Why do GC arguments focus on single-sex spaces rather than sex discrimination?

[ariel333]

From my understanding of the Supreme Court ruling, sex has to mean biological sex in the act because that’s the main reason why women are discriminated against, so that is the characteristic that has to be protected. If trans women are included as women then biological sex is no longer the protected characteristic but gender identity - and employers could go back to asking women if they intend to get pregnant in job interviews - as they used to before the Sex Discrimination Act.
This seems to me to be a pretty good argument for the necessity of sex meaning biological sex but it doesn’t seem to be used. The focus is much more on single sex spaces. Is there a reason for this?

It benefits them to do this, because it’s seen as trivial and petty.

They are related.

Single sex spaces are a concrete example of women, and actually men too, needing provision because of the nature of their sexed bodies.

Most people find the abstract claim harder to really understand and become confused without contextualising it in a real example, grounded in physical bodies.

Women and men want separate changing areas doe entirely to the realities of human sexual dimophism which becomes relevant when people are removing clothing. For safety, in the case of women, but also to support privacy and reduce inappropriate consensual sexual behaviour in those spaces.

Clothes or pronouns are completely irrelevant to whether people change together.

The article in this post https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5535328-trans-rights-the-conjuring-trick-at-the-toilet-door-and-left-vs-liberalism-id makes just the same argument, toilets are a distraction. deliberately so. The movement is a discriminatory one. It's not about toilets.

Well first of all the FWS case was actually primarily about gender recognition on boards. So it was about discrimination against women. Or rather whether men could take advantage of measures put in place to reduce discrimination against women.

I think the reason toilets have become such a focus is because these are the single sex facilities everyone will use on a weekly if not daily basis. They’re key for women to participate in society fully

I think the reason toilets have become such a focus is because these are the single sex facilities everyone will use on a weekly if not daily basis.

I really think toilets are the focus because trans activists decided they would be. It's much easier to make an argument that poor vulnerable trans-identifying men should be allowed into women's toilets ("we just want to pee") than it is to argue they should be allowed into women's changing rooms, women's hospital wards, women's rape crisis centres or women's prisons.

The best way of addressing this is to repeatedly ask the Staniland question: "Do you believe that male-sexed people should have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with women and girls?"

This question gets to the heart of what the issue is all about.

Maybe because if a transwoman gets onto a shortlist/attends a college/gets a job/ joins a club, no-one will be traumatised, injured, or killed, or unable to access a vital resource.

Alone of all the parts of the Act, those relating to single-sex services have built-in safeguards in the interests of safety, fairness, and decency, which were being widely flouted at the behest of Stonewall et al. The consequences were highly visible (pink leggings!) and hastened their defeat. FAFO.

I think it's because the right to single sex space is actually removed if transwomen are let in whereas it doesn't affect my being protected from discrimination, in your example, if anyone is stupid enough to ask a transwoman if they plan to get pregnant. The point is they don't ask me, as a women of childbearing age, and that was still in place, I was still protected. It wouldn't actually change that if the law said they weren't allowed to ask anyone if they planned to get pregnant (men, older women) - they still can't ask me. Whereas my chance at fair sport is instantly taken away when transwomen are included.

The actual discrimination problem with your example is the risk trans men are not protected, but it is hard to fight for someone's rights if they themselves don't want you to.

Although it might have been heading that way and interpreted that way by lobby groups, I don't think sex was replaced by gender identity, they were more messily grouped together. The vast majority of people don't have a gender identity at all, so you can't take sex out and put gender identity in.

Let's not forget the only reason men went into female spaces in the first place was because the doctors insisted they had to use them and relied on them reporting back that nobody had challenged them in there, before they signed off on the next stage of the process.

I agree that protection from direct and indirect sex discrimination and the protection of reproductive and health rights are the concerns that are most important to me, but I can't complain about other people campaigning for what is most important to them.

However, the For Women Scotland case was about laws designed to protect women from sex discrimination.

Nobody expects a man to adopt a child in the same way that they assume that a childless woman in her thirties will have a baby.

And the thing is they aren't wrong. It is more than likely that a childless woman in he thirties will have a baby, and that will be a pain for her employer, but that is why women need sex based protections against discrimination and the right to maternity leave.

That is just one of the many, many reasons why women need rights that men don't, regardless of their feelings about their identity.