GLP are suing Virgin Active

[ByGreatGreenWriter]

https://goodlawproject.org/were-suing-virgin-active-over-their-transphobic-rules/

“So we’re taking legal action. We are representing two claimants who are members of Virgin Active gyms and who have been subject to discrimination solely because they are trans.

According to Virgin’s new policy, both of them can no longer use facilities like the pool and sauna because they can only be reached by going through either the men’s or women’s changing rooms.“

If true that sounds like discrimination?

This is my very favourite bit of nonsense in the application which surely would be blazingly obvious to a senior judge.

On the one hand he seems to be arguing that a pretend man QX (a woman for clarity) would be intimidating for women in a women only space whereas as actual man dressed as woman would not????

And then that a man pretending to be a woman, needs to be in a woman’s space as it is not safe to be in a male space, but a woman pretending to be a man in a mans space would be fine.

🙄

Absolutely that. As someone astutely commented yesterday, feeling vulnerable with other men, but powerful over women.

I've always thought beta male issues played a part in all this among everything else.

Men apparently absolutely understand where they stand in the pecking order with a groupnof men and behave accordingly. When a man kills his partner, his male friends and colleagues, neighbours etc are shocked, because he was usually totally appropriate around them.

This doesn't apply to a man and a group of women. In most cases, he will try to dominate. He doesn't seek out his place in the female hierarchy, other than at the top.

Many men, with no skin in the game, think that trans women are fine to go into the ladies because, to them, they are low status and no threat. They don't understand that they are not a non threat to women.

I think they do understand how women feel, but the effect on women isn't their priority. They don't want to associate with men they perceive as low status, and they don't want to challenge other men who are making demands.

I would like to report that after a long learning journey on here and elsewhere, worrying about departing from my broader political values, and worrying about all manner of small issues I realised that i want to be hard line on this issue.

goodbye to the concept of trans goodbye to being kind hello ordinary words hello ordinary meanings.

What a bloody emotional and intellectual liberation.

They're rubbish at making their arguments because not only are they arguing against rational & settled law, they're arguing against evolution and reality.

They need to stop tilting at windmills.

the SC covered this one and said that such TiF cannot use female facilities

What the SC said was more nuanced. It pointed out that if a TiF appears to be so masculine that admitting them would spoil the service being offered it would not be unlawfully discriminatory to exclude them. It didn't say that they must not or cannot be allowed to use any female facility. It very much depends on the service being offered and is at the discretion of the service provider.

What I took from that is that a very masculine looking man could reasonably be excluded from a female-only rape counselling session, but not, for example, a female toilet.

I had a career in women’s services and cannot imagine refusing a service to a woman thinking they are a man, unless they were so convincing i thought they were an actual man.

Which i believe would be unlikely

I wonder what GLP will do if the case makes it to court. Virgin will be presenting legal arguments about whether there is a requirement to make alternative provision for trans people who aren’t happy to use changing rooms based on sex, and if there is, what standard it should be. Will GLP engage with these arguments or will they stick to arguing Virgin’s changing rooms policy is wrong and must be reversed? If they don’t engage with arguments on alternative provision I think they are not acting in the best interests of trans people. And if they do they’ll upset TRAs.