Single sex spaces

[MiladyRenata]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/08/businesswoman-launches-legal-action-against-the-garrick-club

I'm genuinely curious about what the defenders of women only spaces feel about men doing the same sort of thing.

Clearly there are some reasons why this might be asymmetrical; men are likely to have far fewer reasons for feeling physically safer in a single sex environment, for example. But if a group of men want to create an all male space because they feel happier there (for whatever reason), does it do any more harm than an exclusive female only space?

Alternatively, is it fundamentally unhealthy to operate sex exclusive spaces at all unless there is a really good reason for doing so?

Men only things with women not caring at all.

Gay gyms (men only)
Round our way we have dad and baby things (or used to before the cuts). The men got bacon sarnies. Women's things you get a cup of tea. Wouldn't mind a bacon sarnie but women aren't fussed at the existence of these groups
We have an older men breakfast get together thing locally
I would imagine various support groups are single sex
If men wanted stuff like a men only hour at the local pool or a gym I can't imagine women complaining! Men do about women having an hour a week though...

The 'old boys club' is still operating. It used to be worse. Women were shut out of government. Business. Literally. We have had to fight to get ourselves into the room. At the table. And still it goes on.

Women have wanted in to the male institutions that held the power.

This new thing seems to focus on toilets, changing, rape crisis centres. Stuff like wax my balls (can we mention that?). Places which are sex specific because of vulnerability.

That's really really different.

The interesting thing with eg men getting a woman only hour at a swimming pool shut down. They never want a men only hour. They just don't want women to have one. This is the sort of shit women have been up against forever.

'I don't know where this obsession with males entering women's facilities comes from. Most trans women, including myself, would be absolutely mortified by the prospect of entering a changing room where women are undressed. Because, well, biology.'

A large minority of men are very very keen to do this indeed. Because, well. Biology.

Spying on women taking their clothes off was a standard haha how funny thing in big standard TV and films until fairly recently.

Spying in real life is really common.

Most women have had experiences with fucking creepy men more than once since they were girls.

Thing is. No one is interested in this. We go on about it all the time but when women say well this that the other. Normal. All the men are oh no! Really? And then forget all about it...

Big standard.

I think it might be easier to draw the biggest possible circle on an A4 piece of paper to represent trans women, and then use the tip of your pen to make the tiniest possible dot to represent trans women who expect a female beautician to wax their testicles.

Bog standard!

Fucking autocorrect!

We're not out to upset people and invade spaces. We just want to get on with our lives like everybody else.

You may very well not be, OP, but have you been on Twitter lately?

But that one person used the laws in their country to issue multiple litigations against women of various nationalities (they're racist) who didn't want to have this person in their home, when they were by themselves, and perform intimate waxing that they were not trained for and just didn't want to do. They advertised their services for women.

Many women sent the money asked for to not go to court. Women who were not well off.

The 'authorities' there were very reluctant to look into it until pressed. Didn't want to tell anyone how many women had had this done to them.

That was the result of the law. Harm to multiple women. Many just closed their businesses.

Saying oh well it's one person isn't good enough. A law which allows this is not a good law.

In that same country a rape crisis org who were women only had funding withdrawn.

Here we have had intact male rapists in women's prisons. Funding for services is dependent on opening them up etc.

Thing is that transpeople's experience is different. I would be all for specialist services. I would get behind that 100% and they would give better outcomes for all users.

Women had to fight for the things we have, to enable us to participate in public life (toilets being an obvious example) and services to help us when no one was interested. We set them up ourselves.

I genuinely don't understand why stonewall etc aren't spending their money on lobbying for trans specific stuff given that their experience is just not the same as men and women who aren't trans. That makes no sense to me.

Yaniv is by no meams the only trans woman demanding they use female spaces.

I have seen or spoke to so many online demanding single sex spaces be removed, but cant think of one who wanted additional unisex spaces.

At the same time, I really don't want to be walking into an open plan men's locker room wearing a frock.

twitter.com/FionneOrlander/status/1196512801545752576/photo/1

It sounds like you are coming from the same page as us. I honestly understand why you would feel uncomfortable in both the ladies and the gents and there does need to be more options where you can feel comfortable. It shouldn’t be hard to include an inclusive third space so that you have an option.

Milady I no longer use my local pool because the changing rooms are open plan & last time I went (well before Covid!) I found myself alone in the changing room with a male bodied person, who identifies as a woman (known locally) who was recording in the large mirror (which shows the whole room) on his phone. I found it distressing and humiliating.

On this case - the original post - yes I think it is worrying. There is an exemption in the Equality Act for single sex clubs. The claimant is arguing (as I understand it) that the Garrick is a service provider as it provides services to club members & their guests - so not within the exemption. If this argument is upheld it seems to me to have the potential to significantly undermine the exemption for all clubs.

I think men are perfectly entitled to single sex spaces, in exactly the same way women are.

• On this case - the original post - yes I think it is worrying. There is an exemption in the Equality Act for single sex clubs. The claimant is arguing (as I understand it) that the Garrick is a service provider as it provides services to club members & their guests - so not within the exemption. If this argument is upheld it seems to me to have the potential to significantly undermine the exemption for all clubs.

I don't see why. This is not a case of single sex space or services - women guests are allowed, but they can't be members. There are some areas and functions they're not allowed in - so then perhaps the question is whether that exclusion is based on sex or membership - is the only difference between a male and female guest that the latter could never become a member?

I love how Fionne Orlander calmly demonstrates how things could be.

@MiladyRenata

OK, we're going off topic but never mind.

I don't know where this obsession with males entering women's facilities comes from. Most trans women, including myself, would be absolutely mortified by the prospect of entering a changing room where women are undressed. Because, well, biology.

At the same time, I really don't want to be walking into an open plan men's locker room wearing a frock.

We're not out to upset people and invade spaces. We just want to get on with our lives like everybody else.

You start the thread and then complain about "obsession"?

Milad, genuinely curious, is your position that the woman challenging the Garrick club right to do so because you do not agree with that sort of single sex space? But you do accept that single sex provision has it's place?

@MiladyRenata

I think it might be easier to draw the biggest possible circle on an A4 piece of paper to represent trans women, and then use the tip of your pen to make the tiniest possible dot to represent trans women who expect a female beautician to wax their testicles.

That's not the point. The point is the mechanism is there to force any number of women, over, and over, to attend court to explain why they don't want to touch a man's testicles.

Do you have any idea what that feels like? To know that the country you live in has allowed a law like that to be implemented? And sees absolutely nothing wrong with it. In fact are claiming it's progressive.

That women have to go to court, and stand in front of any number of judges, to say that they don't want to touch a paedophile's genitals, ffs.

And are even reduced to invoking their husband, and him saying that their religion forbids it. A patriarchal religion that restricts them at every turn. They have to use that to prevent some random pervy bloke from forcing them into intimate touching. Their own boundaries, consent, words are utterly meaningless. The law says so.

It's not some tiny dot on your imaginary piece of paper. It's a wholesale attack on women. The fact that to you it is irrelevant, says it all really.

Thank you Datun brilliantly said.

[quote scotsheather]At the same time, I really don't want to be walking into an open plan men's locker room wearing a frock.

twitter.com/FionneOrlander/status/1196512801545752576/photo/1[/quote]
Fionne is a legend

Renata if you wanted to begin a campaign for 3rd spaces to be included in all facilities, I suspect you would have a huge following and support from GC feminists. This is the only fair way forward that meets all needs, and how/what those third spaces would look like is something that needs a lot of public input, whether all gender neutral or all individual cubicles etc. With government and lobby funding, put into equality law, the time from requirement to provision really wouldn't be that long either. It's a very practical, achievable and female friendly goal.

But I'm afraid it's a waste of time to deny that for many within the political lobby the main goal is the right of males to enter female spaces with females in them, regardless of how those females feel, regardless of the consequences to females, regardless of the distress or removal of safety to those females, and regardless of excluding some females from spaces altogether.

This isn't a windmill we're tilting at. And it doesn't matter how tiny the dot on the paper is; we're talking about changes in law, being seriously considered now, that remove sex based rights from females. This is not a drill, if you care about female people and the equality of their rights.

Fionne Orlander & Miranda Yardley have a campaign for third spaces.

mirandayardley.com/en/a-plea-for-third-spaces-for-transmen-and-transwomen/

But I'm afraid it's a waste of time to deny that for many within the political lobby the main goal is the right of males to enter female spaces with females in them,

This is right.

Some of these males are sexually motivated, but all these males need the women in that space to remain there irrespective of whether they want to or not.

Whether it's for sexual reasons, validation reasons or ostensible safety. The women are the tool that these male individuals are insisting on utilising.

It's not about the space. It's about the women in that space.

Wouldn't it be nice to start a campaign directed towards men to accept all men in their spaces, irrespective of how they identify or what they're wearing.

Not just so that gender nonconforming men have a place to pee, but also to start implementing the challenge to the idea that people are split into two, men who fit a certain idea of what men should be, and everyone else.

The people who really appear to be ring fencing the sexes are men. And that category is very strict.

@MiladyRenata

I think it might be easier to draw the biggest possible circle on an A4 piece of paper to represent trans women, and then use the tip of your pen to make the tiniest possible dot to represent trans women who expect a female beautician to wax their testicles.

So what?

Women are entitled to single-sex spaces. That excludes transwomen.

We say NO.