Sex Matters - Hampstead Heath Ponds -

[SexRealismBeliefs]

Sex Matters, a charity that campaigns for single-sex rights, will argue that the City of London Corporation is breaching equality law by allowing trans women to use Kenwood Ladies’ Pond on Hampstead Heath.

Hearing this Wednesday.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/cceca8ca-4167-4b04-875a-40ddacfea782?shareToken=e9fe25a546d20835f1a5a66564cbf27b

J - yes, um
TC - I suggest this doesn't help my learned friend. You have to similarly situate the comparator, the circumstances must be materially the same. The comparator has to also not identify as trans. The non-T ID'd woman is not allowed in the men pond. A mirror position at the other pond, doesn't matter that's the point of Alhidra. Further issue with DS answer which is Nagarajan (?)
J - pages?

TC - In the facts and grounds. para 74c. pg 42, often in discrim cases it's concluded there's more than one reason why, not just sex. What law says is
TC - it only needs to be one reason. It's enough that it is A reason for our purposes. ANother reason it's unreasonable, unfavourable treatment doesn't appear in his reasoning. It is discrim against women whether direct or indirect. Doesn't change the illegality.

TC - Look at the Homer case particular disadvantage is more for the group that founds the claim than those outside that group. MLF accepted that Ground 3 may be sustainable on material before this court. Obviously enough for argue ability. If the case is staid pending their decision

TC - they will say this case is academic, we submit this case would be more widely beneficial. Can't say where, but in other places where services are provided by sex, it is unlikely it be irrelevant. You can see that there are services up and down the country who do this.

TC - that is the submission for C DS - On Alhidra, for your notes, there is explanation about discriminating against both boys and girls, we don't argue. Also on stay of permission, para 60 of our summary grounds, CoL explains that should have permission to change the reasoning.

J - no surprise I won't be handing down now, have full week. Will do best to produce asap in new year. Thanks all rise ENDS....

Exactly. Why do trans women need to access the women's pond when there are two other options?

Hmm, let me think...

Thank you to the TT pasters today (rebooting my Mac seems to have unleashed all sorts of glitches), but hopefully I'll be back on in a couple of days (or maybe I'll just have to reinvent myself).

I'd forgotten just how biased the 2018 report was after Edward Lord and his team had removed nearly half the responses. I've retrieved the report in case it goes AWOL:

"There were 39,650 responses, with the large majority from members of the public. Almost half of these responses did not address any of the questions on gender identity. Once these were excluded there were 21,191 valid responses, which formed the basis for this evaluation.(1) For the
purposes of this report this group are referred to as ‘all respondents’ (2)......"

Footnotes:
(1) The 46% (18,459) response which were deemed invalid were respondents who primarily answered the introduction About You section which sought to identify the respondent’s stakeholder status. The one question some of this group answered was Q10 which enquired about their interest in the survey. 5% (989) responded with answers to this question ranging from
transgender rights, to protecting women’s spaces, feminism, equality, interest in the subject, being a visitor to London and social media promotion.
(2) To ensure that only relevant responses were included for analysis, and findings were not adversely skewed, the eligibility criteria for inclusion was determined as respondents who had answered one of the questions posed (in Section 2 and Section 3) rather than limited their contribution to commenting on Question 102. This group of valid responses is
identified as the core cohort. For the purpose of this report they are referred to as all respondents."

I diligently answered every qn for the current consultation. Let's hope that others did too.

@Madcats thanks for this record- it was shocking they excluded all the responders who don't believe in 'gender identity'.

I did my best to follow TT today but found the discussion as dense as Christmas cake.

Why hasn't the Supreme Court ruling rendered the intricacies of this dispute irrelevant at a stroke?

I understand City of London Corp are still carrying out a consultation but the law is the law - what weight would members' opinions have in the context of the law? Or does this hinge on the notion of whether a sex segregated pond is a "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim"?

Surely the only possible outcomes can be a protected bio female pond, or three mixed ponds, since by law there can't be a bio women+trans women pond?

It sounded to my untrained ear like they were going over old ground and fighting battles that I thought had been resolved by the Supreme Court ruling.

The single sex pools protect people with the protected characteristic of sex. And the mixed sex pool provides an option for those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if they don't want to go in the pool for their biological sex.

It Really Isn't That Hard!

I also don't see how they can throw female bodied people out of the male pool if they are letting male bodied people into the female pool. That is quite clearly bonkers and sexist.

Yes that's what I thought and it's also why I think the Guides are in a pickle.

You tell one boy he can join because he says he's a girl, but you tell another boy he can't because he says he's a boy. That isn't fair on the second boy who might be interested in Guiding activities but not want to go as far as saying he must be a girl because he wants to do Guiding things!

So it's either only girls and mean it, or it's mixed sex.

Surely the only possible outcomes can be a protected bio female pond, or three mixed ponds, since by law there can't be a bio women+trans women pond?

We don't have a good precedent for "there can't be a bio women+trans women" pond yet. There's no judgement that makes it explicit.

CoL's barrister today put the argument (one among many) that since the division is by gender identity, it's not trying to be a separate sex service.

Thanks for all the posts from the front line, lets hope the New Year brings good news. 😁

Ah, so CoL argument rests on the semantics of Gender Feelz. Ok.

CoL's barrister today put the argument (one among many) that since the division is by gender identity, it's not trying to be a separate sex service.

But then don't you have to make this division clear and and exclude people with either the wrong or no gender identity?

If on the other hand you include all men without question, but have different criteria for allowing women to swim in the men's pond (and vice versa in women's pond), that doesn't seem to be division by gender identity.

Thanks for all the pasting. If another case comes up, do PM me or even @ me to see if I'm free to post.

I had nothing on today and didn't realise this case was being heard.

Preaching to the choir!

Do you want me to play devil's advocate? Just for fun?

@MyrtleLion you’re so good! Hope job hunt going well.

Last week I spent 35 hours on meetings and a presentation for an interview on Friday and didn't get it. 😭

Hopefully the New Year will bring something.

Hopefully this judgment doesn't get written with AI.

This morning's session:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2001229827622289718.html

This afternoon's session:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2001288829693505744.html

Jeppers that’s an effort. Still I’m a firm believer that the things we miss our on work our for the best.

A peaceful, hopeful & happy Christmas 🎄 to you and yours @MyrtleLion

I'm gutted for you, at least they didn't make you wait too long for the bad news. I hope the New Year brings you a new job. 💐

CoL's barrister today put the argument (one among many) that since the division is by gender identity, it's not trying to be a separate sex service.

There is no ability within the Equality Act to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.

There is nothing to prevent it either. The default position of the EA is that discrimination on the basis of a PC is unlawful, but discrimination
based on other criteria is not.

The problem is that you would have to be ensure that you weren't unlawfully discriminating on the basis of sex, and if you didn't check and exclude everyone equally on the basis of their gender identity, it is possible that you could be unlawfully discriminating on the basis of sex.

Anybody who doesn't sincerely. believe they have a male or female gender identity could only used the mixed sex pond.

What ever happened to Edward Lord, and their side kick Meg-John Barker. At one point Ed seemed to be everywhere. Amateur Swimming Association, Girl Guide policy meetings, Freemasons. Meg-John was invited by my husbands employer to talk about diversity. Ed, as I remember, was believed to have some dodgy acquaintances with PIE links.

The consultation was very dodgy. Mainly promoted on Twitter and with a long personal section at the top which seemed designed to disqualify women. I am a genuine London based open water swimmer - swam in the sea this morning. I swim regularly in South London lidos and have occasionally swam in the Serpentine. Hampstead was on my bucket list. The impression was that twitter users from the US were more likely to have their views taken on board. There did not seem to have been any effort to engage local populations including some observant Jews who might need single sex spaces. Nor pond users. I wrote several times to the City Corporation to complain but never got a response.

I hope, almost a decade later, that Sex Matters can right the wrong.

He popped up here:

https://christianconcern.com/news/high-profile-lgbt-activist-removed-from-case-for-perception-of-bias/

But given TRAs argue most people’s gender identity aligns with their sex then discriminating on the basis of gender identity automatically introduces sex discrimination. I order to not discriminate on the basis of sex there would have to be at least roughly equal numbers of males and females identifying as each (in this case rather binary) gender.