Good Law Project's latest claim - fact check?

[teawamutu]

I'm sure there must be some arrant bollocks in here somewhere, because Jolyon.

But is there anything worrying in this?

goodlawproject.org/ehrc-backs-down-on-single-sex-toilets/

This conversation started by me expressing the viewpoint that if the Guidance is approved in its current form, the result will be fewer facilities provided/ designated specifically for women.

And you still refuse to clarify what you even mean with your own viewpoint - do you mean fewer facilities for female people, or for mixed-sex women-gendered people?
You seem reluctant to even confirm what your viewpoint is - are you trying to muddle both sides here? Because it comes across as simply confused or fingers-in-ears-you-can't-make-me-think-about-it.

You come across as pretty ignorant on trans issues to the point of offensiveness - conflating sex and gender, assuming we need loos enforcing because trans people will lie, assuming that female-sexed people in toilets will be women and not people of all genders (and likewise for male/men).

So please tell me what (non offensive) words I need to use to refer to a group of men that is differentiated from transwomen to communicate with you?

If you can't think of a way in which men differ from transwomen, then you're dangerously close to "getting it".

Do you think it's the clothes that differentiate them? A personality characteristic? A like or dislike, attitude, belief, or skill? In your view, can you state one thing that TW have in common that men don't have?

This is great Knotty.

I am sure though you will understand that many of us have posted these exact same points (in some form or other) for Tandora to read over the years. So, I will just say that I appreciate your points because I doubt you will get much response from them. I am also actually hoping for a better outcome for your post.

Knotty, that was stunning.

JoMo being so hilariously self-regarding about that Times article that he can't even put a coherent sentence together.

I think he's in for a bloody long summer. A-levels are nearly over so Grin and her posh mates will be getting masked-up ready to demand TKDB by climbing public buildings, blocking access ramps, shitting in pop-up tents and holding pavement pajama parties which become a magnet for dodgy adults.

LOL. He is basically a comedy character.

Et tu Gruniad? <sad trombone noise>

Remember when he used to charm us all with his winsome bon mots about wandering through Westminster chatting to Important London People, refugio sock-washing and plopping apricots?
Now the only people who reply to him are mentally unstable blokes, kids with animé avatars and mimmymum. And he admits to blocking anyone who asks questions so his gullible donors can't see anything that he doesn't want them to on his bluesky feed.

People's Poet

The draft guidance becomes statutory after consultation, review and approval by parliament. Statutory guidance clarifies how to comply with law and institutions are obliged to comply with it.

But - and nota bene - it is legally grounded, based on the law which it summarises. It can't give counterfactual guidance, simply because you, Isla Bryson and Katie Dolatowski want it to.

You've had it explained to you by an actual lawyer and you accused her of mansplaining, despite you pondering a previous poster who thought that you were a man.

A slight hint of double standards on your part, wouldn't you agree?

Good to know and thanks for having been plugging away at this for years on my behalf. I was completely clueless before the Peggie trial and have been educating myself constantly since. The fact that regular people being mass-peaked and joining your ranks must surely give Tandora some pause for thought?

Totally unconnected but I listened to the whole of the BBC's In Dark Places Series II podcast yesterday about PIE and I was just so struck that the taking of "liberal" high ground and making the unreasonable "reasonable" was just so similar to these discussions on this board about trans rights. Some men really have a problem with the word no don't they?

@tandora I fear that your efforts to 'disrupt the echo chamber' might not be going as well as you'd hoped - it looks like your contributions to this thread might have the opposite effect to the one you'd hoped for, and be driving more MNers towards identifying as 'gender-critical feminists'

This is lies, conjecture and falsehoods. I can’t spend too much time going through each bit so I will pick out the lowlights.

I will use your own words, ‘I'm not sure whether this is deliberate? Let me explain again.’

You claim ‘I replied that that it is entirely unnecessary to enforce this since such men do not customarily chose to use facilities designated for women. It's a non issue.’

This is false. It is such an issue it has led to massive changes in toilet design.

‘If you think that's going to end well I can't help you.’

Help? As in you think there will be threats? Violence? Lawsuits? We should be afraid into submission? I don’t think so. As you say you are a new mum with 3 children in tow how would you have the capability to be the physical bouncer, if that’s what you are implying?

‘In sum, trans women don't pretend to be trans to access women and girls toilets.’

Also false but confusingly worded. Men pretend to be trans to access women and girls toilets. Whether they are trans women in that moment because they say they are trans women is irrelevant for safety.

‘Men don't pretend to be women to access women and girls toilets.’

See above.

‘If they want to go into the toilet to rape someone (which is extremely rare, since most VAWG is committed in private settings by people known to the victim) they are free to do so as they please as there is no barred entry to toilets.’

Please give me your figures. I would love to see them. I have spent a couple on years collating reports. I want to know your definition of extremely rare. It is rare someone is convicted. It is rare someone reports the crime in the first place. At what point does the number become justifiable to let men in legally? Goggle. Do FOIs.

‘Provision of unisex facilities increases harassment of women, so it is unfortunate that this is a likely consequence of this guidance.’

You are advocating for all toilets to be unisex. By letting men in the womens they have to be the universal private design which I believe goes beyond harassment and is dangerous. We don’t need more private, sound resistant rooms in public spaces.

‘There is zero evidence that provision of men's and women's designated services, without enforcing the barring of trans people from using the facilities of their choice (I won't say gender because I know it triggers you all), has any relationship whatsoever to increased levels of VAWG.’

After the research I have done, which has been very depressing btw, this is false too. My work on schools for example.

‘A few anecdotal cases on the internet of women being assaulted by trans women in facilities is not evidence.’

Where’s your evidence? You said there’s zero evidence. I would love you to share your evidence as you are so adamant about toilet facilities. It’s men that assault women and children. That includes all men.

Did you know no one centrally is collecting figures as to the locations of assaults? There’s no central database which links design to attack. What constitutes a public toilet to you?

For example did you know the last time school figures were collated through BBC painstaking research, it was found there was an average of more than 1 rape per school day inside a school. And it has just been found that more than 6500 rapes and sexual assaults - some against children under 13 - have been committed in hospitals in England and Wales over nearly four years (which included lockdown). This latter research was done by the WRN. Yet again no one could tell them exactly where these had taken place. And only 4.1% were charged which is when you see your ‘anecdotal evidence’ appear in the paper. How many go unreported?

I have never met a new mum so sure of herself and so prepared to overlook safety.

And how that happens, is that posters post evidenced claims ( or make claims they are prepared to link to evidence) whereas the poster you refer to refuses to evidence their claims.

There is never an answer to how any male person can become a woman, or indeed why that male person's philosophical belief about their identity should be prioritised above sex based rights.

It is like a script these days.

I don’t know why people need to argue over something so simple that my 4 year olds understand it.

There are 2 sexes, Male & Female. No overlap, no scientific proof of any other ‘type’ of sex.

Man, Woman are perfect descriptors of the 2 sexes. None other exists so no requirement to make up any other words.

There are people, men especially, that feel they don’t quite fit in, maybe they feel inadequate in someways, and therefore don’t belong in their sex class. It’s a shame really because they clearly don’t belong in the same group as women.

If a man rejects his biologically determined sex, he doesn’t become a woman he’s remains a man that has rejected being described as male.

Call himself whatever he likes but others, especially those of the opposite sex, are not required to welcome that man into our ‘group’ as he has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with us…

Fin.

Going back a little bit, to the complaints that "trans" wasn't represented...

Quite apart from the fact that the trans angle was put by the Scottish fucking government, so hardly neglected - judges don't decide whether the law might make some men sad oh dear better change it then. They rule on what it actually means.

Actually, there is some truth in that "trans" wasn't represented, because the Scottish government was representing "GRCs change a person's sex, and trans women without GRCs are men".

Which absolutely isn't the trans position.

The trans position is "trans women are women", with GRCs being irrelevant - "just paperwork".

Or at least that's the official position - I think the real position is "trans people are whatever sex they say they are at any particular moment, or even two sexes simultaneously, or none, whatever's most convenient to get what they want."

So maybe they could have had someone like Tandora saying their piece in front of the Supreme Court. (Despite it not being remotely a coherent or principled possible interpretation of the current law, or anything that had been argued in lower court - a solid reason for exclusion.)

But you know what? I think that would have been the biggest Operation Let Them Speak ever.

The judges would have come down in favour of women and lesbians even harder - or at least even faster. They didn't get to see the full reality of how much some people want to undermine women's rights. And how much they don't care about logic, the law, ethics, or really anything other than "me and my pals".

The thing is, that it's a bit like going to the "ideas" gym. The more that Tandora posts, the more helpful it is in helping me examine my thoughts and check my working. My GC arguments get a good work out and get fitter over time...

ETA although for the veterans here it is probably intellectually boring to have the same stuff trotted out without any development by the opposition

This is a good point. The self ID case was the first challenge by FWS and Scotgov lost that in the lower court. So they came back with GRCs only and then lost in the Supreme Court. So all the trans positions have been thoroughly examined with more funding and government support than the women. It really was FWS v Trans Goliath so it is ludicrous to say trans voices weren't heard - they were the driver of the entire Scotgov case.

Good point - starting position in lower courts was as per the trans position. How hard did they push that before switching to GRCs only?

Did they attempt an appeal? Or realise that it wasn't remotely going to fly?

Basic point is that you don't get to argue any nonsense that you like in the Supreme Court.

You actually have to have an arguable case where there is some potential that your view is correct.

The trans view is how they would like the law to be, and how Stonewall has been telling people it is, but it's never been anything close to reality - it's far enough away it doesn't take the Supreme Court to point it out, unlike the GRC mess.

Which is why the trans view (of the law) wasn't represented in the Supreme Court (of the law). It's obviously wrong. In law. Which is what this case was about.

They were totally hamstrung by this "being ahead of the law" thing. If you knowingly aren't aligned with the law, you can't defend your current position in court - you have to fight for it in Parliament.

The fact they don't realise this is making a certain fox-botherer very rich.

Being a transactivist is certainly a choice, so shall we lump you in with the likes of Sarah Jane "Decapitate a Terf" Baker, the piss-protestors, and the beastly little brats who abused live crickets to disrupt a meeting? "You people?"

Incidentally our "shitty" opinions about sex and gender have been officially deemed "worthy of respect in a democratic society".
.

They were considering a point of law.

If you don’t like the law, campaign to change it.

Oh I agree that it is helpful. Very helpful indeed.

I have developed quite a few aspects of discussion based on this poster's own words. Because in the past they told us all that they had qualifications and work in this area, so we have to expect that what they say is current and up to date information. And because of that I think we can make the point that they speak for people with transgender identities.

It is great to understand the arguments being used here through posters such as this.

TBF, the EHRC guidance will be have to be submitted to the Minister for Women and Equalities and laid before Parliament before it becomes statutory.

I'm going to pedant, so brace yourself:

Sarah Jane Baker has called for people to 'punch them in the fucking face' if they see a 'terf', but not 'decapitate', to my knowledge.

The 'decapitate terfs' activist was a young woman from Glasgow, appearing behind Kaukab Stewart and other politicians at a rally in Glasgow.

Tandora Meanwhile there will be and is no way and never has been any way to enforce entry to public toilets in general on an everyday basis other than through intrusive and arbitrary means.

The 'policing entry to toilets' is a very familiar theme, and has been countered so many times that it's surprising to see it reappearing.

The fact is that while you're right to say
there will be and is no way and never has been any way to enforce entry to public toilets
the key word is 'enforce'.

There have been separate men's and women's toilets since I-don't-know-when.
The system worked. Males used the men's, females used the women's.
There was never a need for security guards, cheek swabs, display of genitals.
It worked because of respect and trust.

People mostly respected single-sex spaces.
It was accepted that any man in the women's toilet [who wasn't there to carry out a task like cleaning or plumbing] no matter what he looked like or what he was wearing or how he identified, had no right to be there.
'The good men stay out so the bad men stand out'

What and/or who destroyed the respect and trust which for decades guaranteed that single-sex spaces were exactly that? And why? Why did the insistence on using the toilets designated for the opposite sex become such a huge issue in such a short space of time?

The puzzling and relentless focus of the trans rights movement on toilets is going to be a really interesting chapter when the social history of the 21st century is written!

Thanks, Arabella, I'd forgotten that. My bad. So that's two different horrid TRA people, not just one.

Just returned the thread. I think it’s very curious that my comments have been deleted. They were not directed at any person or poster, they were a political commentary on a strand of feminism. I thought we were allowed to discuss ideas .

Anyway as I said :

I disagree entirely that the SC could offer a competent interpretation of the law when they have very limited understand of the context relating to sex, gender , sexuality and transness.

Furthermore , the suggestion that the contemporary, predominantly British form of feminism known as “gender critical feminism” is the only possible variety of feminism is demonstrably false both in theory and in activism.