Why can't people respect the rules around toilets!?!?

[coffeeandmycats]

I’m really angry and just need to get this off my chest. Me and my sister run a small shop, just the two of us and a couple of customer toilets, one for biological women, one for men, signs on the door. Never had any trouble. Until today.
A regular female customer comes up looking pretty upset, says there’s a man in the women’s loo. I go in to check. At first it sort of looked okay, hair, maybe a trans woman? But then I heard a deep voice, saw stubble and a broad build, a wig that looked like a last-minute costume. It was clearly a bloke who didn’t pass. Not even close.
I said politely, this is the women’s loo, please leave. He stared at me and said flat out, “I was born female.” Not I identify as a woman, he literally claimed he was biologically female. I asked him to go and he refused.
So I rang 101, didn’t want drama and wasn’t sure what rights we had as shop owners. The police said we can’t challenge how someone describes themselves. If he says he was born female, that’s it. We’re not allowed to question it based on how he looks. And since no laws were broken, they won’t come unless he’s being abusive or refusing to follow reasonable requests after shouting multiple times.
They also confirmed that the new Supreme Court judgment about women-only spaces is civil law, not criminal. That means even though legally women are defined by birth, you still can’t challenge someone in the moment just because they say they’re female.
I looked into it after, and yep, the Supreme Court (in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers) ruled that “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 means biologically female. But that applies to protecting women-only spaces under civil law. It doesn’t let us stop someone on the spot from walking into the wrong loo. The police still can’t act if someone says they’re female, even if it’s clearly false.
This bloke walked into the women’s loo, lied about being born female, made women uncomfortable, and we’ve got no legal leg to stand on to stop him. Women customers left feeling unsafe.
So what exactly are we supposed to do? Sit back and let it happen because the law only kicks in later on? Are we just meant to trust someone who’s lying about their sex to decide what sexed spaces they can use?
It feels like women’s rights are just words, no power in real life. Anyone else run into this mess in their business? I'm nearly losing my mind over how absurd this is.

It’s not a sweeping generalisation that of the sexual and violent crimes that occur, 98% are committed by men. Single sex segregation exists for a reason.

A cafe close to us does too. It’s in full view, whoever goes in or out, whoever’s waiting. I don’t like going in there after a man, they often leave it messy.

It is an imaginary man or woman

Just have two unisex toilets

Well, I'd be happy to know I could visit a venue and know that facilities were segregated by sex.

Are trans people dangerous to cats now?

A service provider has to comply with the law, yes.
The judgement did not say that OP must enforce the exclusion of people she believes are trans from the women’s toilets .

A service provider complies with law be enforcing it. They wouldn't be excluding a transwomen because they are trans but because they are male. They're being excluded on the basis of their sex not their gender reassignment status

In your opinion. Other people don’t necessarily agree.

You should take his picture and make a complaint for harassment. A muscular man with a wig, arguing with the shop owner in intimidating way about women's spaces is not ok; sounds like premediated action to insult and devalue women exactly because women have been fighting for their spaces.

There is no offence of using the wrong sex toilet but there are other offences that might be committed like voyeurism & exhibitionism.
You absolutely can ask someone to leave the Ladies based on their appearance if they look like a man. It's your premises & your rules provided you don't discriminate. You can bar the customer from coming to your premises again.

Here is the EHRC guidance that explains that if your toilets are single sex then it's not appropriate for transexual men to use the Ladies.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/interim-update-practical-implications-uk-supreme-court-judgment

Are you for real? What reason would there ever be for a man to do this?

Again, that’s you. Lots of women don’t care. I’ve often used the men’s loos at theatres, cinemas etc. because the queue for the women’s is always ridiculous.
Enclosed units that everyone can use would help solve that problem.

Check the law under 'places of refreshment'. I'm UK but not UK mainland, here we have a 'places of refreshment' law and under that law you can ask any person to leave your establishment for any reason and there is an offence of refusing to leave.

It's similar to bars/restaurants were staff can refuse entry or ask patrons to leave for any reason (in fact they don't have to give a reason, it's their lawful right to eject any person of their choosing) and there are offences if they refuse to leave. This is covered under the licencing law. But places of refreshment have similar offences within the law and as a cafe you'd fall into that.

As I say I'm not mainland UK so we have slightly different laws here but there will be something similar so have a look at the law.

That's disgusting. Men have the right to private single sex spaces too. How dare you invade them.

Don't ignore the potential of a claim of indirect sex discrimination against women.

The man can claim he's been unfairly excluded from the not-really-women-only-despite-the-sign toilet. A woman can claim that because men are more comfoartble and safe in unisex provisions than women, not having single sex provisions makes the service less accomodating or accessible to women than men.

Realistically of course none of this should ever need to happen in situations like the OP's.

I trust trans people to be reasonable adults. Now the law is clear, and now that it is clear that by appropriating cross sex resources they are causing problems and legal risks for service providers who may have to respond by challenging them to keep within the law, I trust trans people to use appropriate facilities for their sex.

After all, a trans woman does not stop being exactly who she is and always was just because she pees in the gents.

Sex is not gender. Trans people are literal proof of this.

There is no reason that using sex specific provisions should ever be seen as an attack upon or an undermining of anyone's gender, and we should all support trans people by saying this loud and clear.

Ironically, the more allies wring their hands that trans people are not allowed in the wrong sex toilets, the harder they make it for trans people to be accepted for both their sex and their gender.

The difference is that in that scenario the woman (you) choses when to use the gents, and if you go in and dont feel comfortable you can go right out again and use the ladies. And if the men are not comfortable they know they can get rid of you because at the end of the day you are unlikely to face off to them and demand they allow you to stay.

That is not the same situation as a woman finding her supposedly single sex space has a man in it. She did not chose to be there with him, she can't leave to go to the ladies space because there isn't one, and there is a much higher risk that he will face off to her if she asks him to leave. Not the same thing at all.

It's no mess at all as you very well know. The Equality Act 2010 is perfectly clear. It's just that you don't like the fact that women's rights can't be trampled on by male transexuals any more.

OP Please ignore Tandora they regularly post misinformation on the FWR board regarding "trans" issues

Why?

No, of course not, in my experience at least transpeople are no more or less dangerous to cats than cis folk are. I just found it odd that a business that charges people on the way in and presumably observes and monitors the clientele interacting with the cats somehow managed to be unaware of a person until they turned up in the loos. If you care about the cats in your small cafe, you know who's in your establishment and are not as surprised as the OP says she was in this seemingly dramatic encounter.

It's not discrimination to eject a man from the Ladies & doesn't matter if they are wearing a frock & wig.

Yes. I am.
Because they believe they are a woman, born into the wrong body, obviously.
I can’t imagine how difficult that must be, to live with. Throw in all of the suspicion and I feel quite sorry for trans people.

When I was a young woman in the 80s, there were people who genuinely believed that gay people were mentally ill and just required the appropriate “treatment”.

Thankfully, the world has moved on in that respect, at least in most Western countries, anyway.

Really hope that I live long enough to see transgender people treated with the same understanding.

Some men are rapists. I believe a minority of male rapists publicly identify as trans women purely to gain access to certain spaces. I don’t believe they are trans at all. I believe that the vast majority of trans people just want to get on with their lives, just like you and I. The suspicion, distrust and sometimes hatred they must sometimes encounter must be terrible to live with.

Boards like this one really don’t help. To live every day being automatically suspicious of a whole group of people, most of whom you’ll never meet, must be draining.

Presumably he wanted to enjoy the cats. 🐈‍⬛🐈

And it's legal to exclude passing transmen from women's single sex spaces. So it would be fine to eject your friend who would have no recourse for a discrimination claim.

Those who don't care DO NOT have the right to remove the provision of single sex spaces from those who do. So I don't care if you (and others) don't care. It's not up to you, and the law allows for single sex spaces.

Some men are rapists. I believe a minority of male rapists publicly identify as trans women purely to gain access to certain spaces. I don’t believe they are trans at all. I believe that the vast majority of trans people just want to get on with their lives, just like you and I. The suspicion, distrust and sometimes hatred they must sometimes encounter must be terrible to live with.

How do you tell if the man in the toilet is a rapist pretending to be trans or a man who thinks he was born in the wrong body?

How do you know if a man is a rapist or one of the good ones just by looking at them?

You can't in either scenario so instead you keep all men out of female single sex spaces.