City of London Consultation Results - they can't get away with this

[2010Equality]

Man Friday!

The City of London consultation on “gender identity” and single-sex facilities (including Hampstead Ponds, toilets and changing rooms at running track, facilities at the Barbican etc... ) results are out .

It's bad. The policy has been adopted on the basis of the flawed survey and misreading of the equality act.

My thread here

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1130973355849461765.html

They can't get away with this!

Well well well, if it isn't our old friend...Edward Lord.

He is a profoundly unserious person and this is his equalities impact on religion / belief:

Additional Equalities Data (Service level or Corporate)
The GI Policy may challenge beliefs about single sex services and facilities in some religious communities. The GI Policy could therefore have a challenging impact on the use of services and facilities by members of those communities.

What is the proposal’s impact on the equalities aims?
The proposal is consistent with the Equality Act 2010 provisions on religion and belief.

Mitigation
The Public Sector Equality Duty includes a responsibility to ‘foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristics and persons who do not share it’, and the City may want to consider what opportunities the GI Policy creates for dialogue with and between different communities.

OUTCOME OF ASSESSMENT
BOX ticked:
Adjustments to remove barriers identified by the assessment or to better advance equality. Are you satisfied that the proposed adjustments will remove the barriers identified?

BOX NOT TICKED
Continue despite having identified some potential adverse impacts or missed opportunities to advance equality. In this case, the justification should be included in the assessment and should in line with the duty have ‘due regard’. For the most important relevant policies, compelling reasons will be needed. You should consider whether there are sufficient plans to reduce the negative impact and/or plans to monitor the actual impact.

Any womens pond ex users because of this policy on here?

In that document linked above "Gender Identity Equality Analysis" two protected characteristics have erroneously been combined as "sexual orientation and gender reassignment".

This is not what the law that is the Equality Act, which separates these two.

Further, since "Gender Identity" has no definition in any UK law and is not referred to in any way in UK law how is it possible to relate this undefined concept to the Equality Act?

I’d be delighted to contribute to a crowdfunder.

I’d definitely contribute to a crowdfund to challenge this.

What about in the meantime - mass stickering?!

My cash would be forthcoming.

Oh what a surprise. I remember filling in that survey because of how furious the biased questions made me. 100% safe bet that my answers, which focused on the ongoing and unchanged need for sex segregation, got filtered out.

So I guess I’m now changing with Edward Lord on his man days. Fucking A.

Maybe RadFem lawyer could advise? Not sure if she is on here but I'll send her a link to this thread on twitter DM

City of London facilities are in a number of constituancies.
People living there might want to flag up issues with their MP?

sorry, I find it really hard to debunk the language

so if the conclusion is that everything is gender based, then are they say everyone can use everything - women can use what's currently the male bathing pond at Hampstead?

We need to start using the men's pool. My gender identity is consistently masculine, I am always trousering and frequent first class rail travel with the predominantly male passengers on a daily basis and therefore expect the men in the pond to respect my aquired identity.

There was a lovely gentle documentary on Hampstead ponds on bbc4 the other day.

Both men and women sung the praises of the single sex ponds for that very reason.

Change that and you change the very soul of them.

so if the conclusion is that everything is gender based, then are they say everyone can use everything - women can use what's currently the male bathing pond at Hampstead?

When a group of #ManFriday women identifying as men used the male ponds, police were called. The female men were asked to leave and the police cited a bylaw which meant that the men's pool was single sex.

My memory was that at the time, this bylaw (not City Of Lordon Corp) possibly did not protect the women's pool in the same way.

Im not completely sure of the outcome.

So consultations now just discount the "wrong" answers - WTAF

Thread about ManFriday's Hampstead Pool action last year:

OP PencilsInSpace wrote Mon 28-May-18
"Turns out Hampstead swimming ponds are single SEX after all ...

... at least the men's pond is

Well done to the fabulous #ManFriday gents for exposing this rank hypocricy! Splendid work, chaps"

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3261705-Turns-out-Hampstead-swimming-ponds-are-single-SEX-after-all

Would this be a good candidate for judicial review? Many people would donate. There was a thread on judicial review (can't find at mo as am on my phone). I believe the challenge has to be made quickly. From threads on here and twitter from the wpuk meeting the other night it sounds like there is a network of lawyers willing to get involved in this kind of thing.

The fact that those who agree just ticked the boxes raises an interesting point. Some of the beliefs underpinning policies like this can only be maintained if you don't look at them closely. Don't scrutinise your own thought processes, or ask yourself why you think that's true. Just tick the box. I wonder if when they publish the finding from the gra consultation they will say how many responses were cribbed ones and how many wrote their own answers.

Is there any way to access all of the original responses and have them analysed?

Mon 28-May-18 SwearyG's account of the day:

"We had half a dozen women swimming, and about the same handing out leaflets and talking to the men. I think it was enough to make an impact, but not so many as to be massively intrusive. Perfect, if you will.

I emailed the Corporation of London about self ID trans inclusivity a month or so ago and received confirmation that we were welcome in the ponds we identified with, so no rules were broken.

It turns out, however, that the super-woke rules don't match up with the bylaws. The lifeguards called the rozzers on us and we were summoned to speak to them. I was out of the pond by them as I had run out of patience talking to a man who called us "petty and Edwardian" many times so I said I'd round everyone up. Seems rounding up self ID transmen swimmers is like herding cats grin but we got out of the pond. The super cross, manly, policemen took us to a side area and got their telling-off-book out and said we were in breach of summary offences, at which point I wibbled. Fortunately one of the other chaps said "Sweary has an email" so they asked to see it and changed their tune.

They told us, once we were changed and outside, that we had breached some bylaws but because the email was ambiguous they wouldn't take action today. No names or addresses were taken, but they will feed back to their Chief Constable. So the rules and the bylaws don't marry, fancy that.

Most of the men we spoke to - inside and outside moved from outraged that women were in their pond to agreeing with us in a matter of moments. I have a very fond memory now of a very grand old chap swearing at us in the ponds, and then when he realised we were on the same side outside having a lovely chat and a bit of a cuddle.

Anyway, all of us who do this are brave. Amy and I are the people who are at the front but there were a good dozen very brave women behind us, who are amazing."

this was almost exactly a year ago

The fact that those who agree just ticked the boxes raises an interesting point. Some of the beliefs underpinning policies like this can only be maintained if you don't look at them closely. Don't scrutinise your own thought processes, or ask yourself why you think that's true. Just tick the box.

It was widely promoted on trans-twitter.
Many twitterTRAs fromoutside the UK were commenting that they were completing it at the time it was running.

Absolutely not on. Man Friday, are you going to wade back in?? (hopes)

CoL is hardly renowned for transparency, accountability and fairness, and I partly expected this lack of clear-sightedness from them, but this is still gobsmacking.

The government listened when thousands of us objected to the prospect of Self-ID being made law, yet the CoL have cloth ears and mushy brains when thousands more of us raise the same issue.

They are thumbing their noses at the legislature, and at women. They really don't think that we matter, and that we have rights. I would like to see a good judge send them back to their lane. Local authorities don't get to reinvent settled law to suit the ideological whims of councillors.

Sex is a protected characteristic for the purposes of the EA 2010. Gender isn't. Gender identity isn't. They have no legal basis for this policy, and they're just opening themselves to being sued when a male predator takes advantage of the policy to cause harm to women and girls.

Binning thousands of responses setting out logical objections? Procedural unfairness, surely. This has to be subject to judicial review. I would support a crowdfunder, and more.

I will be contacting friends in the area to alert them to the fact that their council believes it can deprive them of the simple right to tell a man to leave the womens' toilets/changing room, including when accompanying their infant daughters.

And what about CoL's duty to provide single sex loos for under 8s?

What about the fact it's manifestly, blatantly, and obviously proportionate and legitimate to give women and girls places to change without males present?

This can't be allowed to stand. We have to fight it, and demonstrate once and for all that the law is on our side. I cannot imagine a court finding in their favour or, even if a particular judge had drunk the proverbial Kool Aid, they would surely be overturned on appeal. I'd love to see Baroness Hale tackle this.

If we can't fight it in the courts, I'd suggest a boycott of the Barbican would be in order. Speak to the Corporation in a language they understand - money.

Oh what a surprise. I remember filling in that survey because of how furious the biased questions made me. 100% safe bet that my answers, which focused on the ongoing and unchanged need for sex segregation, got filtered out
^^
this

Absolutely not on. Man Friday, are you going to wade back in?? (hopes)

#Manfriday announcement

A Job Well Done
Posted on November 20, 2018
What a year.

What started off as one woman heading off to her local pool to demand they accept her as a man on her say-so became a nationwide group of nearly 200 women, er, men, with national and international news coverage, smashing #nodebate into tiny, glittering unicorn sparkle pieces. Six months on and:

Swim England had withdrawn their Orwellian guidance telling swimming pools to ‘re-educate’ pesky women to accept men in their changing rooms, showers and closed swimming sessions;
various organisations, including the City of London Corporation, had taken another look at badly-thought-out policies admitting men into women’s spaces;
the government had responded to our petition, announcing an open public consultation on proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act that had previously been seen as a done deal; and, most importantly;
people were talking and the great British public knew very well that ‘I am a man’ was not a magic sex-changing spell.
Now that the public part of the government consultation has drawn to a close, we’re hanging up our flowery swimming hats and mankinis, in the devout hope that we won’t need to use them again.

The job isn’t done – the government hasn’t made up its mind about the future shape of the GRA and Bonerwall is still mis-representing the Equality Act to any wokebot who’ll listen – but we feel that our part of it has come to an end.

We’ve been privileged to work alongside many excellent groups who are carrying on the fight in their own way: Fair Play For Women, Transgender Trend, A Woman’s Place, Standing for Women, Let A Woman Speak, Get the L Out, Liverpool ReSisters, Hands Across the Aisle, and more – and we’ll be continuing to support them as individuals who are passionate about women’s rights, safety, privacy and dignity."
manfridayuk.org/blog/

Thanks R0wantrees I understand why they had to step back. Brilliant women.

Waves to whoever wants to team up to show CoL we're a force to be reckoned with.

At WPUK's London meeting on Monday, Selina Todd in her speech declared that the proposed GRA reforms had been comprehensively seen off.

Can anyone else corroborate this? I have a sinking feeling that, having waited for the dust to settle, the govt will try to do precisely what CoL have just done, i.e. ignore and devalue women's legitimate concerns, and throw us under the bus for the sake of an appearance of wokeness.

That's another reason I think we need to kick up a big noise about this. The City seems to be a testing ground.

Sadly, I think it will take inconveniencing the men to make a change. I think a Man Friday type event would be the quickest way to make the general public aware of the changes and push back against it, which might force them to reconsider.

Last year #ManFriday went swimming on Bank Holiday Monday.

(evidence of their gender fluidity not be solely confined to Fridays)