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/

Inebriati, iirc, I don't think charities are classed as public authority, so are not under PSED.

I'll dig around on EHRC pages and report back.

As suspected, the charities are not defined as 'public authority'.

More interestingly , the Charity Commission isn't bound by the PSED either, seemingly: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/19

An oversight?

Actually, scrap that, Charity Commission is non-ministerial government department, so would automatically be bound by PSED.

Also, as explained here (www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/public-sector-equality-duty/who-must-comply-with-the-public-sector-equality-duty/) the charities are bound by PSED when carrying out 'published functions', but that is woolier and needs to be proved.

It is time to read up on the functions of the Charity Commission. I wonder if they are ok with their customers openly flouting, and discouraging others to do so, latest guidance from another government agency

The word significant doesn't appear in the help sheet guidance but this does.

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.

mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/single-sex-spaces-know-your-rights/

Quite a lot pivots on the perception of risk of harm. Some people might consider that a challenge to their immersive fiction is a harm or risks it being one.

One struggles to envisage any sort of “harm” being inflicted by a small woman distressed at finding a man in the female toilets.
However, the converse…

Only read the OP but never heard such fucking stupid “advice”. What a waste of time for the 999 call handler.

This Mermaids charity really likes to ramp up the notion that certain people are always the imminent victims of the most awful crimes 🤔

precisely.

(though to be fair if I met Dylan in the ladies and he offered me a tampon ………)

I’m finding it confusing too.

if you call a space single sex then it should be that

How often is a TW ever harmed in a ladies lavatory though , I'm presuming by other women?

For clarity once is too often. I would never excuse it based on the numbers. Im interested to understand how much of a problem it is, and who the perpetrators are. The cynic in me wonders if actually a polite request to leave is, as others have said up thread, being classed as literal violence.

The cynic in me is also wondering exactly what the response to the 999 call would be seeing as how I know damn well that when I was the target of unwanted sexually suggestive comments from a "white van man" when running this week ringing 999 would be pointless.

This is so true

So if TW cannot be excluded from single sex spaces then do we not have any single sex spaces by law?

That's right, we don't.

Because it was never considered necessary to make it law.

Actually that's not quite true. The rule of primogeniture is a hard and fast no.

The rule that the eldest son inherits a title and the estate still holds. If his older sister identifies as a man, she's shit out of luck in terms of inheriting that privilege.

Funny that.

Omgfg, every time I think it can’t get worse…

Purely a way to frighten vulnerable women into keeping quiet when someone questionable comes into the toilets, knowing they can threaten them with calling the police.

This is all so fucked up. When will normality return?

www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/500-000-grant-to-gender-dysphoria-charity-to-go-ahead-says-lottery-body.html

I’m surprised we do not have the right, I’ve been reading on this board for a while - I appreciate those who’ve said more on it and before I started reading up on it - and I wasn’t aware this was the case

I googled

According to the EHRC: “[The guidance] advises organisations such as hospitals, retailers, hospitality and sports clubs to put in place policies that are both legal and balance the needs of different groups. The guidance confirms that service providers wishing to limit services to a single sex are legally able to do so, provided the reasons are justified and proportionate.”

and the term guidance seems at odds with legally able

Mermaids is taking the guidance angle but if legally able exists then it is possible? If proportionate etc

But surely the service provider would have to state at the entrance that the toilets for example are not single sex?

The EHRC have published the guidance very recently, there is currently a what is, in effect, a test case being crowdfunded for, you will find the details in 'Update on the Rape Crisis' thread.

The guidance is non-statutory , and may be interpreted as contradicting to the Statutory Codes, which EHRC is currently re-writing.

The Equality Act ALLOWS provision of single-sex services in the exceptions to the general presumption of mixed sex provision.

Stonewall has campaigned since 2015 to remove these exceptions, thankfully unsuccessfully.

Meanwhile they, and Mermaids, and all the other trans charities went ahead with incorrect guidance, managing to persuade many, many organisations into 'getting ahead of the law'.

Now there is a pushback and they are getting very concerned that the gravy train of 'training' are about to end

It really should.

Yes, sorry, you can legally exclude males (however they identify and whether or not they have a GRC). But it's discretionary, and up to the service provider concerned.

You do have the right to single sex places, but only if the provider wants to give them to you, if you see what I mean.

You can absolutely have them, legally, and enforceable. But if the provider doesn't want to get them to you, then no.

For instance, Marks & Spencer's could say they supply changing rooms segregated by sex and it would be perfectly legal and enforceable. But they could also say they don't.

Largely because no one thought they had to actually clarify it in law, because public opinion would do that.

At this point, I want to add a link to a thread I started way back when about the EHRC guidance, and what it all means.

But I can't work the new search function.

if anyone can help me search for my name, starting a thread, that would be great!

Is it this one?
Want to know why women are livid? (trans thread) | Mumsnet

Now there is a pushback and they are getting very concerned that the gravy train of 'training' are about to end

And a growing concern about empowered females who will start daring to say no. And refusing to co operate with enforced mixed sex provision.

Why can't these organisations realise that biologically born women have rights too? It's all about the rights of trans people now and it's so unfair. My blood pressure is rising just thinking about this.

From @Datun 's post above

"You do have the right to single sex places, but only if the provider wants to give them to you, if you see what I mean."

Yes. What cannot happen though is for a service provider to deceive users by, for example, saying a provision is single sex for females only while providing that same service to men who pretend they are not men. The service provider must make it clear that provision is on a mixed sex basis. Otherwise there is the potential for legal challenge via the conflation of two separate protected characteristics in the Equality Act: sex and gender reassignment.

In the Scottish Inner Court, earlier this year, it was established as a UK precedent in law that the PC of 'sex' in the Equality Act is a reference to human biology. A woman is female and provisions for females only must necessarily exclude males including all males who claim the protected characteristic of 'gender reassignment'.