Services and spaces should be separated according to gender, not sex

I agree. From the Women's Rights Network:

We know mixed-sex changing facilities are high-risk. In a 2018 FOI investigation there were 134 complaints of sexual misconduct in sports centres and swimming pools in the UK, 120 (nearly 90%) occurred in mixed facilities.

In January 2025 Swim England held an emergency safeguarding meeting. Cases of voyeurism and using mobile phones to photograph women and girls changing at swim competitions had DOUBLED.

The WRN Leisure Centre Report 2024 published in 2024 found that one-third of council swimming pools have only mixed-sex changing areas for swimmers, providing easy hunting grounds for predatory males seeking access to women and children.

In 2025, WRN published a further report that outlines police data on sexual violence in leisure centres. Figures reveal that in one year (2023) there were 16 rapes, 80 sexual assaults and 65 acts of voyeurism across 257 leisure centres in England and Wales.

https://www.womensrights.network/post/red-flag-campaign

I'm not in favour of mixed sex or mixed gender.

Yes, I think 1 is the strongest with jo/e public. It’s still very common: “they wouldn’t put themselves through all that if they didn’t really need it”, etc.

I also think it’s fairly reasonable in its own terms. But utterly unworkable now, especially in a culture where judging between worthy and unworthy has been delegitimised.

Technically gender and sex are the same thing. Gender identity on the other hand…

I don't think these conversations can be separated though.

Before we can properly consider whether something should be split on the basis of sex or split on the basis of gender we need to properly consider why it is split at all, for what justification? Many of the justifications available intrinsically lead to the conclusion that the split must be sex-based because if it isn't sex based then the root purpose for which the split is required cannot be achieved. IF the justification is not in this category, then maybe it shouldn't be split at all or maybe there is valid justification for splitting be by gender. Consider a space whose primary purpose is to provide a feminine-gendered respite and recuperation zone for anyone with a feminine gender to escape from the constant onslaught of toxic masculinity out there in the wide world. Of course that could include transwomen. I don't think that is the primary purpose of most spaces that are reserved for Female people but I wonder whether some people think it should be.

Train stations used to often have a separate Ladies Waiting Room but now they don't. Why not? What changed such that Victorian women expected to be able to wait for the train separately from the men, but now have no problem sitting next to a male stranger in a mixed-sex waiting room? Is that a cultural change that is continuing and may extend further? The fact that change was possible suggests that the justification for Ladies Waiting Rooms was more about a culture and tradition that is changeable and fluid, whereas the justification for, say, a separate female-only category for a 100m sprint competition is fundamentally based on the biological fact that women's hips are a different shape to men's to allow space for Childbirth and the male shape is more optimised for sprinting and there is no point whatsoever having a category for people with female hip-structure PLUS anyone with male hip-structure who would prefer to be in this category.

Love this, the student was outsmarted! 🤣

Interesting, though, that we occasionally hear of reports of cities laying on female only train carriages and other forms of public transport - largely because of the amount of sexual abuse and predatory behaviour that women can be subjected to on nights out, and at other times. Being sexually assaulted is apparently not uncommon on crowded tubes, or on the Paris underground.

Another example is of a new floating sauna in my city. To begin with it was entirely mixed sex - but now they are expanding the business and running women only sessions ( due to demand), and in my view, for obvious reasons.

@RareGoalsVerge “Train stations used to often have a separate Ladies Waiting Room but now they don't. Why not?”

Changing social norms, a more integrated society, cost.

What does splitting by 'gender' even mean, and what would it look like? What essential quality or characteristic does a male person who 'identifies as a woman' share with an actual woman? To suggest they share 'gender' is to suggest that all women align along presentation or personality styles, but they don't.

The reason we have some facilities and categories separated by 'sex' is down to basic biological differences and all that tends to flow from those differences. Situations in which people may be undressed, pre-occupied with biological function, or else engaged in sporting or physical activity in which one's sex has important implications.

How would you decide which people qualified for 'feminine gendered respite'?

Well indeed. That's not for me to define but I am suggesting that with a framework that starts "back a few steps" and requires each scenario with a "split" to first outline the reasons, justification and legitimate aims for why such a split is appropriate and proportionate, then it will automatically follow from that outline whether or not the split is to be based on biological sex. I was theorising the existence of some kind of thing where the reasoning behind the split was more based on gender than on biological sex to illustrate that these could then exist within that framework. I don't know what the demand and uptake for such spaces and services would be like and it's not for me to work out what definitional basis such spaces and services would use, but the point is to lay out a process by which they can be established. I suspect that for most things, if you take those few steps back and look at the original justification, you will either find that like the train station Ladies Waiting Room the actual need for a split isn't really there any more and there shouldn't actually be a split, or the justification is fundamentally based on the biological differences between male and female that are independent of gender identity and cannot be identified into or out of or surgically/medically replicated in someone of the opposite sex. However, it creates needless oppositionalism and cements enmiity to insist that everything necessarily must fall into this category. It is better to be open to the possibility of the existence of services and spaces that are offered on the basis of gender identity where their rationale is openly explaining why that is the basis of the split, because then it make it easier to show that other kinds of spaces and services that are split on the basis of biological sex are fulfilling a different set of needs, and that a service or space that is split by gender identity is not fulfilling those needs and cannot be expected to.

sorry - but this is a part of the issue - to use language in a way designed to sound reasonable, but which when examined, doesn't make sense

Consider a space whose primary purpose is to provide a feminine-gendered respite and recuperation zone for anyone with a feminine gender to escape from the constant onslaught of toxic masculinity out there in the wide world. Of course that could include transwomen.

let's explore this...

there is no such thing as feminine-gendered

• sex we all know is immutable and is yours from birth...
• gender is society's observational stereotype of typical men / women in this moment.

so to be feminine-gendered can only be defined by the habits of women... as it is observational - it doesn't exist in the abstract outside recognising the pattern of women.

so no man can ever be feminine-gendered - because anything they adopt from that female stereotype simply extends / changes the pattern of being male.

so feminine-gendered simply means things done by women.

you can't include 'trans-women' as there is no such thing - a 'trans-woman' by definition is someone who has transitioned to being a woman - and as we all know, sex is immutable so that is not possible, so a 'trans-woman' is a man.

So if we re-word your paragraph, it becomes

Consider a space whose primary purpose is to provide a women's respite and recuperation zone for anyone who is female to escape from the constant onslaught of toxic masculinity out there in the wide world. Of course that could include men.

now - does that make sense any longer - no of course it doesn't and that is why language is so important. and even more important is that it is used correctly.

Thank you, yes this is the point I am trying to get at. I honestly don't see, myself, the value and purpose of a "women's" space that includes transwomen because I see the need for the space to be "women's" as intrinsically linked to biological effects that are only true of female people and are not true of male people even if they wish they were female or have changed their body or presentation to appear female. However there clearly are women who disagree with this (ie the 111,000ish who have signed the "Not in Our Name" petition) and we aren't going to make progress by digging into silos and refusing to admit the possibility of holding a different point of view. I agree with you that probably the people fighting for women's spaces to be trans-inclusive probably, for the most part, don't really perceive a real value in these things being split into men's and women's at all, so that the only actual beneficial value is to provide a source of gender-affirming acceptance for transwomen. Your example of All-Women shortlists is an excellent case in point - if the value of having them isn't understood and accepted, then the need to protect them for actual women seems unimportant.

I feel a number of people on this thread continue to miss my point by continuing to argue against the very idea that something that is split by gender could exist at all. We don't need to argue against their existence. Their existence - if any such do proceed to formulate an internally consistent rationale for it - takes nothing from us if it is made clear from the outset that they are not trying to serve or support any need that springs from differences in biology. It is helpful to us in our campaigns to ensure that the additional needs that we have on account of our female bodies can be met, to be able to show that they are not being met by services that are working on a remit that ignores these differences due to upholding a premise of trans-inclusiveness. Let those who want to run services that include transwomen do so within a framework where they have to justify why they are doing this (don't do their work for them or declare preemtively that it's impossible) and why their service is different from a mixed sex service (spoiler - it's not - but if some people find it hepful to pretend otherwise that does no harm to those who don't need that service if it can't pretend it is meeting needs that it isn't) because whatever they come up with, intrinically will not and cannot include properly meeting the needs that female people have due to having female bodies and that then makes it easier to uphold/establish different options which DO.

However, it creates needless oppositionalism and cements enmiity to insist that everything necessarily must fall into this category. It is better to be open to the possibility of the existence of services and spaces that are offered on the basis of gender identity where their rationale is openly explaining why that is the basis of the split, because then it make it easier to show that other kinds of spaces and services that are split on the basis of biological sex are fulfilling a different set of needs, and that a service or space that is split by gender identity is not fulfilling those needs and cannot be expected to.

The problem is that gender is subjective and sex is objective.

Single sex changing rooms are lawful because it is sometimes reasonable to object to the presence of the opposite sex. The problem being solved is the unwanted presence of other people, and the assumption is that everyone knows their own sex and that it is possible to judge other people's sex.

However, it is impossible to judge somebody else's gender, so signs for toilets split by gender simply ask people to use the toilet where they feel most comfortable or the toilet that they need.

A service that anyone can use depending on their preference is not segregated in any way.

dazzlingdeborahrose
Technically gender and sex are the same thing.

Are they?

One is a physical fact; the other, not so much. One can be defined, really quite easily; the other can't. One is not "a spectrum"; the other is. An individual has no choice about which they are of one of them; what they are in relation to the other is entirely the decision of the individual.

Apart from those details they are the same thing.

In passing, if I wanted a space in which I could have respite from toxic masculinity I wouldn't choose one in which transwomen were to be found, because with three exceptions, every transwoman I have met in fifty years or so has displayed toxic masculine characteristics the moment there was any suggestion that there might possibly be a point of view differing from his. I say his, because at that point "he" is quite evidently and unmistakeably what he is, whatever pains he has gone to in order to try to conceal the fact.

And again with the missing of the point.

I agree that I don't understand your point.

What is the point of asking questions about why a service might be split by gender if it's impossible to split things by gender?

Are you just saying that people should be asked to demonstrate that they don't have a rational argument?

There is no missing the point...

gender is external societal observation.
by its definition, you can not self gender identify because of the paradox that if a bloke tries to 'take on a female gender' they don't they simply expand the observational boundaries of being a male...

or more plainly put
society might observe a pattern that women wear lipstick / men don't - wearing lipstick is a part of the societal observation of the pattern of women at that moment in time...
but a man putting on lipstick doesn't therefore adopt the female gender / show their femininity / become a woman - instead, the societal observation would be that now x % of men also wear lipstick!

therefore there is never going to be a man showing a female gender, or a woman showing a male gender - they simply show variation of what it means to be their sex.

so you can not split stuff by gender - other than splitting it by sex.

@RareGoalsVerge the problem with splitting by gender is then, who defines what gender is? Splitting by sex is easy. Two sexes. As no one can define gender, how would it be split? Are you suggesting all spaces should be unisex unless it can be proven there is a rational need? Awesome. So as there is a proven rational need for female only spaces (privacy, dignity and safety of women), you’ll support that premise.

akkakk
society might observe a pattern that women wear lipstick / men don't - wearing lipstick is a part of the societal observation of the pattern of women at that moment in time...
but a man putting on lipstick doesn't therefore adopt the female gender / show their femininity / become a woman

I can't remember which Bob Hope film it was, set in the desert, in which they forgot to pack lip-salve to prevent cracking lips and the Love Interest Girl provided what she had, lipstick. Cue hilarious "I'm really not like that you know" lipstick wearing by Hope and I think it may have been Bing Crosby? But no feminity was shown by either of them; that was left for Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot seventeen years later, and in that film it was made plain that they were in disguise rather than changing gender by the immortal line "I tell you, it's a whole different sex" uttered by one of them on seeing Marilyn Munroe walking down a station platform.

Possible because it was so wordy it was difficult to see any point you thought you were making.

‘Before we can properly consider whether something should be split on the basis of sex or split on the basis of gender we need to properly consider why it is split at all, for what justification?’

It’s split on the basis of sex for Health and Safety. This includes preventing harm, otherwise known as safeguarding.

That’s it.

Edit: that should be it. That should be more than enough justification.

My local station has a ladies waiting room. It is a sort of entry room with chairs and the female toilets are accessed by passing through the ladies waiting room.

There seems to be two different pro-gender narratives about gender identity.

There's the one where gender is a mental/ emotional/ spiritual direct substitute for embodied sex, and is either masculine or feminine, though usually nowadays with a third option of "not really either of those".

Then there's the one which proliferates into numerous different options (with no agreement on how many) - some of which are hairsplitting riffs on gender-as-a-sort-of-sex ( e.g. demiboy) and some of which have nothing to do with sex at all ( e.g. cat gender).

The two narratives don't mesh well together in terms of a unified view of what gender is; and the second one is not even internally coherent as a system.