Services and spaces should be separated according to gender, not sex

[BackToLurk]

Because that’s the argument isn’t it? If trans rights activists and their allies accept that no one changes sex, then what they are really arguing for is that any separation should actually be made on the basis of gender.

As I’m a helpful sort, I’ve started a whole thread for people to make that argument. Off you go fellas. Bring your brightest. Make your case. I really do want to hear it. (And I’m not, for once, being sarcastic).

You are correct - no-one has never transitioned from one race to another...
equally, no-one has ever transitioned from one sex to another
equally no-one has transitioned from one gender to another - see my diagrams above for a clearer explanation...

so number of race A who have become race B = 0
so number of actual 'trans women' (men who have become women) = 0

appreciate there is all sorts of labelling and wishful thinking, confusion and mental health issue around this topic, but actual biological transitions = 0.

Worth remembering that none of this would be necessary had transactivists and queer theorists not mounted a systematic assault on language, women's rights and child safeguarding. We wouldn't need to clarify laws if this dystopian belief in sex change hadn't been forced on an unconsenting population.
Maybe if women had been consulted rather than told men would now in women's sport, be sharing spaces where girls and women undress we wouldn't need these court cases? If responsible adults had said no to the male led organisations targeting children in schools & children in care of the state to gaslight them that their uncomfortable growing bodies might be flawed but a sex change will cure them, we wouldn't be viewing adults spouting this with such suspicion? If WPATH had been challenged about some of their paedophile associations / eunuch gender crap they might not be be viewed as so dangerous.

But here we are and now the sunlight has exposed the grim reality, women and men, parents won't be backing off.

I think it's absolutely outrageous to leave trans men - and women who don't sufficiently present with enough femininity - without public accommodation because they can be banned from both male and female toilets under that guidance.

This could be an argument for sufficient mixed sex and unisex provision, although nobody has suggested that 'women who don't sufficiently present with enough femininity' should be excluded from women's services, and it would seem that they would be more excluded by gendered segregation.

From what I recall, neither the guidance nor the judgement suggested that anyone should be banned from a toilet provided for their sex. I'm pretty sure the example suggested was a group for rape survivors who might be further traumatised by somebody who appeared to be male. However, it was also made clear that this should not leave anyone without provision.

But the legal reality of this country is now that a mother cannot take her son into the female changing rooms - even if he's six month's old. If single sex is to mean single sex without exception - then that's a far bigger problem than anyone intended.

You will be relieved to hear that this was specifically considered by the High Court
www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/good-law-project-EHRC-AC-2025-1953-judgment-13Feb26.pdf

"The example of the mother taking her young son to use the female lavatory is a bad example. That (and the corresponding practice for fathers and young daughters) is a common practice but is no more than a facet of ordinary parental responsibilities. No one could reasonably or seriously contend that when a mother takes her young son to use a single-sex female lavatory the lavatory ceases to be single-sex."

and the Guidance
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/guidance/codes-practice/code-practice-services-public-functions-and-associations/chapter-thirteen?utm_source=chatgpt.com

"A council swimming pool has separate men’s and women’s changing rooms. One of the aims of having separate-sex changing rooms is to safeguard women’s ability to access the facilities and use them safely. A woman is allowed to take her male child under the age of ten into the women’s changing room. This does not undermine the aim, because it is unlikely that young boys pose a threat to women’s safety. It also contributes towards achieving the aim, because fewer women would be able to use the swimming pool if they could not bring their children with them"

So again, it seems that you agree with the EHRC.

alcovecupboards
Trans people are protected by law. There is a legal definition that works perfectly well.

Except that there isn't, and it doesn't, because it's too woolly to be of the slightest use: "a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning [their] sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex" could literally mean having a nose job, if the person involved thought that women have to have cute little perked up noses instead of the masculine beak of a nose that individual had at the time. That nose-job would be "part of a process for the purpose of reassigning sex." The first part, obviously; nasty things with potential high failure rates and horrible side-effect consequences, such as genital surgery, are definitely optional as far as the vast majority of TIMs are concerned.

That non-definition includes anyone who is now planning, ever has planned, or may in the future plan to make a completely undefined change to their status that is in any way related to their sex. Dammit, having a hysterectomy or a prostate operation would qualify, since both change physiological attributes of sex; come to that, a vasectomy or tubal ligation would qualify.

Doesn't help us with a definition of gender in any way, shape or form, though.

alcovecupboards
the legal reality of this country is now that a mother cannot take her son into the female changing rooms - even if he's six month's old.

This demonstrates fairly clearly that you have not read the relevant guidance on the legislation. Aren't you lucky that someone has posted it here so that you don't have to worry about the unattended male infants in prams lined up outside the Ladies at the service station?

Please quote the part of the legislation which makes an exemption based on age. I'm happy to be corrected.

(licks forefinger)
(swipes air)

See the post immediately before mine, which was there when I posted. I was quite careful to write "relevant guidance on the legislation", you may or may not realise.

I haven’t mentioned transracial. I don’t know where you got that from.

You are saying that people should legally be able to restrict membership of a group to women and some male people. I am saying that you don’t understand the implication of making that legal. As your weird raising of transracial appears to confirm.

As PPs have said. Groups can be for women and transwomen if they want, but they be recognised as mixed-sex and they may find themselves falling foul of equality legislation

Unfortunately Sex Matters immediately claimed it was an overwhelming victory and so while the EHRC guidance has some merit - the waters have been sufficiently muddied so even if someone is following the guidance, the threat of legal action if they are not going further can be damaging.

So is the suggestion here that e.g. Samantha Niblett has somehow been brainwashed by Sex Matters and is now unable to read the actual code herself?

Well, they really are sneaky!

I just quoted the High Court.

Do you think they are wrong?

Are you genuinely worried about this?

@alcovecupboards In the UK - law is made by a combination of parliament and court - so if the High Court says that it is okay, you shouldn't get carted off in a prison van quite yet for taking a small child into the opposite sex changing room!

The High Court ruled that the service user must be the corrext sex to use a service. If an opposite sex caregiver is with them, that is not a violation. Covers the small child in toilets/ male baby in single sex prison mother & baby unit etc.

No one is genuinely worried about this.

They are just trying to create confusion to undermine a perfectly legitimate judgement.

It's always a surprise to see this one promoted on a parenting site. The idea that a mother taking her male toddler into a women's changing room means that a middle aged man calling himself Cynthia gets the legal right to be there as well.
Especially after the SC so comprehensively dismissed Cynthia's claim.

I agree - except that the people promoting it - as with so many of their arguments know full well that it has no validity, but are trapped in a dead-end corridor, wild-eyed trying to find justifications for absurdities they are promulgating...

after all if you believe that a man can turn into a woman, everything else must seem quite reasonable - however wrong / illogical it might be...

there is also a distinct belief that somehow they are more intelligent / better at debating then the fine women of this forum - only to be handed their homework back with red pen all over it and an exhortation to do better next time 😁

It’s quite ‘surprising’ to see someone who describes themselves as ‘gender critical’ apparently advocating for embedding ‘gender’ into U.K. law.

What would the legitimate aim of having a 'single gender' anything?

We are still to discover that.

People want it. Why isn't that enough?

Off the top of my head, protecting women who have been traumatised by male violence against their persons from unexpectedly finding themselves in the same space as a potentially violent (and possibly unbalanced) male person would be a legitimate aim. And from that one could extrapolate to "protecting woman from men and men from women", though the latter is very rarely a concern in actuality.

It was Margaret Atwood who remarked that men are afraid of women laughing at them, and women are afraid of men killing them. She used to be really quite sensible.

isn't that single sex rather than single gender?

People want clubs without Jews or Muslims or gay people. “People want it” is not a legitimate reason for discrimination. Do you really not understand this?

isn't that single sex rather than single gender?

Yes, but then we were assured repeatedly that they are the same thing, so you see....

(If I put my tongue much further into my cheek on this thread it is going to come out through my left eardrum)

Ahhh - it is so helpful to have such clear logic...

I want £100,000,000 in my bank account - where do I go and pick it up?

I want the physique of a long distance runner in their 20s instead of being a typically desk-bound, slightly over-weight mid fifties male isn't that enough?

I want a luxury yacht paid for by someone else (my £100m won't go far on yachts!)

I want world peace

I want an end to poverty

why isn't it happening - I have said that I want it - isn't that enough?!

oh goody - then we can stop talking about gender and revert to that easier discussion of everything being based on sex...

none of these 400+ genders (though how sex = gender and there are 2 sexes and 400+ genders I am yet to work out - walks off whistling aimlessly)

A small proportion of men want it. They don’t care whether the women who’d have to share their spaces want it.

I guess that’s ‘enough’ for you, but some of us respect women’s rights.