Oxford City Council trans rights plan approved amid 'intimidation'

[IwantToRetire]

On October 5, the city council voted in favour of a motion which attempts to "ensure the rights, dignity and privacy of trans and non-binary residents of Oxford are supported to the maximum extent permitted by law" following an April 2025 Supreme Court judgement.

The ruling defined “sex” within the Equality Act as “biological sex” and “sex at birth” - since the ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission updated its guidance for enforcing the act.

The council has now passed a motion put forward by trans and non-binary councillors stating, “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary,” and calling for new rights legislation, amid descriptions of fear and abuse faced by residents and representatives.

The proposal aims to ensure access to council toilets and leisure facilities in line with self-identification.

Extracts only - full article https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/26611556.oxford-trans-rights-plan-approved-amid-intimidation/

I'm here and I am going to try. But first I need to know exactly what has been agreed by the council at this meeting.

Both the ridiculous men featured in that crappy BBC article are “non binary” so obviously think they should be able to pick and choose.

Not sure they have, it all seems contradictory as they include the line

"ensure the rights, dignity and privacy of trans and non-binary residents of Oxford are supported to the maximum extent permitted by law"

But the law does not permit what they are proposing

I started losing the will to live reading that. These self-absorbed fuckers, why does anyone treat them seriously? Unfortunately, they do.

What the fuck is ‘trans non-binary’?

@illuminada Trans AND non-binary 👌🏻

It generally seems to mean a man in nail varnish and a blouse or a woman with short hair.

And they have a duty to provide those things to other people too, to the extent required by law. And a duty of equality and objectivity in service, as part of the responsibility of their post.

Which, both law and duty, exists to prevent nutjobs like this from championing and privileging their personal pets over everyone else and oppressing whatever bits of the population they don't happen to like or be interested in.

The gvt needs to get rogue areas like this in line, or really what's the point of govt and law.

Aka a person with way too much time on their hands.

If they are to stay within the regulations for the toilets they have responsibility for, they will have to provide only universal toilet rooms and label them with a female pictogram and a male pictogram then a unisex pictogram.

This is the only option available to make the design almost indistinguishable and every identity to have the same. For Building Control (and legislation) you still have to satisfy female and males toilets first. So the individual toilet rooms will look the same except the door pictograms will be different and a sanitary bin. This won’t look too weird on two or three toilet rooms but odd if you have larger numbers.

In Australia 50% of new build toilets can be universal. In this country the EHRC said add a universal toilet in their shopping centre example. Even Michael Foran believes this adding more universal toilets will happen in much larger numbers. It’s the Good Law Project’s ‘sophisicated’ solution for schools.

Universal design is demonstrably worse for health and safety of everyone. If the above had done risk assessments on design, they would see that the traditional separate sex washroom with cubicles leading off (where the partitions and door do not make the compartment completely private) were right to be built like that because it is for health and safety.

Taking out separate sex washrooms and cubicles and replacing them with universal designs:

Economics: much more costly
Queues: longer, less provision per unit area.
No more urinals: longer queues, dirtier toilet floors and seats
Total privacy: misuse increases (drugs, consensual sex, non consensual sex and vandalism)
No supervision: (related to privacy) so no preventative measure for misuse due to witnesses, no preventative measure to witness medical emergencies in a timely manner so a greater chance of fatalities and injuries. People left trapped.
Health: Pathogen loads increase in universal toilets. Ventilation decreases, thorough cleaning ability decreases, the previous occupants flush plume is the zone of the sink and dryer. The chances of catching pathogens in a toilet will increase.

This is a short version of a 90+ page report I wrote with many academic, coroner and medical refs, Freedom of Information results and most importantly many real life instances in the U.K. recently where the complete privacy of a toilet led to either assaults, deaths or being trapped and unable to get out without specialist equipment.

If Oxford City Council want my report, I am happy to discuss. It isn’t transphobic. I look at all demographics.

———————————————————

Here’s why I don’t think it will happen: cost, having to get rid of perfectly functional provision such as urinals, calculations to the loss of provision and subsequent queues, inability to retrofit universal designs, women decision-makers hatred of unisex toilets, and common sense.

Here’s what should happen for equality: install more toilets that are free. Ensure there are double the amount of units for women than men. Have separate sex toilet washrooms as the main provision, with cubicles that are not completely floor-ceiling in privacy so absolute safety is prioritised. More changing places toilets added, and accessible toilets prioritised in terms monitoring and cleaning for a safe environment for those than need a private mixed sex toilet. If additional Accessible toilets can be added into the separate sex accommodation (with H&S tweaks to their design) that would also be useful. We need to reduce the number of completely private designs for reasons of health and safety.

As an educated guess, based on a similar situation elsewhere, the difference between Brighton and Oxford is that the trans population of Brighton is relatively stable whereas Oxford has in the last few years received a big influx of trans students, most of whom will not stay in the city. It's not clear to me that the influx will continue: it looks to me that it may just be earlier adopters of the teenage trans trend working their way into adulthood, but that that trend is itself dying out.

It’s when they describe themselves as ‘trans non-binary masc (or fem) presenting’ that you really wish the fucking asteroid would hurry up.
🙄

Councillor Max Morris’s speech from this week’s council meeting
https://bsky.app/profile/maxmorris.bsky.social/post/3mx74nx3fik2x

It’s like listening to Trans Rights Greatest Hits.

😆

Best laugh I'm likely to have all day, thanks!

🙄 a bit short on detail about how this motion is going to challenge the EHRC guidelines. I suspect the devil in the details will be the “cross party working group” he mentions.

In Australia 50% of new build toilets can be universal. In this country the EHRC said add a universal toilet in their shopping centre example. Even Michael Foran believes this adding more universal toilets will happen in much larger numbers. It’s the Good Law Project’s ‘sophisticated’ solution for schools.

So a tiny but influential pressure group wants to make toilets a bit worse for everyone, especially women, just for their benefit. And the govt rolls over to have its tummy tickled, and says, go right ahead. So in Australia they've got their foot well wedged in the door now, to the point where some of these 'reforms' will be hard to overturn. When the correct response to these demands is FOTTFSOFATFOSM.

The lily-liveredness (almost certainly not a word!) of Labour pols infuriates me.

Add universals. Gold plate the bloody things. Have live music in them. So long as there are single sex provisions TOO, all the coolest people in the world can go jive together to their hearts' content and stop boring the fuck out of everyone else.

Then there will need to be immediate and careful monitoring that the amount of single sex remaining provision is actually proportionate to the number of people using it.

And then we'll see if single sex provision actually is now a small accessibility need for the few, or whether:

if women have a single sex option they will use it in preference to mixed sex (activists gave this for years as a reason why mixed sex couldn't be allowed, that no one would be in the mixed sex space but them)

that a lot of loudly 'pro getting undressed with random men' cool women will actually quietly turn out to feel quite terfy when faced with actually doing it, and will want to make judgment calls in the moment depending on the men actually present, with the single sex space as an available option to withdraw to when wanted

that the behaviour of men in mixed space facilities will rapidly mean no one wants to go in there

that said behaviour may turn out to escalate significantly because now a provided space to go and escalate in

that the safety record of mixed sex spaces continues to prove it is not a safe place for women and girls anyway and raises questions as to why this wasn't properly considered before hand

that the H&S incidents of illness etc continues to make the whole design issue very questionable and raises questions as to why this wasn't properly considered beforehand

the sex space is now thoroughly overcrowded.

But until all this inconveniences men no one will care anyway.

From Australia:

One builder told The Telegraph that the “bloody pointless” change “is the last thing this industry needs”.
“We’re trying to keep things simple, cheap, and functional and some clown from Canberra comes in with feel-good rubbish like this,” he said.
“Sure, I feel sorry for people who don’t know which door to pick, but do we really need to change everything for a tiny minority?”

90% of women apparently opposed the change in one poll in Australia.

I wish people would stop trying to reinvent non domestic toilet designs that are single sex for health and safety reasons. Exactly the same problems happen in Oxford that happen around the world when non domestic toilets are completely private designs, especially if both sexes are permitted to use them.

I thought Dr Max rang a bell. He was part of the crowd who protested a Let Women Speak event in Oxford last year.

I was referring to Dom Birch, described in the bbc article as ‘trans non-binary.
HTH

Good for Oxford, I’m happy to have voted for the Greens ❤️

Thank you Max Morris and Rosie Rawle, this is the kind of city I want my kids to grow up in.