Trans bathroom access - the equality act is 13 years old so why is there such a challenge on it now?

[Snufflebabe05]

Really trying to understand views I’m hearing online, at work, in media.

Anyone who is transitioning, has transitioned, proposing to transition is legally allowed to use the bathroom which is aligned to the gender they see themselves as. No evidence needed, no proof of medical info etc. This has been the case since the Equality Act launched in 2010. Any business who doesn’t allow this is breaking the law. Unless there is a proportionate and reasonable reason (gym changing rooms can be an example). The majority of locations wouldn’t fall into the exemption though.

Toilets are aligned with a relevant Health and Safety legislation, where bathrooms are provided for men and women, so by gender.

So why is the uproar now? Why is it now that we are hearing about “women-only spaces”? Is is the media? What has changed?

Genuine, honest question as keen to understand.

you are very demanding...

You have been given the answer to that question in at least 4 or 5 posts.

What gives?

This is it in a nutshell and as usual, Eresh, your single sentence covers multiple facets.

Not trying to be demanding. I’m finding it really complex and want to be part of the conversation at work and thought I’d seek views on here on the parts of the discussion I am struggling to navigate.

In your first paragraph, which legislation do you mean?

The Workplace (health safety & welfare) regs that I posted earlier that pertain to toilets in workplaces.

Is there currently a law which says what sex and gender is? The difference?

No, but as pp posted the Equality Act is unequivocal.

And is there a law which makes clear that single sex toilets are required?

I posted the Regulations earlier so you can check for yourself. Again, this pertains to workplaces.

Or, (and I’m confusing myself) is the HSE law saying two separate toilets, by sex (when gender wasn’t seen as being something different to sex?) However, this is now being interpreted differently in that the wording that is used is now aligned (in terms of current society) to gender?

Once again, it’s not “HSE law”, it’s just law. (Or are you just unaware that HSE stands for Health and Safety Executive and you’re using it as an incorrect acronym for “Health and Safety Law”? Which would suggest your research is a bit shit and you should “educate yourself”.)

If you read the Regulations it’s clear what is meant. To interpret it differently is ignorant at best.

And I disagree with your stance that gender is used widely by ordinary people as anything other than a coy synonym for sex. Gender reveal parties are all the rage these days and this is totally about sex, as observed on an ultrasound scan.

Check your local building regs, too.

They vary by area but it has always been generally understood that toilets need to be separated on the basis of sex.

I think Sex Matters have guidance on this and their rec is for fully enclosed gender neutral additive loos, as well as the usual male and female.

You could also check with EHRC directly.

I agree that the law is a mess and so badly misunderstood its leaving every employer and service provider in the UK open to accusations of discrimination.

Some of these laws were made before people started changing the meaning of words.

Sex/gender is being argued in Scottish court right now.

The government has been urged to clarify it.

The EHRC has declined to clarify.

We are in a right pickle.

There's this - www.gov.uk/government/news/new-building-requirements-for-separate-male-and-female-toilets#:~:text=The%20government%20has%20announced%20today,private%20toilet%20as%20a%20minimum.

And there's also a recent EAT which was won on the grounds of sex discrimination on the basis of separate sex toilets not being provided (Earl Shilton Town Council v Miller) but I haven't had the chance to read it all through yet.

Sex = male or female

Gender means male or female (in common parlance), apart from to gender ideologues.

Gender stereotyping = root of much evil, but that’s another thread.

In the Workplace (Health safety & welfare) regulations it is in no doubt whatsoever that the meaning is men = male people and women = female people.

Subsequent language mangling, which itself has no basis in law, has no retroactive action.

What exactly don’t you understand?

Good luck OP.

Also, if there is any discussion about separating toilets by ‘gender’ you could ask how that works. Because there are over 100 genders and do they each get a toilet for their unique needs? What about cat gender? Surely for their dignity they need somewhere separate.

It is really systemic transphobia to focus on just two genders as an organisation. So you either separate by sex or you add (not replace) gender neutral as a better option.

If I’m discussing the need for single sex toilets and someone was trying to ask for legal proof of the requirement to provide them, I’d come right back at them and ask why they want males to be able to have free access to female toilets. Because TW are male. If toilets are for women and TW, then a man who doesn’t claim to be a TW could claim discrimination if he were to be prevented from going into the female toilet as other types of males (TW) have been allowed in.

Don't think we need to be hostile to OP who is trying to articulate what she/he wants to know.

Sex and gender are different. The problem is people use them interchangeably all the time and you need to try and tell from context whether they mean sex (everything up until 5 years or so ago would've meant sex, as a rough rule! ) or feelings, usually along the lines of cultural masculinity or femininity.

This is why the Scottish case is really important at the moment.

You're absolutely right to ask these questions and you are finding what so many have found - it's a very muddy mess of a law.

Man and woman are the human terms for male and female.

Just as stag and doe, bull and cow, made and stallion are for their respective animals.

Human culture has adorned the words with a ton of social and visual stereotypes. (Removable 'stuff' - commercial products)

And therein lies the problem; some humans think that the social and visual (clothes etc) stereotypes mean you are the sex most commonly promoted as that stereotype.

Lawyer here.

It is a long established legal principle that when drafting legislation, any words which are used in a sense other than their usual, bog standard, everyday sense need to be defined.

As I said in my previous post, the Gender Recognition Act uses the words "male" and "female" to refer to "genders" but fails to define "male", "female" or "gender". This would ordinarily be considered negligent drafting, but in this case I believe it was deliberate, given that the effect of the Gender Recognition Act is to allow an individual to be legally recognised as the opposite sex.

Why this conflation of sex and gender? And why the refusal to define gender?

The answer is actually quite simple. Gender isn't real. Sex is the only thing that actually exists. A piece of legislation allowing an individual to change their legal gender but not their legal sex would have no impact, because there are no situations where gender is a relevant or useful way of classifying people and so legal gender is not a concept that needs to exist in law.

Gender is based in stereotypes, which is why nobody can define it. If you try to define a woman other than by reference to biological sex, you are left with two things. Feelings, and fashion choices. So your indefinable, unprovable, subjectively experienced feelings, which are unique to the individual and therefore cannot ne used to divide the entirety of humanity into two groups. And high heels, lipstick and push up bras. Obviously the legislators who drafted the Gender Recognition Act could not define the "female gender" as "having womanly feelings and wearing a bra", because that would have made it clear how ridiculous the whole thing was. So they chose not to define their terms and hoped nobody would notice.

Then six years later the Equality Act came along, with its protected characteristics. Sex and gender reassignment were listed separately, and the section on sex even allowed for some circumstances where it would be legal and proportionate to exclude a trans person from spaces for the opposite sex (i.e. the sex with which they believe they identify) even if they had a gender recognition certificate and were therefore legally the opposite sex. So it is clear that the Equality Act did intend to differentiate between someone whose biological sex is female (who benefits from the protected characteristic of "sex") and someone whose biological sex is male but whose legal sex is female (who benefits from the protected characteristic of "gender reassignment").

Unfortunately the wording was not clear enough to prevent Lady Haldane from finding, recently, that the protected characteristic of sex includes legal sex, which is why urgent clarification is now needed so that biological women can have their protected category again, as was always the intention.

And this whole debacle shows, for me, firstly why allowing people to change their legal sex is a bad idea regardless of what the international human rights community believes, and secondly, why we need to resist this assault on language. Because the trans "rights" lobby have proven time and time again that if you give an inch, they will take a mile. Give them "woman", they will change the definition of "female" too. Give them "gender", they will change the definition of "sex" next.

Because one person online says that they are concerned because they think trans women are still men and then everyone else blindly repeats the same arguments! There are far bigger issues than this which people could focus on

Funny how nobody ever tells trans people to just use the correct toilets like everyone else because there are bigger things to worry about than whether a public toilet matches their identity or not.

Hate to break it to you but trans women are still men, they are male in every cell in their body and always will be.

Damm it mother nature is being transphobic again

Who is this one all powerful person, and how can I meet her?

Drive-by alert outside my window... just going to carry on with what I was doing.

Well, I'm waiting for directions to the UrTerf.

I think it was Aunt Germaine...

The reason why now is because the Tories realise it's a vote winner. They obviously don't actually give a fuck about women.

Ah, the bat signal has gone out

Ahhh yes… women cannot think about their own needs and experiences and make a decision issues.

Hey women of the world …. Which one of you stated your opinion that we all copied? Come on, hands up!

@ArabellaScott No, she's busy inspecting people's pelvis width to decide if they can come in the bathroom or not

Sex and gender are not the same thing. Of course a trans man is biologically a woman but that doesn't stop his gender from being male

OP, for what reason would we need services segregated by gender? Why would women felz and men felz need different sports? Bear in mind the number of TW who do nothing surgically or hormonally when they transition (aka the majority).

If we segregate by gender and there are 100 different genders, why do we not have 100 different toilets?

I am agender. Which toilet should I use when there is no agender option?.

There is no logic in the anti women movement's position.