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 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.

Very much unintended, Tyro, I'm so sorry that's how it came across.

What I meant was that I've seen lots and lots of blithe exhortations to women that they can have therapy, they can work through their fears, they can be kind.

I find that obscene and offensive beyond measure.

Women of faith don't seem to be told that they can get over their faith quite so much, so in purely practical terms it seemed an easier starting point for getting justice, privacy and dignity for all women.

But maybe that's the wrong approach, and we should be arguing strongly and forcefully that it DOES FUCKING MATTER and women's trauma must not be dismissed so that males are not made sad.

Again, I'm sorry

My questions were reflecting my concerns that we still can’t say no to males, in our informal women or lesbian groups. Over the years the men have consistently destroyed social and political groups and I yearn for the assumption that women and lesbian groups and space can be just that. I guess it will still involve women at local level, taking on eg the pond committee, local authorities, schools , employers and so on. Saying No has always met with resistance. But it’s a beginning so well done reveryone for getting us to this point.

Two excellent examples there, Michelle, which together illuminate the underlying point I hadn't quite managed to get into words when I typed my previous post.

Roma travellers and women of other faiths can be broadly considered to have a legally-sound reasonable objection because the Equality Act lists belief as a protected characteristic (whether it's cultural beliefs or religious beliefs not being of major significance here).

Women with autism and women with c-ptsd aren't accurately covered by the right to freedom of belief and the right not to be discriminated against due to beliefs. The right to have disabilities reasonably accommodated is the relevant legal wossname.

The point I'm getting here is that my inability to share spaces with males isn't rooted in a cultural norm or a religious belief; rather, it's a lifelong consequence of multiple serious injuries, and as such falls under the general heading of disability accommodations rather than accommodation of cultural differences.

Women of faith don't seem to be told that they can get over their faith quite so much, so in purely practical terms it seemed an easier starting point for getting justice, privacy and dignity for all women.

I agree; if we're being pragmatic then women of other faiths are the obvious group to highlight. So much of this shit comes from the Left, and we've seen time and again that they view tolerance of other cultures as far more important than ensuring the safety of women and girls.

Trouble with that is what happens next. We fight to have women of other faiths accommodated, establish faith/belief/culture as an acceptable reason to maintain female-only spaces for those women. Where does that leave traumatised women? It opens us up to having our inability to share intimate spaces with males characterised as a belief.

Equally, if the initial focus is on traumatised women, women who can't demonstrate they've been personally subjected to male violence are left without a leg to stand on. Focusing attention on just one strand of the need for female-only spaces is inevitably going to mean other strands getting shat on.

(No apologies needed; I was pointing out the logical inference rather than the implication and didn't assume any ill intent.)

I wish the policy of 'reasonable adjustments' would be applied to this situation as well as to disability accommodation.

Inclusion is the focus: the equality of opportunity.
Creative thinking and additional to and different from should be provided in terms of more flexible, accessible provisions as opposed to just doing things the way they've always been done.
The focus is on the word 'reasonable' in terms of individual budget, disruption and impact upon service and other users when choosing what is and is not possible to offer
Sometimes the answer will be this particular situation/service cannot meet the needs of this particular individual but others will, with if necessary new situations or services being created.

In essence: where necessary, single sex provision alongside additional provisions.

That this isn't the obvious, automatic common sense way forward that equally values and helps everyone, illustrates what Angry says above.

Female people are so automatically seen as less human, less valid, that no one (other than us, getting a reputation of being foul harridans for doing it) is saying 'hang on a minute, female needs shouldn't be considered and predicated on how males feel about it, what they want females to have, and whether or not they agree to it first'. That right to say no is so unconsidered that we're actually having to fight this battle based on convincing males we really have reasons they agree with to give us permission to have a space of our own.

It's right there in front of us. No is perceived by some, as being rightfully predicated upon male agreement and permission.

@MichelleofzeResistance

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.

You always manage to put various inchoate thoughts in my head into lucid, clear, utterly logical words. Thank you so very much.

(Re-reading with my self-critical hat on.)

Women of other faiths can't be expected to suck it up because belief is a protected characteristic; autistic women, traumatised women etc can't be expected to suck it up because disability is a protected characteristic; I missed off the third major subgroup of women under threat: lesbians.

I really don't want us to sleepwalk into a situation wherein lesbians can be accommodated in their need to exclude males by characterising lesbianism as a belief system.

I dont think we should use women of faith as an example of why women only spaces are needed. This is because in 99.9% of religions it is men saying women should be segregated / barred because they are unclean or something.

We need to be able to argue that not only young girls but adult women have the right to single sex spaces, not just because of the experience of male violence, but because as biological women we have the right to be in spaces of those who have our shared experience.

Fair point that it tends to be men dictating what goes and what doesn't in faith groups. But on a practical level, unless we're advocating to outlaw the practice of patriarchal religions (not currently remotely feasible), we need to be making accommodations for women who won't be permitted to eg go swimming or use public changing rooms or access inpatient services if these aren't single sex.

@stumbledin

I dont think we should use women of faith as an example of why women only spaces are needed. This is because in 99.9% of religions it is men saying women should be segregated / barred because they are unclean or something.

We need to be able to argue that not only young girls but adult women have the right to single sex spaces, not just because of the experience of male violence, but because as biological women we have the right to be in spaces of those who have our shared experience.

Agreed. One of the upsetting aspects of this whole debate is that the alternative to an ideology supporting retrogressive and rigid sex roles as a definition of gender is — unless we really fight against this — another ideology which also supports retrogressive and rigid sex roles as a definition of gender, the only difference being how the people are defined who should be in a particular gender box.

The horseshoe theory about political views seems to fit this particular context so that the extreme right and the extreme left are in many ways more similar to each other than the views in the middle. More authoritarian, more absolutists, more politics-is-religion.