GLP are suing Virgin Active

They would end up spending more money if they actually brought a case that could go "all the way" in court...

Puregym has also complied with the SC ruling:

You must use the changing room appropriate to your biological sex, or use the all gender facilities

https://www.puregym.com/gym-rules/

@NotAtMyAge I think your analysis is correct

I read the release, but I don't understand the issue. Surely they can still access the pool and sauna but have to use the changing room of their sex, not their identity. I would be interested to know how other groups such as wheelchair users are accessing the pool as well. Maybe the facility is not designed to be that inclusive.

Discrimination is about deliberately targeting someone i.e. sacking them because of their protected characteristic. Surely if someone choses to transition then Virgin Active are not in control of that and they can maintain their rules.

Oh and just to add, there was a transgender woman/transidentified male in the gym changing rooms when I was in there and now I have " have been so worried about using the gym that they have either greatly reduced or completely stopped using some facilities for fear of being harassed."

The protected characteristic of gender reassignment means that someone who has reassigned their gender cannot be treated less favourably than any other member of their sex. In other words, when looking at discrimination, the comparator for a male with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment i is a male without that protected characteristic. So a trans-identifying man would not be discriminated against if he isn't allowed into the women's changing room because no other man is allowed in there either.

What does that mean? One person using it.

At my VA there is a family changing zone. The showers are big enough for 2-3 people and they lock. There are cubicles that lock again big enough 3 people. And an open area with lockers. And some toilets. Some baby changing tables. It’s a mixed space. Designed so mothers can take their sons swimming without using women’s changing room.

If any transwomen turned up I assume that’s where they’d be directed to. Dh and I use it if one of us forgets our padlocks since we never get changed there anyway so just for leaving coat and stuff .

Dudes (with boobs), as we saw at that topless protest they did after FWS.

Please quote the legislation which states this:

In the UK gender neutral spaces are only allowed to have one person using it at a time, so it would be perfectly safe for everyone.

Because mixed sex spaces are the default and single sex spaces are the exception.
And mixed sex spaces are allowed to have as many people in them as they are designed to hold.

In the UK gender neutral spaces are only allowed to have one person using it at a time, so it would be perfectly safe for everyone.

In that case, it would be fine.

The Supreme Court ruling said trans men can be excluded from female spaces. Where do you expect them to go when that happens?

Only in cases where their presence in the female spaces could prove problematic to some of the women there. Other accomodations must be provided then, and I can't imagine why they would include men or transwomen, so it wouldn't present a safety problem.

My understanding of the bit of the EA that you quoted, is that the PC of Gender Reassignment means that a person can't be discriminated against because they declare themselves trans.
But it does NOT mean that they should be treated as if they were the opposite sex in all situations - because they are not.

So if the male changing room was only for the use of men and TW were excluded, that would be discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment.

I might be mixing my legal cases here, but wasn't that also what was decided in the Supreme Court? That regardless of whether a person has the PC of Gender Reassignment, or has the legal fiction of a re-issued but now wrong sex birth certificate, Sex means the biological reality of being male or female.

Therefore, Virgin Active are now correctly following the law, rather than allowing individuals who declared a trans identity to make demands as to where they should be allowed to go.

Chicks with dicks, or more correctly, men - abusing women and women's rights. Again.

The males and females all have access if they are prepared to follow the law and accept that VA are fillowing the law.

But a female who really looks and dresses and sounds like and acts like a male could cause a lot of distress to naked women and girls in there. I wonder how staff get through. Only via changing rooms or another corridor

I would ask why Stonewall et al's definition of trans is different, whether they are referring to the same group of people and whether trans people who think physiological sex determines if you're a man/woman, and those trans people who disagree, have the same needs and priorities, and if not, what can be done about it?

Perhaps that should be agreed before demands are made, as we already have trans people who are very uncomfortable/ put at risk when one group tries to talk for all "trans" people.

It becomes very hard to discuss productively when trans can mean either believing that women are female or hating people that say women are female.

Never, as if tgey did they'd lose their most oppressed title

Then look at it that way.

As of now, transmen are perfectly safe in women's spaces.

Should gender-neutral fourth spaces (third spaces are disabled spaces) be created, transmen would be expected to use them, and would thus potentially come into contact with the bad apples among transwomen, or even with men who would choose to use them precisely to access said transmen.

In short, gender-neutral fourth spaces would make transmen less safe than they are now. Doesn't that matter too?

You've just answered your own question - male and female.

Males go this way.

Females go that way.

And adhere to the law in the process.

What precisely made you imagine that the female changing room was ever an appropriate space for males?
Please be specific.

I don't think the aim is to win- unless they're even more delulu than I'd thought.
It's PR, the aim is to create a false consensus that FWS is somehow in doubt & its application contingent on the antics of the fox batterer & his ridiculous cohorts.

So that's a NO then

Agreed. Ideally there would be third spaces. But if there aren't, then trans women will need to use the men's changing room for access to the sauna. They can't use or go through the women's changing room as all trans women are legally men under the Equality Act 2010.

I strongly suspect this is the case as the Good Laff Project has written its announcement in such a weaselly and confusing manner. GLP know if their complaint were written in clear simple English then the public would know it's all nonsense and they are about to lose yet again in the Courts.

Trans women are men. So they'll be safe with all the other men in the Male Changing Room.

I'd say that rather than relying on your own powers of interpretation, you should take the Supreme Court decision in For Women Scotland as your reference.
For the purposes of the Equality Act those males with the PC of GR remain male & their correct comparator is any male who happens not to share that PC.