Nobody expects a man to adopt a child in the same way that they assume that a childless woman in her thirties will have a baby.

And the thing is they aren't wrong. It is more than likely that a childless woman in he thirties will have a baby, and that will be a pain for her employer, but that is why women need sex based protections against discrimination and the right to maternity leave.

That is just one of the many, many reasons why women need rights that men don't, regardless of their feelings about their identity.

I agree that protection from direct and indirect sex discrimination and the protection of reproductive and health rights are the concerns that are most important to me, but I can't complain about other people campaigning for what is most important to them.

However, the For Women Scotland case was about laws designed to protect women from sex discrimination.

Let's not forget the only reason men went into female spaces in the first place was because the doctors insisted they had to use them and relied on them reporting back that nobody had challenged them in there, before they signed off on the next stage of the process.

I think it's because the right to single sex space is actually removed if transwomen are let in whereas it doesn't affect my being protected from discrimination, in your example, if anyone is stupid enough to ask a transwoman if they plan to get pregnant. The point is they don't ask me, as a women of childbearing age, and that was still in place, I was still protected. It wouldn't actually change that if the law said they weren't allowed to ask anyone if they planned to get pregnant (men, older women) - they still can't ask me. Whereas my chance at fair sport is instantly taken away when transwomen are included.

The actual discrimination problem with your example is the risk trans men are not protected, but it is hard to fight for someone's rights if they themselves don't want you to.

Although it might have been heading that way and interpreted that way by lobby groups, I don't think sex was replaced by gender identity, they were more messily grouped together. The vast majority of people don't have a gender identity at all, so you can't take sex out and put gender identity in.

Maybe because if a transwoman gets onto a shortlist/attends a college/gets a job/ joins a club, no-one will be traumatised, injured, or killed, or unable to access a vital resource.

Alone of all the parts of the Act, those relating to single-sex services have built-in safeguards in the interests of safety, fairness, and decency, which were being widely flouted at the behest of Stonewall et al. The consequences were highly visible (pink leggings!) and hastened their defeat. FAFO.

I think the reason toilets have become such a focus is because these are the single sex facilities everyone will use on a weekly if not daily basis.

I really think toilets are the focus because trans activists decided they would be. It's much easier to make an argument that poor vulnerable trans-identifying men should be allowed into women's toilets ("we just want to pee") than it is to argue they should be allowed into women's changing rooms, women's hospital wards, women's rape crisis centres or women's prisons.

The best way of addressing this is to repeatedly ask the Staniland question: "Do you believe that male-sexed people should have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with women and girls?"

This question gets to the heart of what the issue is all about.

Well first of all the FWS case was actually primarily about gender recognition on boards. So it was about discrimination against women. Or rather whether men could take advantage of measures put in place to reduce discrimination against women.

I think the reason toilets have become such a focus is because these are the single sex facilities everyone will use on a weekly if not daily basis. They’re key for women to participate in society fully

The article in this post https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5535328-trans-rights-the-conjuring-trick-at-the-toilet-door-and-left-vs-liberalism-id makes just the same argument, toilets are a distraction. deliberately so. The movement is a discriminatory one. It's not about toilets.

They are related.

Single sex spaces are a concrete example of women, and actually men too, needing provision because of the nature of their sexed bodies.

Most people find the abstract claim harder to really understand and become confused without contextualising it in a real example, grounded in physical bodies.

Women and men want separate changing areas doe entirely to the realities of human sexual dimophism which becomes relevant when people are removing clothing. For safety, in the case of women, but also to support privacy and reduce inappropriate consensual sexual behaviour in those spaces.

Clothes or pronouns are completely irrelevant to whether people change together.

It benefits them to do this, because it’s seen as trivial and petty.

I also think that a lot of focus has been on single sex facilities because this is where most women and girls would potentially be negatively impacted. We can all imagine what it is like to use pubic toilets and changing rooms. This also reaches into schools and affects girls at a time when they are feeling particularly vulnerable.

Going to the toilet, at work or when out in public is something we all do, everyday.

Toilets are the everyday version of prisons, hospital wards, changing rooms, care and nursing homes and so on. It's relatable short hand for all these spaces.

I'm glad you do! We've learnt a lot.

But yes, having to do it over and over must be tedious. There should be no need.

I am so fed up of having to talk about toilets.

That's strange, because it's the women I see wanting to talk about toilets and changing rooms, quite understandably. We all use loos, few of us are on female only shortlists.

For me, sport was the really big one, but that's a battle that's largely been won, I think.

Indeed - it's fascinating the way the trans lobby have made the it all about toilets, in fact they obsess about toilets so much that you'd be forgiven for thinking that the 'T' in LGBT stands for 'toilets'🙄

All men have the same right to take adoption leave. Still, men don't get asked about their plans for children (at least, not with an underlying intent of trying to avoid employing someone who will take adoption leave).

We won!!!

I suppose I had better say something else, just to be polire.

If trans women are included as women then biological sex is no longer the protected characteristic but gender identity - and employers could go back to asking women if they intend to get pregnant in job interviews - as they used to before the Sex Discrimination Act.

🤦‍♀️

Under the Equality Act 2010, asking about pregnancy plans because the applicant is a woman is sex discrimination. Asking about pregnancy plans because the applicant is incorrectly perceived to be a woman constitutes direct sex discrimination by perception. A man can claim this, with a comparator being someone not perceived to be a woman and not asked about pregnancy plans on that basis, ie. another man.

The same situation and protections can be replicated without calling it "sex discrimination" - words do not determine reality.

If "sex" were to be defined by "gender identity" it would still be only good old fashioned female women who could get pregnant. To protect them from discrimination on that basis it would only be necessary to distinguish between and adequately describe people with the gender identity of "woman" who are actually female and people with the gender identity of "woman" who are actually male, ie. in the current, sane sense of female and male.

Probably quite convoluted but thankfully not something we need to worry about because

WE WON!

Just to re-iterate, that was why the Supreme Court ruling was vital, because of the attempt to erase the reality of sex.

If there is no sex, then there is no sexism.

If there is no sex then there is no sex descrimination.

The MRA movement which is basically day to day life in a sexist society, welcomed this more recent attack on women being so uppity as to say women (the sex class) deserve to be treated with respect.

I think some are not understanding what MRA stands for. MRA ie men's rights activists refers to the entrench representatives of the patriarchy for ever.

ie Men's rights first. For instance they instigated the back lash against Women's Liberation back in the 1980s, just as the moulded "Victorian" values etc., etc..

The reality is if the underlying misogynistic attitude towards women is what created, has allowed women to be dismissed in this way.

If this culture of women not being important wasn't there, there is no way TRAs would have been so sucessful because most people society would say this is disrespectful towards women, just as people said Rachel Dolezal was an insult to PoC.

The incel culture and manosphere of Tate etc., is just a current strand of the underlying partriarchy that exists to protect men's rights as being the most important.

Everyone knows that the TRAs used the gay rights movement as a vehicle, but just to say again it would NOT have been possible for it to be so widely accepted if there wasn't the underlying dismissal of women as second class members of society.

The movement to support people who are same sex attracted did not and does not impinge on any one's life or rights.

It is only because over decades, centuries, women have never been accepted as equal to men, that so many people have just not thought about the loss of women's rights in giving "rights" to TW.

Generations of women not being respected is what has allowed the TRAs to be influential.

Because what it also does is that by trying to say sex isn't real, it allows the MRAs who are accused of discriminating against the sex class of women to say, but there is no sex so we cant be accused of discriminating against the sex class of women and equally we cant be accused as a group because if sex isn't real that how can we be operating as an oppressive sex class.

Exactly this.

For many of us, protection from sex discrimination is a key priority. But others, esp TRAs with their piss protests, have focused the public debate on toilets and changing rooms.

Not politically but they do share a lot of ideas. Both groups think women don’t deserve rights, that’s women’s needs and wants come below men’s and in the cases of some TIM like Mr Serrano, that women owe them sex.

The thing is that a tranwoman doesn't just pass for a woman, those that do pass IRL have undergone extensive surgeries.

True, with extensive surgery, some transwomen can pass. That is my point, it is possible, so you can't say it can never happen

Pitching the trans aganda as MRA came later.

I feel like most MRAs (followers of Tate for example) are not pro-trans. TRAs seem quite left-wing leaning and MRAs tend to be more right-wing so I don't see them having much politcal overlap.

@IwantToRetire

"The TRA arguement would never have advanced as fast as it did if it wasn't built on the anti woman agenda of MRAs."

I disagree with this as IMO, it advanced at the speed that it did as ut was hitched to LGB rights, which were already firmly planted and then gave rise to the #nodebate etc.

Pitching the trans aganda as MRA came later.

The thing is that a tranwoman doesn't just pass for a woman, those that do pass IRL have undergone extensive surgeries.
Those that pass online are often just filtered to the extreme.