A worrying thought about the SC judgment

[PlayerOneReady]

Is anyone else concerned that what may happen now, in reality, is a big increase in ‘gender neutral’ facilities as organisations realise they don’t actually have capacity for a third space, at least in the short term?

And we all know from what we’ve seen in theatres, etc, that that will end up with effectively one ‘Men’s/with urinals’ and one ‘Gender Neutral’.

It was this story in today’s Times that made me think about it. I’m especially worried about gym changing rooms etc. Would we have the right to challenge if this does happen?

story:

Equalities watchdog inundated with questions on trans women ruling

https://www.thetimes.com/article/557269e6-2902-4b30-b873-4fac87ba6253?shareToken=131768232050262c20823acf6fe87c92

AND a lot of people can’t or have never had the need to think that on an abstract level, self-ID will allow literally ANYONE in. They say things like “yeah but you’d know if they were “at it”” or “nobody would go to the lengths of pretending” - they don’t understand how laws actually work, that a rule then must be applied without fear or favour. They think that somehow there will be a sensible person in the shop or wherever in the moment who will magically be able to step in and veto people who are exploiting it. It’s naive but it’s how lots of people operate. Which is fair enough on some level but that’s why you need to legislate for bad faith actors whenever you make abstract rules.

There’s also a fundamental flaw in using Equalities Law to police sex separation, in that there is a safety aspect that only goes one way that does not exist with any of the other PCs…

But do they need a third space? We've been told there are, what, 64 genders? Do they all get their own space? Or shall we keep it more realistic and merely have female non-binary, male non-binary, MtF, FtM...

Sarah Montague often has me shouting at turning off the radio for interrupting and speaking over a great many of the people she is interviewing. She didn't this time. Funny that.

From the statement by the EHRC they will be policing this.

Probably a good idea to make sure that some of those questions innundating the EHRC are coming from women so it's not a wholly one sided thing.

It will be the obvious next step: that where provision is made, accessibility is equal. There can no longer be mixed sex and mens without there being a womens too.

A third space has actual accessibility purposes. Parents with opposite sex children, teens and adults with SEND who need to be accompanied by carers or relatives, and of course a third space permits the women who consent to use a mixed sex space to do so.

Yes, it will not be good in terms of validation or in terms of having compelled the non consenting women to submit, but the whole point of the judgement was 'you can't have everything'.

No, that isn’t what discrimination means in this context.

If you didn’t let a man use the men’s facilities because he had the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, then that would be discrimination.

Read the judgement so you understand what is and isn’t required.

supremecourt.uk/cases/judgments/uksc-2024-0042

I think the worst it can get would be- ‘mainly men’ and ‘mainly women’ (essentially what we have now) and that would only be acceptable where single sex places aren’t required.

So as I understand it, workplaces are required to offer single sex facilities.
People providing a service (gym) aren’t- and we can vote with our feet.

Added: Oh and I saw a lawyer on another thread explaining why it is up to the person to prove they should be allowed, not the organisation, who have the right to refuse entry
Oh, that’s good to know.

Indeed. And it’s never enough is it? Many organisations have probably been continuously scrabbling to not get cancelled, rather than bowing to the gender woo because they actually believe in it. Now they’ve got the backing of the law to say, sorry guv’ 🤷‍♀️.

How do you know this? Just wondering if it’s changed recently due to high coverage of Bryson and others.

Well, now they can be legitimately challenged without the fear of a visit from the thought police.

Sorry if already mentioned, but introduction of gender neutral facilities could well be sex discrimination on the basis that the impact is greater (negatively) for women than for men. Any org thinking of making facilities gender neutral should carry out an Equality Impact Assessment. Properly.

Men who are now wailing that they can't go out in public if they can't use female toilets are saying the quiet part out loud.

From a pp above. Very succinct.

Presumably here 'gender neutral' is a euphamism for 'mixed sex'

Single sex facilities can be gender neutral as eg the womens can accept women whether they are just women or have an additional gender identity of transman, non binary, agender or flying pink flamingo.

Time to dust off this analysis from the Sunday Times? It was based on FOIs about sexual crimes at leisure centres. The article is from 2018, which isn't all that long ago, and can be said to represent "business-as-usual", with no pandemic effects.

Look at how disproportionate the rate of sexual harrassment, voyeurism, sexual assualt, etc. is in mixed-sex facilities, compared to single-sex!

Archive copy <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250417165607/www.thetimes.com/article/b6093ee6-ae19-11e8-bc16-e88ad6fee895" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20250417165607/www.thetimes.com/article/b6093ee6-ae19-11e8-bc16-e88ad6fee895

There were 134 complaints of sexual misconduct in sports centre and swimming pool changing rooms last year, councils said in their FoI responses. Of these, 120 related to incidents that took place in unisex changing rooms and 14 to incidents in single-sex changing rooms. As well as voyeurism, offences recorded in unisex facilities included harassment, sexual assault and rape.

In 46 more cases, councils said, sex incidents were reported in other parts of the premises, such as in or beside the pool, in sports halls, corridors or car parks or an area of the building they could not specify. Some of those not specified could also have been in changing rooms. Not all incidents were reported to police or resulted in prosecutions.

Councils said the vast majority of changing rooms for “dryside” activities, such as fitness training and court or pitch sports, were still single-sex. About half of “wetside” changing rooms, for swimming pools, were mixed.

In Cardiff a 1,000-signature petition has recently been collected against gender-neutral facilities at the new Star Hub leisure centre. Bernie Breen, who started the protest, said the sexes “need to be separate because there isn’t enough staff to keep an eye on everybody”.

The figures show that sports centres in the same city have big differences in sex incidents depending on their changing room arrangements, even where user numbers are similar. In Wolverhampton, two centres, Aldersley Leisure Village and the Central Baths, have only single-sex changing rooms. Between them they had 506,000 users last year and no reported sex incidents.

A third venue in the city, Wolverhampton Swimming & Fitness Centre, has a mixture of single-sex and unisex changing. It had 517,000 users last year and 11 reported sex incidents, all in the unisex changing area.

[edit: I've forgotten how to do links and can't it work! 🙄]

I have some concerns about the impact on disabled people. I was a wheelchair user temporarily and then needed walking aids for quite a long time after a serious accident a few years ago and it really opened my eyes as to quite how shit provision for disabled people is. I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't really aware before I was in that position myself and I at least had the luxury of knowing that I was probably only going to have to put up with it for a few years, not for the rest of my life.
A lot of the discussions around this topic centre on the fact that transwomen's rights do not trump women's rights. They don't trump disabled people's rights either. There's enough abuse of facilities for the disabled already and "just use the disabled loo if you're not happy to use the facilities provided for people of your sex" is a slippery slope in my opinion.
(I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or not though, apologies if you are and I've misread you.)

There already is. It depends on their sex not their 'identity'.

As for men being nice, well on the odd occasion I've used the men's because the women's has been too busy they have been fine. One even 'guarded' the door for me so another man would not come in.

I wonder if the 'selfie in the ladies' will be tried in the gents?

No they won't. The law doesn't say that trans people get their own space, just that they don't have the right to use the opposite sex provision.

I have a few concerns generally about wider implications, especially around backlash from various charities against this and stirring of hyperbole, in relation to the concept of “trans children.”

one thing I do know is that single sex contained loos take up more space but there’s asli certain ratio of service users per loo that can be hard to accommodate when planning / designing buildings.

this is what we will need to tackle next, case by case.

its been a lazy cheap work around to slap “all genders” on the women’s loos.

they may quickly learn how expensive it will be to accommodate third spaces and it will all be dropped like a stone pdq.

fully agree.

I also didn’t realise how easy it is to get a blue key. A friend does need one for a certain urinary condition but appears to have just bought one from a chemist.

A thread for @keeptoiletssafecertainly, hope you don’t mind the tag.

No, I completely agree that provision for disabled people is absolutely awful and that all too often, the disabled toilet is seen as a free for all when it's not.

I'm just saying that I think this is how things will go because it's the easiest and cheapest path forwards.