Strawberries? Snorkels? 🤪

Seriously, fuck off! Women are entitled to single sex spaces for safety, for privacy, for dignity, and for any other reason, including simply wanting them. We don’t have to justify ourselves to you, and you haven’t found an oh-so-clever way to show us we’re wrong 🙄