Page 4 | I will protect trans people in single-sex spaces row, new human rights chair says

IwantToRetire · 2025-12-31T21:38:25+00:00

^Meanwhile, Stephenson said the commission had, under her predecessor Kishwer Falkner, given “legally sound” guidance to the UK Government on single-sex services and were awaiting ministers’ responses.^ ^The Government has said it will not be rushed in publishing an updated code of practice which will be used by businesses and other organisations to inform their provision of single and separate-sex services such as toilets and changing rooms.^ ^The guidance requires ministerial approval and would only come into force 40 days after the Government had laid the draft code in Parliament.^ ^Asked if she would be prepared to accept changes to the draft, Stephenson said: “We’ve made the draft, and we think that it’s legally sound on the basis of extensive legal advice, and we provided it to Government.^ ^“Government obviously has to assure themselves that they’re confident that it’s legally sound, and they’re doing that, and we’re really happy to provide them with any evidence that they need in order to do that.^ ^“We’re waiting to hear back from them about their views on the guidance.^” [[https://uk.news.yahoo.com/protect-trans-people-single-sex-050000412.html https://uk.news.yahoo.com/protect-trans-people-single-sex-050000412.html]] This is just one of the many articles that have been written based on an interview by PA. Each one has a slightly different slant depending of which paper it is published in.

TwoLoonsAndASprout · 02/01/2026 14:17

Justme56 · 02/01/2026 14:11

Outing is one of those ideas to control the narrative. Why should a transperson have the right to a private life and no one else. Imagine if the person had been using SSS and women find out he’s male. Women are just supposed to say yeh that’s absolutely fine, there has been a man in there for years, but he passed so well we weren’t told. This is a problem created by years of misinformation and abuse of female spaces and the whole idea that some people can hide their sex at the expense of others.

I have posted this, from Naomi Cunningham, before, but it so clearly gets at the issue of why “passing men have been using your loos forever and you haven’t known it” is not the amazing confidence-restorative that people seem to think it is:

Think about that for a moment, this idea of a man who is “visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable” from a woman. Lots of women have suffered male violence, and some of those are permanently traumatised to the point that if they are surprised by a man in a supposedly female-only space, they will be retraumatised. These women may need domestic violence shelters and rape crisis services at certain times, but they don’t engage with the world solely as rape or domestic violence survivors. They have ordinary lives, too. They use public toilets, hospitals, gyms; they visit pubs, galleries, cafés, museums, theatres. They don’t wear a special badge or uniform so that we can identify them and make sure we cater for their needs. We don’t know who they are.

Obviously it’s not acceptable to say to such women “You can’t have any single-sex spaces”. But is it better to say “You can have single-sex spaces, mostly. Don’t worry: we’ll only let men use them if they look so much like women that you won’t be able to tell that they’re men.”

Think about that. Think about its power to undermine the certainty of an already traumatised woman that the woman she is dealing with at any given moment is truly a woman. If you’re not shocked by the sadistic, gas-lighting cruelty of that, you’re not doing the thinking bit right. Think harder. Think about it until you are shocked.

MarieDeGournay · 02/01/2026 14:39

I'd like to focus on the idea of 'third spaces' as the preferred solution to the problem of men wanting to use the women's toilets.

They are fourth spaces, not third spaces - the accessible toilet for disabled people is the third space in the existing standard configuration: sex-segregated women's toilet, sex-segregated men's toilet, and accessible 'disabled' toilet.

So what is suggested is that every public building which has toilets now has to find the money, and the space, to install a fourth toilet.

This additional facility is to serve the 10,000 people with GRCs [taking the upper estimate] and the maybe 250,000 people who claimed to be trans or something similar at the Census.

So there will have to be fourth spaces installed everywhere, for approx 300,000 people in a population of 68 million?

How can anyone justify, economically or ethically, that level of expenditure and disruption at the noisy and sometimes violent behest of such a tiny percentage of the population, who are perfectly able to use the standard toilets but choose not to?

Shortshriftandlethal · 02/01/2026 15:48

MarieDeGournay · 02/01/2026 14:39

I'd like to focus on the idea of 'third spaces' as the preferred solution to the problem of men wanting to use the women's toilets.

They are fourth spaces, not third spaces - the accessible toilet for disabled people is the third space in the existing standard configuration: sex-segregated women's toilet, sex-segregated men's toilet, and accessible 'disabled' toilet.

So what is suggested is that every public building which has toilets now has to find the money, and the space, to install a fourth toilet.

This additional facility is to serve the 10,000 people with GRCs [taking the upper estimate] and the maybe 250,000 people who claimed to be trans or something similar at the Census.

So there will have to be fourth spaces installed everywhere, for approx 300,000 people in a population of 68 million?

How can anyone justify, economically or ethically, that level of expenditure and disruption at the noisy and sometimes violent behest of such a tiny percentage of the population, who are perfectly able to use the standard toilets but choose not to?

Edited

Yes, it is ridiculous; but until people disavow the whole concept of 'a trans person' - as some discrete category of human being - that is going to be the only really workable solution.

Keeptoiletssafe · 02/01/2026 16:13

A workable solution is leave most things as they are except the new ‘inclusive’ toilets revert to being single sex. The only mixed sex toilets should be, as it says in legislation, in separate rooms (not cubicles). They should only be after the quotas of male and female toilets are fulfilled or it’s the only provision such as a cafe.

There has never been a time where men and women have had equal provision in this country. Why else was that poor pregnant woman being let into the nice men’s loos at the theatre? But who would have thought non-pregnant theatre-going women were all such meanies they wouldn’t let her pass into their loo lair? Shocking.

EuclidianGeometryFan · 02/01/2026 16:22

Keeptoiletssafe · 01/01/2026 22:22

I have had correspondence with HSE and the last time they passed me to Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government. I hope they are telling the government that all the building standards and their HSE documents will have to be altered because legislation and HSE say mixed sex toilets have to be private, enclosed and in their own room.

I know which toilet designs are healthiest and safest. I think communal changing rooms are safe and healthy but obviously having them as single sex (with exceptions for children). I know that the common factor for misuse and danger in a public place is complete privacy.

Disabled (non-ambulant) people have to compromise. They can’t have single sex. They often do not have a choice. Their toilets are often the most abused and dirty. For them to have the safest and healthiest toilets they should be included in the single sex toilet block.

Disabled (ambulant) people don’t have the option of a reasonable adjustment of a life-saving door gap if they have a collapsible condition, if all toilets lead onto a mixed sex area. They do have an adjustment that helps - ALL new toilets should be openable from the outside. If someone has a cardiac arrest, hypo, seizure or head injury they need to be rescued asap. But that’s not useful if you don’t know they have collapsed. However, it is so well known that people do collapse in toilets that for new non-domestic cubicles and rooms that it is stated there should be mechanism that opens the toilet door outwards so a body can be retrieved.

Being able to open the door from the outside is already a compromise for women’s safety that has been abused. But that’s why mixed-sex enclosed sound resistant cubicles are worst of both worlds. You can’t tell who is outside either.

People of certain religious groups have no provision if all the toilets are mixed sex.

Age plays into it as well as the sexual assaults of children take place in mixed sex toilets.

Frailer, older people are the ones that statistically have strokes in toilets and falls. Bizarrely ambulant toilets have a hand rail specifically for people who have had strokes but if you did have a stroke a door gap would be more appropriate.

Being female is obviously a big factor. Unisex toilets are hated and resisted worldwide by women and girls. In India, schoolgirls who rather go in the open rather than use the unisex toilets because of rape risks.

There are so many compromises. We already have so many compromises.

A very high % of council-run toilets have closed because of misuse. They cost about £10,000 per toilet per year and more when they are vandalised. Having no provision is a real thing which affects disabled and elderly more so that they are house-bound.

I really, really hope the delay is because all of the above are being factored into the decisions of what to do. I think adding a unisex toilet in certain situations will do more harm than good. And I know that from research that they will cause a lot of harm then be closed down.

There’s a good quote from a book from Rose George that sums it up (and this was 2008 even before gender ideology gathered pace):
'Anthropologists and sociologists should be infesting public toilets. There's nothing else in human society quite like them. Not in society, not quite out of it. Needed but rarely demanded. A place where all sorts of human needs and habitats intersect: fear, disgust, conversation, grooming, sex. It's an ambiguous space that is not quite in the public eye, though the public uses it. A place of refuge and sociability: of necessity and criminality.'

Trans gender people are safest using the toilets for their biological sex. Whether they want to is another matter. 11% of people having a cardiac arrest do so on the toilet. Having a medical emergency like that or an overdose is much more of a risk than being killed (0).

I have looked at all the literature from TransActual and Stonewall. The very worse one in TransActual is an account of a man flashing a transwoman outside the toilet block in protest of them using the ladies. The other from Stonewall (from their 2018 booklet quoted in most of all the replies to Document T consultation) which when you look is two women pushing a transwoman out of a women’s toilet after they all shouted and the transwoman wouldn’t leave. Edit to say there’s also the account of someone being spat at in The Guardian.

In contrast I have pages of sexual assaults and deaths in toilets that have made it to court/newspapers and can be officially documented. The deaths are of secondary school pupils, women and men. The sexually assaults are on boys, girls and women.

Do you know who else has been collecting the data of what happens in toilets? No one.

I have asked the HSE, police, DfE, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, RSPoA. No one knows what goes on in them.

That’s why adding a unisex toilet here and there to make the noise go away is so short-sighted.

Also: I really do want everyone to be safe. I am looking at ways to do this. What is wanted can’t override what is needed. I do have ideas of different designs but no one in government is listening.

Edited

Show quote history

I have pages of sexual assaults and deaths in toilets that have made it to court/newspapers and can be officially documented. The deaths are of secondary school pupils, women and men. The sexually assaults are on boys, girls and women.
Do you know who else has been collecting the data of what happens in toilets? No one.
I have asked the HSE, police, DfE, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, RSPoA. No one knows what goes on in them.

Just to say - thank you for the work you are doing in this area. It is so important and I am grateful for your efforts.
Let us know if there is anything we can do to help, e.g. a crowd funder.

AlexandraLeaving · 02/01/2026 19:09

MarieDeGournay · 02/01/2026 14:39

I'd like to focus on the idea of 'third spaces' as the preferred solution to the problem of men wanting to use the women's toilets.

They are fourth spaces, not third spaces - the accessible toilet for disabled people is the third space in the existing standard configuration: sex-segregated women's toilet, sex-segregated men's toilet, and accessible 'disabled' toilet.

So what is suggested is that every public building which has toilets now has to find the money, and the space, to install a fourth toilet.

This additional facility is to serve the 10,000 people with GRCs [taking the upper estimate] and the maybe 250,000 people who claimed to be trans or something similar at the Census.

So there will have to be fourth spaces installed everywhere, for approx 300,000 people in a population of 68 million?

How can anyone justify, economically or ethically, that level of expenditure and disruption at the noisy and sometimes violent behest of such a tiny percentage of the population, who are perfectly able to use the standard toilets but choose not to?

Edited

Agree on the importance of labelling these as 'fourth' spaces. However, I wonder whether there might be scope for some degree of compromise in, in effect, doubling the number of accessible toilets and merging third and fourth spaces (i.e. allowing the relatively small number of trans-identified people to use accessible toilets, provided there were more accessible toilets so that the larger number of disabled people were not further disadvantaged than they already are.)

Talkinpeace · 02/01/2026 19:13

Or, even simpler

tell the trans identified MALES to go in the MALE toilet

and the trans identified FEMALES to go in the MALE space if they think they are men, otherwise stay in the FEMALE space

teawamutu · 03/01/2026 08:41

TwoLoonsAndASprout · 02/01/2026 14:17

I have posted this, from Naomi Cunningham, before, but it so clearly gets at the issue of why “passing men have been using your loos forever and you haven’t known it” is not the amazing confidence-restorative that people seem to think it is:

Think about that for a moment, this idea of a man who is “visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable” from a woman. Lots of women have suffered male violence, and some of those are permanently traumatised to the point that if they are surprised by a man in a supposedly female-only space, they will be retraumatised. These women may need domestic violence shelters and rape crisis services at certain times, but they don’t engage with the world solely as rape or domestic violence survivors. They have ordinary lives, too. They use public toilets, hospitals, gyms; they visit pubs, galleries, cafés, museums, theatres. They don’t wear a special badge or uniform so that we can identify them and make sure we cater for their needs. We don’t know who they are.

Obviously it’s not acceptable to say to such women “You can’t have any single-sex spaces”. But is it better to say “You can have single-sex spaces, mostly. Don’t worry: we’ll only let men use them if they look so much like women that you won’t be able to tell that they’re men.”

Think about that. Think about its power to undermine the certainty of an already traumatised woman that the woman she is dealing with at any given moment is truly a woman. If you’re not shocked by the sadistic, gas-lighting cruelty of that, you’re not doing the thinking bit right. Think harder. Think about it until you are shocked.

Show quote history

Damn, she's good.

FWSsupporter · 03/01/2026 11:53

MarieDeGournay · 02/01/2026 14:39

I'd like to focus on the idea of 'third spaces' as the preferred solution to the problem of men wanting to use the women's toilets.

They are fourth spaces, not third spaces - the accessible toilet for disabled people is the third space in the existing standard configuration: sex-segregated women's toilet, sex-segregated men's toilet, and accessible 'disabled' toilet.

So what is suggested is that every public building which has toilets now has to find the money, and the space, to install a fourth toilet.

This additional facility is to serve the 10,000 people with GRCs [taking the upper estimate] and the maybe 250,000 people who claimed to be trans or something similar at the Census.

So there will have to be fourth spaces installed everywhere, for approx 300,000 people in a population of 68 million?

How can anyone justify, economically or ethically, that level of expenditure and disruption at the noisy and sometimes violent behest of such a tiny percentage of the population, who are perfectly able to use the standard toilets but choose not to?

Edited

I agree they are fourth spaces, I tend to use third spaces as that seems to be consistent with others.

I agree there is also the cost.

However, it’s not just about toilets, communal changing rooms concern me e.g. at swimming pools, gyms and workplaces etc. and are where we need a solution. Both Sandie Peggie and the Darlington Nurses needed a female single sex changing room and in these cases providing an option for Dr Upton and Rose which was not the mens changing room was perfectly feasible. NHS Fife witnesses e.g. senior nurses, consultants stated they had dedicated rooms to change in. This suggests there were options to accommodate Dr Upton requiring no more than a room name change.