Non Binary Gym Changing Rooms

[NevermindNelson]

I’ve just had an email from a gym I use explaining that their changing rooms are going to become gender neutral. I don’t even know where to start to reply. The email states that they’re proud to do this.

I want to reply with the reasons that I’m cancelling my membership, but all I’ve got so far is, “What, seriously?”

Maybe I should just send this - Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities. Because they have made the changing rooms unisex, haven’t they?

Edited to correct the term as ‘gender neutral’

limefrog can you see any safeguarding loopholes in putting men with women in an open changing room where they get completely naked?

Do you think they should sign a disclaimer, for instance?

I used to use a changing room - open plan, open showers - that changed the sex of the changing rooms depending on the events.

They used to put a sign up on the main board to check as you went in.

Guess what used to happen?

Yes that's right. Entirely predictably, and I think innocently, men would regularly walk in on naked/half naked women getting changed in the, for that few hours, women's changing room.

It's not dubious at all. There is a very clear statement on it which has come directly from the government.

It confirms that they are protected under the category of perception, not directly. This has always been the case and it's what the government fell back on to justify why they weren't going to explicitly include "gender fluid" and "non binary" in the GR PC. The rest is the author's interpretation.

What the government said:

“Wider categories of transgender people such as cross-dressers, non-binary and gender-fluid people are protected if they experience less favourable treatment because of gender reassignment, for example, if they are incorrectly perceived as undergoing gender-reassignment when in fact they are not, or incorrectly perceived to be male or female… We will keep this under review."
A barrister in a TRA court case a couple of weeks ago asserted that NB people aren't directly protected under the EA. So as I said, it's a dubious claim. Anyone is protected if people mistakenly discriminate or harass based on a particular PC. Any man could claim if people mistakenly thought he was "transitioning".

yes. Naughty wims starting threads asking for information and advice before they have ALL the information, getting other wims all het up about nothing.

And yes.... even 'half cocked', never full cocked. 😁

Indeed. You can't discriminate against somebody because you think they are gay, even if it turns out they are not.

The big mistake the government made was mot understanding that cross dressers, fetishists, AGPs and chancers in general, can all claim to be protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment.

I mean, it's been suggested on this thread that it might be discriminatory for a gym not to provide an entire room in which men can get naked with women. 😄

There is no entitlement in law to single sex provision. If there were, we would not be in the mess we are now.

There is no legal right of fairness under the EA; there is a right not to suffer discrimination. That might sound like semantics, but it is an important distinction: the right not to suffer discrimination is much narrower than any right to fairness would be.

In the future, case law may interpret the EA as conferring a right to single sex facilities (on the grounds that failure to provide them it is indirect discrimination against women or certain religious groups), but that has not yet happened- unfortunately.

It does the OP’s case no favours to overstate the position in law: it weakens her argument.

The big mistake the government made was mot understanding that cross dressers, fetishists, AGPs and chancers in general, can all claim to be protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment.

This. And it's one thing in a tribunal where the male claimant was basically "transitioning" to becoming a full time MTF trans person. Also Jaguar Landrover accepted the judgment and didn't challenge, if they had it would have gone to an EAT, then it would have come under more scrutiny.

But it's really going to be tested by some of the people making the claim.

This thread isn't about people using the facilities of the opposite sex, though. I don't think anyone is saying that they agree with men going into women's single-sex spaces. It's also not about permanently creating non-gendered changing spaces/ toilets.

It's about a gym introducing an optional session for probably a couple of hours a week where changing rooms become gender neutral, to support people who need that kind of facility. For the rest of the week, the changing rooms are single sex. I don't expect this session will be at a peak time either.

(I've assumed this is the case - waiting for OP's update - but this is something that I have known gyms to do to support non-binary/trans people).

People who want a single sex facility have the option to go at any other time of the week where they have access to single sex facilities.

That’s a terrible cheap-arsed solution though!

Just build a couple of single user spaces and be done with it.

That way the NB people are not restricted to just a couple of hours a week (whose paying a monthly membership for THAT?) and women aren’t at risk of men barging in because they ‘forgot’ that men are only allowed in the ladies changing on Tuesdays between 10 and 11-30.

The EHCR have identified that the EA no longer works in providing protections, and that it has created a direct conflict.

You cannot provide absolute freedom for a male to identify as a woman and require to be allowed to strip off among undressing women while those women unconditionally enable the belief of being a woman

AND

provide basically accessible facilities for all women that do not exclude many, freedom of belief, privacy, dignity and safety for women who do not share the belief that this male is now any different to other males, and who do not want to undress alongside him.

The two things cannot exist simultaneously. You cannot provide absolute freedom for males and single sex accessibility for females.

The advice to government was to address this, and consider being clear that sex means sex, at birth, regardless of legal papers, and to strengthen sex based protections alongside accessible additional options for those who do not wish to identify as the sex they are. The government have their fingers in their ears. The next government will be of the enthusiastic belief that the conflict is resolved best by destroying women's rights and equality. Largely because they're only women after all, and the women affected won't be the kind of woman who is useful or interesting or a mate of theirs.

They will identify as this being 'inclusive'.

Yep, I totally agree - changing cubicles would be a better solution, one that maybe OP could suggest to the gym. I imagine there are probably budgetary reasons why they haven't done this but if enough people request it then they might.

David Attenborough, Chris Packham, the local naturists I worked with - don't want to change with any of em, ta

I don't think removing safeguarding is supporting non binary or trans identified people though. In any circumstance.

The gym wants its virtue cookies without any added effort.

As an aside I'd welcome a plain English campaign that pointed out male facilities were for males of any gender ID and female facilities were for females of any gender ID. Gender neutral.

@RavingStone Do you think that single sex changing spaces provide safeguarding for trans and non binary people?

What about a female to male trans young person who is using the male changing room? (And they will do this, regardless of how much you try to implement rules based on biological sex).

The scenario of a gender neutral space for a couple of hours a week would be safer for them.

And what about that nightmare scenario of a male-female trans young person who is using the female changing room?

This scenario is better for the safety and comfort of all of the biological women using the female changing room.

The safeguarding scenarios in all of this are nuanced and complex - you can't simply say that one course of action or another 'removes safeguarding'. There are safeguarding issues around changing rooms regardless.

The gold standard thing to do with regards to safeguarding is to have individual cubicles for everyone, but that is not always a practical solution in terms of space and budget. However, they should try to provide at least a few cubicles.

women aren’t at risk of men barging in because they ‘forgot’ that men are only allowed in the ladies changing on Tuesdays between 10 and 11-30

I read somewhere that the reason why you often find mens toilets first, and then the women's further away down the corridor, is to give men no excuse whatsoever for just happening to be outside the ladies.

I'm going on the Fair Play for Women advice. Which claims that women can absolutely have single sex provision (I'm trying not to use the word rights or entitlement), whilst a company still upholds the equality act.

That a company can say they have women only provision, without fearing that they will fall foul of the law.

I know this hasn't been tested in court. But In the absence of that precedent being set, companies still have to work within the interpretation they are given. And claiming they have to allow men access to women on their say so, is the advice they've been given.

My point was that the OPs gym could make the facilities female only despite being told that that could be illegal.

Is that not correct? (I realise, I'm probably using words with the dictionary meaning, rather than their legal meaning, so thanks for clarifying).

This is a good idea.

I suspect that having a gender neutral change for only a couple of hours a week (while still charging the same membership fee) would open the gym to a discrimination claim from NB people.

An exercise class for an underserved group once a week is a different proposition to a changing area, because surely ALL members should have access to a suitable changing and toileting area at ALL times, whereas a class (or a pool session) is obviously a fixed duration thing and not being able to attend ladies yoga or spinning for men doesn’t render all the other facilities onsite inaccessible.

You can’t make a policy that both declares NB people a protected class AND restricts them to two hours of toilet access per week.
Well you can, but you are opening yourself up to legal action.

OP’s gym needs legal advice.

Being NB is not a protected characteristic under the EA, so this issue does not arise.

You talk as tho women who identify as men are this sort of official identification, that, for some reason, doesn't require the same sort of safeguarding as other women.

Many women who identify as men are doing it because they are other gay, have suffered from past sexual trauma, or are autistic. Many have comorbid issues.

These are vulnerable women.

And your answer is to create a space where a man, any man, including every single predator in the land, can access them naked.

There are no circumstances under which this should happen, in my opinion.

Obviously, a third space, is entirely different. There will be no male access to vulnerable, naked women in that.

limefrog
Do you think that single sex changing spaces provide safeguarding for trans and non binary people?

As much as they do for any other male and female humans, yes.

No I don't think it's appropriate to reduce safeguarding for all women simply because some humans have been encouraged / choose to use the facilities of the opposite sex.

No, but Gender Reassignment is, which is so vague that anyone who goes by a new nickname can use it.

Plus the gym itself must be working off the basis that nonbinary is protected under gender reassignment because they wouldn’t be able to offer anything special at all if they hadn’t decided it was a proportionate means (nonbinary people don’t want to use single sex facilities) to a legitimate aim (nonbinary people should have access to exercise, same as everyone else).

The characteristic of Gender Reassignment does not offer access to the opposite sex’s spaces, but it does mean you can’t be refused membership or be told that you can only use a loo on Tuesdays.

They need to provide additional third spaces.

And if they can’t afford to build an extra change but want to ensure that people with special genders are included they could change the signs on the door to say ‘Female Only (including nonbinary people registered female at birth)’ and vice versa. That won’t cost much at all.

I am really not sure where I said that trans men don't require the same level of safeguarding as women, or how that's what you have taken from my posts. Just to clarify - my view is that you are absolutely right that there are many trans men who have suffered past sexual trauma, are neurodiverse, or have other vulnerabilities. Many of them are also young. How we can provide a good level of safeguarding for them, however, is complicated.

'And your answer is to create a space where a man, any man, including every single predator in the land, can access them naked.'

The fact is, these young people go into male changing rooms all the time, because they identify as male. Which throws up the exact thing you're worried about - that they are surrounded by biological males who are seeing them undress.

You can tell them not to do this and shout about biological sex until you're blue in the face, but if you know any young trans men, you will know that most of them don't want to use the women's, and they won't do so simply because you tell them to. If you have ever met a teenager, you'll know they can be pretty stubborn and rebellious, too. They are at risk from going into male changing rooms.

A gender neutral changing space (or ideally a cubicle!) is a much better way to safeguard those individuals rather than them going into male-only spaces (which they will do, regardless of what you say about biological sex).

Safeguarding is complicated, it's definitely not black and white.

What the gym should really do is put in some cubicles.