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.

i do not have any evidence but I used to work in a leisure centre and I understand how leisure centres operate, I know that one changing room is going to be less costly than 2 or even 3. Fewer cleaning staff, fewer staff to supervise and check them, smaller overall space, less power for heating, simpler design with one toilet and shower block, no requirement to ensure both male and female staff are on duty at all times. Plus
parents taking their opposite sex kids to the leisure centre prefer it and they are the ones who spend the big money (swimming lessons are usually a big revenue source).

My suggested answer to this is “no comment”.

I think more information will come out in the fullness of time.

I have spent a lot of time in leisure centres with time on my hands - waiting for swimming lessons etc.

Why would it need fewer cleaning staff and fewer staff to supervise? I’m not sure what you mean by ‘supervise’ - I’ve never seen staff supervising in any capacity in the changing rooms - only people on the front desk.

Ratios for facilities like cubicles and sinks should be the same as it’s based on total number of users and it doesn’t make much difference to cleaning the floor if a space is divided into two large single sex spaces or many smaller cubicles (as in a unisex changing village)

In fact you might find that a large open plan single sex space with a handful of cubicles is quicker to clean than 30 individual unisex cubicles where you have to enter and check each one individually and there are 30 locks to check and multiple holes in the panels to fill, lost property to gather etc etc.

Unisex facilities by their nature are generally less space efficient because it needs all cubicles and I can’t see why it would be more expensive to heat the spaces if the heating system is designed sensibly.

This feels like something everyone claims without really thinking about it and it sounds vaguely convincing but isn’t actually backed by the numbers.

There was a bearded trans identifying lass working at a charity shop I visited recently
so clearly female despite the beard and buzz cut
people were calling her 'miss' and 'dearie' despite themselves

And still not legal for employees

who MUST be given single sex changing spaces

As a single parent with opposite sex kids, yes, mixed sex changing can be handy, although even with dyspraxic DS1, we managed OK by preparing/hoodie towels/onsies/changing pool-side.

But when going alone, I very much prefer single sex. Changing at a bench in an open room in front of my locker is so much quicker than getting all my stuff out of the locker into a cubicle, whacking my elbows, dropping stuff on the floor because the hooks are inevitably busted etc.

And when cleaning, I would BY FAR prefer to clean one big room, than 10 little rooms.

You need to make a complaint to the Monitoring Officer. It is an officer role, rather than a councillor and they are legally responsible for ensuring the council follows the law as well as ensuring Councillor’s follow the code of conduct.

Unisex changing rooms are smaller because you can get away with a smaller number of cubicles overall because each cublcle can be used by anyone. So if 100 customers turn up in tbe morning 80 of them might be female (especially if there is an aquaerobics class on). In the afternoon, if might be 80 men and 20 women. To cover these scenarios you need one unisex changing room for 100, or you need a male changing for 80 and a female changing room for 80….and ideally a group of family changing room too and a separate disabled facility.

With single sex changing, you are supposed to have a male and female cleaner and male and female lifeguards. The lifeguards make regular checks of the changing rooms and are often called upon to do first aid in the changing rooms. It does happen, irrespective of whether you have noticed or not. It is part of the job.

I love these ones. "Hey I'm on your side but I just had this thought."

Gosh! we would never of thought of that.

If TRAs hadn't been trying that one on for years.

Would your 83 yr old mum be happier sharing the changing room with an actual man though?

My 79 year old partially sighted frail mum is very up to date on the whole TRAs vs women's rights debate, and would definitely prefer to share with a trans man than with a trans woman.

Apparently business is booming for porn sites that have video posted by men who leave cams in those lockable cubicles.

Additionally there is nothing preventing a man from leaving the door open. Or famously claiming that he was 'just standing there in the middle of the common area moisturising his penis'

But as there are no sanctions for rule breaking all rather a waste of air

Yes it is the ultimate outcome of 'possessive individualism' and consumerism isn't it? Where are these 'communities' of which we hear so much. A flash mob congregating to shout at women is not a community.

Just to add, as others have said, totally shocking but sadly not unexpected at Bristol. Another Green Council who seem to think the law is something they dont have to bother with.

Also want to say, please can we stop using phrases like far left.

Its fairly clear that the whole identity, disruption of society politics, created by Queer activism is what is behind it. And it undoubtedly appeals to mainly middle class younger people. And their puerile notion of politics is the massive self indulgent virtue signalling of students.

Its bad enough that outsiders like to say FWR is right wing and reactionary. We dont have to adopt this identity imposed on us.

The great strength of FWR is that (or used to be) about the common causes we have as women.

Which includes knowing and experiencing sexist anti woman attitudes in all parties.

We dont need to use the limited language of male party (divisive) politics to discuss and share information and ideas, relating to our lived experiences as women, do we?

I used the term far left. But I am not a right-winger, I am a centre-left voter.

Despite being slightly to the left, I am still capable of finding far left politics objectionable. And the lunacy of Bristol council - the subject of this thread - is very far left in my book. And very objectionable.

I think extremism at both ends of the political spectrum is dangerous, not just in relation to genderwang, but also in relation to any other sphere it touches.

I understand your point - and those of other posters who point out that communists and some others on the far left are not in favour of GI (unsurprising, given Marxism is nothing if not materialist) - but if women who defend their rights are called 'far right' purely for wanting their rights back, then people need to understand that those seeking to take them away are extremists. In this case, it's those on the left doing it (and there are many elsewhere, let's face it).

Just to be explicit. I dont think the Greens, or the Councillors in Bristol have anything what so ever to do with left wing politics.

It doesn't help oppose what is happening thinking of it in terms of left right.

Without going into the long history of how trans activists have managed to infiltrate, not just political parties but the "establishment" is in a way more serious.

Hope a group of political juvenile got to be councillors is another issue. But is an example, as many on here have said, about how trans activists have hijacked yet another issue.

There are at least a couple of threads on FWR, probably more, that least the significant moments that trans activists influenced for instance the UN.

That is what we should be discussing. How is it that a group of activists, who on one level have such a tiny area of interest have become so powerful.

But to return to the focus of the OP, it isn't just however gross it was, that Bristol Councillors behaved like indulged youngsters, but what has happened to politics in the UK that basically a fringe group (who dont actually bother with green issues) have this power.

Of course it’s left wing politics. Do you not realise that the entire far left wing of Labour have decamped to the Greens?

It’s not only “trans rights” that the Green Party is far to the left on.

How can those councillors be held to account ?

Bristol are a left wing council, run by the Greens, which is a far left party these days, sadly.

There are multiple angles and threads to how the TRAs nearly took over on both sides of the political spectrum, and so there is more than one talking point for us. The takeover on the left is a topic that needs to be discussed. That doesn’t preclude us talking about where it rears its ugly head elsewhere, of course. We can walk and chew gum.

Exactly @BunfightBetty

There’s a great series of FWR threads about the Greens going back a few years, covering the whole rise of Polanski and the swing further left on issues other than trans, with current and former Green Party members commenting.

They can't
There are no sanctions for misbehaviour and misconduct by elected representatives

Oh but there is

1 - council refuses to enforce EHRC code etc.

2 - Local pressure groups bring a wide range of legal threats to the council, al on record

3 - Council ignore it

4 - Legal action is a huge slam dunk, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds

5 - Local pressure groups tell everyone who will listen that the council set 300 grand on fire

I hope those local pressure groups are listening