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.

That kind of setup is not legal.

They aren't women for all purposes which actually permit men and women to be treated differently in public life.

It’s fascinating to me that people will make these statements and then simultaneously claim that they are not trying to erase/ do not support the erasure of trans people from public life.

They aren't being erased from anything.

Where spaces or services are divided into male or female, everyone is included because everyone is either male or female.

Requiring trans people to respect the same rules as everyone else isn't erasing them.

Trying to make the definition of woman include male people IS actually an attempt to erase female people in law.

insisting that trans people must be treated as their “birth sex” in all aspects of public life is absolutely erasing trans people from public life. It’s completely erasing the very thing that makes people trans.

Anyways, god knows how I got dragged into this with you again. You’d think I would learn.

Thank you OP for a very excellent thread 😆

Yep.

The thing that makes people trans is their own, personal, private identity.

I don't expect people to care about my favourite colour or my star sign, so why should the rest of society have to rearrange itself to accommodate a small number of people's gender identities?

Your identity is personal to you. It is completely irrelevant to everyone else and to what toilets you should be using.

But it’s not the very thing that makes them trans. That would be identifying as the opposite sex to the one they were born.

I’m supportive of anyone identifying as whatever gender they like. Dress how you like, do what you like, but don’t expect to pee with women as they don’t want you to.

OP - if you are serious about getting advice on your legal position wrt your toilets, you need to go elsewhere than MN, and definitely ignore this thread which is about as wrong as you can get in it's understanding of the law (example "The Supreme Court doesn't get the law wrong. The Supreme Court IS the law" 😂😂😂)

The Supreme Court handed down judgment on how the terms “man”, “woman” and “sex” should be interpreted in the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010) in light of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA). Nothing to do with toilets, but actually that The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 introduced an objective that 50% of non-executive members of public boards should be women. It defined “woman” as including people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. You can read the Courts PR here supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_press_summary_8a42145662.pdf

The HoC library publishes research papers on topics to educate MPs on topics to help them in the laws that they create and modify. It published a paper on the SC's judgement (below) and helpfully pointed out that the judgement didn't apply to toilets and provided the following review:

it is not compulsory for services which are open to the public to be provided on a single-sex basis, or to have single-sex facilities such as toilets, but that this is permitted if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, and meets other conditions in the act. However, not providing single-sex services or facilities could be indirect discrimination against women.
The interim update said that people should not use facilities provided for the other biological sex “as this will mean they are no longer single-sex facilities and must be open to all users of the opposite sex”. Further, it said there may be circumstances where trans people are not permitted to use single-sex facilities according to their acquired gender or their biological sex, and that in these cases they should not be put in a position where there are no facilities for them to use. It recommended that where possible, mixed-sex facilities should be provided in addition to single-sex facilities.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10259/#:~:text=The%20GRA%20enables%20people%20whose,recognition%20in%20their%20acquired%20gender.

Of course the whole subject is under review so expect changes.

But please don't take legal advice from MN.

in law do disability rights beat womens or mens rights? for example if a man was violently vomiting and ran into the womans loos as the mens were full, came out 5 minutes later and apologized would this legally be okay?

Your example is legally fine because (as I have previously said several times) there is no law that requires men to not use women's toilets.

You'll get a lot better advice on the Feminism: sex and gender forum on this site.

so basically if I add locks or a keycode to the door and I don't hand over the key to anyone who insists biologically female I can be sued?.. surely i'm missing something

You can be sued for anything by anyone. Whether they win or not is another matter.

Locking the toilets and refusing to give the key to someone who you reasonably believe not to match the sex of the toilet is quite likely to be lawful. Single-sex toilets are a proportionate means to a legitimate end, and therefore it's lawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex in order to provide them, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, as long as you have clear signage as to which is which then you don't have to police the toilets at all. Nobody can sue you because you didn't prevent a man from using the women's toilet.

So really it depends on how much you care about the issue personally.

If you do get sued, then JK Rowling's legal fund seems a good place to apply to for help: https://jkrwf.org/

Fighting a legal case will take years off your life and make you a hero to many and a zero to some others. If you don't want to do it, everyone will understand - you want to run a cafe, not be a legal test case.

enforcing the treatment of trans people according to birth sex in all aspects of public life where men and women are treated differently is treating them as if they weren’t trans in all aspects of public life. This is literally want it is. It says what it is on the tin!!! It’s erasing transness from public life. saying “Oh you can be trans in your head” does not mitigate this. It is still erasing trans people from public life.

I agree there is a balance to be struck. I was responding specifically to this statement :

”They aren't women for all purposes which actually permit men and women to be treated differently in public life.”

Treating them as if they are trans - yes. Treating them as if they are literally the opposite sex they want to be or think they are - no.

@coffeeandmycats

Further to my prior posts, you have three options all of which are legal and comply with the EHRC's forthcoming code of conduct:

a: Both toilets can be used by anyone (with a slight chance of a claim by women of indirect discrimination)

b: A toilet for men (and men who identify as women), and a toilet for women (and women who identify as men)

c: separate unisex toilets designed or a single occupant each of which includes handwashing facilities and a full height door

If you have employees who also use the same toilets, then only b and c above comply with the Workplace Regulations with which you also have to comply.

Option d - to permit men who identify as women to use the women's toilet is not legal. Nevertheless the law doesn't require you to work very hard to prevent this: clear signage is enough. If people don't follow the signs, that's their recidivist behaviour that's the issue, not yours.

So Much Bad advice is living up to their name.

A House of Commons briefing does not change the law.

The Supreme Court ruled on April 16th
Entitled men will have to get over it

Agreed.

Agreed by me also.

You thought you’d add your own misinformation then. This ruling does apply to toilets as sex segregated spaces. It is not limited to representation on boards, that was simply the original case. All aspects of the protected characteristic of sex are affected by it. It is not obligatory to provide single sex toilets, but it may be indirect discrimination against women not to do so. As your source clearly says.

Also, please quote the wording where it “helpfully” says the judgment doesn’t apply to toilets. It doesn’t say that, does it? Because it does, and you’re talking nonsense @SoMuchBadAdvice

Not my information, just the advice the lawyers of the HoC Library are giving MPs. As it happens I don't have a view on Trans rights, but I have had enough experience and training in law to recognise legal gobbledegook when I read it.

so in an emergency ie vomiting anyone can use any toilet etc?

The law is clear. The problem many people, on this thread and in the orgs that have had many years of incorrect training and advice, have is not that it is not clear, but that they do not like what it clearly says.

So they avoid updating their out of date illegal advice, and they claim it's unclear, and they throw around any question they can think of, any scenario they can invent, to create confusion and muddy the waters in the hope that they can bully the government into changing the law or forcing the EHRC to release new guidance that actually is unclear enough to allow trans women to continue to violate women's rights and women's boundaries.

The reality is it is entirely clear that women's singel sex provisions are for biological women alone. The only people who find them unclear are the people who really want to shoehorn trans women into them anyway.

Wish people would care more about wars or child poverty than they did about toilets! As long as I'm in a stall with a lock and it's clean, I really couldn't care who was in the other stall. One thing I do hate is unisex toilets which are disgusting and I wish everyone would stop going on about toilets as they'll all end up being unisex