Good Law Project to report Sex Matters over 'deviant' remark

[IwantToRetire]

In its assessment of the EHRC guidance, Sex Matters took issue with the following phrase: "It is unlikely to be either practical or appropriate to approach any particular individual to make enquiries about their sex in relation to facilities, such as toilets, which are incidental to the primary service.”

The sex-based rights group responded in a publication entitled <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/lLjDq/sex-matters.org/posts/updates/sex-is-not-special-category-data/?ref=ed_latest" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Sex is not a 'special category' data", saying: "There is no legal basis for this instruction, which in effect licenses men to enter women’s facilities and claim that it is inappropriate, possibly unlawful and a breach of their human rights to challenge them."

The group further stated: "Telling staff supervising single-sex spaces that they must second-guess themselves when they become aware of a man engaging in the deviant behaviour of accessing a female-only space, or risk breaching data-protection law, will lead to unwanted conduct related to the protected characteristic of sex that is likely to meet the definition of harassment in the Equality Act. It 'violates a person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment'."

From article at https://www.thenational.scot/news/26143769.good-law-project-report-sex-matters-deviant-remark/
and at https://archive.is/lLjDq

Did your keyboard explode or implode when you typed that?

When Steph was leading the protest at Portsmouth FiLiA, with the stupid I AM WHO I SAY I AM posters, the obscene pavement graffiti & the chanters drowning out the women inside who were trying to talk about having survived sex trafficking, he said it made him sad to have to do it, because if we were the right kind of feminists he’d have been in there with us.

These men are just the worst

Each key laughed individually, choked, and then shook its head

I did not have any information about how to complain to my local authority that a man with his semi-tumescent penis in full view through the gap in his wrap-round skirt, and with a very unrealistic wig and garish makeup on, was occupying (and manopolising the wash-basins in) a ladies public lavatory.

If I'd had that information, I was aware that making a complaint against him was likely to be regarded as a hate crime, and might lead to me being arrested and charged, rather than to him being taken to court for indecent exposure.

So I did nothing about him except leave as soon as I saw him – which, after the suspension from work and subsequent harassment of Sandy Peggy, I am now aware could also be interpreted as a hate crime....

Sorry, but that (lack of a) statistic really isn't the gotcha that you seem to think it is.

As an aside, since the public lavatory in question is in a shopping centre and is neither owned nor run by the local council, why should I complain the the local council anyway? They would quite reasonably reply with words to the effect "nothing to do with us guv, try next door." https://toiletly.app/blog/uk-council-run-public-toilets-a-decline-and-what-it-means indicates they might well not actually have any council-run public lavatories anyway, but in fact there are a total of two council-run public lavatories in this town, one at a cemetery and one in a park some way from the centre, neither in the least convenient to any shops at all.

So women may have the rights and humanity he permits them if he deems them sufficiently subservient and enabling of him, and their feminism having no inconvenient bits or any focus beyond him and those he has given his approval.

Yeah. It's about as batty as the posters who declare they believed in women's rights and equality until they saw women here being rude to men and now they believe in male supremacism.

🙄

Are Transluscent in denial or just hoping they're talking to those who don't ask questions or check anything? They want the dismantling of women's (and gay) rights in law, in order for women to be actively subordinated to the dominant and privileged rights of men with gender identities.

Have we found out why @Baileyonice thinks we have female only spaces in the first place yet?

So that men can infiltrate them?
So that special men have their girly feels affirmed?

We are still waiting for a sensible answer on that one. So far, the working theory from Baileyonice (Sanisette Philosopher), seems to be that unless a crime is statistically guaranteed to happen in a specific cubicle, women have absolutely no right to private boundaries.
Imagine genuinely believing that the entire history of sex-segregated spaces, privacy, and safeguarding was just a random mistake because restaurants and bars don't segregate their entire seating areas. It would be funny if the entitlement wasn't so glaring.

The point he made - that it is necessary to demonstrate less favourable treatment to claim discrimination - can be used by both parties to make their case.

Michael Foran argues that even if you offer 'equal' services to two separate groups of people, this is segregation and therefore discrimination. In the case of services for (Men + TIFs) and (Women + TIMs) the discrimination (for the women or the men) is on grounds of sex and therefore not permitted.
You can only discriminate by sex with equal services if you have the carve out of Schedule 3 para 26(1) of the EA, and for that you need the services to be separated by biological sex. The EA wouldn't need 26 (1) if 'separate but equal' services for men and women were generally lawful.

https://knowingius.org/p/good-law-project-appeals-failed-review
IANAL so happy for a legal bod to explain this better, or even MF himself!

Be careful what you wish for.

You can always rely on convenient assumptions by GC anhistorique 'feminists' that ironically excuse & enable patriarchal influences.

"In fact, laws in the U.S. did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century, when Massachusetts became the first state to enact such a statute. By 1920, over 40 states had adopted similar legislation requiring that public restrooms be separated by sex.
So why did states in the U.S. begin passing such laws? Were legislators merely recognizing natural anatomical differences between men and women?

I’ve studied the history of the legal and cultural norms that require the separation of public bathrooms by sex, and it’s clear that there was nothing so benign about the enactment of these laws. Rather, these laws were rooted in the so-called “separate spheres ideology” of the early-19th century – the idea that, in order to protect the virtue of women, they needed to stay in the home to take care of the children and household chores.

In modern times, such a view of women’s proper place would be readily dismissed as sexist. By highlighting the sexist origin of laws mandating sex-separation of public restrooms, I hope to provide grounds for at least reconsidering their continued existence."

https://theconversation.com/how-did-public-bathrooms-get-to-be-separated-by-sex-in-the-first-place-59575

['anhistorique'? Pourquoi pas ahistorical? On jacte le francomouche tout d'un coup, ou quoi?🤔]

The article is about the USA, so of limited relevance here. They are called 'toilets' here, and the presence of the word 'bathroom' when talking about toilets suggests that not just the word, but the argument has been imported wholesale and un-regionalised from the USA.

It isn't a very thorough article, it doesn't seem to go much deeper than to say that women were given separate facilities because they were considered 'the weaker sex', and a woman's place is in the home.

It doesn't seem to be very objective either - and at the end of the article, the author's parti pris is revealed:
Opponents of transgender rights have employed the slogan “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms,” which evokes visions of weak women being subject to attack by men if transgender women are allowed to “invade” the public bathroom.

'Evokes visions of weak women'? Quite the opposite!✊

In fact, the only solid evidence of any such attacks in public restrooms are those directed at transgendered individuals, a significant percentage of whom report verbal and physical assault in such spaces.

No such solid evidence in the UK, whereas there is solid evidence of attacks by transgendered individuals in women's toilets, e.g. Katie Dolatowski who sexually assaulted a 10 year old girl in the women's toilets at a supermarket.

"The article is about the USA, so of limited relevance here."

"Our Patriarchy isn't the same as theirs!"

😂

"In Victorian Britain, most public toilets were designed for men. Of course, this affected women’s ability to leave the home, as women who wished to travel had to plan their route to include areas where they could relieve themselves. Thus, women never travelled much further than where family and friends resided. This is often called the ‘urinary leash’, as women could only go so far as their bladders would allow them."

"However, the plans for a women’s toilet were set back by several years as men opposed the women’s toilets being situated next to the men’s.
In some cases, plans for women’s toilets were deliberately sabotaged. When a model of a women’s toilet was set up on the pavement in Camden High Street, hansom cabs (driven by men) deliberately drove into the model toilet to demonstrate that it was situated in a most inconvenient position!"

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-of-Womens-Public-Toilets-in-Britain/

That article doesn't support your point.
"The patriarchy" didn't want women to have public toilets at all, because they would give women more freedom to move about and let them out of their domestic "sphere".
Women - not the patriarchy - campaigned for women's toilets in Britain. It wasn't "segregation" in something they were confined to by men, but something of their own that helped to open up the world. Stepping stones to cross the river on. They're our spaces and were ours from the start.

The women got their way, and for a century or so, the patriarchy were stumped. Pesky women, out and about where we can't get at them!

So the patriarchy told men who liked to dress as women that they could use the women's toilets too. So women could no longer get away from men.

Since we're being French tonight: Plus ca change.

But women are fighting back.

The point you're conveniently missing is male violence wasn't the reason historically for sex segregation.

Tell that to Elizabeth Fry. Prisons were mixed sex before they were single sex, and ending that wasn't just a matter of Victorian pearl-clutching about "proper spheres". There are very sound reasons why the Geneva Convention still specifies single sex for imprisonment. If men can, some will.
And I've no doubt that the women who campaigned for women's toilets were also under no illusions about how they'd be treated if they tried to colonise the gents'. Unlike transwomen intruding on women, they didn't have the physical advantage. And perhaps they had a bit of respect for the privacy and dignity of the men they would have been imposing their presence on, as well as for their own. It's not all about violence, sure, but it doesn't have to be. Not unless you're so scared of being thought prudish that you daren't expect - or allow others - any privacy at all.

Men and women do many things together now - many more than were possible in Victorian times; so why this sudden melodramatic screaming about "segregation" in relation to the very few spaces that are still single sex? It seems there's a wilful determination to ignore the difference between women having the use of a temporary refuge from the patriarchal gaze, and women being forbidden to leave it.

But of course, it isn't really about women's rights and freedoms at all, is it? If they were good little girls and let transwomen use the ladies', we wouldn't be hearing a word about "segregation".

I know it is difficult for activists but did you literally just Google 'why do they have separate toilets'?

I asked why YOU think we have separate sex toilets? Why are there rules around why they put signs up when male cleaners are in there? Why do they exist now?

So you would say this is the most common understanding of the reason for sex segregated amenities among trans women? That it's about a social performance of feminine weakness?
And they want to be able to pasrtipate in that performance, hence the fight for access to women's amenities?
That's quite the revealing misunderstanding.

It seems there's a wilful determination to ignore the difference between women having the use of a temporary refuge from the patriarchal gaze, and women being forbidden to leave it.

The problem with this bad faith analysis is it just assumes there's only one 'legitimate' approach to feminism as in 'safetyism'. I'm not suggesting there isn't legitimate justification to this approach but rather that's not the only one. Where safetyism feminism focuses on protection, safe spaces, and framing women as inherently vulnerable to systemic harm or micro aggressions, Agency/Power feminism focuses on autonomy, personal responsibility, empowerment & risk taking.

Camille Paglia provides a great insight into this:

"Paglia: When I arrived in college in 1964, in loco parentis was operative. I was in a girl's dorm. We had a sign-in at 11:00 at night. The boys could run free. They had panty raids. We threw water at them out the windows and so on. My generation of women rose up and said, "Get out of our private lives!" And the university said, "No, the world is dangerous. We must protect you against rape and attack and all those things." And we said, "Give us freedom! Give us freedom to risk rape! That is true freedom!”

https://reason.com/2015/05/30/everythings-awesome-and-camill/

Agency feminists think safetyism promotes women as being inherently weak & by extension regresses to separate sphere of influence structures.

I suspect how a woman approaches feminism like other politics has a lot to do with individual personality traits, experience & cultural influences.

Oh, this make more sense. That other article you posted is really very strange.
Oxfam and other aid workers campaign for women's separate amenities in refugee camps, and cities with large numbers of impoverished people living in slums. I can't get my head around the argument that what they're campaigning for is an opportunity for displaced and impoverished women to play at being weak, dainty ladies.
Safety, dignity, privacy. Straightforward, no silly nonsense.

It's a historical analysis of reasoning which isn't really relevant today.
I'm not trans so I can't speak for them & like all groups I'm sure they aren't a monolith in thinking. But I can speak for myself as a woman & say I have zero issues with unisex toilets but I can empathise with being discriminated in the right to chose.

Poverty & safety issues go hand in hand. We ain't talkin' third world conditions here.

Because they are a vestige from the Victorian era with recent decades of resistance. Patriarchal influences die hard it appears.

Interestingly before then, communal was quite the thing.

You think they put signs up when a man is cleaning a woman's toilet because of the Victorians?

Is there evidence of Victorians putting signs up when men cleaned toilets? Do you think men cleaned any toilets in Victorian times?