Transgender women advised to call 999 if asked to leave women-only lavatories

[ChristinaXYZ]

"Transgender women should call 999 if they feel unsafe through a request to leave a women-only lavatory, Britain’s largest child transgender charity has said.

The advice from Mermaids comes amid lingering confusion over the long-awaited new guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the watchdog, for providers of single-sex spaces such as refuges, changing rooms and hospital wards.

The EHRC ruled last month that trans women, who are born as males, can be excluded from female-only spaces if there is a legitimate reason such as protecting privacy and dignity...

...But Mermaids has become the latest lobby group to issue its own guidance in response, saying it is “not happy” with the regulator’s approach “because we feel it is not inclusive enough of trans people”.

In its helpsheet, titled “single-sex spaces: know your rights”, the influential young people’s trans charity lists a series of tips for “what to do if someone asks you to leave a facility”.

The first tip, branded “grossly irresponsible” by lawyers, stated: “If you are at risk of harm, try and get somewhere safe and call someone you trust, or the emergency services if you feel comfortable in doing so on 999.”

It also recommends that gender-dysphoric youths “ask the facility/your school for a copy of its trans inclusion policy” and “ask the facility/your school for its reasons for your removal, in writing”.

Trans people are also urged to direct the school or venue to Mermaids phone lines and “take notes”. The charity stresses that the EHRC’s guidance “is not the law and cannot be enforced” and that “you still have the right to access the services and facilities you did before the guidance was published”.

Leading lawyers have said it shows how venues such as schools, gyms and hospitals are caught in a war of words between activists and regulators, with little clarity on how to act....

read more

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/30/transgender-women-advised-call-999-asked-leave-women-only-lavatories/

This bit is hilarious at the end of their sheet.
This help sheet does not constitute legal advice
What the point then?
It is a very mixed advice sheet aimed at both school children and their young adult readers.

@Live4weekend
Show him the thread on Dylan, the tampon vending machine. Dylans various social media pages can be found on it. Dylan is a mid 20s male born person who likes to dress like Shirley Temple and to be referred to as a girl. That might help illustrate your point.

Serious risk of harm?

Who's more likely to be in danger of harm?
A man who's confronted by a woman who won't play along with his 'identity', or the woman who dares to correctly sex him to his face?

I fucking hate all the be kind bullshit that makes girls question their natural fear response and puts them in danger.

Round and round in circles we go...
Transitioning males can't use the mens because they'll be in danger but they can become terrified enough in the ladies to call the police...
Sounds like the police are a useful tool against women and ineffective against men.
So being in the women's is purely the path of least resistance not that of psychological safety as I've been demanded to believe.

They know full well this will be interpreted as “you can’t tell me to leave or I will call 999”… because hurting their feelings is a life threatening emergency right?

Utter joke. Calling anything like this a “fact” sheet, like “my truth”, just screams BS.

From the Mermaids sheet:

You cannot be excluded from a single sex space without a fair reason. Someone being ‘scared’ of trans people is not a good enough reason.

and

Each decision has to be dealt with on its ‘own facts’. A facility or school cannot have a blanket rule to not ever allow trans people to use single sex spaces.

So being 'too scared' to use the correct facility for your sex is a valid reason to use opposite sex, but members of that sex are not allowed to feel scared? If it's not a good enough reason for women to object, how is it a good enough reason to use the women's facilities if you are a TW?

Is 'on its own facts' supposed to be a more inclusive way of saying 'case by case'? I am still a bit confused by 'case by case'. I took it to mean by individual incident, but then read on another thread it was more like scenario based - eg TW wanting to use women's changing room. And surely a facility or school CAN have a blanket rule to keep a single sex service as just that? Of course someone trans can use a single sex space - as long as it the correct sex! I imagine Mermaids would not object if a school produced a blanket rule that someone trans could ALWAYS use opp sex spaces if they wish?

Since it is permissible for changing rooms etc to be single sex, but not obligatory, how the hell are we supposed to know which place is which, particularly when out and about? It’s a complete lottery which would be legally in the right in this scenario.

”Leading lawyers have said it shows how venues such as schools, gyms and hospitals are caught in a war of words between activists and regulators, with little clarity on how to act....”

This is bonkers! Obviously, schools, gyms and hospital should act according to the advice of the regulators and have nothing to do with activists. The idea that organisations should be looking to activists to see if they should ignore the law is crazy - what other domain would this happen in?! How has this become normalised?

This "blanket rule" stuff is just wrong. You can devise and implement a policy that does not give everyone advantages. You have to show you've given due regard to the duty, and that duty is not the only thing you have to take into account eg public sector services have financial responsibilities too:

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/149

The due regard part seems to have turned into an inconvenient truth of the legislation for some.

Who the fuck do Mermaids think they are? Sooner they go under the better

^From the Mermaids sheet:

You cannot be excluded from a single sex space without a fair reason. Someone being ‘scared’ of trans people is not a good enough reason.

and

Each decision has to be dealt with on its ‘own facts’. A facility or school cannot have a blanket rule to not ever allow trans people to use single sex spaces.^

But even this seems open to interpretation. If I didn’t know better, I would read that to mean that we still have single sex spaces and you still use the sex based space even if you identify differently.

Otherwise you have a mixed sex single sex space.

They are deliberately misrepresenting the law by not taking into account the legitimate and proportionate bit if the Equality. Surely it is ALWAYS legitimate and proportionate to exclude makes from single sex services for the privacy and dignity of females. This should be the starting point women and girls want there privacy and dignity so it is right to exclude males. This case by case stuff doesn't make sense. All Mermaids are doing is giving boys who say they are girls and men who say they are women a false sense of entitlement. They are basically setting them up for conflict.

All Mermaids are doing is giving boys who say they are girls and men who say they are women a false sense of entitlement. They are basically setting them up for conflict.

They are. And, in my opinion, that's the point. Telling males that if them not being allowed in the ladies makes them feel unsafe they're to call 999, but women being scared of men violating their boundaries is a nothing thing?

Talk about showing your hand.

Honestly. Watching this unravel so spectacularly is grimly satisfying.

TRAs have always assumed trans trumps everything. And the EHRC, quite politely I thought, saying er no, equality is about balance, is causing any pretence at rationality to fly out the window.

I'd like to be a fly on wall at EHRC as the realisation dawns. Then dawns again. And again...

Until, appropriately enough, the sun never sets and the realisation is blinding !

The EHRC called for a reset in relations. They didn't call for groups to wilfully misrepresent the law or to (by implication) slate the organisation that the UN decided not to interfere in. Yet, the response was to say the EHRC is wrong.

That response has not been by way of seeking judicial review, however. And unless they knew that the revised Codes were in the post, it could be inferred that they know the EHRC is right and they're pushing it anyway.

Pushing it by stoking division. The opposite of what a civil society should do.

If they knew and they're waiting for the revised Codes to seek JR, then they've already shown their own hand and given the EHRC an indication of an avenue of likely challenge. On balance, my guess is they did not know the Codes were about to be revised.

All round stupid, and an uncivil way to behave.

Mermaids appears to advise ignoring the EHRC’s advice, but then relies upon assertions about the law which are unclear and dubious.”

Mermaids, relying on unclear and dubious assertions about the law? Never!

An organisation that constantly bangs on about being 'kind' and with a website that looks like a nursery school is here threatening girls with the police if they are upset about males coming into their toilets.

What the hell is going on in the minds of those adults in public positions that they have let this self-appointed organisation of - what, exactly? - dictate so much to a generation of young people.

An organisation that constantly bangs on about being 'kind' and with a website that looks like a nursery school is here threatening girls with the police if they are upset about males coming into their toilets.

Yep. And that if those girls are scared, it doesn't matter.

It's quite the unmasking.

This is getting beyond ridiculous now 😂

You cannot be excluded from a single sex space without a fair reason. Someone being ‘scared’ of trans people is not a good enough reason.

I am relatively new to all of this, and am a bit lost.

Does this mean that they are saying that e.g. a trans woman should be using the mens facilities and cannot be excluded from it? Or the other way around? Or neither?

and surely a “fair reason” for excluding a trans woman from the single sex space of e.g. a women’s bathroom would be that the facility is single sex, not single gender, and that it is biological sex which is the protected characteristic.

Does this mean that they are saying that e.g. a trans woman should be using the mens facilities and cannot be excluded from it? Or the other way around? Or neither?

Theoretically what they've said would absolutely apply to men's spaces , but they're talking about woman's spaces.

and surely a “fair reason” for excluding a trans woman from the single sex space of e.g. a women’s bathroom would be that the facility is single sex, not single gender, and that it is biological sex which is the protected characteristic.

Equality law doesn't allow discrimination on the basis of sex. But certain exceptions are allowed. So in order to keep a space female only you have to justify it using what they call 'a proportionate means to a legitimate end'.

The EHRC have had to give examples of this because that description is so woolly that TRAs have told everyone that there is no proportionate means that is fair and a 'legitimate end' doesn't exist.

The EHRC have said that all traditional woman's spaces can exclude transwomen to preserve women's dignity and privacy. And an alternative provision that isn't necessarily the mens can be provided for transwomen.

It's guidance tho. Not law. No-one imagined that an actual law would be required to keep eg rapists out of female prisons.

So TRAs are trying to claim its not fair in order to force suppliers to ignore it.

• legitimate aim, not legitimate end.

I thought it looked odd, but couldn't work out why!

If it's ok to tell females that being scared and uncomfortable isn't a reason to say no to using a toilet, then it's ok to tell TW that too.

Because otherwise it's just obvious male supremacism. Male people get to choose and be comfortable due to their biological difference and female people get to .... well, just make do with the crumbs of whatever male people choose to let them have, while shutting up about it.

Mermaids lost the plot years ago. The TQ+ lobby really will survive hearing the word no sometimes. Just as they expect female people to survive. They will survive some things existing that are not available to them but are there to meet the needs of others. The world and everything in it not being all about TQ+ people all the time is not a hate crime, and wasting the time of emergency response and police is... well. Let's start with deeply irresponsible and unpack from there.

I think it could breach the EA. They admit it isn't legal advice. It doesn't foster good relationships between groups with different protected characteristics. It encourages men to use single sex women's facilities, and to feel discriminated against if they are barred.

149 Public sector equality duty
(1)A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—
(a)eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;
(b)advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;
(c)foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

(2)A person who is not a public authority but who exercises public functions must, in the exercise of those functions, have due regard to the matters mentioned in subsection (1).
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/149

26 Harassment
(1)A person (A) harasses another (B) if—
(a)A engages in unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, and
(b)the conduct has the purpose or effect of—
(i)violating B's dignity, or
(ii)creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/26

What should the police do when they arrive? Assuming there's only been 'literal' and not 'actual' violence.
Show them the nearest Gents or gender neutral bogs, let them pee in their helmet, escort them to the ladies and/or arrest the women/girls/other men who complained?