Full Council Chaos. Bristol City Council refusing to implement single sex services

The claim was that unisex changing rooms are cheaper to run than single sex. This is often repeated but I’ve never seen any evidence that it’s true.

Most single sex changing rooms have a few cubicles available as well as a common changing area so everyone has a choice.

The risk of voyeurism and sexual assault is drastically reduced, it’s no more expensive, is more space efficient and you can have your cubicle (in the correct sex changing room obvs). The vast majority of people catered for. That’s a win win I’d say.

What is the difference between “single sex” and “STRICTLY single sex”.

There are 2 sexes according to science and the law, “Single sex” means only 1 of those 2 sexes can use that facility/service, no matter what the person is wearing, has had amended on paperwork or has done to their body with medication or surgery to alter their secondary sex characteristics.

Does David Lloyd allow some Males to use spaces, services and facilities designated as being for Women? If so then they need to make clear to service users via signage and policy that those spaces, services and facilities are for ‘women and males who identify as women’ and for staff they need to provide separate sex segregated or unisex fully enclosed facilities in order to meet the requirements of the U.K. H&S at work legislation. What they cannot do is advertise women only and then allow ANY males, or allow ANY males into women's staff changing rooms or toilets.

I have been a David Lloyd member for decades

I have regularly visited the York club.

The Changing rooms are single sex

Clubs like Bannantye are STRICTLY single sex

No they don’t. Check this thread and filter by me only https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5535487-organisations-refusing-to-give-their-single-sex-spaces-policy-david-lloyd-for-example?page=1

I don't think that's true. They should (and are required to) have them on a single-sex basis, but most have been operating on a single-gender basis, which is not at all the same thing!

Perhaps @SingleSexSpacesInSchools could improve on this?

Possibly, but the latest post is from Feb. So, unsure, but thanks!

Pretty much all gyms and leisure centres now have locker rooms and showers on a single sex basis.
It works.

So are people asking for communal single sex changing rooms? I wouldn't support that, I want a cubicle.

I learned to swim in an old Victorian pool. The changing cubicles ran along the two long sides of the pool. They were solid construction with big heavy doors and no gaps. The showers were open at one end of the pool so you showered in your costume.. It felt very safe, no worries about who was in the next cubicle and the lifeguard was within calling distance and of course all the other swimmers around. Not sure why that style went out of fashion.

My local modern pool has male and female changing rooms which can feel a bit creepy at quiet times as it would be easy for anyone to enter.

Is it this one
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5455053-bristol-council-is-about-to-be-sued

Weird, it did! Was about a local Bristol group suing the council for similar nonsense

That link doesn't seem to lead anywhere now, at least not for me. Perhaps it's been moved?

Ah, I reckon these gals - https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5455053-bristol-council-is-about-to-be-sued

Oh but there is

1 - council refuses to enforce EHRC code etc.

2 - Local pressure groups bring a wide range of legal threats to the council, al on record

3 - Council ignore it

4 - Legal action is a huge slam dunk, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds

5 - Local pressure groups tell everyone who will listen that the council set 300 grand on fire

I hope those local pressure groups are listening

They can't
There are no sanctions for misbehaviour and misconduct by elected representatives

There’s a great series of FWR threads about the Greens going back a few years, covering the whole rise of Polanski and the swing further left on issues other than trans, with current and former Green Party members commenting.

Exactly @BunfightBetty

Bristol are a left wing council, run by the Greens, which is a far left party these days, sadly.

There are multiple angles and threads to how the TRAs nearly took over on both sides of the political spectrum, and so there is more than one talking point for us. The takeover on the left is a topic that needs to be discussed. That doesn’t preclude us talking about where it rears its ugly head elsewhere, of course. We can walk and chew gum.

How can those councillors be held to account ?

It’s not only “trans rights” that the Green Party is far to the left on.

Of course it’s left wing politics. Do you not realise that the entire far left wing of Labour have decamped to the Greens?

Just to be explicit. I dont think the Greens, or the Councillors in Bristol have anything what so ever to do with left wing politics.

It doesn't help oppose what is happening thinking of it in terms of left right.

Without going into the long history of how trans activists have managed to infiltrate, not just political parties but the "establishment" is in a way more serious.

Hope a group of political juvenile got to be councillors is another issue. But is an example, as many on here have said, about how trans activists have hijacked yet another issue.

There are at least a couple of threads on FWR, probably more, that least the significant moments that trans activists influenced for instance the UN.

That is what we should be discussing. How is it that a group of activists, who on one level have such a tiny area of interest have become so powerful.

But to return to the focus of the OP, it isn't just however gross it was, that Bristol Councillors behaved like indulged youngsters, but what has happened to politics in the UK that basically a fringe group (who dont actually bother with green issues) have this power.

I used the term far left. But I am not a right-winger, I am a centre-left voter.

Despite being slightly to the left, I am still capable of finding far left politics objectionable. And the lunacy of Bristol council - the subject of this thread - is very far left in my book. And very objectionable.

I think extremism at both ends of the political spectrum is dangerous, not just in relation to genderwang, but also in relation to any other sphere it touches.

I understand your point - and those of other posters who point out that communists and some others on the far left are not in favour of GI (unsurprising, given Marxism is nothing if not materialist) - but if women who defend their rights are called 'far right' purely for wanting their rights back, then people need to understand that those seeking to take them away are extremists. In this case, it's those on the left doing it (and there are many elsewhere, let's face it).

Just to add, as others have said, totally shocking but sadly not unexpected at Bristol. Another Green Council who seem to think the law is something they dont have to bother with.

Also want to say, please can we stop using phrases like far left.

Its fairly clear that the whole identity, disruption of society politics, created by Queer activism is what is behind it. And it undoubtedly appeals to mainly middle class younger people. And their puerile notion of politics is the massive self indulgent virtue signalling of students.

Its bad enough that outsiders like to say FWR is right wing and reactionary. We dont have to adopt this identity imposed on us.

The great strength of FWR is that (or used to be) about the common causes we have as women.

Which includes knowing and experiencing sexist anti woman attitudes in all parties.

We dont need to use the limited language of male party (divisive) politics to discuss and share information and ideas, relating to our lived experiences as women, do we?

Yes it is the ultimate outcome of 'possessive individualism' and consumerism isn't it? Where are these 'communities' of which we hear so much. A flash mob congregating to shout at women is not a community.