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?

For me it was prisons & homelessness hostels, & the corruption of medicine.

I’ve been (briefly) homeless & who knows: I may yet find myself in prison, & we all need accurate medical information.

I went AWS > prisons > homelessness hostels > hostels more broadly > sport > data quite quickly with some overlap. TBH, toilets was quite far down. It was singlesextoilets (Not sure if that's the correct username) that got me thinking more about that provision.

Changing room in an American school with some little incel forcing teen girls to change in front of him. About 2014/15. I never bought into it but thats when I fully could see what a problem it was.

Presumably a man turning up looking like a woman with a woman's name would be treated as a woman by an employer, they can't ask them to show their genitalia to prove they are a woman.

Sex discrimination and misogyny are baked into the very heart of the trans movement. For all the ‘stunning and brave’ transwomen we see in the media, on those rare times when we see a transman who isn’t Elliot Paige it’s usually because they’re pregnant or had a baby. It reduces ‘woman’ down to nothing but the trappings and argues vociferously that the things that make actual women women are irrelevant. Trans women are only as prominent and listened to as they are because they’re men. Women are insulted and treated as badly as they are when they object to males in their spaces because they’re women.
There's nothing actually progressive about it at all.

But recruitment can protect single sex spaces by making it clear to employees that there is no need to disclose BUT no one may enter spaces designated for a sex they are not. And intentional invasion of those spaces will result in disciplinary action. And lets be honest, the issue is not and has never been the theoretical men who look and behave so like women that nobody would ever know without DNA analysis. The whole issue and vast raft of issues for women have arisen from men who are very, very obviously men, behaving like men, looking like men and invading women's spaces.

The advice coming out around the time of the SCJ was as I remember, that there is obviously no need to bother proving whether the man in front of you lying his head off and shouting threats is actually the sex he obviously is; your job is to protect single sex spaces for the entire group with that characteristic. So suspicion or doubt is perfectly enough, and you offer said person your gender neutral space as their accessible alternative. Job done. If he wants to take you to court and prove at length he IS in fact female via a judge providing him with a DNA swab test - and let's face that isn't going to happen in any of the cases that pushed all these court judgments - then even so the employer has not discriminated against him because a perfectly accessible space was offered and available, and there was a duty to protect women's spaces without making a damn great huge time consuming and embarrassing song and dance about it for everyone.

The "the employee might not be honest so there's no point" argument is bizarre.

"The employee might pretend they don't plan to commit fraud, so there's no point saying fraud won't be tolerated"

"The employee might pretend they don't plan to access confidential records they have no business accessing, so there's no point saying we need to comply with GDPR"

"The employee might claim to have skills that they do not, so there's no point in having required skills on the role definition"

It's never been about being able to pee, has it? You take me to a room of women and ask who would prefer to pee in a stall next to another woman, or who would prefer to pee in an empty room. Take me to a room of women and ask who would prefer to strip off in front of other women, or who would prefer to strip off in a private room.

The reason this is an issue is the validation it gives to a person who has been given the right to be 'one of the gals'.

Employers need to know employees' sex, for safeguarding, DEI monitoring, and compliance with HSE regulations and EA2010 (particularly S158-9 and Schedule 9). An original birth certificate issued before age 18 is reliable.

passing has nothing to do with TW actually being women, i don't understand your point. it doesn't matter if transwomen or transmen can trick others into thinking they are a different sex than they are, it doesn't make them so. like are tomboys who dress like men and some people mistake as men actually men? no. i know a TW who passes really well, recently got "bottom surgery", not a woman tho, will never be.

One of the differences between then and now, is that trans sexuals used to police themselves and would take the new comers to one side and give them advice about what they were doing wrong.

Of course now with trans having changed so much, you no longer have to pass. Looking trans has become a thing in itself.

Dragging (excuse the pun) my mind back to around 2010, single sex spaces were not in the debate. The debate was about TIM being classed as women, without any debate. The panel/experts/psychologists in order to declare someone a woman were expecting anyone in the process of transitioning to live as a woman and that included all areas of their lives. This was all happening without women consenting to the process.

Before 2010, Cambridge (Newnham) was accepting TIM's without question.

Women at that time gave their tacit consent to men being in their spaces, because the majority of TIM's were body dysphoric, needing full surgery and medication, so, very few cases. Much of the current stuff grew out of autogynephilia which is a completely different issue. As far as I can tell, someone who experiences autogynephilia will want access to all spaces at all times for validation, for the buzz and wanting to see more of women's bodies in order to copy. Happy to be corrected on the bit about autogynephilia

Exactly!

You could end MVAWG tomorrow and make all toilets mixed sex, and ‘TWAW’ would still destroy women’s rights because it removes the concept of sex from equality law, and going back to the OP, I do think this shoukd be stressed more.

Stage 1) Greens/Libdems/SNP/labour coalition removes concept of sex discrimination from law.

Stage 2) The economic policies have been a disaster so the pendulum swings the other way and Reform/restore control government. They decide that maternity leave over burdens employers and tax payers and privatise healthcare and there is now no duty to provide any form of birth control which is a matter of conscience for the provider.

All employment rights are rolled back, but there is no way to establish how women are affected by this because ‘sex’ is not a concept recognised in law or policy.

Women lose economic power, and it is proposed that voting rights should be attached to paying tax.

Society quietly reverts back to restricting women to domesticity.

There is no explicit order that women should be second class citizens, but there also is no way to prevent them from being second class citizens.

There is a logistical problem on how to turn all women’s cubicles into separate rooms that face directly out onto a corridor. Unless you scrap health and safety and building legislation, change decades worth of British Standards and change the Sexual Offences Act and have a free for all in any design, sod H&S.

As we know from history, women and girls have always avoided unisex toilets.

The urinary leash pulls again.

Absolutely this.

It’s actually my main argument against the GRA. Granting “woman” certificates to men changes the definition of what a woman is. I’ve been honest before that I didn’t expect the SC judgment to turn out as it did. I expected them to rule that under the EA the certificate granted them women’s sex based rights except in extraordinary circumstances. I’ve never been more glad to have got it wrong.

I was so worried it would lead to all toilet cubicles becoming private. I know what a disaster this has been for health and safety.

My rape, and subsequent need for single sex spaces and healthcare stopped me being kind.