Men in women’s groups.

[gingangirly]

Really unsure if I’m being unreasonable, but what do others think?

I belong to a FB group for women over 65 in my town. They have lots of get togethers, at least a couple a week. A few months ago there was a vote after a man requested to join. The overwhelming majority said no. If they want a similar group, start their own. Fair enough.

However there is a trans woman that has been welcomed with open arms. He would NOT pass as a woman, not quite a bloke in a wig but certainly you would know he was trans.

What do people think about this? Acceptable or not? I’m am totally the ‘live and let live’ but seems a bit disingenuous to ban men but not trans women?

You’d think an agreeable, sensitive, empathic, nurturing, compassionate, emotionally expressive, understanding and cooperative male would be very respectful of women’s spaces, whether IRL or online, and careful to stay away from them, wouldn’t you?

Well, I would.

I think we all know his agenda.

I hope everyone can see past the typing errors I made last night / early this morning. I was having a bad night and the drugs I take to assist weren’t working.

I wish I could just view this all as some kind of semantics and a thought experiment but to me it really matters.

I’m still chuckling at the idea that the law might have been wrongly applied in the past and that would upset me because of the poor men who were doing something they never should have been allowed to do in the first place.

I’m so sorry for what you went through, @Taztoy.

Thanks.

it’s weird. In a way it’s kind of what doesn’t kill you only serves to make you stronger type thing.

I rarely get angry but I am very angry about my treatment by the police, and the way my legal rights are being pushed aside to make room for how men feel because they can’t be told no.

I was preparing a formal complaint at the weekend against the police, and the act of doing that has clarified all my thinking around this even more.

it’s against the law for men to go into single sex women’s spaces.

I would tell a man who did so in a group I was part of this.

and I would memorialise and keep a record that I had done so.

If he did it again I would report him to the police for harassment.

And as to the statement that don’t I feel it’s only semantics? No. It’s not.

And the “what about the men who have had their rights taken away?” No. They haven’t. They never should have been in the space in the first place. They still have all their rights as a transgender person. And if they don’t like the current state of the law, then they need to campaign for a change - that is a them problem, not a me problem.

The answer is never to break the law because that leads to no laws being able to be applied.

It is also a consent violation because I say no. And that makes anyone who defends it, in my personal opinion, a rape apologist.

I believe we have lots of young men playing with their identity who will drop the whole thing after a few years.

We can't make law and policy based on whether people genuinely believe they are the opposite sex to the one they actually are or not.

Surely you understand that?

I think it’s far more likely that it is widely understood that a piece of paper cannot change anyone’s sex when it comes to an interpretation of the word ‘sex’ in the Equality Act. We all know about Stonewall’ ambitions to get “ahead of the law”. So no, the SC ruling was not legally wrong.

It doesn’t matter what any of us think. At this point the law is as the ruling in the Supreme court. If an individual or group of people believe that law to be unjust or unfair or wrong, it is for them to campaign to change the equality act. I can’t see a challenge to the echr working because the EA implements EU human rights legislation

It can't be legally wrong. Once the Supreme Court has ruled on a matter of law, that is the law, and it can only be changed through democratic means. So it is correct to say that "sex" in the Equality Act means biological sex, by virtue of the fact that the Supreme Court said so. There is no such thing as the Supreme Court getting it wrong, because the fact that the Supreme Court said it makes it correct.

So you don’t feel that women should be allowed to have their own groups or clubs? Why not?

To further expand on the previous post.

The Supreme Court's role is to interpret and uphold the law as it was passed at the time. So, on the question of whether "sex" in the Equality Act means biological sex or certificated sex, they look at contemporaneous evidence. They look at what was said and written at the time.

They aren't going to survey every person who was a sitting MP in 2009/2010 and ask them what they intended. People can forget, people can change their minds. There are still around 30 serving Labour MPs and a couple of Lib Dems who were elected in 2005 or earlier and would have been involved in passing the Equality Act. I would guess that among their number are people who might argue today that they intended the word "sex" to include people of the opposite sex with a gender recognition certificate because that is the currently fashionable viewpoint, but intended no such thing at the time. Most of the MPs arguing most vociferously in favour of this viewpoint were not in parliament at the time, and some of them were in fact still at primary school. They cannot speak on behalf of a former parliament. And those former members of parliament no longer have any democratic legitimacy and do not get to clarify today what they meant by "sex" in 2010.

So all the Supreme Court has to go on when considering the question, "what the fuck did Parliament actually mean when they wrote this" is contemporanous records.

If the 2005 parliament were not clear enough that they intended "sex" to include "opposite sex with a piece of paper", that is not the Supreme Court's fault. The Supreme Court has made what in my opinion is the only logical interpretation of the law, and so that is now the law unless and until it is changed.

This!