For which services is separate by "gender" appropriate?

[MyAmpleSheep]

Assuming it to be compliant with all relevant legislation (which is another discussion), which public services make more (or enough) sense to separate by self-defined gender rather than by sex?

We are often told that segregating by sex is permissible but not the only way to split "men" and "women" and that it's proportionate and appropriate to split men-identifiers from women-identifiers in some services in "appropriate circumstances" or some other phrase.

What are those services, and what are the appropriate circumstances?

This is a question about services, so I'm explicitly not referring to what the EA2010 covers under associations. Social groups are not services, and they can already be split or made exclusive in a much wider range of ways; I'm not asking about them. Only about public services. For clarity it's probably best to avoid terminology like "single sex spaces" because it's easy to misunderstand whether a "space" is a service - or an association.

So - which services can appropriately be segregated as women+trans-identifying men (women+ "trans women") and men+trans-identifying women (men + "trans men")?

It's not an opinion though, like I love bananas and you hate bananas. Trans women are men. Fact.

Damn good point. Given that "gayness" has almost as much cultural baggage as "woman", to the degree that one could make exactly the same arguments for a non-homosexual gay man as one might for a male woman, would you support a man who is attracted to and sleeps exclusively with female people accessing services for gay people if he genuinely and honestly self identified as gay, feeling more aligned to gay men's culture and company than he does straight?

No religion is provable.
Religious spaces exist.
Gender is a religion and should be treated accordingly.

Gender does not in any way alter the sex of an individual
same as being a Catholic or a Cathar does not alter sex.

I used those in OR relationship, as you could see if you wanted.

If you insist on AND there will be no-one left to compare their experience, so your own point is moot from the beginning.

Anyway, my point was - you used that to establish a common experience between women and transwomen. Which is misleading - on that level of detail, there is no reason to compare specifically women and transwomen, all male and female people can have a horrible experience from rape/murder (attemptwd or finished).

You said you would turn people away on the grounds of gender, but you didn't explain how you would discern another person's gender.

Just one word - none.

I think TRA want the idea that services can be segregated by gender to keep the idea alive, rather than having an actual need for them.

So they continued to talk about woman and man gender, but never have to define it, or say when its relevant.

If there is nothing to link women and TW that excludes all other men and TM, what is gender?

Not “just [an] opinion.” Logically it provides no basis for the argument.

It’s no different from saying we should segregate on the basis of gender id because pudding.

Right. I deleted my reply to this hideous "flippant" post because you said you had "other things to do" so I gave you the benefit of the doubt.

However given that you are still posting, clearly it wasn't a stupid post made without much thought as you rushed to do something else, but something you deliberately chose to say.

So let me say clearly - this post is fucking disgusting.

Yes, if someone is raped and murdered, additional consequences of the rape for that person are no longer a "concern".

And if someone is raped without murder? Are we allowed to recognise there are sex-specific consequences then? Or is just a rape too trivial for you to engage with such small nuances?

We can objectively define gay as being same sex attracted, so we at least have a concept of what it would mean to lie about being gay.

Gender, on the other hand, means completely different things to different people, and is a subjective idea. Who are you to judge anyone else's gender?

Well some people believe the earth is flat and that the moon landings were fake, and dinosaurs aren’t real. Are we supposed to accept their beliefs as well?

You're arguing against single-sex wards, but not for single-gender ones - which was the question.

It's also an argument by someone who's clearly spent very little time in hospitals. Patients often aren't fully clothed. Monitoring or therapeutic equipment can prevent covering parts of the body or make it very hard to get clothes on. If you need to use a commode you're partially undressed with only a flimsy curtain between you and the patients each side (and their visitors) often with no staff there. At night you're asleep, with the nursing station often down the corridor and out of sight. Patients may be confused or disinhibited because of their medical conditions or medication. You may be immobile or unconscious, while patients around you aren't.

Still not bothered?

And even if you answer yes, you can't consent for other women.

The moral propriety of a no-Jews wine bar doesn’t depend on whether there’s a public demand for it; I’m not clear why demand for a service is a relevant criterion for whether a trans-inclusive service is morally appropriate.

We banned discrimination against black people not because it was falling out of fashion, but because it wasn’t: the Race Relations Act passed by 265 votes to 251. Think about that for a second.

I’m trying to find out if your laissez-faire attitude that service providers can pick and choose how they provide segregated services extends to other protected characteristics.

Should I be free operate my wine bar on a “no gender reassigned persons” if want to? Can I make up my own definition of “gender reassignment” and let you in if you don’t look too reassigned?

Is sex the only PC where proprietors can pick their own understanding or am I free to decide what Jew means when I have my (presumably now lawful) Jew-free bar?

Religious spaces practice a religion. The space will be for anyone willing to practice it. The proof is in the action, not the belief.

We can have gendered spaces, but it would have to be defined. The suggestion is that women have the same gender as TW and therefore need joint services.

But no one is willing to define what woman gender is and how to practice it.

Yes, they very much want to keep the idea alive. That's what the Conversion Therapy Bill aims to do. There is a cinema complex in Bristol offering single-sex toilets AND single-gender toilets AND unisex toilets. I suspect the idea is to run this for a while, with the ss toilets in a cold, hard-to-find spot guarded by leopards and shame the women who use it. Then, in a short while, they'll run a Hampstead Ponds-style 'survey' that 'shows' nobody wants it.

Unusually, I find I'm in agreement with @alcovecupboards . What is this, the Twilight Zone?

Cupboards suggests a single-sex (women-only) service can exist side-by-side with an otherwise identical service that is for women and transwomen. This is logically possible.

Schedule 3 doesn't provide a sex-discrimination exemption for the latter. But imagine for the moment that you have created the former, with the usual Schedule 3 underpinning, but that now some potential users wish to share the service with men who have a female acquired gender as contemplated by the GRA.

They may believe wholeheartedly in gender identity theory. Or, in a weaker iteration, they may consider that the disadvantages of 'trans inclusion' (issues of safety and decency) are greatly outweighed by the advantage (mitigating psychological distress in the men), particularly as only a small number of men are involved.

I think this could only be justified if there is also sufficient women-only provision to meet demand. Otherwise you will run into problems with indirect discrimination as to sex (female) or belief (Muslim or Jewish) or even disability (PTSD caused by SA).

(The TRAs will kick off about the women-only service being transphobic, and come in anyway. How will you solve that, cupboards?

And some will complain that acquired gender is too nebulous, and you will get just any old man wandering in. But, they could have done this at any point in the last few years, and on the whole they don't. People do what's socially accepted, and that means at least popping on some lipstick or a skirt before entering the ladies, because it sends a readily understood signal.)

What does this mean for the OP's question? The users of the service are made up of:

Women who accept that they are women, and wish to share with men who claim a female gender identity.

And.

Men who claim a female gender identity.

The only thing these two groups have in common is a female gender identity.

It follows that the users of the parallel women-only service don't have a female gender identity, and this makes sense. Either they are transmen who have decided not to pop off to the gents, or they are women who have chosen the service on the basis of their sex and don't see what gender identity has to do with it.

So it's about belief. The woman gender service is for people who think that gender identity is important and that theirs is female.

Had this done to me once during my buzzcut phase. Barber possibly Muslim, though, so that might affect it.

On this

People do what's socially accepted, and that means at least popping on some lipstick or a skirt before entering the ladies, because it sends a readily understood signal.)

If you explicitly say ‘this is a service for women and male people with a womany gender identity” do you hypothetically remove the requirement for the signal, that is the signal was only needed as the individual was aping an idea of ‘female sex’ in order to be accepted

ss toilets in a cold, hard-to-find spot guarded by leopards

India Willoughby will be right there, ready to fight the leopards.

A woman with short hair and no makeup wearing jeans and a hoodie is a woman.
It is deeply sexist and inappropriate to make any assumption about her sexuality or belief system

We also come up against reality
how many different changing rooms should a venue provide
and how can they avoid discriminating if they do not use a segregation criteria
that is realisable, understandable and measurable

It must also be borne in mind that many TIMs revel in invading spaces where they are not welcome
so wooly boundary edges would lead to more stress
than clear sex based ones

And that would demonstrate what we all know is true. For some of these men, single-gender services will not be enough. They want to be where the unconsenting women are.

Who cares? It isn't a legal concept.

There are single sex services that the law allows.

And even if it were worth discussing you cant because gender is not an agreed description.

That's it.

Why bother with this as it only implies you think some people's lifestyles should somehow be catered for, and worse still is yet another thread that encourages the disrupters to drone on about attitudes that are contrary to the opportunity that FWR as a discussion, action forum for women who believe in sex based rights.

Why not ask a relevant question instead of pointless whataboutery.

eg what are you doing to help ensure that women's sex based rights are re-establish. Or is occasionally liking of groups like Sex Matters feel like doing enough to counter TRAism?

The problem already exists, and yet men don't march into the ladies saying "I may present like any other man, but inside I'm a woman, so you can't ask me to leave". So why would they start now? Unless as a really determined GC campaign to undermine 'trans inclusivity' 🤔(I guess this hasn't been suggested before now at least partly because it would be so unpleasant for female service users while it was going on).

I wonder how that would/will pan out legally. There is still segregation by sex in the single-gender pair of toilets. For example, a non-trans man is excluded from a toilet that a non-trans woman can use, and vice versa. Is this inherently discriminatory, without the ss exception granted in the Equality Act?
IANAL

The leopards would run away and hide if that happened.