Lib Dem counsellor has responded - help needed...

[Mner2019]

I emailed my Lib Dem counsellor re their views on maintaining safe spaces for women in prisons etc. Their response is below:

The reform will not change the law on the access trans men and women have to these spaces: they can already access single-sex spaces (e.g. toilets, changing rooms and refuges) that match their gender and have had the right to do so since 2004. Any abuses are rare and covered by existing laws. Our proposed changes to the GRA would streamline the law to allow individuals to self-ID without unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles.

Any ideas on how to best respond? They seem to have forgotten re the equality act...

Could you ask what this candidate means by gender? Gender identity or sex?

I'd quote the full list EA and ask how this candidate resolves conflicting rights of gender reassignment with religious beliefs.

Does this help?

womansplaceuk.org/2019/11/05/5-questions-for-your-prospective-parliamentary-candidates/

I'd also check in on the This Never Happens thread and quote some of the 'rare' cases (only Uk ones).

Maybe ask a question back- if it won’t change anything, why are they pursuing the policy? It must change something, otherwise it wouldn’t be a reform

These are great. I shall draft out a list of responses

I would make the numbers point - the 2004 act was expected to allow about 5000 people to change their legal gender, a vanishingly small % of the population which is why recorded incidents have been so rare.
Self-I'd is expected to be taken up by more like 100,000's of people I as I understand it so the risk is much higher, plus the whole movement seems more agressive

Aside from the fact that GRC-holding trans people can lawfully be excluded from single-sex spaces under the Equality Act...

The point of the GRA reforms, they claim, is to make it easier for trans people with Gender Dysphoria to change their legal sex.

Actually, it enables people-who-say-they're-trans - WITHOUT Gender Dysphoria - to change their legal sex.

And they're trying to claim that this won't impact single-sex spaces?

The Lib Dem’s here are mental. Woke beyond woke with no interest at all in women or the rights of women. They are not interested in your vote at all.

I don't understand how the women Lib Dem MPs are ok with this... I can't get my head around it.

I have a young daughter and I really worry for her using these 'shared spaces' in the future.

They are wrong on the law. The Equalities Act prohibits spaces and services that discriminate against one or other sex, but then gives an exemption which allows for such single sex spaces/services to be provided in certain defined circumstance. It is this exemption which allows for single sex toilets, changing rooms etc to exist and not fall foul of the basic anti-discrimination premis of the Act.

The Act says nothing about those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment being regarded as the sex to which they are transitioning. For that you have to have a GRC (though, even then guidance to the Equalities Act envisages situations where you might exclude someone of the opposite sex even if they are the same legal sex).

If I remember correctly, there is no case law which has decided that the single sex exemption is effective even if someone of the opposite (legal) sex is using that service/space. There is one first instance case (which does not establish law) in which a judge decided that a transwoman should not have been prevented from using the toilets at a pub provided for the opposite sex when a woman complained about the transwoman’s presence. I do not know why that decision was made (and, in any event, it does not set legal precedent), though I would love to know! I am not aware of any other cases on this - let alone those that impact the law - but maybe your councillor is better informed than I am?

IIRC, there are de minimis provisions built into the law so that a space/service benefitting from the single sex exemption doesn’t lose the benefit of the protection should someone of the opposite sex incidentally use the service/space, so I think this is what could be relied upon if a women’s refuge, for example, occasionally allowed a transwoman to stay.

However, Stonewall law has it that it is OK to provide a service/space for women and men that self-identify as women. So far as the Equalities Act is concerned, I do not see how that can fall within the single sex exemption and therefore there would surely be grounds for complaint by men (who do not ID as women) that it is discriminatory to exclude them. In other words, the for the single sex exemption to be effective, it has to benefit a single sex class, not all of one and some (but not all) of the other.

You might use some of the examples which go beyond toilets and communal changing rooms, where the argument keeps coming back to whether there are lockable cubicles.

A number of organisations have already stated that they treat any man who's prepared to say they identify as a woman as a female, no questions asked. The Youth Hostels Association will therefore allow any man who wants to, to share the woman's dormitory (shared sleeping space, curtained-off showers...). If you're booking a berth on a sleeper train to Scotland, you may find a man in the other bunk in the tiny, enclosed space where you are expected to wash, change and sleep. All you know about him is that he's specifically sought to be sharing his sleeping space with a woman he doesn't know. Why would predatory men not take advantage of this kind of opportunity? How comfortable would your Councillor be if they (or if they are male, their wife or young daughter) was facing this kind of situation while travelling alone?

Self ID is absolutely not about believing that trans people are all predators; it's about opening women's spaces to any man at all, whatever his motives. It's because gatekeepers to this kind of space can't be expected to distinguish between genuine and harmless transwomen on the one hand and predators on the other that the Equality Act allows discrimination in these circumstances on grounds of sex and gender reassignment.

"Our proposed changes to the GRA would streamline the law to allow individuals to self-ID without unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles. "

What she sees as "unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles", most people see as "essential safeguarding".

You could argue that having to have doctors pass an exam before they're let loose on patients is "an unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle". Or you could argue it is essential common sense and necessary for other people's safety.

I know the LibDems are supposed to be...er...liberal but you can take this whole allowing everyone to do whatever they want and removing all restrictions thing too far. In any remotely advanced society, laws exist that DO limit people's freedom, as other people have rights too. And no-one has a right to do anything that can harm other people.

The only way you can argue that a tiny number of transwomen's rights trump those of all women ie 51% of the population is by rank misogyny - only if you start from the view that Women Fundamentally Don't Matter can you happily countenance throwing away women's hard-won rights to safe spaces of their own.

I am pleased that they have not immediately declared me as a bigot and that they didn’t just ignore me but the arguments they have put together are not particularly informed or evidence based... It is really frustrating that something so fundamental can be thrown away on such flimsy arguments.

I will draft a response tomorrow based on your suggestions above and keep you posted. Thank you!