Reflections on trans presence at a Dykes Who Hike event

You're saying that lesbians excluding males is discriminatory.

That's quite offensive.

Just going by stats. Straight women are the ones least likely to see TWAW.

No. Generally, people are encouraged to keep their discriminatory views to themselves..especially at someone else's party.

I don't think it's a particularly legally grey area - I don't think that this group is governed by the Equality Act at all. They're not AFAICS providing a service, they're not a membership group, and they're definitely not an employer or state body etc.

I suppose it's just about arguable that for the £2 entry fee means that the organisers provide a service (guiding the hike) but IF they wanted to make their hike women only - which they clearly do not - then they would have to get past the threshold of justifying it under paragraph 27 of Schedule 3 to the Equality Act. That means justifying that making it women only is necessary and proportionate in pursuit of one of the identified legitimate aims.

That's a very easy argument to make for a rape crisis centre or a changing room but I have huge doubts that it applies to a hiking group, because the sub-para they would need to meet is para 27(4) which is that the service would be less effective if provided to both sexes. Since the other women-only group is demonstrably less popular, that sounds like an argument doomed to fail.

If the group were offering hiking as a form of trauma-informed support for women who had been victims of domestic abuse then that might justify a single-sex service. But for an "informal Instagram event" it seems highly unlikely that it's a service at all, and even more unlikely that they could justify a single sex group, other than under para 30 which is providing services to a group who share a PC. They're not providing it to women but they are, it seems, providing a service to people who have the protected belief of genderism (if they are providing a service at all which as I say I think is a moot point).

I would regard myself as GC but I can't see an issue with this. There are two women leading a group which is flourishing and getting people out in the countryside and making friends? What monsters. If I could get past the phrase "WLW girlies" which sounds like something off a 90s lads mag I'd be tempted to get out there and join them.

No. Generally, people are encouraged to keep their discriminatory views to themselves..especially at someone else's party.

Bit threatening, no?

Dykes.... So it's a gay women's group for biological women who like to walk? Why are men there, with or without make up, frocks, however they supposedly identify?

@Lexibletheflexible Lesbians on the whole arent into excluding trans women from their spaces.

I must have missed the meeting where you were elected lesbian spokesperson.

Ahem. Once again, the only butch lesbian I saw was in the mirror.

And once again with feeling - it’s not about passing so well that you get a certificate from the Council of Lesbians. If that older bloke who attended identified as a lesbian then I’m John F Kennedy.

The behaviour of most of the women in that space demonstrated that TW were at best tolerated at arms’ length, and I thought that was interesting.

@Lexibletheflexible Lesbians on the whole arent into excluding trans women from their spaces.

I must have missed the meeting where you were elected lesbian spokesperson.

Bit threatening, no?

A better analogy would be going into a hardware store but needing to pass shelves and shelves of high-end Japanese cookware while you browse. They’re in your way, they don’t belong there, but you’re obliged to consider them on your way to the things you’re looking for. Except the Japanese cookware knows it’s not wanted and yet mysteriously keeps turning up.

Meanwhile many lesbian events have just gone underground so that they are only for women. To the detriment of younger women or late in lifers who are left to wade through this nonsense.

Yes they can if they mouth off about other attendees. If you keep your views to yourself, nobody will know and you'll be fine.

Yes they can if they mouth off about other attendees. If you keep your views to yourself, nobody will know and you'll be fine.

Um, no. Just no. Lesbians are women who are same-sex attracted. Very few want men in their spaces. Need? Tolerate? Forced into? Put up with? Happy to have that conversation on different terms, but the idea that lesbians want TIMs in their spaces - ha bloody ha.

Not, legally, on the basis of their beliefs.

With respect, this is not a comparable situation. The near destruction of women's social spaces is not comparable to Mary and John who would quite like the local community centre to start a book club but they don't want to run it themselves.

And the difference is that ALL of these social groups that I am referring to used to be women only. And all the ones set up since gender bollocks, which are TWAW, would have been women only if TWAW gender bollocks had never been invented.

The problem is that the lie of gender bollocks has led to the near destruction of women only spaces. And in many scenes, especially in the alternative sector, even women who may want to put on female only events are probably too scared to as the scene is so prog left dominated.