GLP v EHRC judgement - Thread 2

They are unhappy with the term transgender because it suggests that gender is different to sex.

If gender wasn't different to sex, you would have eradicated trans people.
A trans person is someone whose gender (or gender identity) is different from (or doesn't align with/match/ correspond with etc) their sex.

If sex and gender are interchangeable terms, there would be no trans people.

They have maintained that this is the definition (as opposed to someone who seriously wishes to be the opposite sex, or has gebder dysphoria), so if this is wrong, they need to rethink it, a bit like when they said 'oh, of course we don't think anyone is born in the wrong body...'

The mistake we made was allowing "trans people don't change their sex, they change their gender" to become mainstream understanding, not the distinction between sex and gender in the first place.

If anything, I think we should be separating "gender identity" and "gender expression"

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1r660nn/equality_act_reassign_biological_sex/

Which threads are those? The ones I’m reading the majority are arguing why they should be counted as “women” in the EA legally, because they’re foolish.

I find it painful to think about the harm and cost of the TRA strategy to bring in self id and replace the sex category with gender categories and how things would / could have been so much better for so many if they had just accepted that sex matters and they needed to find a different way.

Over on Reddit the relatively common sense people are starting to talk about this now. There is some logic creeping through the cracks. They are saying if legislation is based on sex, not gender, and the GRA stated that a GRC was a change of legal sex, then shouldn't they call themselves transexual, not transgender. They are unhappy with the term transgender because it suggests that gender is different to sex.

However, they do also still say that sex is not something that can be defined so they've got a way to go yet. They are very muddled now they have to try and make sense of their own ideology.

It's fascinating to follow their discussions sometimes.

Because I am trying to keep everyone safe, I collate views of everyone.

Robin used to work on the railways before women had any toilet provision. Robin said the men had to go in and check the toilets before a woman entered. How ironic.

Robin also said in the past that gender neutral toilets are ghettos.

There’s no regulated ‘Gender neutral’ toilet design. Gender neutral IS unisex. Which is the universal design.

Robin doesn’t seem to get the fact that the women’s loo would all have to be the universal design. The only end point would be universal designs with different pictograms on the door.

Robin does say he’s been going round Parliament trying to get enhanced privacy. So I am presuming that means floor to ceiling cubicles and shared washbasins. Thats the common transactivist solution. That’s not a regulated design for mixed sex use. It’s a least bad for healthy men. That’s why men can’t see the health and safety implications.

They don’t get you would have to change the building legislation and British standards and even parts of the Sexual offences Act on exposure, voyeurism and what constitutes sexual activity in a toilet. Or it would mean the end of urinals and hundreds of thousands of cubicles would have to be reconfigured into separate rooms with sinks, dryers, vad alarms, extra ventilation. No government is going to do that to businesses.

The Judge is saying that, if someone does not rely on a SSE ( and Schedules 3 and 16 are both SSEs albeit operating in different ways) then a discrimination claim by the excluded men is not guaranteed to succeed, because it depends on the facts of the case.

He thought the possibility of such a claim was still important enough to remain in the guidance.

In practice, anyone providing only single-gender facilities can expect to get sued by somebody, if not aggrieved men then women pointing at the indirect sex-discrimination finding in the Darlington case.

So the safe thing to do is to copy slavishly the workplace set-up endorsed by the judge - genuine single-sex facilities plus provision for people whose beliefs require that they don't share with their own sex. This ruling tells us this is legal vis-a-vis all the PCs. So you're not risking a court case, just a few broken windows and a load of crickets through your letter box.

I hope enough service providers are sane enough to grasp this.

This attempt at a Judicial Review was about a specific bit of the EHRC's interim guildance with regard to single sex spaces. Nothing to do with associations or their memberships.

The fact that even now, after the EHRC won the JR, Robin and Katie are still maintaining their entitlement to enter women only spaces is so disturbing.

It is insofar as it restates the SC ruling that under the EA sex means biological sex, so if you are using the exemption to allow an association to be formed based on female sex then you can’t let men in regardless of how they identify. But as you say, this is just restating what the SC had already said.

He/she/they claim to be a "trans person"

But as a trans person, and someone fighting for the rights of my community, I refuse to remain silent.

https://goodlawproject.org/jess-othomson-trans-people-dont-trust-judges-and-theyre-right/

Yes. But the judgement is not relevant to who the associations allow to join.

i am fascinated by the levels of denial going on
Why is a gender neutral loo unbearable for these men?

The claimed fear of being outed is silly: we can all see.

Strangely enough that is what has been suggested- a unisex loo that RMW and anyone else can use, plus female toilets.

Associations must follow the judgement too.

yes but RMW is now pushing for his favoured solution:
men who think they're women can enter women's facilities
any women who have a problem with undressing in front of men like robin and katie can be offered a 'sensitive women' changing room or loo

[NB this option is beneath men who think they're women, who are very important and apparently hard to spot with normal eyesight]

NOTHING must stand in the way of the frisson of affirmation that the MEN require from entering a service signposted as WOMEN ONLY

RMW thinks everywhere should have single-gender toilets plus a Universal toilet for people whose religion requires it.

Who's up for starting a new religion?

Oh save me from giggly K Neves- RMW doesn't look impressed
Waffle waffle

Associations, such as Girl Guides or the WI, are not relevant to this judgement.

That’s a really good example.

Isn’t Jess a “non binary” young woman? I’ve heard Jess speak and I assumed this, judging by the voice. Recent law graduate I think, wildly overhyped as a legal expert.

He claims to be the trans lead at GLP. He’s a “legal researcher”.

Indeed, it's daft to give money to somebody who either didn't read, or didn't understand the judge saying

5 One clear consequence of the conclusion reached in For Women Scotland was that if, for example, a service provider provided a service to be used both by women and transsexual women, that service would not be a single-sex service.

30 for the purposes of sex discrimination under the EA 2010, all persons with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment continue to be considered by reference to their biological sex.

37 It is clear from this that the objective of regulation 20 is that men and women should use conveniences in separate rooms, not together in the same room.

45. It was suggested that it was material that the 1992 Workplace Regulations were made in exercise of powers in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and were not legislation “about discrimination”. I do not attach any significance to this point. The Regulations are to be construed on their own terms...
Given the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court in For Women Scotland on the meaning of “woman” and “man” in the EA 2010, any contrary reading of the same words in the 1992 Workplace Regulations would make the application of paragraph 2 of schedule 22 to the EA 2010 certainly less coherent, and likely impossible.

etc. etc.

What the Judge is saying is:
Excluding other men, but not trans women, from a women-only space, (e.g. women's toilets or the Women's Institute) is NOT necessarily unfair treatment for the 'other men'. Providing facilities of equal 'value', are readily available.

sorry, but no. He didn’t even say that. He was talking specifically and only about “lavatories”.

he didn’t say a man who is excluded from the WI isn’t going to make a good case for unlawful discrimination. Only lavatories.