Do we now get our spaces back?

[Angryresister]

Thinking about whether swimming is now women only again at Hampstead ladies pond, and whether mixed sex facilities will be changed back esp in schools. Is there no risk now of sharing a hospital ward or prison cell with a male? Or in a refuge? Can we ask to see the GRC ? Asking for a friend

I really hope so

I suspect it will take some time to restore safe places to women - and sadly it may involve some more legal action and digging from women. In an ideal world all the wealthy special interest groups would start working with organisations on the provision of 3rd spaces. In an ideal world.
I see that the Baroness is turning her attention to prisons next.

I think we should, and the entrance to the Women's pond should have a statue of the Man Friday women, bravely turning up to draw attention to the unfairness of allowing the opposite sex to invade the privacy of the single sexed ponds if they are willing to claim that they "identify" as being the other "gender".

I think women's spaces will take the longest-and a lot of fighting.

I hope schools are easier. Gender reassignment is protected, not gender identity. Children can't have any form of gender reassignment, can they? Or a GRC?I really hope not. If not, there is no justification to allow boys into the girls toilets and vice versa.

There'd need to be a brass plaque under the statue explaining what they did, and why, and how their clever PR stunt led to the first positive media coverage. Before that any article was always from the transgenderist perspective, women's voices and protests were ignored or dismissed as hateful.

As I understand it although the EA allows for single sex provision, ie can exclude trans women, it has to be shown to be necessary (cant remember the legalese word, think it is "proportionate"). ie it isn't automatic.

So providing single sex services to women who have suffered male violence would be easier to argue than .... Well actually I dont think women's toilets, wards, and so on should be anything other than single sex, but I suspect there will be loads of pressure if not actually court cases asking schools, trains stations, hotels, etc., to "prove" that toilets need to be single sex.

@Stealhsquirrelnutkin

I think we should, and the entrance to the Women's pond should have a statue of the Man Friday women, bravely turning up to draw attention to the unfairness of allowing the opposite sex to invade the privacy of the single sexed ponds if they are willing to claim that they "identify" as being the other "gender".

Yes!

That consultation
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3592053-City-of-London-Consultation-Results-they-cant-get-away-with-this?pg=1

Good question. I really hope so.

It's crazy how many organisations were persuaded by the trans lobby that self-ID was already legal/ was definitely about to become legal. I think schools and hospitals etc will have to comply with the law. But I suspect that facilities like the Ladies' Pond, which we don't have a statutory right to, may not be covered.

It's a shame. The Ladies' pond has always been used by women only, just as the Men's pond has been used by men, and anyone can use the Mixed pond. Many women can't use a mixed-sex pond and changing room for personal or religious reasons. But that didn't bother the misogynists at the Corporation of London when they withdrew its single-sex status.

that toilets need to be single sex.

Toilets still are in the main single sex. But that category of sex includes the legal sex that some have changed to. Trans people have never been excluded from the toilets of their acquired sex.

I hope so - prisons and women's refuges are of particular urgency

Not a lawyer, but wondering about challenges on equality impact assessments, particularly on women of faiths who can't share spaces with males?

The Ladies Pond was used by Orthodox Jewish women, I think I remember reading, who wouldn't be able to swim in a mixed sex space.

The work has already begun in some respects.

It can only be done well through a coordinated campaign though. Part of that is writing letters. Anyone up to helping, even just a few here and there, should contact the Baroness to offer. I know she has some help and needs more.

[email protected]

But I suspect that facilities like the Ladies' Pond, which we don't have a statutory right to, may not be covered.

That demonstrates, all by itself, just how ludicrously misogynistic and unfair this all is in reality.

Three ponds now that male people may take their personal, preferred individual choice on based on their valued feelings and needs in the moment.

No pond at all that some female people may now use under any circumstances, with their needs and feelings being irrelevant.

You can only celebrate that as a victory for progressivism if you have a very, very distorted view of life indeed.

Sorry, my point relevant to the thread being: the ponds are a very helpful demonstration of actual practice. There's no getting away from it.

I suspect Liz Truss's statement was carefully balanced to wait for the results of the coming court cases which hopefully will start to put pressure back on providers and services that they must not exclude female people from any access by removing single sex options in their rush to ensure male people have their full breadth of choice and valued wellbeing at all times.

This will, eventually, lead to the government realising that in order to allow a female person's needs and wellbeing to met, there will come a point where the word 'no' has to be said to a male person, with a limit placed upon how their needs and accommodation can injustly and unequally impact upon the needs and accommodation of others. Because let's face it, no one is saying the male person's needs should not be met, or that accommodation should be provided that fits that male person's needs; the only limit is at insisting upon a very specific type of accommodation even though it removes accommodation from others.

But the DfE has laid the ground for this. That was how to put down polite, firm boundaries in plain English, in a way impossible to argue with.

The Girl Guides are another glaring example. They use the Equality Act to justify their right to exist and then break it by accepting boys and men.

@MichelleofzeResistance

But I suspect that facilities like the Ladies' Pond, which we don't have a statutory right to, may not be covered.

That demonstrates, all by itself, just how ludicrously misogynistic and unfair this all is in reality.

Three ponds now that male people may take their personal, preferred individual choice on based on their valued feelings and needs in the moment.

No pond at all that some female people may now use under any circumstances, with their needs and feelings being irrelevant.

You can only celebrate that as a victory for progressivism if you have a very, very distorted view of life indeed.

This!

In the zealous anxiety to ensure all male people have their needs met, and feelings catered to, some female people are excluded from any provision at all... and we're being told that's a marvellous victory for human rights and freedoms.

@KnowingYou

that toilets need to be single sex.

Toilets still are in the main single sex. But that category of sex includes the legal sex that some have changed to. Trans people have never been excluded from the toilets of their acquired sex.

There are only 4,000 odd people with GRCs. The claim is that anyone who says that they are trans or NB should be able to use women's facilities, which is in the hundreds of thousands. Not the same.

And even with a GRA, you can restrict services to one sex. It's just more difficult.

Personally, I didn't care about toilets until they started to be the thin end of the wedge - with prisons, refuges and rape counselling firmly at the thick end. Now? I care.

I think this is going to take a lot of legal action.

It needs to be established that women of certain cultures and women with trauma issues rooted in male violence cannot be reasonably expected to share certain spaces with males, and that to accommodate this service providers need to be starting from the assumption that female-only spaces are always a proportionate means to a legitimate end.

The onus needs to be on male trans people to prove, on a case-by-case basis, that their inclusion will not prevent traumatised women or women of other cultures from accessing services. At the moment, women and service providers have to go through the rigmarole of demonstrating over and over again that this male cannot be safely included in certain spaces without excluding some females, and this male, and this male...

Rape crisis centres, swimming ponds, toilets, hospital wards - the default starting position needs to be "no males". And it's going to take a lot of legal cases to build up the evidence needed to establish that as a general principle.

Would say a private swimming pool/club need to follow the law? So there’s your solution... if you want to follow the ‘stonewall’ version then join a relevant club that allows these rules (virgin active said they did didn’t they?).

Otherwise - clubs, pools, classes... just follow the flipping law!

So far, trans voices have been loud and now women are speaking up and the media can no longer avoid. All organisations that have acted beyond the scope of the EA will have to look very carefully at whether legal challenges can be mounted.

The most obvious one and the one that cannot be swept aside is the religious need for some women of faith to have single sex spaces.

No matter how you look at this, the rights of religious women are equal to trans rights and the fact that a trans person can use other facilities such as gender neutral or unisex spaces whereas a religious woman has no where else, is a very compelling argument and one that the courts could not dismiss easily.

I just hope people are now able to turn to those who were speaking so loudly before and ask ‘why did you do this’? But then they will deny that they ever did.

Personally, I didn't care about toilets until they started to be the thin end of the wedge - with prisons, refuges and rape counselling firmly at the thick end. Now? I care.

This x100. I still have no personal problem with old school transsexuals using the Ladies - but if women's kindness is going to be used to open up sports, rape shelters and wards to bearded aggressors, then it's a hard no to any male in any female space.

The most obvious one and the one that cannot be swept aside is the religious need for some women of faith to have single sex spaces.

Most obvious, yes. Most likely to be accepted by the general public, yes. But not the only one that cannot be swept aside.

Women traumatised by male violence matter. We might not have a handy label round which to rally and form a coherent political category, but we still matter, and we are still just as excluded by the presence of male bodies as women of other faiths are.

I strongly object to the (no doubt unintended) implication that the women who've experienced male bodies as a weapon, with lifelong consequences, are less important than the women who cannot share spaces with males for religious reasons.

Sweeping aside the female victims of male violence - the women who know through painful personal experience that the male body is inherently a weapon - when the topic for consideration is whether to allow those male bodies into the spaces we rely on in order to have a semblance of life outside the home, isn't acceptable.

It's quite difficult not to infer from that traumatised women are being unreasonable.

if women's kindness is going to be used to open up sports, rape shelters and wards

To unpick that a little, it went in a flash from #bekind to #don'tyoufuckingsaynotomeyoubitch yes.

But this is what happens when you use special pleading to say more or less, I know this is not ideal for females, I know it might make you uncomfortable (and will drive some females out of a female space, we have no way to track how many, how vulnerable they are what impact this has on those females) but it's a really really hard situation and it would be nice if you'd bend a little and make an exception for just these few...…

Because that entry becomes a right, and male people starting getting understandably angry about why that person can but they shouldn't, and male people can do this so who are these uppity bitches gatekeeping their space and implying one transition is more valid than another, and male people start shouting at other male people about which of them under which circumstances get to do what they want with females and female spaces and - shut up females, you didn't get a say in this to start with, this is nothing to do with you ….

I mean if you put this crap on the relationships board, you'd have an overwhelming vote of call Women's Aid, go on the Freedom Training right now and LTB. This is not sane. Why would any woman enter into this kind of situation and see it as any kind of a good thing? Unless they have some twisted idea of their own virtue in signalling self sacrifice and sacrificing other female equalities and female people to get male approval, and that does happen.

It was destruction tested. It is very apparent that the jolly good chap principle where everyone respects everyone else and doesn't take the piss has failed beyond measure, and it was a bad idea that was very poor in considering female needs, rights and seeing females as equally human in the first place.

Two separate issues.

Female single sex spaces required that meet the needs of all females inclusively of all protected characteristics.

Additional spaces required to meet the needs of people who need alternatives to sex based spaces.

Very well said, Tyro

Two more groups to add to females who cannot grit their teeth and just suck up the disadvantage and unpleasantness of mixed sex spaces for the betterment of male people,

• Cultural groups, Roma travellers being one. We're pretty hot in the UK about respect for this group: does that get hurled aside if it's only women involved, and those women are having boundaries contrary to the preferences of those a small percentage of male people would like them to have?

• MNetters with Autism have spoken a number of times on threads about their challenge with and distress at needing to socially say and show something contrary to the evidence of their eyes, or to enact a belief they do not hold. Likewise women with dementia, Alzheimers, many other disabilities that affect perception and ability to inhibit and control social responses other than their feelings. In any other situation we'd say to demand this of them would be abusive. What changes when it's just a woman with a boundary different to the one a male person would like them to have?