I stuck my head above the parapet

[RedCrochetedWigFace]

So I work for a smallish company but we have a few different branches throughout the country. I think each branch has a least one trans woman. I've no idea if we've any transmen. They don't make as much of a drama and noise if we do.

There is a staff group who are generally well meaning but they've started kicking off about how awful the supreme court ruling is blah blah blah. They are mostly women. I tried respectfully pointing out that no-one has lost any rights and that it's actually protecting women's rights.

I said that I want any trans people to feel comfortable at work and if that's not the case then action absolutely needs to be taken but that the supreme court judgement shouldn't make a difference to that. Someone said what about the "ugly women who look like men" who were dragged out of women's toilets. I said that was an awful thing to call a woman and misogynist. I was accused of avoiding the question. They said that the ruling meant that women who don't look/present as women will also suffer and seemed to think that undermined the argument that no ones rights were being negatively impacted.

I just reiterated that anyone feeling unsafe at work needs support regardless of gender/perceived gender or any other factor. I asked what the group wanted to achieve. They said they want trans people to feel safe at work. I dont think I hid my exasperation.

I'm pretty sure I was respectful throughout. I tried to be.

Now I have a meeting with my manager and HR on Tuesday. I have spoken with ACAS. It's not a formal meeting so I'm not allowed to take anyone in with me.

FFS.

Its probably not helpful to OP to speculate about where she works. Sorry to be a killjoy.

Why do we even have separate women’s and men’s facilities in the first place? I have literally no idea.
🙄

Join the Free Speech Union asap!

Well done, OP. You are in tune with the views of the majority of the British public, which is why the TRAs are just pissing in the wind (sometimes literally):

YouGov

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425

Lots of good suggestions here.
Doesn't sound like you said anything wrong but you may well be right that there was a trans woman in the mix who took offence.
Also, if you didn't start the conversation, make that clear - especially if it was a general discussion you joined in with.
The issue is the trans lobby have been pushing their agenda for so long and getting their own way. They were not expecting pushback and don't like it. It is still very raw at the moment but will settle down.
The SC literally clarified the existing law, which the majority of people correctly interpreted but a small group of people wanted it to mean something different.

OP don't get drawn into hypothetical discussions about 'ugly' women, etc. Just stick to workplace law and the facts.

The facts are that the workplace has to provide single sex facilities for women. If they allow a transwoman to use female facilities that space it is no longer a single sex facility. The UKSC confirmed that this has been the law since The Equality Act 2010.

You have a right to expect your workplace to uphold the law. Keep it short and factual.

It's got nothing to do with being kind, it doesn't matter about other people's feelings, it is simply the law which your workplace is obliged to comply with.

I guess the first thing is:

Don't panic.

It seems possible/likely that another employee has raised a concern.

However, they've not apparently raised a formal grievance, otherwise your employer should have started the process for investigation and so on, and they would then need to follow the rules.

https://www.acas.org.uk/grievance-procedure-step-by-step

It could well be that your employer is trying, reasonably, to de-escalate any tensions. They have said they will have a chat. They're going to do that.

That could be the end of it, it could be box ticking and/or done in a positive and supportive way.

The only problems that could possibly arise are if your employer has funny ideas about the law, or a personal axe to grind, and/or if the other party wants to escalate to a formal grievance - but you'd need to be informed of that.

Always best to say as little as possible ,and get as much as possible in writing, and take notes if you don't record.

Most sensible employers will just want to ensure that the workplace is respectful and that they are following legislation.

The judgment clarified that for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 the words man, woman and sex all refer to biological sex and that the possession of a gender recognition certificate does not affect this. We all know a GRC is a legal fiction. This just confirms it.

Of course future legislation could change this, but at present this is the law and it has been the case since 2010, so employers and others who have opened single-sex spaces to the opposite sex have been wrong to do so.

If you are an expert on how the UK judicial system works, please do give us the benefit of your superior knowledge and tell us how a clear and unequivocal judgment by the highest court in the land can be challenged. I'm all ears.

Given the high success rate of legal cases involving sex realist people as against the parlous failure of the Good Law Project and others to win cases, my money's on the sex realists here. 😉

No point arguing with dishonest posters.
OP I agree with the advice to avoid the temptation to fill gaps, and let them talk.

Keep it factual and you don't need to actually give any personal views. Others have given good advice.

Jolyon, is that you?

At my work, the women’s toilets all have passive aggressive ‘leave this toilet as you would like to find it’ signs on the backs of the doors. But when they were doing repair work and we were all using the men’s for a day, the men’s doors had posters about safe sex on them.
Im not sure what to think about that. I think the men are having more fun.

@AzureCritic

No UK Supreme Court judgment has definitively clarified the meanings of "man," "woman," and "sex" in the Equality Act 2010 as universally fixed since 2010 (in fact the judgement made clear that was not their place)

I think you’ve got this backwards. The judgment made clear that the SC wasn’t ruling on wider policy debate or the meaning of the words other than in EA 2010. But it clearly did rule on what those words in the EA 2010 mean, and standard UK judicial theory holds that the court is clarifying what the legislation has always meant (ie, since 2010, not since the decision).

There’s a summary here you might find useful, and the judgment itself is very clearly written for a lay audience.

knowledge.dlapiper.com/dlapiperknowledge/globalemploymentlatestdevelopments/2025/Supreme-Court-rules-that-meaning-of-man-and-woman-in-Equality-Act-2010-refers-to-biological-sex

@AzureCritic do you understand that the SC went in favour or biology?
You know that sex exists and we all have a sex?

Hasn’t biological sex already been defined in law much earlier than the EA2010?

Why would there be a need to clarify the definition of biological sex in this Supreme Court judgement? Am I missing something?

The SC clarified that the EA means biological, not certified, sex throughout. It doesn't define biological sex, because this was done in Corbett v Corbett in the 1970s.

Because the EA (for reasons known only to Labour) decided that gender re-assignment would be included as a "protected characteristic" (not clear why a medical condition and certificate would be thought to be the same as actual facts, such as race, sex, disability, age unless it was part of a long term ploy).

Consequently because gender re-assignment is meant to lead to gaining a GRC when a man is then certificed to be a "legal woman" the EA as intended by Labour when they wrote it created the fictioned that certified women were the same as biological women. And even if you thought Labour couldn't have thought anyone would buy into that fiction, they then acknowledged that biological women were in fact different from ceritified women and so they very kindly created the SSE.

The mere fact of the SSE confirms that Labour was trying to make a GRC = to biology. ie it was an act of social engineering, to put into law the trans belief system.

But in the end the Supreme court ruled that this legal fiction of certified women being the same as biological women in fact impinges on women as a sex class, as no other protected characteristic is asked to deny the reality of their protected characteristic to placate a medical certificate.

ie that elevating a GRC to same level as biological fact discriminated against the protected characteristic of sex.

Worth remember that prior to the Supreme Court ruling the EHRC had already recommended "disapplying" the GRA / GRC in the EA.

ie if it had never been illogically inserted into the EA there would never have been any doubt that sex in the EA referred to biology.

@IwantToRetire The mere fact of the SSE confirms that Labour was trying to make a GRC = to biology. ie it was an act of social engineering, to put into law the trans belief system.

Oh FFS, how many times do we have to explain to you that this is a load of old shit? For the umpteenth plus one time, the single sex exceptions exist to make single sex services possible at all. Without them, insisting that a service was single sex would be unlawful sex discrimination, so they would still be required even if the concept of trans people did not exist. You're conflating the provisions within the single sex exceptions that allow for gender reassignment discrimination if it's a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, with the single sex exceptions as a whole.

Jumping in with 2 left feet again.

The question I was answering way about hadn't biological sex already been defined in the EA.

You are quoting a totally different function.

Which is you check the Parliament web site where the ammendments to the EA are listed, said that that was one of the purposes.

So as you want to be pedantic one function of the SSE - there does that make you feel better.

But the mere fact of that one function confirms that "for all purposes" except when proporationate, men with a GRC (up until the court ruling) were "legal women".

Sigh.

There is no universally agreed, nor scientific definition of 'biological sex', which is where the SC have possibly messed up most.

You think this ruling retroactively rewrites history? lol

Grow up

I would put in writing a request for why there is a meeting about your beliefs as protected in law as being equivalent to religious faith.

Document everything.

Good luck.