Self-ID/Equalities Act and the current law

[Biologicalreality]

Please can I check my understanding of the current laws about equality/discrimination and sex/gender?

Am I right in thinking:

The Equalities act makes it illegal to discriminate in terms of certain protected characteristics (sex and race being some of those, gender identity being another?)

It then provides for certain exceptions.

So if we take changing rooms in shops for example:

1. They are not a legal requirement.
2. If you have them for men you also have to have them for women?
3. You could have unisex ones.
4. If you were a shop that only sold clothes 'for men' (obviously women could wear them if they wanted to) would you be allowed to have a changing room for men and not for women?
5. What seems to me to be unclear is if you have them labelled 'women' who you allow to go in there. Obviously all legal women can. But if you let men who are not legal women in, but who say they are a woman, is that discriminating against men who are not legal women and who say they are a man? Is it discriminating against women to say they are single sex and then not make them actually so?
6. In this case the answer seems to be to make all changing rooms unisex. Then at least it is clear that everyone can go in. Some people of course will then choose not to go in.

How far does the Equalities Act go to protect 'people who believe that transwomen are not women'?

For example, if your job description was 'to conduct strip searches/body searches/bra fittings for women' and you didn't want to do that for a man (even if they had a GRC, but presuming in this case no surgery) are you protected somewhere?

And where sex segregation is more obviously needed (hospital/prison) is there a duty to provide sex segregation? Or is there only a clause allowing that to be provided? How about access to female health care professionals?

Long explanation:

fairplayforwomen.com/equality-act-2010_womens-rights/

Quick summary:

fairplayforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/handout_EA2010.pdf

Thanks that is very interesting. It seems all to be worded as 'it is lawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex if....' . I still can't see anything that protects (eg) a female worker who has been told her job is to search women, and who does not want to search a man.

Nor can I see anything that would protect (eg) a female netball player who joined a women's netball league only to find that (due to the league being inclusive of all women) an opposing team are made up entirely of biological men. All she can do is set up her own league and use the exemptions provided? Is that right?

Yes.

Entities can act as they like, provided it is within the law.

The real problem isn't that EA2010 is insufficient. It is that political pressure and activism intimidates entities from asserting the exemptions.

That said, employees required to, for example, perform bodily searches on members of the opposite sex may have some recourse via their union. This happened in Scotland with the real charmer Andrew Burns/Tiffany Scott.

I see. So it goes something like this:

1. Swimming pool advertises 'women only' session (which it is allowed to do).
2. Swimming pool turns away TIM (which it is allowed to do)
3. Swimming pool gets attacked in some way
4. Swimming pool changes its policy either:

a) to allow in 'anyone who says they are female' to the women only session or b) to cancel women only sessions.

1. Either way, certain women stop going swimming.

So my question about that is - is it legal to advertise a women's only session and then apply a self-id policy? Presumably yes as long as you make it clear what the rules of the session are?

Yes. s.28 of Schedule 2 to the EA 2010 allows women only spaces to be sex segregated and exclude transgender people if they are acting in pursuit of a legitimate aim (eg encouraging women who wouldn't swim in mixed space to go swimming)

The pool has an option c) which is to say "bring on your lawyers then" and defend its policy in court. So far the parameters of the EA have not been tested in court as far as I know - which makes it hard for the pool to know whether they would be likely to win but also hard for whoever sues them too. At the moment it turns into a game of who blinks first.

As far as I can see, the exemptions in the EA pretty much require you to be able to prove that a single sex space is 'proportionate' and I cannot see the organisations or groups where this applies having the time and the money to take out from the work they do in order to fight a speculative court case that some activist brings against them.

Therefore it is easier for them to cave in and 'accommodate' in hope that it is not a situation that arises. Then they will give short shrift to anyone that complains because they are powerless to do anything about it.

Yes, it's couched in similar terms to the qualified articles of the Human Rights Act / ECHR - you have to be acting proportionately and in pursuit of a legitimate aim.

However it's not a total free-for-all; the Codes of Practice would give guidance to the courts on how the law should be interpreted, and those cover your swimming pool example (in favour of the swimming pool). Have a look at the bottom of p197 onwards of this: www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/servicescode_0.pdf

It's followed by a section on gender reassignment which appears to deal only with transsexuals, ie people who have GRCs.

But yes, nobody wants to be a test case, it's a massive black hole of time and energy and money.

One of our swimming pools is ending female only sessions partly due to the difficulty of defining who is a 'woman'. I suppose it comes back to what the purpose of the sessions are in the first place, and beneficiaries include religious (mostly muslim/jewish) women, some parts of which don't even accept fully operative transwomen as women. Whether thats bigots or religious observance is anyones guess. There were also complaints from men they are being charged the same for membership and have less access, many other solutions to that.

Regarding hospitals, I'm told trans people are more likely to be put in single wards or at least curtained privacy in a shared ward (of their chosen gender). That was one on hormone treatment and waiting for surgeries, though that wasn't a gender related op they were in for.

There was a pool recently that stopped it's women only sessions after a man complained that it breached laws about sexism.

Then a petition and a lot of coverage happened and they realised that it wasn't illegal and put them back agian.

Point here being that there are not a few men out there who dislike "women only" anything on the basis that it's somehow "not fair" as they can't have "anything" any more due to bloody feminists. eg at my work they started banging on about this at a women's network thing using an imaginary "one legged lesbians only" group as an example.

Of course the real answer is to say "if you want a men only swimming session then find if there is demand, demonstrate the demand and then talk to the centre about it" the way women have got these things in the first place. But that's not what they want is it, they don't want men only swimming, they just want for women not to be allowed to have it.

So, TRA aims here align well with what a lot of ordinary men want let alone MRAs.

I know this post is at a tangent but I don't like women only swimming sessions being used as supporting argument for other sex-segregated areas in the trans debate.

The UK has a history of men and women bathing together. Changing separately is a different issue.

A particular immigrant culture where I live does not have this tradition. I have observed that the women of this culture do not use any of the mixed public bathing sessions. I actually find it sad and offensive to see men, boys, and some younger girls having fun in the pool while the women sit covered up on the sidelines.

There is one women only hour a week when these women are 'allowed' to swim. But I find it wrong that they cannot swim in the dozens of other hours available at the pool for men of their culture and anyone of of Western culture. One measly hour is a travesty really. And as a side issue, what if you can't ever make that hour?

I don't buy the argument that this is their free religious choice. I think it is cultural oppression not religious choice.

The woman only hour also acts to undermines any argument these women might have with the men in their culture that they cannot swim and it's unfair. The men can say: "but you can swim, in the women only hour".

I think these women's lives would have greater equality if their culture embraced a Western tradition of it being perfectly acceptable for women to swim in the same sessions as men, as I have done all my life.

I know this point jars in the current trans debate over sex-segregated spaces but I think that specific cases of what I see as cultural misogynistic oppression add a burden to women's lives rather than a protection. Haven't women often been covered up and kept out of public spaces with the excuse that it is for their own protection?

I am not arguing that we should do away with women only sessions as they obviously have a tradition of serving women with a perfectly reasonable preference or emotional need (as opposed to a cultural directive) to swim separately. But I do think they help to maintain a misogynistic status quo in the context I describe and I so do not think women only swimming sessions are the best example to use in the trans debate.

In the meantime though, they don't swim, while we, what, wait for their menfolk to get up to speed?

I'd love to have more women only stuff.

I think that men should have men only stuff as well if they want - do they though? Would men want men only swimming? If not, why not? It's an interesting question.

PracticallyTerfectInEveryWay

Plenty of pervy men love lane swimming behind women. It's happened to me. More than once.

Or those ones who lurk under the water with goggles on yuck

That is always the argument that is used Up. Better these women have one hour than none. .

But I predict the menfolk will never get up to speed while a woman only hour is provided. And it weakens the case of the women in the community who might otherwise be able to campaign within their community for the right to be able to swim - in any public session.

We end up with short term gain, long term pain instead of vice versa.

I'm not arguing for the removal of woman only hours. Just that it is not the responsibility of my local baths to make provision for religious oppression, and it isn't the best example of our need for sex-segregated spaces.

I know what you mean about having more women only spaces. I like them but I am aware that any segregation in public spaces or facilities, as opposed to private changing rooms and suchlike, is the thin end of the wedge which ends like Saudi Arabia and similar countries. At some point on the continuum men start using the idea against women, to justify harassment of them when they venture into any public space inhabited by men.

There is actually a men only hour too at one of my local pools. There is apparently good uptake. Possibly because there is demand for the pool at all times so men will take the hour because it is available not necessarily because it is men only.

"I like them but I am aware that any segregation in public spaces or facilities, as opposed to private changing rooms and suchlike, is the thin end of the wedge which ends like Saudi Arabia and similar countries."

That doesn't make any logical sense.

You are taking your cultural norms as being somehow natural law, and everyone elses as being not right and they need to bend to what we do.

Having sex segregated changing facilities (if they are open) is a Uk cultural norm. Why do you see it as natural and right to enforce this but you want to do away with women only sessions at pools, gyms etc as they are apparently the thin end of the wedge and we end up liek saudi arabia?

Why so we segregate hospital wards? This is a cultural norm, we don't have to. Why do we segregate toilets? Why do we do anything?

Maybe it makes sense for women only swimming to be widely available so women don't have to run the potential gauntlet of aggression and / or pervs in the pool. Sounds good to me.

"I like them but I am aware that any segregation in public spaces or facilities, as opposed to private changing rooms and suchlike, is the thin end of the wedge which ends like Saudi Arabia and similar countries."

That doesn't make any logical sense.

You are taking your cultural norms as being somehow natural law, and everyone elses as being not right and they need to bend to what we do.

Having sex segregated changing facilities (if they are open) is a Uk cultural norm. Why do you see it as natural and right to enforce this but you want to do away with women only sessions at pools, gyms etc as they are apparently the thin end of the wedge and we end up liek saudi arabia?

Why so we segregate hospital wards? This is a cultural norm, we don't have to. Why do we segregate toilets? Why do we do anything?

Maybe it makes sense for women only swimming to be widely available so women don't have to run the potential gauntlet of aggression and / or pervs in the pool. Sounds good to me.

Ooops PC playing up sorry