So how do we fight the misleading guidance that is eroding the Equalities Act?

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

I know we are already fighting the battle on too many fronts, but one thing that seems particularly insidious is the undermining of the legal sex based exceptions in the Equalities act eg recently

• Swimming pond
• TIM trying to perform smear test
• TIMs on female wards in hospitals
• TI children in schools / guides etc

These organisations, as far as I can tell, are all going against the Equalities act with complete impunity - I presume they are being advised by TRAs?

This is legislation that already exists to protect women's spaces - why is it not being used?

Sorry, another thought, it struck me that a good use of money might be to fund lawyers to write to these orgs and point out what the actual law says - IANAL but surely the Equalities act actually means something?

Strategic litigation. I haven't got round to reading this guide yet but it looks very useful from the blurb.

We would need cases to be brought by people personally affected in each situation. A few of those with enough publicity would prompt organisations to rewrite their guidance. I'm not sure just writing to the orgs would achieve much unless it was a 'letter before action' - i.e. change your guidance or our client will see you in court.

Anywhere this is happening in the public sector (hospitals, schools, council run leisure facilities etc.) we could also use the public sector equality duty but again, I think we need people who have been personally affected to bring cases.

So we need brave people to be test cases and lots of money. I'd be happy to donate.

I would hope that the current fund raising effort to mount a legal challenge against the Labour party is a start and will give an impetus to start challenging elsewhere,
I also think that there's a significant shift in terms of publicity and this IS starting to highlight the nature of some of the delusional aspects of this cult - and also their techniques they use to silence women are being highlighted - and it's not a good look.
And yes, in the absence of any political party that can represent women, I suspect we are going to have to 'crowd fund' legal challenges.

PencilsinSpace
So a school who implements the NAHT's transgender guidelines where women teachers who are told to 'go elsewhere' when a self ID TiM demands to use the female toilets, could find themselves at the centre of a test case.
I'd also donate to something like that.

If you have donated to the gofundme site Jennifer is going to run a poll on the best use of the funds. She wants ideas. Apart from the obvious challenge to the LP to define terms.

Well they wouldn't 'find themselves' at the centre of a test case but they could agree to be claimants in a test case IYSWIM. It's a big ask because it would be a very public thing to do.

Yes, I think there will be test cases.

But as cases to date have shown, when there are two 'competing' protected characteristics, it is the one who feels they are being denied access that defines his the other can present itself in the public arena.

So Jew, Muslims and some Christians have had to alter how they live publically in accordance with their beliefs, because they cannot refuse goods and services to homosexuals (even in well-supplied sectors, where there is no question that alternative supply would be anything other than abundant).

So I expect that any legal challenge on this would come out much the same way. The more disadvantaged group (in this case transgender people) is likely to get the greater protection in law.

Remember, one reason for lack of traction in public policy on this is that it is being formulated with regard to the transgender population as a whole, not a few criminal outliers.

I definitely think strategic legislation is the way to go.

But we will need to be much better organised.

The more disadvantaged group (in this case transgender people) is likely to get the greater protection in law.

But how do you measure “disadvantage”?

On what basis are transgender people 'the most disadvantaged'?

I posted this in AIBU but I think it's a good test case. The woman in question has already gone public and is still suffering a disadvantage because she no longer feels able to access NHS treatment when she has relapses:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3138989-To-be-absolutely-raging-that-womens-rights-and-well-being-count-for-absolutely-nothing

Maybe this is how the NHS is saved - Make women feel so uncomfortable and unsafe using it that you only have to provide treatment for 50% of the population.

Awful. Poor woman. Being on a psyc ward is traumatic enough when you are very vunerable without any extra considerations having to be made.

I definitely think strategic legislation is the way to go

It certainly sounds like it could be quite an efficient way of doing things.

But we will need to be much better organised.

And there's the rub...

But as cases to date have shown, when there are two 'competing' protected characteristics, it is the one who feels they are being denied access that defines his the other can present itself in the public arena.

Self-identification isn't a protected characteristic. The problem here is people looking at this as though the proposed amendments to the GRA 2004 have already been made.

Your argument based on two 'competing' protected characteristics is a non-starter.

It's possible that trans people might be the more disadvantaged group in particular situations. Personally, I would not be in favour of banning transmen from female spaces because they appear masculine. They are female and have every right to be there. Or from creating situations which make it difficult for them to access appropriate healthcare, e.g. no longer receiving mammogram invites.

But it's never about transmen or transsexuals in this narrative of disadvantage, is it? Always about the transwomen.

Its not about the 'least disadvantaged group'. Its about safeguarding of all vulnerable persons.

Work on it from this point of view.

We're on the same page RedToothBrush but perhaps that didn't come over in my post. I was responding to meditrina.

I think the crux for me is that sex and gender identity have become conflated, when they are two different things.

We need to fight to keep "sex" and "gender identity" separate for the purposes of law and policy, rather than chuck them together in the same box. Funny though that the "MAN" box doesn't get co-mingled like this, isn't it

Most women's rights issues concern biology, perceptions of it, and social circumstances stemming directly from it such as child rearing.

I feel I'm losing the right to have a biological sex based identity as opposed to a gender identity. Why should gender take precedence over sex? For those who do not identify with, or as having a gender, this is discriminatory.

When MN took on the government over Bounty, the whole stick was that 'women on a maternity ward are not vulnerable'.

It was almost a case of demonstrating the various ways in which Trusts hadn't considered safeguarding when it came to Bounty and why women WERE vulnerable and acted in ways which they would not normally do so AND how widespread issues were, and how no complaints didn't necessarily mean there wasn't an issue. Its just that women didn't feel able to complain or raise an objection. Hence this is why they were vulnerable...

You can do this, by asking certain questions about how institutions have done risk assessments for certain situations that might involve a vulnerable person via an FOI request.

What I suspect you will find is an absence of risk assessments, and any policy there might be, will be based on one sided thinking.

You have to force transparency on how they have come to decisions like this, and ask how they have assessed the needs of both vulnerable women and transpeople and come up with said policy.

Its all in the wording as to whether it works.

But the basis point is getting them to some how admit that whilst they might be assessing the needs of transpeople they have not considered its impact on vulnerable women.

Its essentially about pointing out, whether they have fully compiled with their responsibilities via the Equalities Act that protects on the basis of sex as well as gender.

The intent is to start growling at institutions that you know all about the Equalities Act and how they might be breaking the law and almost hint that they have a liability that they need to sought out pronto.

These institutions do not want a legal case and will try and head it off.

Yes a legal case would be very helpful, but getting institutions to be seen to have their pants down on safeguarding, is more to the point.

We are talking schools - have they assessed properly the bodies going into schools and whether they are suitable.
We are talking hospitals - and potential rape / sexual abuse victims
We are talking plastic surgery etc - and whether young people are getting a range of information from a range of sources and are able to make properly informed decisions which are accurate.

Identify who is most at risk.

At the moment, the situation is the idea of the poor trans community where everyone is a good guy. That's never the case in any situation. There are good and bad in every community and their are people with conflicting interests which might be putting the vulnerable at risk for their own political agendas and profit.

As I say, I don't think you need to necessarily get as far as going legal. Just scare people and make them realise they are responsible if they don't take their safeguarding seriously in this area and something does happen on their watch or they might face a legal challenge.

People have started to post on social media about how its women and radfems challenging this that are the ones upholding the law.

I think thats a useful message to post online, it appeals to both left and right. Left wing people are concerned about the erosion of human rights and the loss of human rights legislation.
And right wing people are concerned about upholding the law.

RedToothBrush

Brilliant post and yes to it all.

Perhaps what we need are some tireless researchers willing to flood TPTB with FOI requests - as Dr Nic did with the prison trans population.

In disability issues, the Equality Act has an expectation of reasonable adjustments, with the key word being reasonable (proportional to budget, size of organisation, number of people affected, degree to which they are affected). If a (properly done, not thoroughly fudged like the Scots one) risk assessment and evidence of having made reasonable adjustments (which include compromise) then that is legally defensible grounds for not accepting an individual or meeting their needs as they request. It's about balance, the Equality Act in this way doesn't expect other involved parties to accept real disadvantage or loss.

So a reasonable adjustment to a request to enter a changing room of the opposite sex might be provision of a unisex space, or for a facility with a large budget and large clientele, it might be to restructure the changing room to be single, lockable rooms instead of a communal room.

The sticking point here is that it is NOT about meeting the specific raised needs about safety etc, it comes down to the one basic debate: are trans women legally women in all situations without exemption, or are trans women trans women, who are fine to join women in many social situations and categories but there are exemptions around intimate care, nudity, privacy and dignity where biological women are seen as a specific legal group with their own separate rights. (Sex) In those situations separate arrangements need to be made for trans women and biological women.

If you believe transwomen are transwomen then that seems the sensible way forward. If however you believe that trans women must be included as biological women at all times without exemption - that by self id they are women in every legal sense and biological women have no separate needs or rights of any kind - then no reasonable adjustment will seem reasonable because it dodges the key issue of validation and acceptance of dogma over actual fact.

Until a legal decision is reached - which is going to involve pushing it to a court - as to whether biological women are an identifiable group with separate needs and requirements to be met in some situations that require them to be planned for as a separate group without incorporation of anyone other than biological women, this won't be settled.