I wonder what the WI are going to announce on Woman's Hour in the next few minutes?

[nauticant]

Apparently it will be a matter of the greatest seriousness and sorrow.

I suspect the Sisterhood 🙄 meetings will be as well attended as the sports (swimming, I think) trans category was - zero participants. Or the gender neutral loos that the lawyer Robin Moira White refuses to use, referring to them as ‘ghettos.’

The blokes pretending to be women want the real thing, to step across the boundary legislated to keep their sex out. Where’s the fun in making jam with non-binary Andi and Madge who supports ‘the trans’ as her friend from bridge club has a trans grandchild.

As a species we don’t need a meteorite to wipe us out. The statements from Girl Guiding yesterday and the WI today demonstrate just how utterly weak, stupid and destructive some people can be.

It's taken their lawyers almost eight months to draw the blindingly obvious conclusion that men can't be part of the Women's Institute? Jeez.

I understand why it makes sense for GirlGuides to remain single sex, but I do not understand why the WI chose to keep it single sex. They already had a policy of including trans women, and I am assuming this means that non-trans men were self-selecting out anyway.

They were not forced to because of the clarification in the ERA, they could have still have called themselves the WI and changed some paperwork around making it mixed. They chose not too and I would like to know what was their reasoning.

No transwoman has ever given birth.

The law allows organisations to choose to be single-sex if they can demonstrate that doing so is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

In fact the law allows associations to choose to be single-sex for any reason, good or bad, or even for no reason at all. The "proportionate means" test applies to various forms of lawful discrimination, and is not relevant to single PC associations.

You can have an association whose membership is open to women for any purpose and for no purpose.

Any membership group/leadership with an agenda on this topic will not survey their members. See my previous post, not sure what thread now, on Glyndebourne.

I’m glad you live in a country where you have that option. But if you were really worried, wouldn’t you use a gender neutral facility?

This is your solution puppy.
Why can't you do this?

It's not hyperbolic it is what you are advocating for and more than one poster on this thread has at least been honest about that.

It is what is happening- hence the announcement of girl guides yesterday and WI today.

it is a demand for a total prohibition on any women's organisation, service, facility, that chooses to welcome/ include trans women.

It is not what the SC said in their judgement and not what I believe they contemplated/ intended.

I would agree, before the Equality Act (EqA) came into force there was the Sex Discrimination Act 1974 (SDA).

The SDA provided a de minimus saving in Section 43(2) that allowed single-sex charities to provide “benefits to persons of the opposite sex which are exceptional or are relatively insignificant”. However, this saving was not carried over into the EqA and no longer had effect when the SDA was repealed.

What may have, possibly, been arguably permissible under the SDA (allowing a very small number of trans-identifying men to become members) was no longer lawful when the EqA came into effect. Any possible argument that the WI may have had to be acting lawfully went out of the window when the SDA was repealed by the EqA.

When the SDA was repealed in its entirety by Schedule 27 Part 1 EqA, Parliament had the choice to continue with this saving but clearly made the conscious decision not to include a similar saving in the EqA which meant that, from then on, single-sex charities must indeed be single sex.

We have a GD in brownies and my daughter just called to say she received an email from the guiding association saying that boys will not be allowed to join anymore. Plus the waffle that is in their statement today.
That was quick.

Err.. No. I'm a member of a Polish club. I'm not Polish but my DGF was. I had to produce a lot of evidence before I was accepted. No way would they accept that I identified as 'Polish'.

And I presume they know this otherwise they'd have voted to change their name and constitution to people with a feminine identity institute.

If they are so sad about the decision why didn't they do this?
Because they knew it would destroy it.

Why don't they leave and set that up?

There's then a choice for women: a single sex organisation for those who want it, and a mixed sex for feminine people one for people that want that.

Then this is a good insight into the actual issue.

A man isn't going to experience the same level of threat seeing a female in a male space, that a female experiences when she sees a male in a female space.

The problem with trans-women i.e. males in female spaces are based on the facts that

1. All males are significantly stronger than females (a female is the eqiv strength as a 12 boy) therefore females are unable to defend themselves against any male who is over the age of 14.
2. Females are much more likely to be assaulted by males than by females. Unlike males who are also more likely to be assaulted by males rather than females.
3. Females are more likely to be assualted for sexual or controlling motivations. Males are much more likely to be assualted due to alcohol and drugs etc...
4. And these assualts are overwhelmingly happen in private spaces rather than public spaces like most male-on-male assaults.

It is for these reasons that spaces like toilets, changing rooms, prisons, hosptial wards, rape crisis centres and sports are have single sex female options, and places like school, libraries, workplaces etc... are not single sex.

It is imporatant to add that these facts do not change post-transition. If a male was assaulting females before transition that doesn't change, and even though there is some debate about the loss of strength in males post transition, the average number is about 10% which would make the equiv. strength to something around a 16 year old boy which is still more significant than all women.

This is why I don't completely understand the WIs stance- nothing that I can see they do requires a single sex space, where as the GG have camping trips and are dealing with girls going through puberty so it makes sense. Also this policy of including men in the WI has been going back many decades and they were able to manage it- so we need a bit more information about what their reasons were.

it is a demand for a total prohibition on any women's organisation, service, facility, that chooses to welcome/ include trans women

I ask this genuinely not to be snide, Puppy, but have you actually read and taken in all the replies explaining this to you, not least the one you appear to be replying too? You’re misrepresenting the situation. Whether this is due to a lack of understanding or a purposeful attempt to misrepresent things, I don’t know.

Both Girlguiding and the WI used the single sex exemption I believe. That means they should never having been letting boys and men into their organisations.

(The scouts for example let boys, and girls and transgirls and transboys join because they don't claim to be single sex.)

Over the past two days both organisations have decided to stick with their single sex exemption rather than make themselves mixed sex.

Had they decided to not stick to single sex but to open their organisations to both sexes they could have done so.

There may have been some paperwork and maybe namechanges that needed to be made, but they could have allowed the transgirls and transwomen to remain.

They didn't chose that option. So go whinge at them

trans men are so often used as props in arguments to justify the judgement.

LOL! I happened to join this board on the very day the SC judgment came out. I saw the fallout with my own eyes, live. And trust me: the ones bringing up trans men were not the GC people. It was the TRAs. For example, all of them seemed to have a 6ft-tall, bearded and muscular trans man friend, who obviously couldn't be asked to go to the ladies'!

Also, there's nothing to "justify" in the judgement.

Why can't we have some services that are reserved for women at birth and some organisations/ services that include both women and trans women?

You mean, exactly how it is now that the SC has clarified the law? Because before that, it was literally impossible for women to set up "services reserved for women at birth". That's why I believe it would happen: because it did happen. Why do you think women fought all the way to the SC??

Also, how would you differentiate between the services for women only, and the ones for women and trans women? On what basis would you exclude the trans women from the former?

Sure, and your organisation has every right to enforce that as a membership rule. Many other orgs may not require this kind of proof - but that's beside the point.

The point is that - and your case is an excellent demonstration -/your organisation accepts you as polish because your DGF was. Thats their rule for membership/ being polish,

Now- What if the State said- that doesn't make you polish- you are only 1/ 4 polish! Or- you don't have a polish BC. According to the definition of "being Polish" in British law you have to be a polish national at birth!

Would you say your organisation should now be legally required to exclude you or else disband as a
polish org and admit any person of any ethnicity?

@puppymaddnessI feel like you need bullet points to help you understand, rather than paragraphs.

The law states, for the purposes of The Equality Act (and maybe some other laws), that TW are male/men and TM are female/women (this is what is being referred to when sex is mentioned)

Mixed sex groups - allowed - no discrimination

Single sex groups - allowed - legal discrimination using the exemptions in the EqA

Having a group but only allowing some of one of the sexes - illegal - sex discrimination

Calling an organisation "women's" but allowing male people - not allowed

(Groups with fewer than 25 members have fewer restrictions)

To address your anti democracy point, I think there have been You Gov polls which show that the majority believe that TW shouldn't be allowed to access sports etc meant for women, which would appear to show that all the above is in line with the general public i.e. democratic

it is a demand for a total prohibition on any women's organisation, service, facility, that chooses to welcome/ include trans women.

No it's just a prohibition on calling such groups women's groups.

I presume you can see that but realky want the right to define what a women is and you're just dressing it up in this faux outrage at 'democracy'.

Democracy doesn't mean words don't have legal definitions.

What I find disturbing is your total lack of concern or empathy for actual women -and for their legal protections and rights. I don't know if you are male or female, but whatever the case you don't actually seem to have much bandwidth at all for what could be considered female interests and priorities, or the reasons we have single sex space, services and categories in the first instance.

What you are calling "extremism" is simply a recognition of everyday, common sense, biological reality and its consequences. You seem to think that being able to distinguish between one type of thing and another is an extremist act.

There is nothing to stop you from hosting your own private events to which you can invite and include anyone you like or choose.

The WI, GG, Rape Crisis, feminist and lesbian groups, women's health including groups for post partum and breastfeeding mothers have long proud histories of women organising for the benefit of women. Often to counter a male dominated society / specific threats to the safety of women & girls safety from men.

All these organisations (and the workplace) have been relentlessly trashed by certain men - seeking them out, infiltrating and dominating, working to exclude any woman who dared speak out. See the ETs Fife & Darlington to see what happens to women employees objecting to compulsory undressing in front of random male colleagues.

The SC judgment has removed the power of these destructive men and their allies and reinforced that lesbians choosing to associate with other women can do so legally. That single sex means just that - no men in women's showers, changing rooms, dormitories etc etc. That an organisation set up for women and girls is just that. If the WI are so desperate to centre men, then they can become the PI instead.

Those who want to decriminalise voyeurism and indecent exposure or to insist that women have no right to meet without men can campaign to change the law (and deal with the derision from the rest of society).

Stonewall law is finally over.

I can imagine you're in a weird, frustrating position (wherever you are!)

I. Understand. Your. Logic/ argument.

It is not what the SC said in their judgement and not what I believe they contemplated/intended

It's exactly what the SC said, contemplated and intended.