Female only hostel in London…except it isn’t.

[SidewaysOtter]

https://www.hostelle.co.uk

Hostelle appears to be a woman-only hostel in London, offering cheap accomodation. Being a hostel, this means dorm rooms as shown in their own pictures. Sounds great, right? Perhaps you’re a woman travelling alone and you’re unfamiliar with London, so a woman only space would be a great idea.

Except, for reasons of inclusivity, they include transwomen. So you rock up to your room in and find you’re sharing with a male. And you can’t ask for single sex accomodation as the owners have made it clear they include TIMs in their definition of “woman”. Their policies include the right to deny service for noncompliance, which includes “making a guest feel uncomfortable”. So you’d be between a rock and a very hard place: sleep in a room with a man, or find somewhere else in an unfamiliar city, perhaps late at night.

It’s almost like the Supreme Court ruling never happened, isn’t it?

“Hostelle” in itself as a name is worrying.
It transforms hostel into a different word.
”Femme” “Sissie” are similar.

Was it started by a man?

It does not sound safe to stay in even without the fact that it welcomes transwomen (males).

They use the word “female” though, not just women.

Appears to be a Dutch company.

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/14252851

It's illegal to discriminate against some men. Just the same as its illegal to discriminate against black men, or old men.

The women can also claim false advertising, they are being lured in by a single sex space only to find a perverted male in the same room.

Remember men don't need to do much to say they are "transitioning".

I'd much rather be in a mixed sex dorm, than be lured into a pervs paradise.

They'll need one of these signs soon too.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Targeting ‘female solo travel’. What possible problems could there be.

https://www.soulofamerica.com/international/amsterdam/hostelle/

What on earth are you talking about?

You cannot genuinely think that the law won't apply to you if you just declare that you're using your own personal definition of words rather than the legal definition?

None of our laws would be effective if that was how it worked.

This is completely incorrect. Of course the Equality Act 2010 applies to businesses.

Find their insurers or tell them to speak to their insurers as their liability is going way up!
They're violating the UK law and if someone sues they have no defense so a big $ award will result.
Insurers don't like this risk and will either dump them or raise their rates astronomically.
Do, this, money always talks...

Exactly, any man using a “female only” dorm is already a boundary violator.

Is there a minimum age?
Yes, we have a minimum age of 16 years old. Only when accompanied by a parent or a guardian we do allow female children from the age of 12 years to stay in Hostelle.

So any single mums with babies and little ones would be turned away; whilst any grown-up bloke who wants to is allowed to stay? Going on how insistent they are about TW being women, I'm guessing they would also turn away any TM who wanted to stay, for 'NOT being a woman'. Not to mention asking what happens if you want your 13yo DS to come to, but is it OK if he claims to be a girl?

I don't know what the reality is, but considering how prominently they've made their men-inclusive policy - not even just down in the FAQs list (along with the "Can I bring my children" question, which would surely be far more commonly-asked) but with its own special big heading alongside the basic essential info - I'd be very inclined to wonder if it was deliberately set up by a TW, or at least robustly designed to centre them, with actual unsuspecting women serving as their validation.

Sorry to have to bring David Walliams into it, but I'm strongly reminded here of Emily Howard, his 'laay-deee' character - who was obsessed with doing every little mundane neutral thing specifically 'as a laay-deee would do it', and approaching actual women and going on about how simply delightful it was for them both just being laay-deees.

I'd be willing to bet their insurance company doesn't know, or hasn't looked at their policy beyond Women's Only Hostel

Thank you. Schedule 23 provides an SSE for communal accommodation, which is defined as 'residential accommodation which includes dormitories or other shared sleeping accommodation which for reasons of privacy should be used only by persons of the same sex.'

The example provided is:

A hostel only accepts male guests. It is not unlawful for it to refuse to accept female guests because the majority of the bedrooms are shared and there is only one communal bathroom.

[There's a carve-out to ensure both sexes are provided with suitable accommodation if, for example, required to stay on-site for work purposes.

Also, same-sex transgender people can be excluded if it's a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.]

None of which applies to the mixed sex hostel in the OP. I wonder, though, if there are other regulations that apply to mixed-sex accommodation that are being broken.

The mixed sex hostel may be able to justify the discrimination involved in admitting trans-identifying men but not other men under the terms of schedule 23, so the “women+transwomen” service may be legal.

Wasn’t this covered in the recent Jolyon ruling where the judge said it may we possible to have a women+TIM service but it wld depend on the facts of the case including what provision was made for other men? He did say it wld be a mixed sex service for the purposes of Eq Act. [He may have expressed it slightly differently as: he didn’t agree as strongly as EHRC that it was definitely discrimination against other men, but he also ruled that it wasn’t unlawful for the EHRC to say in its guidance that it was discrimination - IANAL so I have mis-described this]

Given that service providers aren’t obligated to provide SSS, isn’t the issue with this hostelle that it may be indirect discrimination against women?

The second point is correct, he was speculating that it was possible that a situation could occur where wouldn’t be discriminatory against other men. Which is what JM has built his misinformation offensive on. See Kate Osborne and a couple of other terrible Labour MPs saying that the judge had “sent the guidance back to be rewritten” based on the GLP spin. Which is a lie.

The second point is correct, he was speculating that it was possible that a situation could occur where wouldn’t be discriminatory against other men.

Michal Foran has written a very interesting substack on this (schedule 3 though, not schedule 23):

My own view, which I will set out below, is that Schedule 3 para 26 of the Equality Act heavily implies that ‘separate but equal’ services do constitute direct sex discrimination which are unlawful except where the conditions established in para 26 are met.

https://knowingius.org/p/good-law-project-appeals-failed-review

Foran is saying (and I paraphrase slightly):

[The SSEs]of the Equality Act heavily imply that ‘separate but equal’ services do constitute direct sex discrimination which is unlawful except where the conditions established [by the SSEs] are met.

Swift J was saying:

[The SSEs]of the Equality Act heavily imply only that ‘separate but equal’ services do not constitute direct sex discrimination which is unlawful except where if the conditions established [by the SSEs] are met.

The two statements are not the same because the IF in the second paragraph is not an IFF. Swift leaves open the possibility of establishing non-discrimination without relying on a SSE at all.