Sunak: I’ll change the Equality Act to protect women’s spaces

[Binglebong]

Sorry to dump and run but this needed sharing.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/02/rishi-suank-equality-act-protect-womens-spaces-tory/

What a shame you think so

I'm not clear what that bit is (should be after so long in the trenches, but I'm not, sorry!) but is that the proportionate means to a legitimate aim bit? Which I thought the Haldane judgement did affect?

I agree, because it takes some of the wind out of TRA sails. When they claim we don’t know the difference of sex and gender, although would it require some sort of legal definition of gender.

It then becomes whether the GRA is needed at all. We look carefully of where the need to seperate on sex is needed. And that means biological. We consider whether some things need to be separated on sex that currently are (possibly). But we leave privately organised groups alone. That covers book clubs etc where women (or indeed men) could meet separately. I don’t see this even meaning something like the Garrick couldn’t be mixed-sex, as there are lots of laws that don’t apply under certain thresholds. 30 members for example.

Well, for the woman in the street, I suppose what we want to know is whether our daughter can have a changing room that excludes middle aged males, however they dress.

If not, how the fuck do we change things.

Or if our teenage daughter can have a toilet that excludes teenage boys, however they dress/whatever pronouns they use.

If not, how the fuck do we change things.

This is bad news like the single sex toilets design.

The toilet legislation that is coming in in October will mean toilets being more enclosed as there’s no design that specifies gap at the bottom of the doors.

So little enclosed private cubicles in public spaces. Not great for women and girls who are more likely to be attacked or spiked, not great for anyone collapsing with a medical condition (heart attacks and strokes, both 1 every 5mins on average and, statistically more likely to happen on the toilet), not great for epilepsy sufferers or diabetics. Not great for anyone who wants clean ventilated toilets less likely to catch diseases, not great for anyone in the event of a fire or another emergency.

What could possibly happen in tiny private spaces?

Sex, drugs, death and the occasional birth?

Whatever it is, these fully enclosed toilet rooms are supposed to quieten noises, so if you need to collapse or if you are being assaulted please do it noisily and make sure another person is around to help. Because there’s no gaps for prevention.

The reason it got to this is nobody thought it through because the justification for fully enclosed design was wholly based on ‘gender neutral’ toilet design. All the evidence is there in the documents.

So everyone’s ability to be safe in an emergency, suffers. But it’s women, girls, the disabled and frail that are most likely to be affected by these designs.

Haven't read the full thread, but this makes me really angry. Where have they been the last ten years while women have been struggling to be heard? Cloth-eared until, 'oh, we need their votes'. They can fuck right off.

A good illustration is Mridul Wadhwa. Assuming that those who appointed Wadhwa had no clue that he was male, which I don't believe but let's run with it, then when they realised, they should have pointed out that the job was advertised under the Schedule 9 exception and then arranged for him to leave the post.

There are many reasons that wasn't going to happen. And they're not to do with paperwork. Unfortunately it's about a captured culture and I don't think the suggested change to the Equality Act 2010 is the answer.

What I'm getting from this argument is that the law is fucked.

It needs changed. Women and girls need privacy, dignity and safety, we need single sex spaces, and if the law makes that harder to achieve then the law is an ass.

I may well be misunderstanding the legal intricacies; I think that itself reveals the issues with the EA/GRA.

Laws need to be simple so that every employer and service provider can understand them clearly.

There should be no quibbling: spaces that are single sex should always be single sex, males should never be allowed to use female spaces, no exceptions. No men in women's prisons, no men in women's sports, no men in women's changing rooms, toilets, or breastfeeding groups. Never. No weasels, no 'legal fiction', no paperwork, no equivocation. Get males out of women's spaces.

I'm not sure that the paperwork is a red herring. I think that @Biscofffan and @WarriorN are right to intimate that there is an intrinsic logical inconsistency between the GRA and the law against sex discrimination.

Sex discrimination can only be avoided if we know everybody's birth sex (including corrected if a VSD). The sole remaining purpose of the GRA (now that we have tax, pensions, and marriage equality) is to conceal someone's birth sex. A 'woman' with a GRC has a female sex marker on birth certificate, and the Registrar is not allowed to reveal that it replaced an earlier registration with a male sex marker.

I know this sounds like nitpickery of the highest order, but it's a real problem for sensible legal enforcement of single-sex spaces. The only solution I can see is to uncloak the birth sex of all transgender people ie repeal the GRA.

Sex discrimination can only be avoided if we know everybody's birth sex

In some instances, we need to discriminate.

@ArabellaScott

"So is the counter argument to Kemi that there is absolutely no way at all to keep males out if women's spaces?"

This appears to be what Mishal Hussain was going for. Pandora's Box is open and you can't stop men so why bother trying.

The only solution I can see is to uncloak the birth sex of all transgender people ie repeal the GRA.

This is the logical conclusion.

We cannot repeal biological sex. The GRA is the issue

'fuck it, we can't stop men doing what they want so we're not going to bother trying'.

To be fair to Mishal Hussain, this appears to be the tack taken with regards to rapists.

Well, if we hadn't had 14 years of local govt funding cuts, we'd have plenty of toilet spaces & changing rooms.

Our local (now privatised) leisure centre now has shared open showers, all to save money, with the stipulation, swimwear is worn, difficult when you ve toddlers determined to get out of their swimming suit.

I hate them

Hmmm perhaps that is what she was going for on reflection.

But I'm not sure Kemi could have gone as far as to say we need to repeal the GRA?

I'm not sure that the paperwork is a red herring. I think that @Biscofffan and @WarriorN are right to intimate that there is an intrinsic logical inconsistency between the GRA and the law against sex discrimination.

The discussion (at least the one I was in) was about Mishal Husain's argument that male trans people accessing women's single sex spaces is done on the basis of paperwork inspection. That's just nonsense.

The problem is that none of the people talking about this - politicans, legals, journalists are the minimum wage shop workers having to tell a 6 foot man waving his driving licence around, that no, he cant come in because scheduled x of y law says he cant.

The law probably doesnt need changing dramatically. It needs politicans to say we recognise gender, but that doesn't mean that single sex services arent single sex anymore. That service users have a right to be confident that 'women' or 'female' on a door means what everyone thinks it does.

Then they can explain how that can happen when men have female id.

No politican is currently acknowledging that most people can't differentiate between someone wih a GRC and someone with the PC of GR with id, and most people with GRC, people with PC of GR and those without either if no id is given.

No matter how much politicians admonish, the zealots, eg at ERCC, are not going to listen and will follow what they learned from Stonewall.

How to make them realise that they have to act responsibly rather than ideologically (in a way that suits them at the cost of others)?

I haven’t yet listened to the interview but the main thing that needs to happen is legal change

We absolutely need the ability to protect single sex spaces in law

And this bar the GRA repeal is all I can see that will do it

I’ll have to listen to the paperwork argument but it doesn’t seem an issue, no one needs to show it if that’s what’s being suggested

Yes. This needs simple, clear, basic instruction.

Men out of women's spaces. Even if he is lovely, even if he wears a wig, even if he really doesn't want to use men's spaces.

Women and girls matter, we need our own spaces. I actually am sick of dithering over the minutiae (I can't even spell it) of the legalities. We don't need another fifty court cases to clarify that men need to stay out of women's and girl's spaces.

We need women's spaces. Stop blithering and dithering and Keir Starmer sort your whingeing prevaricating waffly '99%' bullshit right out.

I have had ENOUGH.

This is why it's so mind bending! We sometimes need to avoid discrimination against the vulnerable, by discriminating against the powerful. And 'cis' people (shudder) are always deemed to be powerful.

i’m sorry I can’t see the merit in your position. You appear to be arguing that despite KS wanting to consult on a simpler GRC process, one that merely requires a sign off from one doctor, so even easier to legally change sex than get an abortion, we don’t need to worry about this because KS wanting this consultation is not a sign he actually wants this to become law and anyway, it might never happen.

This is not a tenable position.

Despite all the outing of GI through Adam Bryson and Cass and all the evidence collected by GC women and all our predictions coming
true and our arguments being validated by evidence, KS is choosing to make clear his commitment to enabling men to more easily change legal sex, it really will be the ‘admin’ that Ruth Hunt and Owen Jones laughed about. That tells you something really profound about his personal commitment to, and belief in, GI.

I’m not voting for a party that makes their commitment to seeing through something I oppose, on the hope that ‘they don’t really mean it and it probably won’t happen’. I’m sorry, I think that’s delusional.

They could have done it before but I’ll take late over never. Tbf I do think this has been seen as very much a fringe issue for a long time. The tories have managed to get a much better handle on it whilst Labour are talking about making a grc even easier to obtain. Eurgh, shit election, shit options.

I agree. Yet again, everyone else’s safety is thrown out of the window to accommodate this ideology.