Telegraph article: ‘We’re not transphobic, we just want privacy’

[RoyalCorgi]

Haven't seen this shared anywhere else. This is a good article about the Darlington nurses who were forced to share changing room space with a person called Rose who, in the words of the article, "was born a man and retains male genitalia".

The women are taking their employer to an employment tribunal for sex discrimination and sexual harassment. I absolutely applaud them for doing this and admire their determination. But I also think: isn't it time to be a bit more blunt about this? In any normal context, if we knew a male person was using a female changing room, we would recognise him as engaging in voyeurism and, possibly, exhibitionism - both criminal offences. Isn't there a case for going straight to the police rather than to an employment tribunal? I am so fed up with the way we all tiptoe round this issue rather than speaking loudly and clearly about what's going on.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/02/darlington-nurses-fighting-for-women-only-spaces/

Hopefully so

What a battle women have due to poor, male centred legislation

So according to the police, whether or not a man commits a crime of voyeurism or indecent exposure depends entirely on what he claims to be thinking at the time. Is that really what the law says?

The law so often seems to give men the benefit of the doubt. In rape, for example, if the man can convincingly claim that he thought the woman was giving consent, then he's not guilty. Hence in France, where it seems to work the same way, dozens of men are claiming that they thought a drugged, unconscious woman gave her consent to having sex with them. Or, in the many cases we've seen of men sexually abusing children, or downloading images of child sexual abuse, we always hear a lot of guff about how the man was under an emotional strain and he's not really an abuser.

Looking at the voyeurism section of the Sexual Offences Act (2003), it says:

"A person commits an offence if—
(a)for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, he observes another person doing a private act, and
(b)he knows that the other person does not consent to being observed for his sexual gratification.`'

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/67

I suppose in the case of the changing room, it would all hinge on whether the individual can be shown to be observing the women undress for the purposes of his own sexual gratification. Though, frankly, I can't see any other reason why a man would want to use a women's changing room.

I suppose it's no more bizarre than the belief that women should predicate whether they feel humiliated and stripped of their dignity and privacy, and their right to consent, on what a man tells them is happening between his ears at the time, and differentiate between him and all the other men on his expressed inner feels.

The whole thing is insanely misogynistic. Men have the right to believe whatever they want about themselves. They absolutely do not have the right to insist that women enable this belief and provide themselves as resources, and take their clothes off with him (and for him) under threat of punishment of losing the space for non compliance. Whether he's emotionally satisfied by this or sexually satisfied is pretty much irrelevant to the women who do not want to be involved in being props for his inner life at all. And they should not be permitted boundaries based only on how objectively and provably he sexually harasses and abuses them.

Women aren't toys for men that they can play with so long as they don't break them too much.

Yes. It's also a worry that there must be some very dodgy senior officers in the College of Policing and other centres of power. The fact that they can calmly utter this pretzel logic despite the awful data about rape, sexual assault & VAWG suggests that there's are some powerful vested interests determined to destroy boundaries for women and girls. Otherwise there's be push back against this from within the police.

So depressing.

They need to be offered an alternative place which is actually suitable for getting changed and storing their belongings.

And this also applies to senior echelons of the NHS where again boundaries are eroded to the extent that certain NHS Trusts seek to wedge male sex offenders onto women's wards. Who in their right minds would argue this? Yet the sainted NHS does.

www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/trans-sex-offenders-can-go-on-womens-wards-hospitals-advise-0fmbhm3bn

Where is DadJoke to explain why Rose is perfectly within Rose’s rights to ogle protesting women as they change into uniform for their work?

Come on, we’re all agog.

To that point, Rose needs to be offered an alternative place to change - that's the EHRC guidance. Assuming the hospital plays along with his nonsense, which they shouldn't, but here we are. It would be interesting to see see how long he keeps this up if he isn't allowed in the women's toilets or changing rooms.

In reality there's no need to make special accommodations for Rose at all - he can carry on using the facilities he's been using all his life without exploding or turning into dust.

It's funny how often people like DadJoke accuse us of not knowing any transwomen. Yet for many of us it's precisely because we have lived with, or had to change near, transwomen that we have experience of transwomen being just as bad as any other men.

I often think of Hannah Mouncey's Australian team mates who were all cheerleaders for thinking that 'transwomen are women' until they actually had to experience being in the shower with a fully in tact 6 foot 4 transwoman.

Why can't he get changed in the cupboard?

Well, this is the million dollar question.

Great post.

Agree that it's 'insanely misogynistic'. Nonetheless, I think the law, as I understand it, supports the women. We know that the Equality Act says that women have the right to single-sex spaces for reasons of privacy, so I find it hard to see how the NHS is going to defend this. The only argument I can see is that Rose has a gender recognition certificate and is therefore legally female - but I don't know whether Rose does have a GRC or not. (And even then it hinges on whether the definition of 'sex' in the Equality Act is understood to be biological sex, or includes those with a GRC.)

Anyone have any thoughts about what the NHS might be planning to argue in the ET?

It seems to me the problem outlined in that comment by the police superintendent is that the rules and the direction they have is confused and inconsistent. So it's going to inhibit them from taking action in a useful way.

I don't necessarily think that's an unfair statement from the police, I am not sure that's where the problem really is.

The only argument I can see is that Rose has a gender recognition certificate and is therefore legally female - but I don't know whether Rose does have a GRC or not. (And even then it hinges on whether the definition of 'sex' in the Equality Act is understood to be biological sex, or includes those with a GRC.)

This wasn't the case in this case

https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2022/08/07/false-equivalence-a-guest-blog-by-barrister-anya-palmer/

Which is about this case www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4593138-transwoman-wins-employment-discrimination-case-against-nhs-for-being-treated-differently-from-women-in-changing-room

IANAL
IMO, what will actually happen is that the NHS will settle, this time at least. Because their lawyers will tell them that they don't have a leg to stand on. Even if Rose did have a GRC, there is nothing in the GRA or the EA which gives him the right to be in communal single sex spaces where women may be vulnerable or in a state of undress. This is because the women's Article 8 rights to privacy, dignity and safety are absolute and don't have to be balanced against the MCW's preferences. The EA allows the NHS to discriminate on the grounds of Sex and on the grounds of GR in these circumstances.
So I really have no idea what their lawyers would try to argue!
(The EHRC guidance says, in the case of a male with a GRC, it could be different if there was a women's block with separate changing cubicles, or where the loos were all single-user and self-contained, for example.)

It might sound odd, but I hope they don't settle, because a settlement on this case would be a much weaker precedent than a full judgement of an appeal tribunal.

Yes @Snowypeaks I hope they don't settle because we need sunlight.

If the legal answer hinges on whether Rose has a GRC or not, we all need to be asking ourselves some serious questions. Namely:

1. Why should women's right to safety and dignity be conditional on a man not having obtained a magical piece of paper?
2. Since we're not allowed to check people's GRCs or even ask whether they have one, doesn't this in practice mean that women are no longer entitled to safety and dignity just because some men have obtained magical pieces of paper, but we don't know which ones?

Since we're not allowed to check people's GRCs or even ask whether they have one, doesn't this in practice mean that women are no longer entitled to safety and dignity just because some men have obtained magical pieces of paper, but we don't know which ones?

Yes, I certainly think this is how trans activists see it.

And it's so often expressed with such enjoyment.

Then they need to say so out loud so everyone can hear it.

Ereshkigalangcleg - that was such a bizarre case. The ruling of the tribunal was perverse, to put it mildly. It was a shame that the employer didn't contest it. Like SnowyPeaks I'm hoping that the NHS doesn't settle in this case, so that it can go to tribunal and be debated in open court. This stuff needs to be thrashed out in the open so people can see what's really at stake and how mad it all is.

Ereshkigalangcleg - that was such a bizarre case. The ruling of the tribunal was perverse, to put it mildly. It was a shame that the employer didn't contest it. Like SnowyPeaks I'm hoping that the NHS doesn't settle in this case, so that it can go to tribunal and be debated in open court. This stuff needs to be thrashed out in the open so people can see what's really at stake and how mad it all is.

Yes, me too.

Agree