Labour’s trans guidance ‘poses danger to women’

I do hope people are not going to start bringing fake ID into the mix! The only reliable option is an extract taken from the birth register before the person reaches the age of eighteen. Faking one of those is seriously criminal.

The only legal females who genuinely look male without testosterone treatment have XY DSDs and are rare. If someone can prove they're legally female, providers are going to let them in unless their appearance is very extreme/the service is of a sensitive nature. They have a discretion to turn people away, irrespective of whether proof was provided, and the only thing they are risking is that turning away a transman will be ruled illegal because the situation wasn't quite extreme/sensitive enough. The chances of mistaking a transman for a transwoman with fake ID seem low, particularly as transmen commonly exclude themselves from women's services, for various reasons.

(This is potentially sad for women with XY DSDs, who don't have the same legal protection as transmen. But, their legal position is unchanged by FWS, so they will cope as before, or not. They sometimes claim to be trans, but they aren't. )

If an obvious man hands over female id, wouldn't that prove that he is either trans or has fake id and therefore can be removed?

I'm not convinced there are women who look like men by accident, that is, not transmen. Maybe detransioners may have problems.

The only reliable ID is a birth certificate issued to a minor: a transwoman will not have that/will only have one with a male sex marker.

Providers can turn away anyone they like with or without proof of sex, and illegal discrimination really only applies in the case of transmen. Providers need educating and empowering. Obviously TRAs will kick off, and their best weapon is misinformation.

The wording of the guidance about this is quite poor.

It is special category data for anyone because pregnancy is a medical condition.

A transwoman will not have that proof.

Not true. A transwoman can get all his ID to say he is female. Unless that is changed, asking for ID means almost nothing when it comes to verifying sex.

They can be asked to leave without it being considered discrimination.

They doesn't mean they can't attempt to bring a case or at least a lot of bad publicity. If I were a service provider I would be very cautious unless I saw signs they were 100% male (adam's apple, receding hairline, deep voice etc).

It's not illegal (and is sometimes necessary) to make access to women-only services contingent on providing proof of sex. A transwoman will not have that proof. A woman who looks masculine will likely be used to the problem and prepared to carry proof with her. Such women are rare: I've encountered a handful. They usually have a DSD and live with the problem their whole life: FWS has made no difference to their legal position.

Thanks to the GRA, the only reliable proof now is a birth certificate issued in childhood. This is one reason why digital ID with data pulled from the birth register would be useful.

ETA to add PP mentioned transmen. They can be excluded, but only if it's a proportionate means to a legitimate aim, because they have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

I think that has already been answered. According to the Supreme Court, it's not discrimination if you genuinely think they're a man. Even if they're not.

Hence the example of transman looking so like like a man they would make the women uncomfortable. (which is a far more likely scenario).

They can be asked to leave without it being considered discrimination.

What happens if you question a transwoman and he lies and says he is a female or shows you ID which says female, what then? If you request he gets removed, do the service providers have to deny him entry?

What happens if they remove or deny entry to someone who they think is a transwoman but it turns out it was just a manly looking woman, can they be sued for discrimination (or at least dragged through the mud in the press)? I imagine they would want to be extremely certain the person was a man before denying entry to someone.

Back in the real world it would have been:

Another woman walked in, gasped audibly and said: ‘There’s a man in here!’ I said: ‘Oh I’m not a man …’ in a friendly way, then she said aggressively: ‘You look like a man, there aren’t meant to be men in here’ and continued to look at my body. 'Oh, sorry!' smiled at me and then got on with changing into her swimming costume.

I know four women who have had mastectomies. Not one of them would wander around getting changed and putting on a swimming-hat with her scars on show; they are extremely sensitive on the subject, and cover their chests as much as possible (if only to avoid pity).

Stillamum3
He "passes" quite well, but there was just something about him that made me wonder and feel uncomfortable, and when I found out I felt conned.

Conned. Yes. LIED TO. And that is very often what becomes the last straw for women when their marriages are falling apart: yes, he is off-hand and dismissive of her, yes, she discovers he is playing away, but the thing that drives her to smashing up the family unit by going to a lawyer to get a divorce is the realisation that he has been lying to her, for months or years. She has been being made a fool of.

Indeed. And looking at her picture in the article, she looks absolutely nothing like a man.

An entirely fictional scenario imo.

True, she must have scarring

It's completely incomprehensible. Who in the world thinks that a flat chested woman is a man? It's such nonsense.

And did I read that it was after a mastectomy? A uniquely female presentation.

Women acting weird should be as well, who secures her hair before she secures her tit's, even if she's flat chested 🤯

The two groups that are most likely to be challenged in women's changing rooms are men and allies acting strangely.

It's written like a male fantasy, women standing around half naked in the changing rooms. I have never, ever seen a woman adjusting her hat while top less 😁

I hadn't realised before how fishy that tale from JM's wife was.

In May, Prihartini was in the women’s changing room area of her local pool. “I was standing with my top off in front of the mirror putting on my swimming cap. Another woman walked in, gasped audibly and said: ‘There’s a man in here!’ I said: ‘Oh I’m not a man …’ in a friendly way, then she said aggressively: ‘You look like a man, there aren’t meant to be men in here’ and continued to look at my body. I didn’t want to engage with her any further so I just walked off into the pool.”

I've never in my life put a swimming hat on before my cossie. Or seen anyone else doing so. Not to mention from that narrative she apparently then charges off to the pool still without her top.

Surely asking everyone having an xray if they could be pregnant potentially becomes problematic because you are indirectly asking them to disclose special category data (only biological females can be pregnant), often in earshot of other patients?

Yes, and frankly I am grateful that some men are stepping up and challenging men in women's spaces, false positives are an unfortunate side effect of insistent female boundary violation.
Interesting, the second example is the from the founder of the Good Law Project, who if I'm not mistaken are very trans-activist, and he was very taken aback by the "empowered" way a woman questioned his wife. That was quite telling to me. He also stated that it was not a traumatic experience.
Prihartini, whose experience was first shared on social media by her husband, Jolyon Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, is at pains to make clear that this was not “a massively traumatic experience”.

Can't help noticing though the absence of any Guardian articles on very real examples if sexual assaults against women, girls and children in changing rooms, toilets and jails.
You'd have to read more widely than the Guardian and the BBC/ABC (in Australia) for truthful reporting on that.

So much concern for the gender-nonconforming women being "harrassed" in the ladies, but less concern for those being sexually assaulted. Must admit, I have doubts about the seriousness of those incidents of "harrassment". I imagine they go something like this "um, (nervously polite) you do realise this is the ladies?", and the gender non-conforming woman says, perhaps irritably, "yes, thanks, I am in fact female", and the original enquirer says "oh gosh, I'm so sorry, but you never can tell these days, apologies". Seems pretty run-of-the-mill-stranger-interaction to me. In most cases, I imagine the gender non-conforming women just recieves a couple of glances, and some passive aggressive body language. But really, they have boundary-crossing men to thank for that, not safety vigilant females.

When they had once got it by heart, the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim, and often as they lay in the field they would all start bleating “Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!” and keep it up for hours on end, never growing tired of it.’