Single sex toilets and muslim women

[peonyred]

Since I am constantly being met with the "be kind" bollox and clearly am not perceived as being "kind", I have started asking people (mostly men and young people) how they feel about the fact that allowing men into women's loos means Muslim women and orthodox Jewish women cannot use them - at all. Therefore they have no access to any public toilets. TW can use unisex, mens or women's but their insistence on their rights to women's loos has shut out a significant number of women. This is without mentioning sexual abuse survivors (which appears not to register) First - am I right about this? Second, is there a Muslim woman out there who (with our backing) takes this to court? Is this the way though or am I kidding myself we'll ever get our spaces back?

@peonyred

I've just come across this excellent article written by Shonagh Dillon who has interviewed Muslim women on how transgender inclusion policies and how it affects them.
Not sure if this should have its own post though.

shonaghdillon.co.uk/muslim-women-focus-group/

"Within Islam, the religion is set – it was set 1,400 years ago and it is very clear that sex is biological. For example, if someone is born male then identifies later as a woman, to us that wouldn’t make a difference – because what our religion tells us is that male and female is set at birth, and it is set by God. It is not something for us to change."

"I am seeing this more and more for Muslim women – we are afraid to speak up because we don’t want to be accused of being a transphobe or of discriminating against transgender women. I just feel that when these people say that everyone has the right to choose their identity, they forget that everyone also has the right not to believe that identity.
I feel as Muslim women our voices have been entirely lost."

In short, I would say that this makes a factual and compelling argument for why "transwomen are women" discriminates against Muslim women on their "sex" and "religion". (And possibly race?).

I don't think the reason Iran surgically modifies gay men is that they are supportive of 'transwomen'. I don't know what the status is of the gay men they do this conversion on. I would be very surprised if they were accepted to actually be women for all purposes.

Reminds me of those men they had in Ottoman circles. Surgically modified for a reason. Don't think they thought those men to be women, though.

You can see the attraction for women and girls though. If mastectomy and hormones were enough to camouflage them as men, they might not be discriminated against. Price to pay with your health and fertility though.

Even if all toilets were self contained cubicles I'd still prefer them to be single sex given the toilet habits of some men. Re gender neutral loos at uni, recently saw something on twitter where a female student was complaining about having to deal with a period with men in the adjoining toilet stalls, with these men going on to talk about it afterwards. I wondered if she had been one of those proclaiming workers but then in practice found that it doesn't work (for women at least).

So would I

Given the treatment meted out to a Black Muslim FGM survivor at a WEN Cafe Equalities Hustings, I think that many so called progressive groups don't give a fuck about the needs of minority group women. They think even asking about our rights is hateful.
mobile.twitter.com/abdisamira1/status/1523392054340251648

It is important to understand that words like 'inclusion' and 'equality' have merely been appropriated as powerful words to manipulate those who genuinely have morals, ethics, value led beliefs. There is no actual held belief on the part of the person weaponising that word in their own personal agenda.

Society is going to have to get very, very much more cynical and look at deeds, not words. Because there's a political group who know all the words.

I remember Ann Sinnott saying once that all protected characteristics need to be assessed within an ecosystem and there not be a hierarchy. (Gender reassignment (whatever that means, so woolly)) not top-trumping every other PC.

So trans inclusion policies in the workplace, which from what I have seen mostly always come from a Stonewall template, should be rebuked. As Stonewall policy represents ONE of the protected characteristics and has no interest in the other 8, in fact actively campaigns for all colleagues to ignore them by labelling them as transphobic.

Well this thread has had all sorts of… special… interesting effort with [repeatedly] claiming the UK is a secular country though. Yes, the UK with an established church that the Head of State is Head of; & that same UK that fills 26 of the 764 seats of the Upper House of its bicameral legislature with bishops. The UK where, in England and Wales, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 states that all pupils in state schools must take part in a daily act of collective worship, unless their parents request that they be excused from attending.

The UK remains culturally Christian; & while the C of E is in decline, other denominations are not. There are a very few Christian women whose agreement with other “Peoples of The Book” as to the immutability of trans women’s male sex being more important than their “gender identity” extends to the inability to share spaces with them.

Referencing Iran looks even weaker when you consider it is a complete outlier. There have been fatwas issued by multiple clerics making it clear sex reassignment surgery is haram - they do permit, however, surgery for people with VSDs. Obviously Iran is Shia not Sunni, but this study by Iranian academics (at Tehran University) concluded that the same does, in fact, apply to a Shi’ite reading of the relevant texts.

I’m sure there are individual Muslims who will say TWAW - just as there are Muslims who drink alcohol despite it being Haram. It’s the same as it is in the case of any other woman who thinks TWAW & as such is happy to share facilities other women wish to continue being single sex: how nice for them, but unless-until the time humans evolve so dramatically we will probably have the technology for trans women to reconfigure themselves into women on a sub-atomic level; we need to keep single-sex spaces for all those women who do want &/or need them.

@NitroNine I’ve read this
There are a very few Christian women whose agreement with other “Peoples of The Book” as to the immutability of trans women’s male sex being more important than their “gender identity” extends to the inability to share spaces with them. several times and can’t understand it can you break it down for me?

@5zeds

Sorry, it really wasn’t very well written: I was trying to communicate that while lots of Christian women reject gender ideology (& thus believe trans women are men, however they may choose to identify); there are only a very few whose religious practices [&, perhaps religiosity?] preclude their sharing spaces with TW (on basis of their sex) in a similar way to [some] women from the other Abrahamic religions.

it’s an interesting statement but I’m not sure how accurate. The Roman Catholic community while “kinder” towards difference than is often perceived would I think be highly unlikely to embrace men in their female spaces and I am fairly sure would not countenance TM in their male spaces.

Certainly the position of the Catholic Church has been made very clear re: TWAM & TMAW. As such, TM are ineligible to join the clergy/become monks; & TW cannot become nuns (I think only the former is a specific part of the Equality Act, but Hansard won’t play for me right now - certainly it’s in the bit with primogeniture going unchanged). Equally, single-sex prayer groups etc are just that, not single-gender.

That’s very different from Catholic women not being able to use ladies loos/go to women only swimming sessions/use changing rooms in shops/make use of other supposedly female-only public spaces though, which is what is being discussed in this thread. Individual Catholic women’s public lives may be circumscribed by the presence of males in female spaces; but not as a requirement of their faith. Arguably in this sense they’re better off than many other Christian women - male people are not being granted entry to female spaces in activities directly related to their faith; but the Church doesn’t seek to limit their movement in the World, either.

Take Iran for instance - has a very big transgender population and is quite supportive of them.

Because homosexuality in Iran is met with a death sentence, and a group of powerful men must have their desires for young men met legally - therefore trans away the gay.

I think you’re conflating culture and religion in a very pick and mix way. Men in changing rooms and toilets would absolutely have mean Catholic girls would not attend. I assume it would be similar for many other Christians.