Hampstead Ponds update today

[WallaceinAnderland]

I'm not sure that this is in line with the law.

They need to label all 3 ponds as mixed sex.

https://news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/hampstead-heaths-bathing-ponds-to-remain-trans-inclusive-spaces-as-city-corporation-agrees-future-access-policy/

I'll very happily use the saggy titted bitch terf scum labelled space
Me too; bring it on

Also a bit of a cleaning headache if the floor is constantly wet and there are more nooks and crevices.

I'm pretty sure it was always men's, women's, and mixed. Trans people have always had somewhere to go there, they just want to go into the women's out of principle. Makes it much worse if you ask me

It means that biological and trans women will continue to use the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond,

I don’t understand why it would be called a Ladies pond. That is mixed sex so it must allow men too or be discriminatory.

Intuitively, trans-inclusive spaces should be unobjectionable for people who want them

All unlawful discrimination is unobjectionable to the people who want it. That’s why we need a law to prevent it.

According to Swift J, whether or not it's illegal direct sex-discrimination against males, or illegal indirect sex-discrimination against females, is fact dependent, meaning court action might be needed every time. Are you disagreeing with him, or suggesting the law be changed?

Debated how graphic to get with this but door and partition gaps are handy for ventilation to keep everything less smelly.

Don’t read on if you are easily revolted. This is what it boils down to: bodily fluids such as blood, semen, urine, vomit and faeces end up on walls as well as floors. There will be drug rubbish too. It’s nicer for the cleaners if they can hose/mop everything down. If you have gaps, this can lead to a drain. You don’t get detritus stuck behind the door or the door getting jammed with it. I hope the City of London people speak to toilet cleaners. Obviously the above is at the extreme end, but so is some of the behaviour in the Heath. When the above gets too bad, the toilets get closed down. We’ve lost a lot of toilet provision. When they said the ‘solution’ to pacify people was to refurbish and make everything private, I thought ‘here we go again’…

It’s not just men btw. In a Tokyo entertainment complex, the private ‘gender-neutral’ toilets became brothels with women selling to men.

It's not at all literate, legally or otherwise, to say the code says you can have a group that's ONLY female or trans identified males.

Yes - every argument on these lines relies on an assumption that 'female' means lady-gendered. This despite multiple legislative sessions, an exhaustive Supreme Court review and repeated issues of guidance, all of them stating that 'female' is a biological category.

The only thing 'trans women' and women can be said to have in common is their gender identity. Gender identity has never been objectively defined - as far as I'm aware, it can't be - and the waffly depictions available do not inevitably apply to women.

It's irrational to make legal distinctions on the basis of an unprovable quality. We do make them on the basis of belief and perception. Even then, the belief or perception has to be demonstrable - such as the guy who claimed discrimination against his ecological beliefs, who proved his intense commitment, and the theoretical cases in the SC judgment, where 'trans women' suffered discrimination due to being perceived as female.

A 'trans woman' who was perceived as a woman even when naked would not, realistically or legally, be excluded from a female-only service such as a leisure facility. This doesn't mean he shares a gender identity with all the women. It means he's perceived as a female.

It is not an argument for including all men with a gender identity as a cohesive group with women, who may or may not have any gender identities at all.

There is no logic to that - unless you insist on discarding biological sex in favour of gender identity, and good luck proving that objectively.

If my last post sounds implausible about the sex, look at page Ev89 on this Government report from 2008. People need to realise that design matters. And that this new ‘need’ was not even anticipated in 2008.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmcomloc/636/636.pdf

I think you have misunderstood the difference between OR and AND.

Nice bit of "Calm down, dears" there 😂 FWIW, I am approaching the end of my time on Earth and have necessarily formed clear ideas on the matter of my brief existence. I'm pleased to review the contributions I've made to the furtherance of women's rights, freedoms and opportunities.

This current struggle to defend the very definition of women and their rights will determine whether or not my efforts have been in vain. So, yes, I fucking care.

The 'two characteristics' thing is a Schedule 16 rethink, slipped into the latest draft of the Code on the strength of the Interpretation Act 1978 and Article 11 ECHR. Fascinating though it is, it's irrelevant to services potentially exempted under Schedule 3 Part 7. For which I suppose we should all be grateful. There's only so much bending over backwards to pacify TRAs I can cope with.

what I’m saying is that trans-inclusive “single sex”services (which are therefore not single sex) are inherently objectionable. Regardless of who wants them.

If that’s controversial I can try to explain why, later.

The ones in my city do.

There are sessions advertised as women only, presumably to allow women from certain faiths the opportunity to swim. Whether the centres would allow trans identifying men into the sessions (and thereby completely negate the point of running them) is less clear.

Legally they shouldn’t, but I don’t know what they do in practice.

According to Swift J, they're objectionable, but not inevitably illegal (because using a SSE is not the only way of avoiding illegal discrimination).

What with his comments, and the last minute swerve on Schedule 16, I feel as though the great and the good are squeamish about the 'trans-inclusive groups and services are illegal because they have different access criteria for the two sexes' argument.

I think it's probably more important that mixed-sex services are generally worse for women than for men. I suggested upthread lobbying for all such services that are notionally sex-segregated always to incorporate a genuinely sex-segregated option (sufficient to meet demand), not to answer the indirect sex-discrimination argument (which might be resisted in court), but to serve the public goods (particularly decency) that Schedule 3 Part 7 was supposed to facilitate in the first place for both sexes.

ETA I realised I've caused confusion by using 'objectionable' in two different ways, one legal, one everyday. What I should have said earlier was:

Intuitively, trans-inclusive spaces should be possible unobjectionable for people who want them. The problem exists for people who dont want them, and for whom market forces have failed to provide an alternative.

I wish that the Jewish people of North London would sue, because they've been unable to use the Ponds since they went mixed.

I've wondered whether people whose religions - or other beliefs - preclude certain mixed-sex activities could bring claims against freshly trans-inclusive services for discrimination on those grounds. Have any done so yet, do you know?

I'm only aware of LS v NHS, which failed on that point (Islamic faith) (and also on a disability claim) because the wrong evidence was presented. She won on indirect sex-discrimination anyway.

Says someone who is also “here doing this”. If it doesn’t matter, why are YOU here?

There should be some sort of penalty (over and above legal costs) for organisations continuing to fight cases like this where it is patently clear that they are deliberately flouting the law.

Intuitively, trans-inclusive spaces should be possible unobjectionable for people who want them. The problem exists for people who dont want them, and for whom market forces have failed to provide an alternative.

Depending on what you mean by "spaces", I don't think it's intuitive, and it's a position with which I disagree strongly. Trans-inclusive ("single-sex" but not actually single-sex) services should not be possible and should not be offered.

Basically, you are isolating a bunch of women and then giving a small, select group of men access. We know from clinicians such as Dr Az Hakeem that these men will include a higher proportion of fetishistic, straight men than the general male population. Prisoner stats suggest the group may even have higher rates of sexual assault than the general male pop.
This is not the case for TIFs given access to a men's space.

Well, yes, single-sex services of the type envisaged by Schedule 3 must remain single-sex, because to do otherwise will undermine both the SSE and the underlying legitimate aim that justifies its existence.

The trouble is that lots of services that could usefully be single-sex are actually mixed-sex in real life, whether overtly or because 'trans-inclusive'. They're likely to be sub-optimal for women, but taking court action every time would be onerous.

My suggestion is to let the 'trans-inclusive' services exist if they must, but somehow force the (additional) provision of sufficient single-sex provision, then let market forces work their magic.

For instance, require the provision of at least one genuinely single-sex ladies' pond, then we'll find out how many women still choose the 'trans-inclusive' pond. NB this is a thought experiment: I'm aware there isn't an infinite supply of ponds!

I think as few services as possible should be single-sex.

The EA proceeds from the position that men should not be separated from women, in the provision of services. I think this is correct.

It (almost reluctantly) permits services to be offered separately to the two sexes (or only to one sex) under very very stringent conditions. This should be the very rarest of situations. It should only ever happen in a situation that admitting even a single person of the opposite sex would spoil the service or make it unworkable.

On that basis, service providers should have to pick: accept and engage in the sexism of a single-sex or sex-separated service, or work the service so that both men and women can be admitted. Letting in women and but only some, acceptable, men, is, frankly a cop-out. not to mention incoherent and unworkable.

services that could usefully be single-sex

That it would be "useful" isn't the threshold in law that a service has to meet to be offered to one sex only. As a test it understates and underplays the disdain we should have for single-sex services. We don't talk about services that could usefully be single race, or single colour.

My suggestion is to let the 'trans-inclusive' services exist if they must,

I say, no. If a service is such that it can lawfully be offered to one sex or to the sexes separately then it has already been decided by the provider that admitting anyone of the other sex is impossible. If it's possible that one man can use a service for women without spoiling it - then it must necessarily be possible for all men to do so. There is no deciding that some, nice, men can use this women's service, but not the other, nasty men. No men. Or all men.