Which is sad because I believe most of us would be largely supportive of trans people in general, and would have supported third/ unisex spaces in public areas. But not at the cost of our rights and our needs.
this is exactly it - I don't think many of us had much issue with the tiny proportion of people who quietly got on with their business and wanted to present themselves to the world in a particular way. I used to work with a transwoman and all was fine (apart from the fact that she would never respond when I said hello when we passed in the corridor - people generally said hello in that org).
Many of the transsexuals (by their own term) we hear from these days are generally very supportive of womens rights to single sex spaces (and don't use them themselves) and in some cases are campaigning for women's spaces and against self-id.
Something big has been lost here - I remember hearing about the early attempts of women to have a conversation about the emerging conflict in rights/requirements between women and the new breed of people who were 'expanding the bandwidth of being a woman' while retaining penises and male outward presentation yet still feeling that they needed to access female single sex spaces.
Certain key players in this move were not distinguishable from any other male in their presentation so why do they need to use the ladies? No one would look twice at them in the men's.
I remember the conversations about third spaces which were rejected out of hand as 'othering'. In those days I didn't understand the concept of othering very well. In my mind people who are trans and not born of the same sex as me are not the same as me and never will be. So 'othering' seems like a redundant concept - it is a fact, not an action.
The conversation turned into violent protests of women's meetings and events (smoke bombs near Grenfell, pounding on windows and doors in Brighton at the time of the Labour Party Conference, violent gatherings outside meetings physically intimidating the women going in etc) - I was a bit mystified as to why women meeting up was causing such a problem.
The bit that concerns me most is the ease of 'capture' of so many organisations and public services including all government depts (although a small faction are fighting back), all main political parties, the police, the NHS, schools, BBC, most mainstream media, CPS, ONS, EHRC, google, Social Services, NSPCC, local councils etc etc.
These organisations are supposedly run by sensible grown ups but these people seem to have thrown safeguarding, logic, common sense and basic humanity to the wind and are buying Stonewall's false version of the law wholesale. Do none of these organisations have access to google to check the text of the EA 2010??
Do none of these people stop to ask themselves why they 'don't need to include most of the protected characteristics in the Equality Impact Assessment' on a policy which blatantly affects all of the pcs?
I could deal with the fact that an organisation like Stonewall is campaigning so hard for a change in the law that is detrimental to women but I can't understand how so many people in charge have fallen for the lies.