What does the SC ruling mean for schools and youth organisations?

[JellySaurus]

What does the SC ruling mean for schools and youth organisations?

Both for the children and for the employees and volunteers.

So “Girl guiding” is going to have to choose between becoming “Guiding” and letting any boy who fancies it in or not letting the “special” boys who call themselves girls in?

But they can’t discriminate between the boys?

I’m just waiting for the trans thing to go out of fashion - it’s already very last season in London.

That's a whole other thread to itself. Why it's polite to code yourself as your sex. That doesn't mean you have to conform to stereotypes, but provide some reassurance somehow. But yes, whole thread for that.

I don’t think this will affect Guiding or the WI.

My understanding from reading the ruling is that it makes it clear that single sex facilities exclude transwomen and it’s legal to do so. (IANAL)

But that clubs or hobby groups don’t have to exclude transwomen, they can be single gender if that’s what they want.

So we don’t have to put up with transwomen demanding to be allowed to join a menopause group, for example, but if you wanted to set up a women and transwomen book club you can fill your boots.

Frankly as a woman it’s not my problem. Most toilets these days are gender neutral anyway as there’s just one of them and you queue for them.

Agree @TheOtherRaven - we have seen so many schools using the equality act as a reason for allowing boys into girls toilets etc. This means they can no longer do that.

Yes but you'd have to call it a Woman and Transwoman book club. Not a Women's book club or a Women's Institute

I think it means Girl Guiding can no longer claim to be a girls only organisation and it means any boys they admit are not allowed to share facilities with girls. But this won't happen unless parents hold them to account, they are so captured they are not going to change their policies without a fight. Parents have been fighting them for years.

Exactly! The women’s institute fir example currently says

“Today, we are the largest women’s organisation in the UK and we pride ourselves on being a trusted place for all women of all generations, to share experiences and learn from each other”

they are not a women’s organisation because they include men and now they will have to be clear that they do

How much money do you think it will take for every building to change their loos to incorporate a 3rd toilet.

It was done with disabled access, it took about 5 years to roll out completely, the LA and government had grants. People moaned but got it done. The diff will be that no one cared much about disabled people, nor had many huge expensive government funded charities involved. This should be easy. Government can throw money, so can the charities, fundraisers and crowdfunding, new builds required to consider. If it is actually wanted and useful - and it would be, there are more groups of people who would benefit from additional gender neutral provision for access than TQ alone - it would happen.

It does mean that any school/ activist teacher still trying to actively allow boys to access girls’ changing/ toilet spaces will be showing their true colours and putting themselves in a very vulnerable position for being sued. Unions are going to have to get their act together.

it allows kcsie to explicitly state separation of toilets for safety and privacy but I bet they won’t as Labour would prefer to let the courts state that. It makes it really bloody easy for them to include it though .

Bloody hope so - I was a district commissioner and Brownie pack leader. The whole point ten years ago (was it really only 10 years?) was ‘Girls Can’. It was about there being space for girls to explore new things and build confidence outside the male gaze, without being subject to the social stress of having boys watching, judging, mocking. It was space to try abseiling, kayaking, archery without being observed or censured. It broke my heart when I read a couple of years ago that boys - because they were boys as the UK legal system does not grant GRCs to under 18s - were allowed to intrude on this trusted space. Actually, I was not just broken-hearted. I was fucking furious.

That’s like saying “all Americans are loud”. You have quite likely walked among many, many trans men getting on with their lives and not given them a second glance.

I think it will still require legal action to force a school to act legally and within their safeguarding frameworks. But that legal action has now become much more straightforward.

If a space is signed as single sex it has to be exactly that.

'Trans' status is irrelevant.

as stated in the judgment there’s no “has” to, it’s CAN

There is a paragraph in the judgment about excluding women who identify as men from some women’s spaces on the basis of perception (I think). The Supreme Court judges seem to think this is not discriminatory.

Can you point me to which part you're referring to, please? mummytoonetryingfortwo

It would be gender reassignment discrimination as the ruling noted

Spaces and services are mixed sex by default. If someone exercises the exceptions to restrict a group to one sex or the other, it has to be done on the basis of sex. This was made very clear in the judgement.

If you say a space is for women, it cannot include males.

Thank you @2fallsfromSSA. Restoring the rights of girls and boys to single sex changing, showers and dormitories is critical. Schools should never have been caught up in all this, their role in promoting trans ideology to children has been shameful - although partly explained by the capture of Ofsted, the DfE, unions etc

But what this ruling does now do is give all these institutions a golden bridge. They can all conduct their reverse ferret while talking about their previous wrong decisions being in the light of "information given at the time".

It'll be tedious (and a bit enraging ) to watch, but what matters is that they do reverse and that parents use this opportunity to force schools to return to prioritising safeguarding children once more.

You know

I have. They come across as an effeminate gay man. But if I hadn't known they were born female, I'd have no idea. It helps that they are six feet tall.

Yep, my 12 and 13 year olds think it’s silly and so does my 14 year old nephew. Hopefully this will be an awful but brief stain on society.

I don't see how it's inherently discriminatory to have an organisation that only caters for "people who think they're women", any more than it's discriminatory to have one that only caters for physicists or Harry Potter fans.

There's a difference between:

Organisations for women (ie no males)

Organisations for people who think they're women (ie anyone who the recites the appropriate trans neo-religion catechism)

And

Organisations for women and people who think they're women (ie females and some males but not other males).

It's all a matter of what choices the organisations make, and how those choices interact with the EA2010.

Schools are different to any such organisations, as they do not have the freedom to make certain choices. Many have been doing so until now. Hopefully, the SC ruling will clarify the law to schools and protect our children and young people.