Janice Turner in the Times today

To be pedantic they aren't, because men and women are not the same and the reasons for single sex provision are not the same. As long as no drugs are involved, I don't think anyone cares about the existence of an open division for sport, for instance.

However, the rationale behind single sex toilets is privacy, which does apply equally to both sexes.

I am disappointed that nobody has asked for Mothin Ali's opinion on this.

These councils are declaring that they don't respect the right of religious people to know whether they are doing something that might be against their religious principles.

Which says absolutely nothing about female to male trans people so I still don't see the point your post was making.

All trans people should be subject to the same rules.

Because women who say they are men are zero threat to men?

If Stonewall had campaigned for third spaces in the first place, or for trans people to be safe & welcome in the spaces for their own sex, this might never have been a problem.

I have no sympathy to spare. I’ve run out.

A lot of them are doing a lot of things. Some very bad indeed. But "they" aren't all the same, especially the people who transitioned many years ago.

I feel quite sorry for the ones who were quietly pretending to be women, never held a banner or tweeted a hateful statement in their lives, who were assured by Stonewall that they had every right to do what they were doing and then suddenly have been told that they don't.

I've heard of one who captained (I'm sure that's relevant btw, that a male became captain) a local cricket side for 20 years who suddenly isn't allowed to play for that team any more. I do believe that there are some who would be very afraid to use the men's loos in the local authority toilet blocks that you used to see everywhere in town car parks.

It is a complete mess, and I blame Stonewall for this and I'm beyond cross that they are throwing everything now into getting the law changed instead of doing the right thing for everyone.

Tbf, a lot of TRAs haven't been working seriously on trying to change the law; rather, they've been trying to pretend, and to convince the unsuspecting to believe, that the Law is and always has been what they would like it to be.

I think the compromise she refers to is to stop fighting to get the law changed so they can legally use women's spaces and work instead on getting and using gender neutral
facilities.

The compromise would be in the agreement to stop trying to change the law, which they have every right to try and do.

Of course it has never been legal, or fair, or appropriate to use the facilities designated for the opposite sex.

The main compromise, i suggest, lies in giving up trying to force people to validate or accept your/one's private belief.......by just accepting that you can get on with your life in the same way as everyone else does, and in such a way which respects that others also have specific rights and protections too.

There are established protections for those with trans identities...that has not changed. Everyone has the same civil rights.

It seems the precedent those councils seek to establish is that, if you don't agree with a law, you don't have to obey it.

Sounds like a dangerous precedent.

Have you written back providing reasons why this would be highly inappropriate in a multi-cultural borough like Lewisham?

I don't think I was aggressive, although I was definitely blunt. I apologise if I came across that way.

You said JT expected trans identifying people to compromise, not actual women. I was saying I couldn't see much compromise was required when they had changing rooms available and every single swimming session bar one person week.

if you live a fantasy life, you can't expect others to share your fantasy

no-one changes sex

if you want to pretend you have - you compromise

MoistvonL wasn’t being aggressive. But I think we’ve all discovered that transgenderists routinely take the slightest query or hint of a different opinion as an attack. Which all helps to build their fantasy of scary women intimidating men. That is just nonsense, but more harmfully it also increases the fear and sense of victimhood you instil into confused young people.

a country can remain progressive and democratic while still legally protecting biological women's spaces

Encouraging in the respect you highlight... But what's with this implicit mutual exclusion of "progressive and democratic" and women's rights? That secondary status of the PC of sex is just built right in, isn't it?

Thanks for the share token. I completely agree about being grateful to live in the UK.

I went down a rabbit hole with Google Gemini this morning trying to find out about legal action regarding single sex space in countries in Europe, prompted by reading up about the gym owner in Germany, Doris Lange, who has been in a legal battle to stop an entitled man using her women only gym.

I asked what the prospects of success were for GC groups in the EU, and the answer was that there is little prospect of success regarding top-down directives from Brussels (no surprises there) but there are better prospects at the national and local level (such as the June 2026 Lady's First gym appeal, which ruled that stating biological facts is a protected right under freedom of expression (so you can call a man a man without committing a crime). This part of the response heartened me:

1. The Blueprint Effect of the UK ModelThe single largest driver of potential success for European groups is the rising prominence of the United Kingdom's legal framework. Because the UK successfully decoupled administrative "gender markers" on paper from physical access to "biological single-sex spaces," European groups have a practical, proven legislative blueprint. They are successfully convincing center-right European politicians that a country can remain progressive and democratic while still legally protecting biological women's spaces.

The claim is that men identifying as women have always been using womens spaces. That its always been impossible to remove men from women's spaces. Or men identifying as women look like women, or we know the difference between a man and a man identifying as a women, and men identifying as women never abuse women.

Its amazing that single sex spaces ever existed, or that trans identifying men need them to avoid male violence.

The idea that a man can decide he has a right to enter women spaces and its a bigger crime to challenging him is male entitlement.

So the law is on women's side, but numerous transwomen have declared that they will be breaking the law, nobody is going to enforce the law, and if a woman mentions that the law is being broken, she can be prosecuted?

This doesn't sound like a functioning society.

A CPS barrister has contributed to the debate with a twix post seemingly threatening women with possible consequences for challenging men in women's spaces.
You'd think after the public exposure of their incompetence with the convicted sex offender Levy murders, the CPS might try to dial down their anti women narratives - but this guy went there. Sarah Phillimore is on the case:

https://x.com/SVPhillimore/status/2085603188342759428

www.dailymail.com/crime-desk/article-16030659/Simon-Levy-two-women-dead-sexually-assaulted-Tube-victims-justice-broken-REBECCA-CAMBER.html

:

I think you're probably right, but

they can just carry on claiming that single sex spaces are impossible to provide

So, for nearly 100 years, single-sex spaces (meaning, mainly toilets and swimming pool changing rooms, until perhaps the last 60 years) have been "impossible to provide" but suddenly, in the last ten years, they've only just noticed just how "impossible" it all is.

Why didn't they mention how impossible it all was to reconcile their budgets in 2011? Surely someone noticed that it had been impossible for the past 100 years?

(It's just so confusing, as Miranda Priestley would say)

What I want to know is, just what exactly are they waiting for? What's going to change between now and two months from now?

I think they are waiting to see if they get away with it.

If they aren't going to be fined or face any consequences, they can just carry on claiming that single sex spaces are impossible to provide, but single gender ones are.

Thanks for posting this, OP.

I particularly like this line:

The law is certainly now a shield for cowards like [Yvette] Cooper who swerved the issue when it came at any political or personal cost.

What I want to know is, just what exactly are they waiting for? What's going to change between now and two months from now?

I can understand the cowardice. I think we're all well-acquainted with that now, in our politicians. But, as many of us have been saying, the law is the perfect fallback position for such cowardice.

Why aren't they saying this? Are they really all that stupid? If I were an unscrupulous politician (in my opinion, they all are), I would just say "Sorry, mate, it's the law, blame someone else", and then duck and cover. Do they not even have the wit to do that?

They're not going to get more funding to break the law, the issue (if they've bothered to look at any of the polling) is not a vote winner, and they're going to hand their seats to Reform at the next election. So, it's not only idiocy, it's election-losing idiocy. These clowns are digging their own graves.

These "politicians" need to learn how to "politician" better!

I had an email from our new major in Lewisham apparently in name of Lewisham confirming they will be defying law for trans people. No recognition that single spaces are needed for women, no thought to women's refuges or the fact women need protection from abusive men. It's absolutely depressing.

Why would you distinguish?

Though I haven't once seen any campaigning by female to male trans people to be allowed to use men's facilities, so I doubt it's an issue.,