How do we deal with this? Transmen have police called on them

[SadiraOfTyr]

I honestly don’t know how this can be addressed. A group of male-identifying women used the women’s toilets, as they are required to where they live, and got the police called on them.

Obviously they did it as a stunt, but what really might the solution be? They are committing a criminal offence using the men’s.

www.erininthemorning.com/p/police-called-on-trans-men-using

So single sex spaces aren't a right after all?

Women have a right to single sex spaces - unless they make choices about their appearances that make other women uncomfortable?

That's exactly what the Equality Act permits. If a woman has altered her appearance so that she looks like a man she can be barred from female single sex spaces as long as an alternative space is available

Sure. I'm more arguing that that is not a good thing.

Or consistent with everything that those arguing for single sex spaces have been saying for years - i.e. that it doesn't matter how a woman looks, she is still a woman; and that women have a right to single sex spaces.

Turns out lots of you don't believe that after all.

In the UK the solution would be that they could argue that a lack of unisex provision is discriminatory (if indeed there were a lack of unisex provision), and the police would be unlikely to involve themselves unless they were engaged in criminal behaviour, which would not just be using an opposite sex toilet.

Are there laws that protect trans people from discrimination in the US? If not maybe they should campaign for that.

Should we discuss US gun laws next? They are really odd.

Most women have not taken extreme steps to resemble the opposite sex. Doing so is likely to be restrictive, but happily, in the UK, trans people should not be left without any provision.

So its a right to single sex spaces for most women?

But some women who have made choices about how they look do not have that right?

A woman is still a woman regardless of what steps she has taken to look more male. I personally believe that they should use female SSS.

I think it was the Scottish Governments arguments in the FWS legal cases that led to this ruling. They vehemently argued that allowing transmen in woman's spaces would cause problems.

I would hope that trans identified women would only be barred from female single sex spaces in extremely limited circumstances such rape crisis centres or therapy groups.

It does however mean that if a man pretends to be a transman to enter female single sex spaces there is no need to prove he's a man to prevent him from using the service. (not that i believe that there will be hordes of men saying they're transmen but is a TRA attempted gotcha)

But that's not really a solution, is it?

Because we were told the key point of the push for single sex spaces were that single sex spaces were a right, and it was critical that women have access to them.

And that womanhood is not defined by how you look, or dress, or act - so all women have the right to a single sex space.

But now its a case that that that 'right' is, in fact, determined by how you look.

OK, you personally believe that trans men should use women's single sex spaces. That is at least consistent with the concept of their being a right to single sex spaces.

Do you recognise that if you create single sex spaces that are closed to people of that sex based on the choices they have made about their appearance, access to those single sex spaces is not, in fact, a right? It is a privilege which can be withheld based on whether someone makes choices that make others uncomfortable.

I'd say it was a qualified right rather than a privilege

"In the UK ..... the police would be unlikely to involve themselves unless they were engaged in criminal behaviour"

By that reasoning trans women can realistically use female spaces unless they were involved in criminal behaviour...

These women are denying they are women, so going to bat for them as women seems redundant.

It's a civil matter, so it could escalate to a criminal offence if they were asked to leave and refused, and the service provider could be found to have unlawfully discriminated if their 'single sex' provision was effectively 'mixed sex'.

Do you recognise that if you create single sex spaces that are closed to people of that sex based on the choices they have made about their appearance, access to those single sex spaces is not, in fact, a right? It is a privilege which can be withheld based on whether someone makes choices that make others uncomfortable.

Yes, that is pretty much what the law says. Sometimes discrimination is lawful, but service providers must show that their policy is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. However, I think it is imagined that the proportionality test is more likely to be passed in rape crisis groups than toilets.

Do you really not see any difference between women choosing to wear trousers/have a buzz cut/refuse make up/have some facial hair, and women taking huge amounts of testosterone and having their breasts removed in order to look as much like a man as possible? I am certain many of the women who frequent this board don’t go in for make up, long hair and dresses, including me. I do support the rights of women to wear what the fuck they want and refuse to perform femininity. But I don’t see it as a right to have extreme cosmetic surgery or take huge amounts of cross sex hormones. Just as I don’t think it is a right to persuade a surgeon to remove your legs because you’ve got a thing about amputation. (A surgeon called Robert Smith was banned from doing these procedures about 20 odd years ago. I see ‘gender affirming care’ as the same thing.)

Exactly! They chose to change their appearance so much that they don’t look like women, what do they expect? This is exactly why third spaces should have requested when all this started to be an issue.

You have the right to wear what you like. You have the right to enter an open branch of a high street bank. But if you wear a balaclava and carry a toy gun and try to walk into your local barclays, it's reasonable to expect your rights might be curtailed.

I'm not saying they aren't a right, but your normal easy access - people seeing an obvious woman going into the ladies' and not thinking anything of it - will be compromised by your own choices to go out of your way to look like you shouldn't be there.

Also, other people have rights too - including all of the women who accept that they are women, who will naturally be perturbed and maybe frightened at people who have gone to extremes to try to look like men coming into the ladies'.

The world is set up based around the two biological sexes and, however much trans people may wish it were true, it just isn't possible to change from one to the other; so you predictably end up in a hinterland of your own doing, where you struggle to fit in, being not obviously one or the other, and you will cause confusion, wariness and even fear amongst others.

All trans people realise this; it's just when they try to make it other people's issue rather than their own.

But this is the situation you wanted. You include them in your definition of women.

You can’t have it both ways.

Either trans men are women, in which case they should have the same rights as other women. Or they are not women, in which case of course your whole position is in tatters.

Or as seems to be the case in terms of the worldview expressed here, they are women who are denied an essential right because of choices they have made about their appearance.

Your views about what medical treatments should be available is irrelevant.

The question is why, if trans men are women, they should be denied such an essential right as single sex spaces?

The claim that a trans man’s choices about his appearance and how he looks, regardless of how extreme you consider them, should be enough to deny him the rights he should logically have as a woman, is deeply regressive.

Rights are very often not absolute.

The ruling says that it may be the case that in some cases transmen might not reasonably able to use womens same sex spaces. It's pretty vague on when that might be the case.

Toilets don't seem the most likely scenario for that to me. But it could be something that could end up being adjudicated by the courts.

What that ignores is the power imbalance.

A man who thinks he is seeing a woman (who is actually a transwoman) in the gents' may be disconcerted but won't have reason to feel alarmed. If he was right, it wouldn't be disastrous - there's no physical threat.

A woman who thinks there is a man (who is actually a transman) in the ladies' has good reason to feel alarmed. If she was right, there could well be a threat, and a serious one; and challenging him might end badly.

So the situation is not comparable and may need a different solution. This has been recognised.

It’s not irrelevant. I’m saying that if no one had these treatments then very few people would look convincingly like the opposite sex so this problem wouldn’t exist.

It's just recognition that sometimes women feel threatened by men, so in some situations, e.g. a rape crisis group, providing separate provision for women who have chosen to change their appearance to seem male may be a proportionate way of achieving a legitimate aim.

As PP said, all people have the right to go into a bank or a post office; but if somebody goes in wearing a balaclava and looking potentially shifty, their choices will have removed their automatic default welcome status - even if they genuinely just have a very chilly head and no nefarious intentions whatsoever.

Nobody is remotely trying to suggest that the person wearing the balaclava is not a human - nor that the bank is not expressly a place designed for humans to enter - but that person's choices will naturally make people very suspicious of their motives, and thus they will not be welcomed as they present.