City of London says Sex Matters "out of time" and has "no standing" re Hapstead Ponds

[IwantToRetire]

On 17th December there was a full-day permission hearing in our case against the City of London over the Hampstead ponds. A decision on whether the case can go forward is expected in January.
The permission hearing was held because the City of London, rather than defend the lawfulness of its policy of allowing men into the women’s pond, is trying to put up procedural barriers to the policy even being questioned.

It says that our claim is out of time because it has been following a gender self-ID policy since 2017. At the same time, it argues that our claim is premature because it is planning to change the policy for the Hampstead ponds next year following a consultation. It also argues that Sex Matters doesn’t have standing and that instead of answering our claim, individual women should bear the burden of bringing cases.
We say that this kind of squirming shouldn’t allow the City of London to duck and dive its way out of defending its policy and complying with the Equality Act.

If it is confident that its policy based on gender identity is lawful and doesn’t result in sex discrimination or harassment, it should defend that policy. It is in everyone’s interest to understand whether it is lawful to provide a service for women that includes men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

Full article at https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/sex-and-the-city-of-london/

Didn’t they have a consultation recently? I’d like to know how many people responded and what the flavour of those responses was, because I know many, MANY women who responded and absolutely handed their arses to them.

As long as I live I think I will NEVER understand why so many people are so committed to allowing men into women only spaces.
I mean, I know why AGP men want this but why are so many others backing it up? So many women too. I cannot get my head around it.

Yes what is the agenda here? Everyone knows that people can’t change sex. It’s baffling. Unless it’s just plain old fashioned women-hating misogny? Yes that’ll be it.

How can it be out of time? What's wrong with them?

Now I have a Sandi Thom earworm keeping me awake!

How can it be out of time?

I think this is scrapping the barrel to find an arguement to stop it going to trial as they aren't confident.

Anyway its a stupid arguement because obviously this year we have the Supreme Court ruling which I assume is as much part of the rationale for raising it now.

And given the Supreme Court ruling even if they are having a consultaion, the options offered would have to apply the ruling that single sex means biological fact.

But am still nervous as to the outcome of this hearing, which will be announced next week.

It says that our claim is out of time because it has been following a gender self-ID policy since 2017

Then why when women declared they were men did they call the coppers out to eject them from the men's pool.

I think in the end it comes down to a power trip, the CoL don't like having their authority challenged, they're digging in to show who's got the power and who doesn't. It's not about right or wrong but who's in charge and who isn't.

When multiple organisation subscribe to this ideology you really begin to wonder why women are so hated.

Because you continue to refuse to see the obvious - that there is no "silent transphobic majority" despite what this forum and others keep expecting to suddenly make itself visible, and instead most people are understanding and supportive of transgender people. And that's despite the press being openly hostile for years now, and now also having openly transphobic government, it's still not enough for that supposed "silent majority" to emerge.

It just doesn't exist.

Eventually you got to allow the possibility of being wrong about it, even if it may feel like an earth-shattering idea. But once you do, you may get the answer you seek, especially if you actually meet some trans people and learn that despite what hate group campaigners tell you, those are actual humans, despite you refusing them basic dignity.

Perhaps if they hadn't thrown out half the responses to the 2017 consultationbecause they didn't like the answers they wouldn't be following a gender self ID policy.

No guarantee they aren't planning on also disregarding half the answers this time either which is why Sex Matters was right to intervene.

Haha good one.

@AidaPso why are men allowed there own spaces but women aren’t? Your position only stacks up if both male and female spaces are forcefully given up for trans people, which isn’t what’s happening.

the ponds are prime example - a men’s pond, a mixed sex pond. And a was womens
now mixed sex pond. That’s what it’s available.

Tell is again how that’s not misogyny rather than transphobia.

I really do think it is a case of social contagion and people prioritising the security of group belonging over everything else. People will go along with all sorts of things if they think everyone else is doing it too. Plus, people are cowardly, and won't stand up in a crowd. They won't intervene if they see an abuse in public.....

What do you mean? At the ponds trans women were always welcome in women spaces, and trans men into mens. This was always the policy, and continues to be voted to continue with overwhelming majority every single time.

So I am not sure where does your claim of asymmetry comes from.

Also, many people, maybe women especially, identify themselves as 'kind' and good people...so they go along with what they believe to be kind.

Not according to the women who actually use the ponds. Just because nobody has said anything to you, doesn't mean they are comfortable with it.

The women who use the ponds voted for it and are happy with it. This is fabricated and a moral panic entirely manufactured by women who don't actually use the Hampstead Swimming Ponds. It's just the latest target.

Again, what is the point you are trying to make? Exactly? That someone who is transphobic disliked trans women in womens pond, or trans men in mens pond? Well yeah, that's what transphobia is, duh.

But the pond continue to be a welcoming space, as it always was. And users voted for it to continue to be so. You lot just hate the idea of actually following of what majority wants if it disagrees with the hate views.

Plenty of us have met or have experience of men with trans identities ( I come across a good number such men in my city on a frequent basis); and what they all are is male...most very obviously so...and some certainly intent on using the women present for a feeling of frisson. Women are attuned to male sexual proclivities, having been exposed to them since childhood. They stand out a mile off. Men, on the otherhand, seem far more oblivious to the signals they give off, and don't even consider the female people they utilise to be fully human. They just exist for validatory reasons, or to affirm the man's desires.

Women don't generally like uninvited men coming into female only spaces. It is an intrusion in which the male desires take centre stage. It makes women very uncomforrtable. Why would a man want to use a women only facility when there are two others he could use ( mixed sex and male only) without the need to upset of offend women?

Ha ha talk about a mirror inversion of the truth. It is gender critical people who fear speaking out for being harassed and losing their jobs. There is a violently vocal minority that support men having accessing to women's spaces who have bullied organisations and institutions into giving into their demands, a silent majority who are against it but too scared to speak up for fear of losing their jobs or worse and a vocal minority of brave women and men standing up against it.

Are those attuned feelings with us in the room now? And I assume you've checked all those people for their transgender ID to confirm, and are not just judging tons of women based on their looks... Right?

Of course not. This is just how you spin your own rampant narrative that goes on unchecked with reality, bundled with listening to stories made up by others in the same token. That's literally how cults work.

You've no idea what it is like to be female, clearly. An overly flowery writing style does not make someone a woman.

I have children at 21 and almost 18, I have met transpeople and every single one of them made me more convinced that they needed mental health support and adults who held the line on objective reality, not confirmation, testosterone and mastectomies.

Man with self interest doesn't want his conflict of interest looked at, as it discredits him personally elsewhere.

I assume they are arguing out of time/no standing because they know they haven’t a hope on the substantive issues. Of course men shouldn’t be in women’s spaces.

On the asymmetry of it all, women identifying as men were thrown out of the men’s pool by irate users and the Police during the Man Friday demonstrations so CoL and the male swimmers had a rather skewed understanding of inclusivity then. I believe now the pool committee has said women identifying as men can swim in the men’s pool but I don’t know if any do or if they have told the male swimmers that.