Bit of a shoehorn, but....?

[Cubic]

Hi, we're on a trip out with my ds today. He has severe autism, ld, sensory needs etc and is approaching adulthood. He still enjoys venues and facilities that are aimed at families and those with children. Some of the venues insist that you have to have a person in your group under 18 years to have entry.

As disability is a PC and DS is cognitively much younger than his biological age could the similar arguments used by man to access women's area's be used so DS can still attend places such as Legoland Discovery centres or is it too much of a stretch?

I'm just thinking over the fact that men can gain access to women's only spaces but ds would be removed from a venue on his birthday that he could have attended the day before. I know you guys are really attuned to the legislation and thought i'd ask your views.

No it wouldn't and if your son is over 18 and not accompanying a child he doesn't belong in a children's group/space/activity.
His mental age is irrelevant his physical age is. He could very easily seriously hurt a child due to his size whether by accident or purposes.
Also the arguments from men being allowed to access the womens have been found to be harmful to women and no man is allowed in the women's single sex spaces under the equality act.
You might want to try the sen board for advice on alternative venues and facilities for your son

The legoland discovery centres do 18+ events if that helps you.

I think this is a tricky problem OP. I've encountered issues like this in my workplace. In one case an autistic teen, probably much like your son, who came to children't storytime. We allowed it for our autism friendly storytime, but it would have been tricky at our regular one. Not because the patron was a problem, he really wasn't at all. But the fact that he wasn't a minor adds safeguarding questions. Mixing adults and children is often tricky even when the adult has a mental age that is younger - they are still not children.

We've also had problems around kids who were still much younger mentally graduating to adult privileges in the facility and how to manage that. Solutions were less than satisfactory imo.

My suggestion would be to talk to the facility people and try and think outside the box - is there a way to have something like a time allocated for young adults like your son specifically, for example?

The argument that he could hurt a child isn't applicable as if I took my neice with us for example he would be allowed in and the risk would be the same. Also, there are adults/ over 18's in the venues using the facilities who attend with children, they could equally harm a child or are you saying ds is more of a risk than a dad who forgets he's parenting and enjoys the venue/ facilities more than some of the children?

Men are allowed in some places that should be single sex but either the venue doesn't apply the legislation correctly, the men go in anyway or they aren't single sex.

Interestingly i've just spoken to a manager at one of the venues (not LLDC) and they do make exceptions for people like ds, they do a risk assessment each year so that if Joe Bloggs walks in off the street he can't enter but DS could with carers for each year following the RA.

that sounds like a sensible approach

It's a separate issue.

The rights given to transgender people largely stems from the (faulty IMO) view that transgender people can effectively become indistinguishable from members of the opposite sex.

See eg this from the Goodwin judgment (which led to the GRA 2004):

82. While it also remains the case that a transsexual cannot acquire all the biological characteristics of the assigned sex (Sheffield and Horsham, cited above, p. 2028, § 56), the Court notes that with increasingly sophisticated surgery and types of hormonal treatments, the principal unchanging biological aspect of gender identity is the chromosomal element. It is known however that chromosomal anomalies may arise naturally (for example, in cases of intersex conditions where the biological criteria at birth are not congruent) and in those cases, some persons have to be assigned to one sex or the other as seems most appropriate in the circumstances of the individual case. It is not apparent to the Court that the chromosomal element, amongst all the others, must inevitably take on decisive significance for the purposes of legal attribution of gender identity for transsexuals (see the dissenting opinion of Thorpe LJ in Bellinger v. Bellinger cited in paragraph 52 above; and the judgment of Chisholm J in the Australian case, Re Kevin, cited in paragraph 55 above).

83. The Court is not persuaded therefore that the state of medical science or scientific knowledge provides any determining argument as regards the legal recognition of transsexuals.

Or this from A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire re: whether a transwoman police officer could search women

In my opinion, effect can be given to the clear thrust of Community law only by reading “the same sex” in section 54(9) of the 1984 Act, and “woman”, “man” and “men” in sections 1, 2, 6 and 7 of the 1975 Act, as referring to the acquired gender of a post-operative transsexual who is visually and for all practical purposes indistinguishable from non-transsexual members of that gender. No one of that gender searched by such a person could reasonably object to the search.

Whereas your DS will not be pretending to be a child or trying to become one. Your issues will be whether it is a reasonable adjustment for the event to allow access despite his age in light of his disability, which is a separate topic.

Thank you @FrenchBunionSoup. That makes sense.

Why would you need to go through the detour of trying to liken your son's situation to that of men who want to access women's spaces?

Your son has the protected characteristic of disability, so service providers have to make reasonable adjustments to allow him to use what they provide where possible. In some circumstances this may mean allowing him in to facilities aimed at children (with the caveat that, as a PP has said, his physical size would reasonably exclude him if it could present a hazard to children). In other circumstances, different adjustments may be appropriate.

In no circumstances would he be able to, or required to, 'identify into childhood', in order to get the reasonable adjustments he is entitled to on the grounds of disability.

Strapless. It's the band that supports you not the straps. Get something underwired. I take a 38DD and wore an underwired strapless bra with an evening dress with tiny thin straps, and it worked fine. Make sure the band is a good fit.

Eh? 🤣

Well that was a swerve and a half!🤣

Not sure it'd help ds get into the family venues.

IANAL but I think the problem will be the comparator. OP's son, claiming discrimination on grounds of disability, would be compared with someone identical except for the disability. Which would not help, because that person would not be allowed into the children's session either. There is a comparison with the transgender issue, in that OP is trying to compare her son not with someone who is the same except for a given protected characteristic, but instead, with someone (in this case, a non-disabled child) who seems in some ways similar. I think the latter kind of comparisons are so difficult that we don't want them in law, however, and that a better approach is as others have suggested.

The band of the bra, below the cups, is what supports the bra. The straps don't do much, just keep the cups in place. So a strapless bra is held up by the band.

double eh?

There is no law in the UK that allows men to gain access to women only spaces OP. Regardless of how they identify. If this happens it's because the venue owner is interpreting the law incorrectly, or the man is deliberately ignoring it.

The Equality Act prevents someone undergoing gender reassignment from being discriminated against eg at work. It doesn't confer the right to be treated as the opposite sex.

As others have said, your son has the protected characteristic of disability and as such could expect reasonable adjustments to be made - but no venue is obliged to treat him as an under 18.