Dozens of men discuss ignoring single sex space rules

This comment made me laugh:

"No. 100% non-compliance, no matter the consequence. I want to look back on this period with my grandchildren, decades later, and be proud of myself."

(Yes, I know adoption is a thing. But how does he think babies are made??)

Bully for you.
The end point of your ‘logic’ is that we shouldn’t bother with any laws re sexual offences, trespass, etc etc.

If you don't know your own sex by the time you reach adulthood then you wouldn't be allowed out without carers, who WOULD know your sex. So if you DO know your own sex why would you force yourself into the opposite sex's space?

People should be policing themselves (as they have always done). The ones who don't are dangerous.

I note this from one response-
is more heartbreaking to be seen as a monster than to be attacked by one.

and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more male. Having been attacked, by more than one man, I can assure the person who wrote that I’d take being though of as a monster anytime over what I actually experienced

The sooner men are exterminated the better!

Not all men.

🙄

This happens already. Like many gender-non-conforming women, I've been 'challenged' in women's toilets.
It doesn't take the form of 'going up to someone in a bathroom [toilet - the facilities that do not have baths in them] and say i think you’re a man, prove you’re a woman if you want to stay here?'

It takes the form of 'Excuse me, this is the ladies!'
I deal with it by replying in a friendly tone - 'That's OK, I'm in the right place'
which resolves the issue - a second glance enables the challenger to ID me as a woman, because it's really not that difficult; she perceives my non-aggressive and friendly attitude; and she hears my voice; she recognises me as a woman.

It happens. No drama. I welcome the challenge because it is an indicator of women proactively protecting women's spaces.

Any man who has genuinely made a mistake will quickly leave.

Any man who has deliberately entered a space which he knows is designated for women only should quickly leave, but if he stays, he is 'outing' himself as a transgressor, and his actions may result in security/management, and eventually if he causes a public nuisance, the police being called to deal with him.

I have challenged men who are in the women’s toilets and apart from one (ordinary looking middle aged bloke) who scowled and shoved me when I prevented him from going in, others have been apologetic and conciliatory.
Possibly some had made a genuine mistake. These were all dressed as men. Haven’t spotted any trans people actually in the ladies but I have elsewhere.
And, in the light of my bad experience, if I did see any man in the women’s toilet I would immediately leave and report it to store security or similar.

Particularly if the only thing you were denying access to is the female single sex facility.

There's a gender neutral one right there that they can use. They have an accessible facility. Reasonable doubt is enough to deny access to the single sex, as there's a duty to provide and protect this for women. 99.9% of whom are obviously and unambiguously in the right place. The SCJ mentions that individual tragedies (bit of an exaggeration in this context) do not outweigh the needs of the many for that facility to be protected for the access and equality of biological women as a group.

There will undoubtedly be men who decide the rules don't apply to them; but hopefully fewer who act on this belief than who express it. As a pp said the fact that rules become unequivocal does puts women who need to complain in a much stronger position. A point I think may in the long term be even more important, but which hasn't got much attention so far: I think, and hope, that the clarification that no, transwomen are not women, may have an impact on how many people transition in the first place. I think the attractiveness, to an adult male, of claiming to be a woman, may be diminished when claiming to be a woman doesn't get him so much; and I think parents and other adults may be less keen on supporting kids into transitioning, given that it's now crystal clear those kids are not going to have a straightforward life "as" the opposite sex. Accepting your sexed body, and helping others to do so, may rise in popularity (even if there's a badly-worded conversion therapy ban) and we may see the numbers of people identifying as trans fall from here on. I know that will be misinterpreted as "they want trans people dead!" but of course it isn't that; it's more akin to wanting fewer pregnant women to be folic acid deficient in order to reduce the number of babies born with spina bifida.

The point is a) it's wrong - sex is easily detected and verifed and b) even if it wasn't wrong - the fact that a law is difficult to enforce doesn't make it "null and void".

would you really go up to someone in a bathroom and say i think you’re a man,

Employees in a shop are trained not to go up to a shoplifter and confront them about theft. That doesn't make shoplifting laws "null and void". Who would even think that?

Excuse me but what planet are you on that you think people can’t tell the difference between male and female?

I was reading a thread yesterday where someone asked if women minded if there was a transwoman in the women's public toilets. The majority of responses said of course they didn't mind, as they had their own lockable cubicle. Quite a few went beyond that, saying that they had often popped into the gents when there was a queue for the ladies, or that the transwoman was likely to be a more attractive woman than they were, or that they'd probably compliment the transwoman on their hair, or that they never felt in danger from transwomen, only from cis men. No-one mentioned that if "transwomen" are allowed into the ladies, any man can go in and can refuse to leave.

bathrooms - I'll wait for a restroom as well!

in the UK it's toilets

bathrooms are the private spaces in our homes

You might not directly approach them on your own, but you could

• if other women there too, collectively approach
• choose to call management there and then (eg in a sports club)
• take a mental photo and report to management
• call the police

For a few years we were in a position that women were being told the rights were not on their side and they were bigots for being concerned. That has now gone.

sure it’s easy to police in theory. But in practice?

would you really go up to someone in a bathroom and say i think you’re a man, prove you’re a woman if you want to stay here? I wouldn’t. I might just huff and tut.

Justice Swift addressed this in GLP v EHRC

39 .... would place too great a burden on employers, requiring them to either “police” the use of lavatories or risk prosecution for breach of the 1992 Workplace Regulations. This point is significantly overstated.

40 The notion that an employer or anyone else is required to “police” the use of a lavatory, person by person and day by day, reveals the application of a “logic” so strict that it is divorced from reality and from any sensible model of human behaviour.

A 'sensible model of human behaviour' is that people respect the law, respect sex-segregated spaces as designated, 'the good men stay out so the bad men stand out' and we all get along OK, as we did until a small group of unrepresentative, noisy, aggressive and sometimes violent men started demanding access to women's spaces as if it was their human right.

This doesn't even make sense. Of course you can prove sex. It's one of the easier things both to detect and prove. It's like saying shoplifting laws are null and void because shopkeepers (being none-police) can't physically police their shops.

We HAD single sex spaces which worked as well as possible before this insanity took over and eroded the social contract that was our boundaries, and now people like yourself (for example) say well they were never going to work anyway 🤷‍♀️ You can't be that unintelligent that you can't see the logical flow there... can you?

Don't be daft. We know who are men. I've been "policing" bathrooms I use for a few years due to a horrid experience. I've had to shout loudly at 2 men to get out of the bathroom in a department store toilet within the past year. They weren't even pretending/dressed as women.

It's a very childish attitude to think that people should only follow rules that are intensively policed. Sure, my kids only brush their teeth if I stand over them making them do it, but once they get older I expect them to brush their teeth without me being in the bathroom policing things. Likewise, there is be a general social expectation that if the rule is single sex, that is followed by individuals without genetic testing being required on the door. But I think there is a broader sense of individual entitlement now and much less sense of duty to the social contract. It is a much bigger problem than 'just' single sex spaces.

Oooh i’m not sure about that. Sure most of the time. But i have definitely seen trans people who i would absolutely say pass 100% both ways. I also have a colleague i was convinced (for years) was trans (tall deep voice broad shoulders) until she showed up pregnant 🤣

Anyways I don’t really care either way. I think if a man wants to assault a woman they are probably not going to be put off by rules one way or another. So I don’t feel like this is the hill to die on - doesn’t make me feel safer one way or another

So what you are saying is there are men who will not obey the law, and therefore it isn't worth having the law?

In case of doubt women can call the appropriate authority eg managers of a business, or the police who can deal with it.

We managed for decades with men staying out of womens toilets, we can return to that.

If I'm a service provider who refuses someone entry to a female single sex service because I believe that person is male I don't need to prove their sex.

If that person wishes to sue me as a service provider it is them that needs to prove their sex in court.

This ! Everyone knows what sex they are and just as social pressure not to drink and drive works then friends of these trans identifying men should put pressure on them to use mixed sex spaces not women’s. It takes social pressure to do the right thing sometimes.