is this legal

[javyd]

is it legal for the RSPB to advertise this women only walk and then say it’s for anyone who identifies as a woman or anyone who is non binary? So basically a mixed sex walk:

https://events.rspb.org.uk/events/96479?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwK78EFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuuR3UtdrATGnTTt5ySxJ2WYamEz4NDR_kaGslT5fzD6KXb0R73aBSl4iXxp_aem_Tl1LwIsISF5qJxKMiI80Bg

Oh, I was quoting someone who asked if it was possible to have a group for just transgender people that excludes everyone else.
i think you can.

What's wrong with "women and transmen"?

Only tautology!

I accept that you have particular experiences of trans women, but I don't think the RSPB is planing to exclude men on the basis that their non-binary identity is too masculine or that they are the wrong kind of trans woman.

Yes. I could legitimately claim to be non-binary. I would be comfortable in a women's only space (provided that I made sure I didn't think about the women's comfort or feelings). So I could join that group, as a man who doesn't even attempt to present in a feminine way, and the RSPB should be OK with it. But in real life, I don't think it would be at all unreasonable to question my presence in it.

I think you can.

I also think you might be able to have a grouo for people who have a feminine gender identity, because gender isn’t a PC. You just couldn’t unfairly exclude men.

Define transgender ?
How long does one have to have been 'transgender' for to join the group ?
5 minutes ?
5 hours ?
5 years ?
How could anybody tell ?

As you are presumably not in the category that the RSPB are excluding from their nature walk, that is men without the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, it's not too surprising that you don't see the blatant discrimination. As it happens, I've got over my feelings of hurt when women (quite reasonably) don't always want to include me, so I won't be complaining to the RSPB this time. But I would be unreasonably discriminated against if my wife and my son (who is trans identifying) were allowed to go on this nature walk but I was not.

In principle, I totally agree with the EA2010 as clarified by the Supreme Court a couple of months ago. This particular example won't seem very important to everyone, but it would be very difficult indeed to draft a law that permitted relatively uncontroversial discrimination but prevented blatantly damaging discrimination. The law we have draws a line in a clearly defined place, even though it can be a little difficult for some of us to get our heads round where that line is and why it has been drawn there.

I think this was clearly illegal even before the SC ruling.

Even under the assumption that trans women are women, you can’t then add in only non binary men, because that discriminates against men.

gender reassignment is a protected characteristic, and an association can be just for people with a particular PC.

some PCs are more easy to define than others, and I suppose it would be up to the courts to decide if somebody were being unfairly excluded.

In practice, the RSPB will be able to continue to offer their women plus some men walks if no man bothers to object. But if a man does object, it's clear that he would have to be permitted to join the group, in which case a woman (or indeed a transwoman!) could legitimately object to his presence, I think.

It may well end up being like the law around trespass, which (with a few exceptions, like military sites) is usually tolerated. With trespass, often no-one ever finds out that it has occurred, and this is similar to the situation with "passing" trans people if they really exist (I'm sure there are some that I don't clock).

In reality women are objecting right now, because something described as 'for women' includes men.
But for so many posters its all about the men, and women's objections can't be heard or taken seriously.

Remember the thought experiment ''what would you do if men disappeared for 24 hours?' and the vast majority of women said they'd go outside for a walk, especially at night or into the countryside?

men just hate being told they cannot do things

like join women only walks with female guides

The point is that it’s not clear how you would challenge that.

I don’t think the RSPB have committed a criminal offence, so what would be the basis for a civil case?

This is really all about the men.

A women’s tour ought to be about women, not about males who feel comfortable (or more comfortable) with women. Women are not support animals to validate males’ feelings or make them feel comfortable. The women’s tour should be about what makes women comfortable and even if some women would feel fine with males who identify as women, they don’t get to give away the comfort of women who don’t. There really could be no other reason (legal or otherwise) for this tour than to make women comfortable.

This is not an inclusive policy. This is an “in the face”, blatant misogynistic policy - which is being disguised by stealth.

The equality act 2010 defines it as:

You can be at any stage in the transition process, from proposing to reassign your sex, undergoing a process of reassignment, or having completed it. It does not matter whether or not you have applied for or obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate, which is the document that confirms the change of a person's legal sex.

I guess if you were in that definition you are transgender, and if you are not, you are not transgender, as far as the equality act goes. If you can be discriminated against on those terms, it’s probably fair to have a selective group on those terms too. But it would have to have a proportionate reason why a particular service would exclude everyone else.

Whether you agree with that definition of transgender, or think it should even be a PC separate to religious beliefs, that’s a different matter.

I also think that now is the time for all those female people who have centred their 'lovely' male friends and who want them included in women's and girl's activities and single sex provisions to acknowledge that their personal consent to grant these privileges to this group of male people, is only for instances relating to them personally.

If a female person wants their male friends to be included in provisions and events categorised as 'women only', they are demanding their male friends have additional privileges. It is fine that they want to call them women and include them in their own personally organised events, but it is very wrong to expect any other female person to accept this person decision. And their friend's decisions obviously.

Effectively, any female person who feels they can give permission for a group of male people to access female single sex provisions has overstepped their capacity. Because they cannot give consent on behalf of any other female person. Only themselves.

It is like the writer in that disaster of a Guardian article at KOKO club over the weekend. That writer, Jack, a 'gender fluid' male described his female friends as effectively forcing their way with him in toe, into what was supposed to be a female single sex space. That was wholly wrong.

So, bluntly, if you want to include your male friends in any space or activity that is labelled as 'women' or 'girls' only, you need to acknowledge the potential harm that you, personally, could be causing to female people who have the expectation that something saying 'women / girls' only is based on sex.

I think there has been enough discussion about the Supreme Court judgement now that those female people who do this should be fully aware of what they are doing.

But it would have to have a proportionate reason why a particular service would exclude everyone else

associations don’t need to meet the proportionate test.

that is why all male golf clubs are legal.

If they have not followed the EA2010, isn't that the basis for the complaint?

So a bloke could get out of his car, identify as trans and demand to join an all women walk
in the space of five minutes.

Hence why the Supreme Court rejected that "incoherent" argument and stated that
men remain male for the purposes of the EA no matter how they identify
and whether or not they have a GRC

If a door / space / event says "women" then ALL men can and should be excluded

I hope it helps to record here what Kishwer Falkner, Chair at Equality and Human Rights Commission, actually said about GRCs at the WESC on 11 June.

Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: Work of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) (2024-25 session), HC 942
Wednesday 11 June 2025

Transcript mentions of "GRC" and "Gender Recognition Certificate":

Page 5

Rachel Taylor: Welcome to the Committee. It is my first time interviewing you and you are very welcome here. The EHRC has been saying that there is an incompatibility between the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act. To what extent has the Supreme Court judgment resolved those concerns and brought clarity?

Baroness Falkner of Margravine: I do not think we said there was an incompatibility — that was possibly another group. We said that the practical implementation of the Equality Act was made very difficult by the differential uses of sex and gender within the Equality Act 2010 itself. We are not the regulator of the Gender Recognition Act; I just want to clarify that. But the Supreme Court judgment, looking very narrowly at only the Equality Act for the purposes of its statutory interpretation, found that the meaning of sex in the Act, rather than gender, was the meaning that should apply for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. That has given us clarification.

Our advice in our intervention to the Court itself did not say that. Our advice until that point had been different because we recognised a different category. In addition to a man and a woman — female and male — we recognised a third category, which was legal sex. We thought that a man or a woman’s legal sex — in other words the sex at birth — was also augmented by people who had gender recognition certificates, whereby once they had a gender recognition certificate, that small group of people could also be defined as the sex that they had acquired as a process of transition. We were inaccurate in that regard, which the Supreme Court has clarified.

Page 11

Baroness Falkner of Margravine:

"The Supreme Court judgment itself said it does not cause disadvantage to trans people, with or without a GRC. It said that in the light of case law interpreting the relevant provisions, a trans woman would be able to invoke the provisions on direct discrimination and harassment, and indirect discrimination. So, when the Supreme Court itself is saying, “You have not lost a right,” I do not see why this particular group of people would become so fearful. The rights that exist are rights in terms of exemptions to single-sex services, and separate sex services have always been there in the Equality Act. We can say to you unequivocally that in our interpretation of the Act trans people have not lost any rights, as the Supreme Court has informed us and the whole country."

Page 15-16

Baroness Falkner of Margravine:

"Let us be clear, this Supreme Court ruling only covers 8,464 people: the holders of GRCs. So in terms not of disadvantaging but changing things, those are the people affected but the level of agitation that they can cause in terms of personal attacks, libellous attacks, defamation where our family members are affected, and our intimate family members have to think about how they are going about their place of work and so on, has to stop."

Page 30

Baroness Falkner of Margravine:

"From our perspective, it is not the numbers that are relevant, although as I have said earlier, sex covers the entire population of the country, and here we are talking about the impact on 8,464 people who hold GRCs."

https://committees.parliament.uk/event/23501/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/

In short, if a bit repetitive:

Everyone "trans" who was covered by the PC of Gender Reassignment before the Supreme Court ruling is still covered by the PC of Gender Reassignment, both those with a GRC and those without a GRC.

The definition of Gender Reassignment in the Equality Act 2010 is taken from the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which refers only to male and female sexes and genders.

(Ms R Taylor v Jaguar Land Rover Ltd: 1304471/2018 established that although "non-binary" and "gender fluid" cannot be the endpoints of "gender reassignment" under the GRA2004 they can however be considered to be part of a transition process, so they can be "trans" according to the EA2010.)

Trans people who fall within definition of the GRA2004 but do not have a GRC were, and still are, covered by the PC of Gender Reassignment - but they were never thought by the EHRC to have "changed sex" for the purposes of the Equality Act. Therefore the Supreme Court was not concerned with this larger cohort of "uncertificated" trans people who are covered by the PC of Gender Reassignment.

Under 10,000 people currently do have a GRC and they remain covered by the PC of Gender Reassignment. What has been clarified by the SC ruling is that this smaller cohort of people who do a GRC have not "changed sex" as far as the Equality Act is concerned.

Legally, for the purposes of the Equality Act, those with a GRC who are born male remain male and those with a GRC who are born female remain female. They all remain covered by both the PC of Gender Reassignment AND the PC of Sex - as per their birth sex.

-

A recurrent theme and misunderstanding, including in questions put to Kishwer Falkner by some WESC members on 11 June, is that the Supreme Court was tasked with clarifying what rights are covered by the PC of Gender Reassignment.

What the Supreme Court was actually concerned with was clarifying who is a man (male) and who is a woman (female) under the PC of Sex.

No. If transwomen are allowed but not men who are not trans, then it discriminates against men on the protected characteristic of sex - or they have to be allowed to join the walk. This is spelled out to the Women and Equalities Committee by Baroness Faulkner and John Kirkpatrick - it took a long time to get their point across to the questioner who clearly was TWAW and could not understand that TiMs are men (or men men as Alibhai-Brown said, not meaning TiMs).

If we are still talking about the RSPB "Nature Walks for Women" or anything similar then those "groups" are not Associations under EA2010, they are Services.

If the all-male golf club decided to offer "Golf Walks for Women" to the general public, for free or a fee, then those would be single-sex, women-only Services provided by an all-male Association.

Self-ID refers to self-certification of a legal change of gender, not a trans declaration. That's what Baroness Falkner is talking about - no self-declared legal change of gender.

The SC confirmed that the GRA is effectively disapplied from the EA. There is no need to consider a person's GRC status in matters covered by the EA. A MCW is a man with the additional PC of GR. A WCM is a woman with the additional PC of GR. That's it. Women and men are sex words, defined in Corbett v Corbett as biological only.
Anyone who claims a cross-sex identity is protected under the PC of GR, regardless of whether they declared themselves trans this morning or have had a GRC for 20 years. All treated the same.

The unlawfulness of the proposed nature walk doesn't lie in how accurately the RSPB described it, but in whom they seek to exclude - ie men without the PC of GR (direct discr) and women who need a single sex service (indirect discr). Doesn't matter whether the description is clear that men with the PC of GR are permitted, or not. Even if you go on the walk knowing full well that MCW will be on it, it still discriminates unlawfully against non-trans ID men and - women who need a single sex service.

The SC ruling did not make anything illegal, it said what was legal and had always been legal and what was illegal and had always been illegal, or at least since 2010.

Thanks to you and also to Helleofabore earlier on Akua Reindorf for your very useful quotes.