Women only Cambridge college Newnham welcome men who ID as trans

[YouCantProveIt]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15249729/All-female-Cambridge-college-defies-Supreme-Court-ruling.html

Germaine Greer opposed the appointment of Rachel Padman to a fellowship at Newnham college in the 90s (Padman is male, trans identified).
So I don't know why they say this started in 2017.
Maybe fellows could be male in the 90s, but not undergraduates?
Or maybe admission on the basis of self-ID alone started in 2017?

'We dare you'…..

I like it.

I think they are still excluding men from the faculty but male undergraduates are welcome.

They’re allegedly using an exemption that doesn’t suit the facts. Let’s see how they fare. I suspect litigation is in their future.

It’s such odd criteria for applications. A TM can change everything to M but if their birth certificate says F they’re in. A TW can change a driving licence to F and everything else remains M and they can apply. One document with F on is all it takes. It all seems very messy and I’m sure taking a deeper look probably discriminatory possibly against bio females with a GRC.

I think, legally, it's discriminatory against men who don't 'identify', because they're letting in some biological men but not others.

Yes. Discrimination on the basis of sex is illegal. The EA permits exceptions, which allow discrimination where reasonable for a legitimate aim.

You can't include 'some men' on this basis.

Previous thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5399154-newnham-college-cambridge-restricts-womens-fellowships

They are relying on Schedule 12. The relevant explanatory note reads as follows:

877.This paragraph allows a single-sex institution to refuse to admit members of the opposite sex. An institution is defined as single-sex if it admits students of one sex only. An institution which exceptionally admits students of the opposite sex, or which admits a comparatively small number of opposite-sex students to particular courses or classes only, is still regarded as single-sex. Limiting those students to particular courses or classes is permitted. However, other forms of sex discrimination by the institution against its opposite-sex students would still be unlawful.
Examples

• A women’s college which admits only female students is not discriminating unlawfully against men.
• If the college admits a small number of men to make up the numbers on a particular course of study, it is still regarded as a single-sex college. It is not discriminating unlawfully by refusing to admit men to other courses.
• A women’s college which admits men to certain courses but refuses to let them use the student cafeteria would be discriminating unlawfully against them.

(emboldening added by me)

This Schedule appears to be a carry-over from the SDA, intended to enable eg mixed-sex sixth forms and catering for students of disciplines favoured by the opposite sex (Steve goes to catering college/Debbie does motor mechanics). (It was a different world! Everything was supposed to go co-ed eventually. )

The qualification for a male to attend Newnham, then, is that it is being done "exceptionally", with no further explanation. I can see why their lawyers seized on it.

I think this, and the previous post, are good reasoning for service providers under Schedule 3 and associations under Schedule 16, but I'm not sure it always applies to educational settings, because the Act has a lot to say about them specifically (including Schedule 12)

The previous thread related to fellowships and was covered by Schedule 9 (sex-specific appointment permissible if mandated by an instrument pre-dating the Employment Act 1992).

And, to complete my wall of posts.....

The instrument establishing Newnham as a college 'for women' was ratified by the King in 1917 and has the force of law against the college administration. I find it hard to believe that the college statutes expressly permit admission of male undergraduates at all. Maybe someone who is a lawyer and/or a member of the college can put me right on this?

Not disagreeing on this, just pointing out that they could also be discriminating against biological females who have changed all their documents to male (certificated sex = male but biological sex = female).

It's so sad to see people in charge of single sex organisations being so contemptuous of women only organisations. The history of women only schools / universities is well established.
If Newnham feels it's no longer appropriate to be single sex, they need to own it. Just stop using women students as a support service for confused men.

It also went into a bit of discussion on their general admissions policy.

Ah so 'special circumstances' apply only when convenient?
You can't have it both ways.

You can always rely on maximum malicious pettiness from Maya & the mob…

Presumably this will be another case where the delusional "TWAW / women can have a penis and women who think otherwise are bigots" nonsense will be exposed in our courts?

If I recall correctly, universities have been exposed as hotbeds of insane transactivism every time they've been forced to expose their thinking in court - the OU were certainly humiliated by what came out in the Jo P case.

Well of course there's already a huge deficit of autistic men at Cambridge so it's important to squeeze a few more in by allowing them to identify as women.

Sarcasm for those who don't get it.

Yes, they could amend their statutes to become mixed-sex but they haven't. Instead they are simultaneously a) applying their own interpretation of 'women' to the college statutes, and b) avoiding Equality Act implications by admitting a few men 'exceptionally'. I can't even begin to work out whether this is ok in law, for the usual reason that it reifies a ludicrous proposition about the natural world. But I don't think it's ok in practice that women who want single-sex study get less opportunity for it.

I agree.
The baked in dishonesty gets to me. If these people are so uncaring about the history of women's activism, education, organisations (thinking of the WI as an example) then they need to be upfront and declare it.
"We care more about men's demands than we do about feminism / the rights of girls and women"

They need to be honest that they're dismissing the honourable history of women's suffrage, lesbian rights to same sex attraction, women's equality etc in favour of demands from a small number of rather grubby men wanting access to women when vulnerable.

We now see that the motivation of extreme transactivism is to identify anything women centred and to trash it. Those running these organisations should acknowledge that this is what they're colluding with.

I think this will fail if tested by the courts.

I don't think the "exceptionally" clause will be permitted to be used in an otherwise discriminatory way, i.e. to admit only students with a protected characteristic (such as GR).

You could not, for example, countenance a women's college that admitted men only when they are Sikh.

There is a clear difference between an exceptional circumstance (in which it might be lawful to admit a man) and then man is from an exceptional class of men (those with GR) but the circumstances of their admission are not exceptional.

That would be illegal discrimination - on the grounds of belief. Being 'cis' is not a protected characteristic so the only PC in play is sex - which this provision is all about in the first place. I'd love to see that 'exceptionally' debated in court, but I wouldn't bank on winning.

Presumably colleges are using their resources fully already, and don't have spare extra space etc hanging around.

So does Newnham admit these men in addition to their intake, or do they reject female applicants - who may need to be in a single-sex environment for all kinds of reasons, who therefore can't apply to the mixed-sex colleges, and who may have protected characteristics under the law - to make room for them?

I think that means there are now no single-sex women's colleges at Cambridge, as Murray Edwards isn't.

I don't think I understand you - at least, to the point I think you're making, I disagree.

DIrect discrimination is unawful if it's "because of" a protected characteristic. The person being discriminated against can either have, not have, or be perceived to have (or not have) the protected characteristic. It's all forbidden.

So if the men admitted have personal characteristics that closely approximate the PC of gender reassignment, that's unlawful discrimination. it's only disability where you can treat people who hold a PC better than those who don't.

The reason might not be 'just 'cause trans' tho. It could be associated with being trans as in 'this person is safer among women' for example.

We simply don't know the reason yet.

In your example, why is this person "safer among women"? Because they are trans. You can't argue your way out of a claim for direct discrimination by changing nothing but the language you use to describe the discrimination. Discrimination doesn't become legal if you say it's "because this person has a vagina" rather than "is a woman".