Equalities Office: men who identify as women can be banned from female-only areas

[jgrobinson]

Equalities Office

Men who identify as women can be banned from female-only areas such as changing rooms if there is a 'justifiable reason', says a Government equality chief.

But Ollie Entwistle, head of LGBT policy at the Equalities Office, warned this was not an excuse to be 'trans exclusionary'.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5825513/Transgender-women-banned-female-areas-theres-justifiable-reason.html

Any links that aren't the Daily Fail?

The justifiable reason is that it's a women only space. Lots of women need women only spaces, for different reasons.

You see, welcome though that is, this is just illogical to me.

I don't see how you can say "yes if you have reasons you can separate the two" on the one hand and "transwomen are women" on the other.

Under current definitions of transphobia I also don't see how you could ever apply these "justifiable reasons" without being accused of being transphobic.

Unfortunately it's not clear whether this refers to any bloke who calls himself a woman, or someone with a GRC and therefore a birth certificate labelled F.

But overall this may signal that the administrative machinery of state is realizing that it's not practicable to replace sex by genderfeels.

But the objection is based on biology not being trans, therefore not transphobic.

I am happy to share my female only space with trans people as long as they match my female biology. Aka Are the same sex as me.

People with male bodies belong in the male changing rooms however they indentify in gender terms.

Not clicking a DM link.

The devil is in the detail, as always. It will have to be very specific.

If a space is just for women, but Transwomen are allowed to legally call themselves women, how can they be excluded?

Spaces will have to be labelled ‘female’. No transgender male can claim to be female (and be able to prove it). Ditch the word ‘women’s’ for ‘female’.

I'd like to be cheered by this but am unconvinced as to how it would actually work in practice. I predict a mass trans howling.

He's not really saying anything different from what we know already...we can exclude them but we shouldn't. Not very helpful.

This is from Gov guidance for providing services to transgender people. It was sent to me by the new Equalities Minister after I wrote to my MP. The onus is first on showing an overwhelming need to exclude. It also suggests people without a GRC are included.
I don't understand the relationship between legislation and guidance.
Separate and single sex services
You may only treat people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment
differently regarding access to services reserved for their self-identified gender if you can
demonstrate that the way you have approached a situation is a ‘proportionate means of
achieving a legitimate aim’ and so is objectively justifiable.
11
You need to be able to
show that there is no less discriminatory way to achieve the aim.
Unlawful discrimination against people with the protected characteristic of gender
reassignment is not acceptable and consequently the exception has to be used in
exceptional circumstances. Decisions made cannot be based on personal prejudice but
on evidence of detriment to others, and the service provider will need to show that a less
discriminatory way to achieve the objective was not available. Also, the service provider
still has to seek a way to provide that service to people with the protected characteristic
of gender reassignment.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission provides guidance on how services should
apply these exceptions.12 13 In general, it is very unlikely that any exceptions will apply in
ordinary 'high street' service provision situations.

imnobody4 I believe that document was created by Equalities Office and Gendered Intelligence in 2015:
happyslide.net/doc/1775508/providing-services-for-transgender-customers-a-guide

Therefore it contains the most extremely trans-positive interpretation of Equality Act 2010.

I suspect the Equalities Office are now trying to walk this back.

No - Ollie Entwistle also says the 'bar will be set high'. Yes, he said those things but he is parroting the TRA narrative that the Equality Act will protect women if self ID comes in. It won't.

His example was if a woman was in a refuge and her abusive partner was trans, s/he would not be allowed in. That's how high the bar is set. I mean that would apply even if the abusive partner was a lesbian. So I'm afraid Ollie Entwistle cannot be trusted with women's rights.

I've just checked the EHRC and that seems worse. This is all just double speak.Is the privacy and dignity of women a justification?

An organisation which is providing separate services or single-sex services should treat a transsexual personaccording to the sex in which the transsexual person presents (as opposed to the physical sex they were born with). The service provider can only exclude a transsexual person or provide them with a different service if they can objectively justify doing so.

A voluntary organisation may have a policy about providing its service to transsexual users, but this policy must still be applied on a case-by-case basis. It is necessary to balance the needs of the transsexual person for the service, and the disadvantage to them if they are refused access to it, against the needs of other users, and any disadvantage to them, if the transsexual person is allowed access. To do this may require discussion with service users (maintaining confidentiality for the transsexual service user). Care should be taken in each case to avoid a decision based on ignorance or prejudice.

Where a transsexual person is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from someone of their preferred gender, they should normally be treated according to their acquired gender unless there are strong reasons not to do so.
Where someone has a gender recognition certificate they should be treated in their acquired gender for all purposes and therefore should not be excluded from single sex services

The onus is first on showing an overwhelming need to exclude

Yes exactly. That's how high the bar is set. That will NOT protect women's changing rooms, toilets, prisons, rape crisis centres and refuges.

The Equality Act does include this example:

A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/notes/division/3/16/20/7/5/3

Presumably this would still apply even if the transsexual had a GRC. But that isn't clear.

It's all in the interpretation and the government's LGBT head of Equalities has said that the interpretation will be that the bar will be high and it will be case by case. There will challenges all the time and the Equalities Act and the Equalities bodies will not protect us. If the Act shows any danger of protecting us, it will come under even stronger attack.

A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful.

interesting to read this example because there are charities and services set up solely to cater for people with female sexed bodies, who are not following this example and excluding trans women. this despite trans women's bodies not having need of the services offered.

i think the charities weigh up the pros and cons and decide that being threatened by TRAs is not worth it. someone on another thread likened this kind of unrelenting insistence on entering female spaces as akin to sexual harassment.

also why in that example could a trans man not attend the session? it is not very well worded.

Remember that once someone has a GRC they are not a "transsexual person" outside the confines of the Gender Recognition Act by operation of s9 of the Act on all original documents including birth certificate and medical records.

Yes, there is an exemption

The problem is that since you can get official docs such as passports updated with a different sex with no gate keeping, what do you do? If you challenge someone and say “I don’t think you’re female”. How do you prove they’re not entitled to use the service.

Are you sure about that gibb? Does someone with a GRC no longer have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment?

People with a GRC are the point of the sex exemptions in the Equality Act. The sex exemption specifically allows exclusion of people with a GRC.

"Are you sure about that gibb? Does someone with a GRC no longer have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment?"

They do by perception. So if someone calls them trans or misgenders them, the protection is triggered because A, the person doing the discrimination, clearly then perceives B to be a transsexual person. In practice, that covers most of it.

But absent that - say for indirect discrimination - I don't think they do, although there has been no test case. By operation of s9(ii) of GRA 2004 a person cannot be said to have had the purpose of reassigning sex because, outside GRA, both birth certificates read the same sex. That will change if feminists successfully argue for a biological rather than legal definition of sex. I find it sort of amusing that they are campaigning to increase the scope of the Equality Act without realising it.

You may find this amusing Gibberty but the majority of women do not. We are increasing angry about this unthought out pressure by men on women and our lives. And we will resist.