Accessible Toilets

[WarOnWomen]

I've just seen this thread by Fair Play for Women regarding their stance on toilets. Maya F is also on the thread clarifying the issue.

twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1312062467191734273?s=21

They are saying that everyone should be comfortable choosing the toilets they want to without being forced to share with opposite sex. Yup. Trans people should also not have to share with people designated at birth. Yup, also agree. Have a mix sex category for people who don't mind and trans people. Sure.

They are saying these facilities already exist. Accessible toilets. This is where I feel lost and let down. These toilets are for disabled people. People worked hard to get these accessible toilets. I don't want my mum having to share these toilets with trans women, anymore than I want them in female spaces. It's just wrong. And don't disabled people have a say as part of the EA2010?

Please tell me I have the wrong end of the stick.

backed up by various sources online, that transgender people have for at least a decade been able to choose which sex based toilets they use based on how they identify

Transgender doesn't mean every person who identifies as a woman or vice versa though. It's about those, the old school transsexuals if you like, that are making a commitment to a GRC and gender reassignment. Not just any old bod who says I think like a woman therefore I am a woman.

*It's not law that they have a right to use opposite sex provision.

There is no law that mandates that.*

I've already posted a link where a trans women successfully sued after being denied entry to women's toilets. Trans women, as you know I'm sure, are protected from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment. In the explanatory notes of the Equality Act both of the examples given relate to single sex spaces, noting that it may be legal to prevent a trans women from accessing a rape support group, but probably not legal to exclude a trans woman from changng rooms which were individual lockable cubicals. It's pretty clear this part of the law is intended to provide transgender access to spaces inline with their gender and to date the courts have agreed, as do ECHR the GEO and the Law Society.

@ListeningQuietly

accessible toilets are for those who physically cannot use normal cubicles

• wheelchair users
• the blind
• parents with disabled children
• disabled adults with their carers
• those with dementia who need the extra privacy

everybody else cane fuck off out of them IHO
being Trans does NOT make you need an accessible toilet

and by definition NOBODY SHARES THEM

People affected by Crohn's Disease and colitis don't come under any of the categories you listed but carry on lecturing that they shouldn't use accessible toilets. All you are doing is showing ignorance about a health impairment which , for some sufferers, can have a very limiting effect.

People affected by Crohn's Disease and colitis don't come under any of the categories you listed but carry on lecturing that they shouldn't use accessible toilets

That's a health condition. There are so many it would be impossible to list them all here. Clearly they do have the right to the accessible toilet. Gender feelings don't though.

@jj1968 I was just reading that case. It does seem like a bit of semantics on here. So there is no right mandating that transgender people use single sex spaces in line with their gender identity, but there are also laws stating it must be only in meaningful circumstances that they are excluded, and as you said the law is increasingly ruling in favour of transgender individuals where discrimination has taken place.

Sorry I'm not adding anything new, I just have been confused by that for a while.

My vote is still for single cubicle toilets. You can fit more into the communal area anyway surely. My old workplace had a corridor of single occupancy cubicles, it's not that hard. It would be nice to have infant feeding areas that aren't directly in toilets too. Even the posh ones in John Lewis are actually inside the toilets. Its a little bit gross.

@KarenCaron

backed up by various sources online, that transgender people have for at least a decade been able to choose which sex based toilets they use based on how they identify

Transgender doesn't mean every person who identifies as a woman or vice versa though. It's about those, the old school transsexuals if you like, that are making a commitment to a GRC and gender reassignment. Not just any old bod who says I think like a woman therefore I am a woman.

It has nothing to do with GRCs. The protected characteristic is gender reassignnment. This does not require any medical changes to have taken place. But more importantly, anti-discrimination laws are based on perception. So if someone is discriminated against because someone perceives them to be re-assigning their gender they would be covered under the act whether they were actually undergoing gender reassignment or not. And the recent Jaguar verdict suggests the courts may also protect non-binary people with protection on the grounds of gender reassignment.

Strictly speaking everyone has the right to use accessible toilets. Any categories anyone writes here as to who is worthy or not are arbitrary, as there are no laws limiting their use to disabled people only.

And the recent Jaguar verdict suggests the courts may also protect non-binary people with protection on the grounds of gender reassignment.

I suspect there will be a legal challenge to that. The court doesn't just get to change the law. And non binary people, nor those who are not going through gender reassignment are not protected under the EA. Watch this space....

@SpartacusAutisticus

The EHRC and GEO are subject to an application for judicial review on the grounds that they are giving wrong advice on law. I'd hold off on claiming them as arbiters tbh.

Well let's see if the review is granted first. But even so, they are both prepared to fight to protect their guidelines in court. They will not have taken that decision without extensive legal consultation - it would be hugely embarrassing, especially for ECHR if they lost. So they seem pretty confident that the advice they give reflects the law.

Of course there are few certainties when in comes to court, but to confidently assert that their guidance is incorrect as people seem to have done on this thread is jumping the gun considerably. The case 'hasn't even been listed yet and a large part of it is based on an error in some previous ECHR guidance which has since been corrected.

@KarenCaron

And the recent Jaguar verdict suggests the courts may also protect non-binary people with protection on the grounds of gender reassignment.

I suspect there will be a legal challenge to that. The court doesn't just get to change the law. And non binary people, nor those who are not going through gender reassignment are not protected under the EA. Watch this space....

The courts interpret the law, and that's how they interpreted it. Jaguar are not appealing. It's a lower court and so not binding, but it does provide an indicator of how the courts are likely to interpret the act, which is based on previous case law, the wording of the legislation itself and in this case even went into the Hansard records of the debates which took place around the introduction of the act in order to establish the intention of Parliament when the Equalities Act was introduced.

No. Agreed. That's why able transwomen and men should continue to use the toilets that match their gender identity.

@KarenCaron

People affected by Crohn's Disease and colitis don't come under any of the categories you listed but carry on lecturing that they shouldn't use accessible toilets

That's a health condition. There are so many it would be impossible to list them all here. Clearly they do have the right to the accessible toilet. Gender feelings don't though.

It rather proves my point though- these toilets are not just for people
"who can't access the facilities you can".

My vote is still for single cubicle toilets. You can fit more into the communal area anyway surely

Mine too. It would also mean that Crohn's, colitis sufferers, users of colostomy bags, anyone with urinary incontinence issues who need somewhere to wash and possibly change clothing but are otherwise fully mobile can do so without having to take up a wheelchair space.

They absolutely should as they absolutely do.

It rather proves my point though- these toilets are not just for people
"who can't access the facilities you can"

Nope. Those toilets are there for people with disabilities/ health issues. Gender feels doesn't fall into these categories.

@KarenCaron

It rather proves my point though- these toilets are not just for people "who can't access the facilities you can"

Nope. Those toilets are there for people with disabilities/ health issues. Gender feels doesn't fall into these categories.

Um , that wasn't the point I was making.

A poster early on stated these toilets are only for people who can't access the facilities you can.

There are plenty of people who can physically access normal toilets but who can legitimately use these toilets.

There are plenty of people who can physically access normal toilets but who can legitimately use these toilets.

Ok. Cool.

As far as I am aware, exclusion is based around a proportionate means to a legitimate aim.

If I own a department store and my female customers don't want changing rooms to include men, I can legitimately exclude all men, including those who identify as women. Just by saying so.

I can provide them with their own changing room. And the legitimate aim is keeping my paying customers who are largely female, from being put off shopping in my women's department.

If I own a bar, and I have toilets for both sexes, I can enforce sex segregation, on the basis that my female customers are uncomfortable with men in their bathrooms.

As long as they have a toilet they can use, and the legitimate aim is not to piss off my paying customers, I can do it.

That's my understanding. Happy to be corrected, but that's what I think is the law. You can absolutely do it, if you have a legitimate enough reason. And pissing off your client base is that reason.

@Datun

The courts have found that economic reasons do not meet the threshold for being considered a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim so your example would no more be legal than if someone discriminated on the grounds of race and claimed it was what their customers wanted. There's quite a bit of case law about this and the threshold for the exemptions has generally been quite high for obvious reasons - it would undermine the intention of the Equality Act completely otherwise.

Gender identity is hokum. I don’t have one, nor does any woman I know. Being female is simply an objective biological fact.

We don’t all buy into this religious belief in gendered souls. Sorry.

If transwomen identified WITH women, they would not want to violate their single sex spaces.

And NO, ‘gender reassignment’ is categorically not the same as self ID. A legal fiction can be created if certain conditions are met. Someone had to have a GRC or be in the process of obtaining one.

And for the last time TOILETS ARE NOT SEPARATED ON THE BASIS OF GENDER WOOWOO BUT ON THE BASIS OF SEX. Men cannot change sex.

Until such time as someone can tell me how my teenage daughter is supposed to tell the difference between a ‘transwoman’ in the toilets with her or a common-or-garden man - actually to fuck that. Only biological women should be in there. They are single sex spaces for women, not validation portals for men.

I'm sure m and s could easily claim that men in their changing room was making their customers uncomfortable jj. Especially as so many of them are obliging enough to leave very female distressing reviews on their website.

And anyone is perfectly welcome to challenge that in court, of course.

Good grief this is why the Govt has had to reiterate that sex is still a protected characteristic, and single sex spaces and services are legal.