The City of London consultation didn’t go quite as they hoped...

[SwearyG]

Minutes of their meeting discussing it here and the two relevant pages attached as screen grabs.

They had 15k odd people fill it out, and in view of that are going to get professional analysis. I don’t think it’s because of the numbers, it’s because they didn’t get to sneak it through without anyone noticing. It’s interesting that they weren’t going to do this in the first place.

They are going to do an equality impact assesment (something they said they wouldn’t to me on the phone which they then backtracked slightly on via email).

They misrepresent EA 2010 saying you can’t discriminate against transsexuals. Now of course you can’t discriminate, but you can exclude them if proportionate/legitimate.

They do accept that sex based protections are a thing.

They have decided not to report to members until after the government publishes the results of their own consultation.

So the people with a vested interest in the City of London thought they’d get away with sneaking this through without it being noticed. ManFriday fought this super hard, and will continue to ensure that women and girls are protected properly in any policy the city enacts. I wonder if they wish they’d removed the consultation and written it properly in plain English like we asked now

Following some minor protest

You bloody stars.

And the only 70% thing. Dear God when I worked there uk nationals were in the minority because of the companies that were based there! International firms.

"Only" 70 per cent are UK nationals.

From Wikipedia: At the 2011 census, 36.7% of London's population was foreign born (including 24.5% born outside of Europe). With 3,082,000 residents born abroad in 2014. London has the largest population number (not percentage) of foreign-born.

Hardly surprising that some interested parties would be foreign nationals then, is it?

Well done for the hard work on this.

So in fact, the whole thing was meant to be sneaked under the radar, with no consultation and no-one noticing - until Man Friday got on the case!

Well done! I have vague hopes that one day I will be brave enough to swim in the Hampstead Ladies' Pond but in the mean time I do use the public toilets on the Heath and in the City and I occasionally visit the Guildhall Art Gallery, all of which come under the ambit of the Corporation. So I felt I had a legitimate interest in the consultation. When I worked in the city a long time ago, I used one of its branch libraries. It's a tiny area of London but there must be millions of people going in and out of the Square Mile every working day.

The other day I had my first experience of a unisex multi-cubicle loo in a place. It was clearly marked unisex, which was good (rather than gender neutral, which would be gobbledegook to a lot of people). On opening the door, I found a range of cubicles with substantial floor to ceiling walls and doors, so no possibility of anyone looking under or over from the adjacent cubicle and effective sound insulation, also good.

Nevertheless, I didn't like it. As I was going in, there was a man coming out. OK, I'm not used to this, and I expect I could get used to it. But the wash hand basins were all outside the cubicles. That was what bothered me. I have on occasion in the past emerged from a cubicle with blood on my hands (not dripping with gore! just what I couldn't get off with the loo paper). I would have hated to have to wash my hands in those circumstances standing next to a man.

Some people will feel I'm being a bit precious about this, but I think my personal privacy matters. I wondered how this unisex arrangement would have been received by a strict Muslim or Orthodox Jewish person.

This sort of stuff is why I am so grateful to Man Friday and all the other brave people who've put their heads above the parapet to fight for sex-segregated facilities.

Congratulations. I filled in the survey. I often feel with these things that there is no point because my voice won’t be heard. But I am wrong! 😁Without all your work I wouldn’t have heard about the survey.

Clearly it has not gone as they expected 🤣. Every voice counts.

Thank you for all you do.

ManFriday you are bloody brilliant

Activists are relying on the public not knowing what's going on.

As long as they work in secret, only pack the population of these surveys with sympathetic respondents and ensure the rest of the public, you know, the people who will be affected, don't respond, they will succeed in pushing their agenda.

Well done to everyone who publicised this survey so widely, that actual, 'ordinary' members of the public actually had their say.

Exactly TerfandSerf.

Activists had successfully managed to pass the GRA in law under the radar, and have subsequently gloated about that.

I suspect they hoped they could get self ID and other stuff, like this consultation, through in the same underhand way - and they've failed.

Many, many thanks to the women of ManFriday, and all the women fighting these legislation changes.

Oh, Sweary - brilliant work from you and Amy and all the Man Friday fellas. You are wonderful and brilliant and inspirational and, more to the point, you get shit done.

Oh good work. I filled it, feeling it was pointless, so glad I did.
It was a pile of bollocks anyway and conducted in a really bias manner.

Good, good, good.

Re: the Ponds. I left a couple of weeks ago on a hot day, as there was a constant stream of men coming and looking over the fence at women sunbathing. They stand by the sign and pretend to look at the sign and have a good ol gawp at the women. This is on the heath side enterance, where the City of London have failed to safeguard and provide proper screening.
Yep only women and girls.

After one of the lifeguards caught a man taking photos, I’d had enough.

I mean what could possibly go wrong women, you hysterical women need to dail you fear down.

hello, city of London you already have a mixed Gender pond. Fuck right off.

Jesus what is it about women having there own space that is so threatening.
You have the whole world men.

Great news - congratulations! Thanks for drawing attention to it here and on Twitter. Cheeky fuckers thinking none of the nice kind ladies would mind. We mind very much.

Edward Lord again.

Well done Sweary and Man Friday.

There are many grassroots women's groups working and campaigning about this subject. Well done to all of you. And keep going, it's working

Well done Sweary, thanks for the links, thanks for the explanation, thanks for the campaign and thanks to everyone who posted the link to the consultation over and over.

I'm so incredibly grateful for women such as sweary and manfriday - you are the Pankhursts and Davisons of the 21st century.

Best we can hope for is long grass at the moment
1 stop the law changing in favour of self ID
2 reverse the policy changes which already undermine sex specific spaces despite the Equality Act
3 change the zeitgeist so that it is socially acceptable to listen to women
4 ensure clarification in law of biological sex, of 'gender reassignment' and of any self ID loopholes

Thanks manfriday. This is good news.

In that order, but the first job is kicking everything into the long grass instead of this rush to change the law to women's disadvantage

I read somewhere that the barbican loos are unisex these days (not sure if its all of them).

Something about that just doesn't sit right with me about than - not only considering that in the barbican is a girls school.

Excellent news Sweary

They’ve got the law completely wrong at Point 6. Transsexuality is not a protected characteristic. You are not protected if you identify with a different gender from that which was assigned to you at birth. You are protected if you have undergone, are undergoing or intend to undergo a process of reassigning sex. Not if you wear a frock.

Well done and thank you so much for all that you have done.

ASA they did make them unisex but changed back after outcry. They had a consultation with a trans lobby group and genderqueer singer and decided to implement the mixed sex loos in a few areas.

Thank you so much for all you have done, and this really cheering update