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

oh yeah nice white civilised men completely different
Sorry I forgot
But oh my salad days the memories flooding back! Were you reading in a pomo addled humanities department in the 90s? I remember women swearing blind the women's toilets in their department were beats too!! See we're just as cool as the boys. Crazy days but at least it was all safely cloistered in the ivory towers and not spewing out into public policy and legislation.
More grim was young women taking up cam-girling to prove their non-safetyist credentials. Paglia was bright and instightful but she was bloody irresponsible at times, too.

'Why am I writing this sign 'male cleaner in attendance' again?
'Because of the Victorian Patriarchy dumbass'

oh yeah nice white civilised men completely different

The data on sexual violence between poor/wealthy warring/peaceful jurisdictions speaks for itself.

More grim was young women taking up cam-girling to prove their non-safetyist credentials.

It never gets old excusing capitalism & instead blaming women's liberty for the debasement of society.

Great. So, as transpeople say using unisex toilets is “outing”, you can use those toilets with them, women and men needing single sex toilets can use them and everyone is happy right?

So as Oxfam are campaigning for single sex toilets in India and Africa, are you saying Oxfam are racist? If unisex toilets are so safe, why do Oxfam consider it an urgent need?

"Freedom to risk rape" is not the same as having nowhere to get away from it. The latter is not choice and not empowering. And it's not just rape, its all the other lesser but still shitty male shit.

You are confusing allowing women and girls to take risks in pursuit of experience (which is what Camille Paglia wanted) with forcing them to take completely pointless risks by doing away with basic sensible single-sex facilities.

There are plenty of opportunities for modern women to put themselves in the way of getting raped (if that's how they define freedom) without demolishing basic protections for other women in the process. If a woman wants to live dangerously, she doesn't need a mixed sex toilet (or changing room, hospital ward or prison cell) to do it in.

While we're at it, what does Camille Paglia think about women's refuges? Does she think the abused women who go there are just wimps who should have stayed at home and toughed it out?

So would you be happy if you had a choice of unisex and single sex toilets?

Does that seem fair?

Do you not think there would be any reason why women would want the ability to exclude men in some situations? Who is in control if they don't have the choice?

Exactly what I thought - Bailey needs to also needs to read further than the top search result. On the other hand the naive and ignorant debating tactics have proved a useful talking point at home with the DC, so this poster has been a useful idiot in that regard. And whereas I’d not been feeling much like writing a legal take-down on some NHS policy, he’s 100% irritated me into doing it by the end of the weekend. So he’s quite the public servant!

I imagine she does tbh. She has zero truck with transgenderism though so I don’t know why Bailey is citing her in support of their odd arguments.

I doubt they even knew who Camille Paglia is. They are just Googling & posting links they don’t even understand.

Going back to the topic of the thread, it might be that Sex Matters is demonstrating Victorian sensibilities when they suggest that men who wish to enter women's spaces are deviant, but having Victorian sensibilities isn't grounds for complaint to the Charities Commission.

Exactly. I encountered a bloke in the ladies in a pub in Oxford last night. His pink shorts, long hair and trans tattoo, didn’t in any way disguise his Adam’s apple or the fact that he was 6 foot tall with wide shoulders.

But who was I going to complain to?

He should have had the decency to stay out of a space where he didn’t belong. He didn’t have that decency. He didn’t respect the law and he didn’t comply with behaviour conventions. Thus I consider his actions were deviant.

Any man knowingly violating women’s boundaries is an automatic red flag.

The law has been made clear. The whining has been epic. All these men know they are in the wrong in accessing women’s spaces. They do it because they don’t care.

What is this batshit argument? Women of the (first) world, empower yourselves by letting some men into your spaces, take risks by inviting in those who particularly enjoy crossing your boundaries, accept personal responsibility when it all goes wrong.
Sounds more like coercion than autonomy to me.

The answer is always going to be, No.

Oh good grief.

Go and do your exciting and phenomentally wordy feminism in the gender neutral loos and have a lovely time. Good luck with that.

I'm still ordering that T shirt.

How is it relevant that the origins of sex-separated facilities include moralistic/patriarchal segregatory principles? Anyone over 60 or so has probably seen old Victorian school buildings whose history of sex segegation is carved in to the structure -- with the words 'Girls' and 'Boys' appearing in stone above the two separate entrances. There are many such historical remnants of the herding (and exclusion) of women in public spaces. For example, my ocal cathedral has an in-built structural line near the back, which marked the boundary of how far women were allowed to be.

The Equality Act is a modern piece of legislation, not a hangover from the Victorian era. It explicitly disallows any such remnant of patriarchal sex segregation. It's primary function is to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex. But, secondarily, it sets out parameters for the cases in which discrimination - in this case separate provision - is lawful. I've only skimmed your posts, but I think you are saying that where mixed-sex provision presents no discrimination against women, facilities should not be separated by sex. The Equality Act agrees with you.

I agree with you, too, and I expect many other posters do too. Probably where we differ is in respect of two things. One is that we would like to call a 'mixed sex' facility just that, and not pretend that it is single-sex just because it only allows in a sub-set of opposite sex people.
And the other is in relation to the definition of what counts as a detriment to women (ie how we determine whether or not thay have been discriminated against by the absence of single-sex provision. I've seen you speak of male violence, and of course the risk of sexed violence (where it exists) is one of the clearest legitimate grounds for excluding men in order to avoid discriminating against women. But the risk of violence isn't the only possible detriment of mixed-sex provision. It is perfectly lawful and reasonable to also consider lower-level sexual abuse and harassment, such as exhibitionism and voyeurism.
It is also lawful to consider the fact that almost all women have life-long experience of some level of harassment, making it distressing and in many instances traumatic, to share toilet and changing facilities with men. Where there is reference to women's 'privacy and dignity' it relates to their legitimate need to be free from this constant and corrosive male gaze, NOT to any moralistic overhang of Victorian prudery.

If your mission is to ensure that facilities aren't separated by sex where there is not reason to do so, then, fine, I'm with you. But look fairmindedly at all of the evidence of actual and possible detriment generated by men as a sex class. And look at the entire absence of evidence that a trans-identification somehow exempts a man from being regarded as a member of his sex class when it comes to the demographics of male violence and harrassment.

I don't know.

Baileyonice seems to be accepting that women should have the right to single sex spaces

"I'm not suggesting there isn't legitimate justification to this approach"

At any rate, any political party seeking to change legislation would struggle with the 'give women the freedom to risk rape' line.

@Baileyonice spend a few more years on looking at design and safety and you’ll catch us up. I need you to read this carefully to understand this is not about anything other than safety.

I want safer toilet designs for everyone. ‘Inclusive’ design is not safe. It was not borne from safety. And it is definitely not ‘inclusive’. It’s worse for everyone at their most vulnerable but least bad for healthy men.

You seem to be wading through the common historical toilet articles. Carry on. Wait til you get to research the person whose first foray into design was looking at maps and finding penis shapes amongst the street gridding. Articles, which eventually get around to toilet design, include detailed drawings of penis amputations for good measure. This gender studies professor has international influence on toilet design which is termed ‘inclusive’. The professor thinks a good safety measure is to have a one way one-way mirror lookout on the door positioned so when the occupant is sitting on the toilet it is at eye level so they can observe their surroundings looking out at men, women and children in their communal washing and grooming zones. Also, of course, making the cubicle private visually and acoustically.

As an aside, from a safety and design point of view can you think why a one way mirror at seated eye level may not be a good feature? Luckily that one didn’t catch on. But the complete privacy of the cubicle did.

This is important because I am campaigning for safety for anyone at their most vulnerable. When the government looked at toilet designs, they commissioned a private company to look at the needs of people with long term health conditions in standard and ambulant cubicles. This is good. However this company didn’t look at many of the common long term health conditions that could have safety issues in standard toilets. Collectively they missed out millions of people with heart conditions, epilepsy, diabetes, endometriosis, heavy periods. All these conditions where people end up unconsciousness on the floor of a toilet and need emergency help. They did mention stroke in terms of a handrail and discussed positioning of this. But if someone had a stroke in a toilet and was on the floor? No mention of collapse.

But guess whose name was referenced in literature evidence for recommending U.K. toilets are private for those with long term health conditions?

with forcing them to take completely pointless risks by doing away with basic sensible single-sex facilities.

Still not getting is ain't an ought?

Again, the blind spot in GC ideology is the assumption that people all view facts the same way in terms of how they should be dealt with. Ultimately this is a values issue proven by the fact that many Western countries & their feminist population don't agree on the risks & whether the risks warrant segregation.

Might help if you took your own advice.

Camille Paglia actually identifies as transgender and has experienced gender dysphoria since childhood. She is primarily critical of the contemporary "transgender wave" rather than the existence of trans people themselves. Her core issues centre on biology, cultural trends, and institutional overreach not toilet etiquette.

Which design is riskier to anyone at their most vulnerable?

The design on the left is single sex.
The design on the right is mixed sex.

(Apologies to those who have seen this picture before but words don’t seem to be engaging)