Ooh! A week on holiday and I come back to this!! Bloody Nora!
I think the answer is contained within the question - I think you've very succinctly captured the key point of nuance to the entire matter with the word or and the implications it holds, and why both the EA2010 is as it is currently alongside why efforts to alter it are (thankfully) doomed to failure for the forseeable. I don't think the EA2010 says what you think/hope it does. Maybe go and read the acccompanying guidelines for yourself. Don't rely on us to translate it, or anyone else. Go straight to the souce... see what it says explicitly.
Then come back and start a new conversation on what it says explicitly about single sex spaces, transitioning, GRCs etc.
And maybe come back and tell us why same sex marriages mean there needs to be an overhaul...
Needs must be met. Single-sex space provisions are necessary and should be made, where need is identified. Yep. But, as your posts show again and agin - whose needs?
The service has to be fit for purpose - if it can't achieve its stated goals, then it's useless. If the only way for that goal to be achieved is by exclusion - for example, with respect to the provision of rape crisis centres that are likely to support women for whom being in the presence of those who are percieved as male would be completely impossible - then it seems that exclusion of people who are percieved as male is regrettably the only option. Yep! I work in a group of linked community charities that includes a crisis centre. The women who run and use the place voted for absolute exclusion of anyone with a male body - that included all men, all transwomen and all transmen. Their choice. They excluded anyone whose physical appearance, voice, mannerisms, behaviour etc could possibly have a negative impact of the female sevice users.
They also chose to support a mixed sex space and support group where anyone, women, men, transwomen and transmen, could access support and counseling and allow that the users there would make their own decisions on who could use the service
This part, right here, is the Cannot.
That's an obvious clear-cut case, right? Sorry Debs, you're percieved as male. This service isn't for you. Just wham a nice big F or M on it, using assigned sex at birth, done. Yep. Exactly that. No more, no less
Only it isn't. Where do trans men go? Is it appropriate for them to attend? Is it always, axiomatically? When is it not appropriate for them to attend? What about non-binary people? Detransitioners? Intersex people? Even if you ban transgenderism, they still exist. As does any flavour of GNC woman who doesn't reliably 'pass' within the category that is subjectively read as female. Birth sex is not, and has never been, a one-size-fits-all silver bullet for this issue, and in today's world it is not fit for purpose. You use the word ban a lot there. We haven't banned anyone, just offered alternative services. Services that the users, in turn, get to decide who can use them and ho needs fruther alternative provision. Not the most cost effective way of doing it but the point is to support women who have ben raped
So what then? Then we have to accept that for traumatised women birth sex does actually matter and that they don't need you or Mridhul, to tell them they need to be re-ducated, to rframe thier trauma, to accept what they find unacceptable, to care about everyone else over and above themselves.
Maybe we need a test? Awesome. Do we get a person to do so? What if they, in practice, have different subjective responses to gender cues? Who wants to be the Gender Cops whose job is to tell people all day long that sorry, no pass means no pass? How do you train the Gender Cops, and make sure their decisions are consistent? Sod off. If you want services based on gender go build them!
Maybe we need an AI, trained on a vast sample set, to be able to serve as a sorting hat? I am so happy for you that you can find mirth in the reality of women's trauma!
Simple, automated, reliable, replicable - perfect, right? OK great. There's a social media network that actually has one of those. It analyses an image of your face and then either allows or disallows you to register. The tech already exists! Again, sod off!
Several people in this thread have said they wouldn't be comfortable with any AMAB person, ever, being present in women's spaces. Yep! And nothing you have blathered will have done anything to reassure them that they could safely revisit that thought! All that gender, be nice shite means NOTHING to a woman who has been raped, beaten. Her trauma is real, She has no obligation to find additional emotuonal resources for someone else!
What you are asking is that traumatised women have more emptahy for a hypothetical 'other' than you are showing for them, safely typed out on an anonymous forum!
Waaaaaait. It let me join, using a photo of myself taken that morning at my least flattering, at the least favourable angle I could find. It wouldn't let several of my trans guy buddies, but would let another. The transphobic sorting hat AI couldn't even get its transphobia straight. I couldn't give a toss if your Sunday morning look was as Shrek like as Shrek himself. Who cares? Women are more than being beautifully groomed and flatteringly photographed.
You can't rely on visual cues and judgements; all personal assessments are subjective, and frankly, the idea of having a formal 'do you look male enough to be excluded?' process is astonishingly demeaning and offensive. It'll exclude plenty of people you define as women, who are likely to have need of these provisions. It's already horrendous enough that organisations like the TSA over in the states routinely scan traveller's genitals at airport security. Should we implement that here as well? I hate to burst your bubble. But, as a human physiologist, I can assure you that no man ever actually passes as a woman. Sat absolutely still and quiet, possibly. But as soon as a man moves EVERY woman recognises MAN! You can say anything you like about butch lesbians being challenged but as son as they move and talk their female body betrays their actual sex - and that includes transmen.
ONE SINGLE physical difference between men and women is repsonsible for this. A skeletal difference that cannot be changed bay any surgery. To see it in action look at any drag act simply walking in what they perceive to be a feminine manner.
Sorry mate, the male pelvis cannot ever replicate the female gait. EVER!
So no need for any genital check - which no GC woman has ever suggested. It is only ever gender ideologists that come up with that!
Any process that ultimately relies on notions of passability, no matter how cleverly worded they are, is broken, demeaning and I'd certainly consider any trans person who advocates for one to be acting like a bus-throwing piece of sh*t. It's just the same prejudices repeated in microcosm. Yep! You see we can agree, just not for the reasons you think. 'Passing' is a fallacy. Transmen occasionally manage it for a slightly longer time than transwomen can.
So we can't rely on recorded birth sex due to trans men, intersex people, non-binary people and gnc women; we can't rely on whether the sorting hat thinks you're a real girl as it'll include some people with a recorded male sex at birth who you want to exclude, and exclude some people with a recorded female sex at birth who you want to include. We could combine the two; first you have to show your sex passport, then you have to let the sorting hat decide if you're woman enough. And that is where you make a great leap what just isn't supported by science, common sense, common experience , logic, reality.... Your sorting hat seems to have been programmed by a male IT hack who hasn't identified his wn biases well enoug to keep them out of his coding. Simply because he deosn;t see a thing deosn't mean it doesn't exist so you he will have coded in all sorts of errors. And those errors are male persective ones, ones that automatically set women at disadvantage.
Sex passports? Appearance-based gatekeeping? Do you want to live in that world? Noope. And won't have to if people like yoursefl actually fucking LISTEN to what women are saying rather than talk all over them!
Thankfully, we have an Equality Act for that, and the conservatives haven't succeeded in getting rid of it yet, though they were crowing about being able to do so in the run up to Brexit. Again, I suggest you go to the source and read it and the accompanying guideines for yourself. It doesn't say what you have been told it does!
In the magical utopia where we're all happily dancing along together, anyone can identify as whatever they want without judgement, all needs are met without pressure or prejudice, and blablablabla there's probably no longer a need for sex-based spaces. And only a man could say that! Which is the whole point of everything I have typed here. ONLY A MAN COULD SAY THAT!
That world obviously isn't ever going to happen. Oppression is real; social dynamics are depressingly real. What we'd be talking about there is a fundamental change in the nature of humanity. Yes. Where men accept and see clearly that the sex based differneces between them, as a class, and women, as a class, make such a world difficult, dangerous, miserable for only one of those classes.
Third spaces have come up a few times here as an obvious seeming solution. The women can use the women's services, the men can use the men's services, and all those weird people who creep us out can use the one in betwee- Uh, I mean, anyone who can tolerate being in the same space as trans people can use the trans one. Well, unlike others here I don't actually care where transmen and transwomen go. That is for them to work out. Not for women, who are clearly saying no! Women's safety, dignity, choices are not to vbe given up in order to make any others feel more comfortable.
One woman hurt by any exception made is one woman too many... and we have already had far more than one woman hurt, killed. So sod off there too!
Therein lies the problem. The provision of a third space must be an addition; not a subtraction. An extra provision for everyone, including those who identify with neither of the existing options. And it's a great idea, if that's how it is handled. So go to it. Go and handle it!
But we aren't talking about inclusion. We're talking, explicitly, about exclusion. Yep! We are talking about the continued exclusion of males from femael spaces. Men may choose to exclude females from male spaces - their choice! Exactly as is provided for int he EA2010
Third spaces are in theory a great idea, but they fail on two key principles:
Firstly: All they actually do is kick the passing/filtering problem down the road. They don't in any way solve it, just introduce a new category to filter on. That filter problem is still present. Do you legally mandate intersex people use a third space? GNC women who don't reliably 'pass'? Trans and non binary people who experience and identify with some or all of womanhood? Detransitioners? Oooh! That deeserves a fuck off! Bringing people with DSDs into this is such a regular, unecessary strawman. Actaully appropriating someone elses medcial condition to get your own way? Despicable!
And we have already been through 'passing' as a fallacy. And the reality of recognising the actiual sex of any individual.
Secondly: If the Third Space is general-purpose inclusive, then it doesn't cover the established need for same-sex services. If the Third Space is the exclusionary trans ghetto where we send all the icky people who make us uncomfortable, then anyone going into it automatically makes themself into a target, because transphobia is still a problem in our society. It's not a solved problem. The entire idea of a general purpose exclusionary space just for trans people - that's institutionalised transphobia. Oh that gets all beautifully caught u in itself ,doesn't it. Did you know that if you logic is righ then yiu never have to go through all those hoops and u-turns to make sense?
The reasonable, safe and fair provision of Third Spaces requires us to already be living in a world where prejudice is a solved problem. Where it isn't still dangerous, for both trans and non-trans people, to open themselves up to suspicion, hostility and fear. We definitely aren't living in the world where a third space is a safe option yet. As I said, I don't care . That isn't my fight! YOU sort it out. Just as so many women have done for their single sex spaces. Go make what you need
What are we left with, then? Well I think we are left with women saying no. Keeping single sex spaces single sex.
With men having yet to speak up
With transpeople, non binary etc having to accept that what they want may never be available to them precisely how they are demnding it. That a compromise is NOT women aquiescing but trans people workig out their own alternatives.
Cannot, or Will Not. Both equally valid when it comes down to prptecting the safety and dignity of ANY person.
We have to, sensitively, on a case-by-case basis, negotiate this kind of subject as a culture. We've -always- had to, as using birth sex is not, and has never been a reliable marker - we've just been all the usual flavours of shit about it and ridden roughshod over things in the past. The need is clearly even greater now. Case by case doesn't mean person by person - another great gender ideology error. Again, I refer you to the EA2010 and its guidelines.
Cannot is already covered by the EA2010: The exceptions specifically exist to cover need for exclusion where it is objectively justified. I'm hugely sympathetic to the difficulties in practically enforcing the criteria for exclusion, and think they really do have to be defined on the individual level when viewed through the filter of harm mitigation. Nothing you have written suggests you have actually understood the exemptions.
Transphobia, however, is not objectively justified. Transphobia is not cannot. It is will not. And we all agree with that. But what we are discussing is not trnsphobia. It is the deconstruction of the rights of women. Until you can see that you will always come up against the brick wall of women saying no!
It's what the desperately hard-won GRA and EA2010 specifically protect against, and I'm damn glad we have them. They are not synonymous, the EA2010 was not written for trans individuals and actually the GRA is made redundant by the the EA2010. At the very least the two no exist in some opposition to each other.
Which is why we are all here talking about it!