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.

sorry everyone for messaging so much - just the whole thing is stressful and honestly feels like un needed drama in my life

You say
"I am sorry but I still believe you are a man and that the document you are showing me follows a GRC
which the Supreme Court ruled does not allow you access to female spaces"

If he sues, give Ben Cooper a call :-)

Then you check the details on a site like FreeBMD which will show the true assignation at birth.

The sex binary in mammals evolved about 180 million years ago. Modern humans evolved about 300,000 years ago. Sex has outlasted many individual species of mammals. I think it's far more likely that sex will outlast humans than vice versa.

But either way, what might happen in millions of years is really not a reason to ignore physical body sex here and now where it clearly does exist, clearly does have material consequences especially for those of us born female, and is clearly not the same thing as a mental self image that the body should have been a different one.

If the entire basis of his claim is that he is female then he will have to prove it.

I don't know where you've got this "the court can't ask for a DNA test" thing from but I highly doubt it would stand up in a court case which literally hinges on whether someone is male or female.

Violet has made a good point. If this was a performative visit it could have been shared.
Do you remember the wedding cake saga?
My late brother was a builder and there is no way two sinks will cost you £15k.

Ive been in plenty of loos with TW. It doesn't both me but I'm nearly six foot with a fine right hook. I have many friends it would upset on religious grounds.
And please remember cross sex hormones can cause urinary incontinence. That is a disability and many trans people find this out too late. They would be entitled to use your disabled loo.
I think location of your premises might make it ideal to be LGBTQ supportive.
Fwiw my DC has a lot of friends and eats out when they are in college.

If they've got a cert, fine, let them in. To cover your arse, not because it's morally right.

That way, you could demonstrate to any woman challenging you, that you checked.

But it almost certainly will not come to this.

If they are only going in one person at a time why does it matter what sex or gender they are?

Yeh your right to be fairm I just find the whole thing a lot to handle. I feel like when I started this business with my sister we thought it would be fun and a nice way to give back to the community. We do half a day for 35 (5 hours) and a lot of people being their laptops do their uni work. And we provide unlimited hot drinks tea coffee biscuits etc in this time. We didn't expect to be in situations where we had to police toilets etc

Because its multiple cubicles opening onto a shared wash space

And you shouldn't be.

Entitled men need to learn to obey the law as it was written in 2010

It's absolutely awful that entitled men are putting you in this position. I'm sorry about that.

I think you just need a plan you can stick to in every eventuality.

Then if anyone did challenge you, you can i say, I did this for this reason, in accordance with what the law says.

Good luck.

Do people think it will be a criminal offence to enter the wrong toilets at some point and would this apply to staff?
E.g if I need to clean the men's toilets currently I knock ask if anyone is in there and then clean them and I've never had a complaint but if it did would we have to find a male cleaner etc?

Thanks

I think I am in edge because we had an incident three years ago in which a female urinated in the floor in the bathrooms (not sure how we never saw her again ..) and then another female slipped over (less than 5 minutes after the first woman urinated before it could be cleaned). And the insurance company settled for £8000 hiking our renewal heavily in the process..

No.

You just need to give the patrons warning

Yikes. God what a nightmare. As you say, you're just trying to run a business, not grapple with all this crap.

Yes, and I think we will also have to prosecute any male firefighters entering a women only space in a burning building and any male paramedics attempting to save the life of a woman who has collapsed in the toilets.

(/sarcasm)

This thread is pretty brilliant to be fair :)

i haven’t read all the hundreds of posts but just in case someone gets this far… how would you know what gender they were born? The whole point of transitioning is that you don’t look like you did when you were born. So enforcing legal gender as birth gender would surely mean there are plenty of people who present as the opposite using the ‘wrong’ toilets? And if someone says they are a born woman (or man) how would anyone know otherwise?

(I personally have no idea why anyone cares this much but if you do I’m curious how you’d approach this!)

Don't police the toilets then, there is no law that says that you have to.

There are plenty of laws that control what you are allowed to do if you do set yourself up to police your customers, but why would you want to do this? Even the police didn't want to police your toilets!

This comment wins! Perfect solution! I know a cafe in Cleethorpes that does this. It's a good system!

The whole point of transitioning is that you don’t look like you did when you were born

You've a lot more faith in what putting on a dress and a bit of lippy will achieve than I have.

She could be sued by women whose right to single sex spaces are not being upheld

As I previously posted, there is no law requiring any sex to use the toilets provided for that sex (i.e. men using the ladies or ladies using the men's aren't breaking a law. Happy to be corrected by a link to the law).

I frequently see signs in public toilets stating that cleaners of both sexes clean.

There’s no right to single sex toilets in a cafe.