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

They’ve mostly been closed down. Do you live on the moon and are therefore unaware of this?

Even Justice Swift can't change the rules of logic.
A single sex service that can be used by both sexes is not single sex.
Justice Swift did not ask the EHRC to change their guidance, so anyone relying on his comment is on rather shaky ground.

That's because it depends on the individual facts of the case & whether there was less favourable treatment so he couldn't make judgment generally.

Do they still have public bathrooms in France? I haven't come across those.

In the UK those died out in the last century.

However, I am familiar with the concept of women having fewer rights in other countries.

You're new around here, aren't you?

If he felt strongly that the EHRC were wrong he would have asked them to change the guidance.

And again, your big, big problem is that you can't actually provide an exclusive facility for women + trans women and exclude men because there is no way of knowing anybody else's gender. In practice it can only be a facility for everyone.

They have closed 40% since 2000. That still leaves 60% open for 16.5 million people in that link…..& nary a whisper.

From memory this wasnt a matter in which he was asked to make a judgment. It was an aside comment which is still to be tested in court.

Feel free to cling on to hope that your arguments might succeed but you’ll have to accept that most people here dont rate your chances very highly

Well I have been thanked for my research on toilets over the years as a TERT (Tired of Explaining the Reality of Toilets), but to imply I am a toilet god is a bit extreme.

What are the numbers?
There were loads that were closed before 2000 btw.

I don't think the police log whether somebody is trans.

The vast majority of sexual offences are unreported, but crimes like voyeurism and indecent exposure are committed by men and it is easier to commit these offences when there is access to women in a state of undress or when it is legal to be in a state of undress.

Without any way to know somebody else's gender, all you are left with is the removal of barriers.

Google AI is not your friend - you need to look beyond the first search results. And get a grip on your understanding of percentages which seems very poor.

According to a recent survey there is 1 council run public toilet for every 15,481 people in the UK.

https://www.rsph.org.uk/news/public-toilet-deserts-widespread-across-england/

On that basis @Keeptoiletssafe ‘s comment about most people not using public toilets is completely valid

Have you got stuck in another A Level philosophical loop and forgotten about reality again?

It would be good to have a quote from the judgment on this.

Not sure it said exactly what you said here. Happy to stand to be corrected.

What he did say is that employers must keep trans identified men out of the toilets otherwise they’re committing a criminal offense. We have so much to thank GLP for.

Toilet Goddess, surely?

Your work is very impressive and much more impressive than all the millions of pounds taxpayer funded organisations who should (excuse the pun) know and be on top of this toilet safety shit, but who noticeably aren't, in most cases.

Ok Toilet 🚽 🫅 Queen then your highness. 🤩

À propos of nothing, I'm going to get a T shirt with "Phuck Philosophy" on it.

I think condemning the whole discipline on the basis of this one shoddy example is a bit rash?!

Meh.

I live in a bankrupt council area. There are no council run public toilets, anywhere in the borough.

HTH 😐

Your evidence based approach doesn’t match with my feelings.

This is toilet apartheid. You lavatory fundamentalist. 😂

The idea that mixed sex toilets are the norm in France is false. We keep getting told this is the case across Europe, but it simply isn't true. In fact in recent years France has become even more aware of the scale of male sexual abuse.

Sex exists. It is real and measurable. It also has consequences and implications. Trans identified people still have a sex. They are either male or female like everyone else on the planet.

Female only spaces provide protection for the dignity and privacy of one's sex in public situations of undress and/or pre-occupation with bodily function or physicality. This is not just about violence, but about the essential 'otherness' of the opposite sex and how this 'otherness' comprises feelings of safety and/or dignity in certain types of public situation. And how it impinges on fairness and safety for female people when it comes to sport.

If you are male, you are 'other' to female. It means that males are not included in the category of female. Cultural expectation has got nothing to do with it. If there is any cultural expectation it is that women and girls, as a group, have the right to privacy and dignity and to protection from known risks and dangers.

Can you quote from the judgment please.

Exactly. It’s completely deliberate on his part. He’s conflating an action with an identity to cause maximum outrage. The word is completely accurate—entering a space explicitly reserved for the opposite biological sex is deviant behaviour. If a boundary is respected, there’s no issue. The word only applies if they go where they shouldn’t.

Your answer in providing a male person with a trans identity with equitable facilities has to start from you cannot take it away from women.

No we're not debating the whole 'should women actually be entitled to freedom from men' bullshit again, the law's accepted that they shouldn't and everybody knows TRAs seem to lack the capacity to care how many women have been or ever will be injured, excluded or harmed and never will see this as sufficient reason to inconvenience a single bloke who wanted to use and abuse women to meet his own needs. They just can't see women as equally human. It's a feature of the activism and not a bug.

Have whatever the fuck you like in addition, but your argument - and the argument for trans identified men, is not that they want equity, they just want whatever women have. They can't have it. Women have rights too, these men are going to have to just learn to cope with this idea. Possibly someone should have taught them better concepts of sharing at an early age.

Yes, I declare am the Goddess of the Toilet Door Gap. Protector of women, children and men. Safeguarding them against poor outcomes in medical emergencies, pathogens and bad men in non-domestic toilets.

Alas, I go a bit funny in the heat.

Many western countries don't consider that male violence requires the exclusion of trans people

male violence does make the exclusion of men from spaces where women are partially clothed or vulnerable a good idea though. Given that I can tell what sex someone is by looking at them, but I haven't a scooby what their gender identity is, the simplest solution seems to be that all men stay out of the ladies lavs, even (especially) ones that really want to be in there

Honestly all this to avoid accepting that the only sex that can get pregnant is (not ought!) women