Full Council Chaos. Bristol City Council refusing to implement single sex services

[LoudDeer]

Last night at the full council meeting women asking questions about BCC's refusal to implement the law was met with heckling from the gallery and a nonsensical word salad from council officials.

Somehow the number of questions, and goodness knows what other personal details, was leaked from within the Council offices and fed to far left activists who put out a call for attendance online. At least 100 turned up and abused and harrassed members of the public while they were speaking. At one point they were shouting at a questioners to sit down. No action was taken by council officials to maintain order.

As they left, women were met with heckling, chanting and shouting outside the building from more far left activists. The atmosphere was intimidating and abusive.

Please note, the Council agenda that evening held an item on a city wide commitment to ending VAWG. Harrassment and abuse was happening right in front of them and they not only initiated this spectacle but supported it.

Women are not safe in Bristol.

Unfortunately there have been quite a few cases of voyeurism in changing villages:

https://www.cheshire.police.uk/news/cheshire/news/articles/2026/7/man-sentenced-for-voyeurism-in-widnes/

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/26251456.heysham-man-40s-charged-voyeurism-drug-offences/

https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2025-10-20/man-who-spied-on-children-in-butlins-changing-rooms-is-jailed

I don’t keep a file of these btw, that is just from a quick search…
😕

To be honest, yes.

Certain issues are neither "left" nor "right"

Both the extreme left and extreme right are deeply misogynist

It is not possible to categorise the political hue of people by their stance on the rights of women

Julie Burchill and Julie Bindel are cases in point

Bristol City Council is controlled by the Greens and, before that Labour. So this is a problem with the Left,in tbis aituation

That woman thought she was being so clever - smirking away with her ridiculous non answers.

A yes/no question might be revealing next time

“following the SC judgement clarifying that for the purposes of the Equality Act will you be adopting the ruling of the court?”

And maybe “if not, why not?”

Huge kudos to those brave ladies who went there and faced those awful people though.

I’m sure you are right.

However, I think it is possible to build and manage safe unisex spaces. The economic reality is that unisex spaces usually cost a lot less to create and run. It’a both a question of what level of risk we are prepared to accept and also what level of cost.

Mixed sex.
There are two sexes.

And yes mixed sex spaces exist
but in many situations (eg workplace toilets and washrooms) they are illegal

Mixed Sex - both sexes use at the same time
Unisex- either sex can use but not at the same time.

But I agree with the premise of what dizzydizzydizzy is saying

This is objectively not true.
We can look at the stats which others have already quoted and we can listen to the life experience of Women and girls, to know Bristol is not safe.
Also the council chamber rejected Women's participation in democracy.

It is a problem with a huge swathe of the current identitarian, usually younger, middle class left in recent years.

Not the "whole of the left". Framing it as such (and as merely a left-right battle as if one side are the goodies and the other the baddies so if only we'd "vote correctly" all would be solved) is inaccurate and not especially helpful. The labelling also doesn't really get to the root of the problem, any more than fingerpointing and labelling anyone slightly to the right of Corbyn as "far right and thus evil" resolves any of the bubbling societal issues that led to Brexit, for instance.

We live in a supposedly pluralistic, democratic society. The issue in this case is acceptance and active promotion of authoritarianism and intolerance at a local government level towards members of the public. This is misuse of power. And lack of comprehension as to whdt the role of public representative is actually supposed to entail in a supposed democracy.

Unisex spaces are less safe statistically than single sex spaces, for women. Why on earth would we want to build them?
Our safety isn't a social experiment.

This is horrific

It is. Completely unacceptable.

No. And there is a long and extensively evidenced history of why we had single sex spaces in the first place. But no impact assessments or consultation with those it most affected - women and girls - was carried out when a small yet powerful lobby of male activists and a number of their ideologically captured female enablers decided to change things unilaterally.

And anyone objecting gets demonised and lied about and then this type of behaviour in the public sphere. Utterly appalling.

Because businessss like to keep costs down. (I am explaining why it probably does happen and not what should happen).

The issue in this case is acceptance and active promotion of authoritarianism and intolerance at a local government level towards members of the public. This is misuse of power.

Exactly. This is what frightens me the most about this whole thing, and should frighten everyone. Has everyone already forgotten about the storming of the Capitol building? I have always said that the British are too sensible to let their leaders goad them into such disgraceful abuses of power and privilege. Yet here we are, heading that way. It doesn't matter which party is in charge. They are authoritarians or they are letting authoritarians rule in their stead.

It doesn't matter how many different ways women can come up with to ask questions about respecting the rule of law, if all they have to do is shout women down so that no one can hear the questions.

Do we really care if Trump is Republican or Democrat? I don't think so. We care that he does not respect the rule of law. He thinks he's above the law. Trump believes in Party Trump. Given half a chance of getting away with it, I do not doubt that there are a few Democrats who would do exactly the same.

Bristol Council must be forced by the courts to obey the law and the democratic process. Or this will end up somewhere very bad.

Which other laws do you support them breaking to keep costs down.

the 1992 Health and Safety Regs are in place for a reason.

A couple of years ago I was in the women's toilets when I came face to face with what at first glance appeared to be a bearded gentleman. Fight/flight/freeze kicked in, and I couldn't move. Then I clocked the height, the facial bones, the lack of Adam's apple, the carrying angle of the elbows, and the hips. It was just a transman in the biologically correct toilet. And my fear went.

I’m fairly sure my 83 yr old mum would just stop at the beard!

I totally agree.

I think in this country, we are pretty blase about the seriousness of this (I have lived in several others which saw the end results of this type of action - from both left and right authoritarians! End results were the same for the ordinary person. Oppression and fear. We do NOT want to go there).

But as you say, it's easy to assume, and a lot of people do, that "that type of thing doesn't happen in the UK." But as soon as someone in power starts undermining the rule of law at the governance level, and worse, attempting to justify it like this, we are really f*cked. It is a dangerous position to be in and I'm not sure how many people are truly aware of quite how dangerous it is. Can we pull ourselves back? I hope so but it requires not standing for it or enabling it from anyone and being really clear about where the line is.

Not convinced that we're really there yet or that our political system is strong enough or has enough high calibre high integrity people to ensure that happens.

wrt left/right alignment, as PP said the Communist Party have no truck with denying physical reality
there's this guy too
https://labourheartlands.com/the-darlington-nurses-won-the-unions-should-hang-their-heads/

I keep hearing this claim. Do you have any evidence of cost savings that can’t be achieved by sensible design?

I must have typed the suggestion about ignoring the law without even realizing 🙄

If you can say without further harming the women involved, how did the sharing of personal information happen?