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

Again, individuals vary on what they consider comfort & safety risks.

Values.

While safety is a vitally important issue, and, unlike what was claimed in the US article cited by Baileyonice, there have been attacks perpetrated by transwomen in women's toilets, there are reasons other that 'safetyism' for men and women to have separate spaces.

Without going back to the history of sanitation and public toilets and all that,
there are very practical reasons why the established norm has been sex-segregated toilets, up to very recently.

Men and women have different ways of using toilets, due to the physiological difference between male and female bodies.
I have facetiously suggested that forcing men to use gender neutral toilets with floor-mounted toilets is discriminatory, because clearly urinals are more appropriately adapted for their use.

The throughput in men's toilets is much faster - I'm sure KTS knows the exact stats, but I think I'm safe in saying that on average women take twice as long as men to pee, and you don't see the long queues in the men's.
Having completely mixed sex cubicles slows everything down, and both men and women would have to queue for longer. Hardly a win for either sex.

When you do away with single-sex cubicle toilets, you have to replace them with individual 'universal' toilets which are building regs etc. compliant.
They have to be a contained space which includes not just the toilet, but also handwashing/drying, bins etc.

So not only is the toilet occupied while the user is performing bodily functions, it is also occupied while they wash their hands, brush their hair, etc., whereas single sex cubicle toilets are quickly freed up for the next user because handwashing facilities can be shared.

Again I defer to KTS who may be aware of research into the ratio of 'universal' toilets needed to provide the same level of access to toilets as single-sex toilets.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the removal of sex-segregated toilets and their complete replacement with 'gender neutral' toilets causes a net loss of provision, for both men and women, who are now forced to wait longer for the single-occupancy toilet to become available.

It's not all to do with 'safetyism', or Victorian notions of 'the weaker sex'.
The established configuration men's/women's/accessible worked, from a practical point of view, and the segregated spaces were generally speaking respected, until a very small, very aggressive group of men started asserting an alleged 'right' to use the women's toilet.

If it works, don't fix it. Men's/Women's [segregated on the basis of biological sex not gender ID] and accessible for disabled people who need them works.

Call me 'keeptoiletssimple', Keeptoiletssafe's tribute band😁

Forgive the lèse-majesté, I should of course have said 'Her Majesty KTS!🙂

It's all very well having something works in practice, but what if it doesn't work in theory?

And what if it's possible to find someone saying something ridiculous on the subject via Google?

Eh?

Wow.

Indeed. The first thing I look for when I desperately need a pee is a good theory, the more unscientific and groundless the better!

It's all very well having something works in practice, but what if it doesn't work in theory?

Like loo policing?

People either ark up about it or they pretend no such law exists & sometimes both…like in Iran over hijabs.

Are you at least acknowledging that whether or not you agree with them, Sex Matters are concerned about men using women's facilities? That they would be suspicious of any man who wanted to use women's facilities?

We have had single sex toilets for quite a number of years, and people have been able to understand which one they should use.

To quote Justice Swift again:
39 ... would place too great a burden on employers, requiring them to either “police” the use of lavatories or risk prosecution for breach of the 1992 Workplace Regulations. This point is significantly overstated.

40 The notion that an employer or anyone else is required to “police” the use of a lavatory, person by person and day by day, reveals the application of a “logic” so strict that it is divorced from reality and from any sensible model of human behaviour.

'any sensible model of human behaviour' is that you put up a sign saying that the toilets are designated by biological sex not gender, and asking people to respect that.

That's what sensible people do. They use the toilet designated for their biological sex. No policing necessary, just common sense and respect.

I suppose we are at least debating the point of single sex toilets, and (at this point in the thread). nobody is trying to suggest that we should have single sex toilets that can be used by anyone.

In many ways this is progress.

Of course I do because that's what they believe & are entitled to believe because everyone has the right to their own personal values as a function of how they understand the world. It's not that I don't empathise with where they are coming from or even disagree with all their demands rather I don't hold the same safety risk expectations from trans women AND I don't think public toilets are a setting that would likely occur in.

You reckon? Unfortunately some of us here were brought up by women who knew full well that was the reason they had fought for women's public lavatories, and know that you are wrong in that assumption. My grandmother was born in the nineteenth century (that's when Victoria was Queen, in case you didn't know) and had no qualms about talking of these things in the presence of her grandchildren, and I promise you that the violence of men against women was part of the reason women of her generation wanted to piss in places men were not allowed to go. You have to take your bloomers off to piss, you see, and some men would then be likely to want to get an eyeful and more.

You sweet summer child!

OK, so what if safety is removed from the discussion - what is the argument against maintaining the standard configuration of toilet provision that works fine for the huge majority of people?

So you think there are safety risks, but that some men are less risky than others, and they should be allowed to use women's toilets.

How would one identify the less risky men?

Apparently I was wrong about this.

The argument against the new EHRC guidelines?

Which one? By whom?

Of course, you are free to use mixed sex facilities when they are available.

Plenty of women have had unpleasant experiences with trans identified or cross dressing men in women's facilities, even if you have not. Again, it is not all about safety in terms of direct physical or sexual assault, more so about dignity and privacy and feeling very uncomfortable with the 'otherness' of a male person in a space you had thought was for female people only.

Do you mean the EHRC guidelines related to the Supreme Court's clarification of the original law, to confirm that it meant what it said rather than what a completely amateur and extremely biased organisation claimed it meant?

I agree that it might be argued that they try to weasel out of saying what it is absolutely clear should be said. And they do it at great length.

And the majority position in the U.K. favours the majority position on MN rather than your fringe one, funnily enough.

'Risky' men tend to conduct their 'risky business' aka as sexual violence with women they know in private settings not public toilets because they aren't private hence the word 'public' & on the odd occasion they do attempt to abuse the ladies the last thing they worry about is 'permission' structures. But one thing they do concern themselves with is being discovered so you won't be able to identify them regardless of how masculine they are in appearance because they have the basic savvy to know to strike in isolated environments.

I can't believe I need to explain this…….

You're still relying on what you've previously called 'safetyism'.
I repeat my question - if the men's/women's/accessible configuration works for the majority of people, what it the argument for changing it?
You haven't explained that yet.

I'm hardly an expert but Paglia seems to me to be saying, consistently, precisely the opposite; she had considerable dysphoria about the gendered social role she was required to play, but thinks it ridiculous and unacceptable to have to change your recorded sex, still less modify your physical body, in order to live your life the way you want to. Many of us born in the 40s felt the same.

Discomfort is a subjective thing though. Many women don't feels comfortable in women's open change rooms & aren't afforded the dignity & privacy they need so this isn't a consistently held argument.