Transgender ‘women’ should not be asked what sex they are when using toilets in public, according to new rules from Britain’s equalities watchdog the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and doing so could be “discrimination or harassment”. The Mail has the story.
Delayed guidance by the equalities watchdog says it is “unlikely to be either practical or appropriate” to challenge people if they should be using the gents’ or the ladies’ in places such as supermarkets or cinemas.
It says signs and websites should be used to tell people that a service is single-sex, and that people can be asked if they are eligible to use it if there is “clear evidence” that men are trying to access female-only areas.
But the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s new Code of Practice, updated in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces, warns it is “not always possible to be sure of a person’s sex from their appearance” and no official documents such as passports or driving licences provide “reliable evidence”.
And it states: “It is unlikely to be either practical or appropriate to approach any particular individual to make enquiries about their sex in relation to facilities, such as toilets, which are incidental to the primary service.”
Maya Forstater, Chief Executive of women’s rights charity Sex Matters, welcomed the publication of the document but added: “The guidance could be clearer that service providers are entitled to ask people to state their sex, and to require an honest answer.
“It’s absurd to say that it is ‘unlikely to be either practical or appropriate’ to ask an individual what sex they are in relation to facilities such as toilets: on the contrary, if a man walks into a women’s space it will be not just appropriate to challenge him, but essential. Otherwise women’s rights to single-sex spaces cannot be enforced.”
Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson, who finally published the 342-page document after being accused of sitting on it for months, said: “The Equality Act enshrines our rights in law so that people can live free from discrimination and harassment.
“Our focus has always been making sure organisations have clear, accessible guidance on how to implement the law.
“I thank the EHRC for its work updating the draft Code of Practice, and look forward to continuing to work with it to ensure people’s rights are upheld across our country.”
The code further says that if “individuals are asked about their sex in a way that requires them to disclose this information in public, or if the language or manner of a request is rude, combative or offensive”, this could be deemed as “discrimination or harassment”.
Worth reading in full.
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Gotta love this: Official documents aren’t reliable because we ensured that they won’t be! Therefore, you cannot use them in ways we disapprove of!
Dixit trans-human Bridget Phillipson before changing back to lizard shape.
In my pre-retirement Civil Service career I worked in an office which had a trans-woman. There were, to the best of my knowledge, no problems between “her” and female staff. “She” had properly transitioned; did “her” level best to look and behave in a feminine manner and to be fair could pass as a woman (although the shoulders and leg muscles gave it away if you thought about it).
“She” used the ladies facilities. I did not object.
But that is different to an obvious man, still with all his tackle, possibly with a beard …. because a lot of these trans-activists are basically male exhibitionists seeking attention and wanting to intimidate.
It is why self-identification is an idiotic idea. Genuine gender dysphoria should only be diagnosed by a professional psychiatrist and a trans-woman should only be one who has had all the surgical procedures necessary to maintain the illusion.
A man in a frock is a transvestite.
So yet again biological womens rights are being ignored, a male is a male no matter what they wear or claim, and clearly have MH issues, you can claim they are no threat, but they clearly are, its odd how males spent years pushing females down and still do, and yet they want to pretend to be one, it is all pure fantasy , and attention seeking, and I for one will not assist in their dillusionment. You can choose to live how you want, but that is your choice, and I can choose to not accept it, that is my choice.
I’m thinking about becoming transgender so I can hang around ladies’ toilets more often
Fact – mentally ill men have been allowed the pretence of being women for decades. Thanks to the too many influential women who could have said no – stop – but instead self sabotaged (suicidal empathy?), for which the rest of the female sex is paying a heavy price.
The irony here is protections for women weren’t destroyed by men, but by influential feminists who decided that their feelings and of a few mentally ill people outweighed the safety of the many, then made it a moral/legal offence to disagree.
If you want to know how the UK (and the rest of the West) got itself into such a mess, look no further than the havoc wrought by lunatic feminists like Kimberly Crenshaw. In the 30 years since Crenshaw published ‘Mapping the Margins’ and invented the academic nonsense that’s ‘Intersectional Feminism’, those values have come to philosophically dominate every level of bureaucracy and academia. Women have acquired tremendous political, cultural and institutional power. Female tastes now define our entire society.
Have these feminists been so busy being radical or intersectional they forgot that, as feminists, their overarching allegiance was to actual women?
Absolutely!
”The irony here is protections for women weren’t destroyed by men, but by influential feminists..”
Given that laws are made and changed by the government, and these laws in themselves are what shape society when they’re passed/amended, how many ”influential feminists” have occupied the role of Prime Minister in the UK? Or are we back to blaming the women in HR for what the white, male CEO/boss man did?
Still in denial I see, lol.
Still overlooking the roles men in positions of leadership have played, due to your obsession with scapegoating women, I see. 😆 Stay prejudiced. 😏
“Still overlooking the roles weak men in positions of…”
It always amuses me the knots certain men tie themselves in and mental gymnastics they perform just to avoid acknowledging the fact that Neo-Marxists and adherents of Critical Theory are available in both sexes. Such is their need to point the finger of blame always at the opposite sex. Feminism is but one branch on a very large and multi-limbed toxic tree.
That’s textbook denialism for you, though. Blinkers always firmly in situ, cognitive bias present and correct.🤷♀️
Oh, so you do understand my point. You’re the only one on this thread performing gymnastics 😉
And you’re the only one displaying denialism, with your myopic tunnel visioned focus on one specific group to the exclusion of everyone else who’s culpable. But I’m used to men like you demonstrating projection. I’ve been accused of all sorts on here by men who’ve displayed the exact behaviour they accuse me of.
No way am I denying the responsibility of feminism in this context, but at least I have the ability to look at the big picture and not dismiss inconvenient facts which don’t support my bias. I have no axe to grind because I’m a realist, not an obsessive.
You initially stated that women’s protections weren’t destroyed by men but by feminists. I’m merely providing you with the unedited version and reminding you that those pushing this entire woke BS come in both sexes. To assert it’s exclusively down to a bunch of crazy activist women, with no men anywhere in the picture, is a blatant lie that showcases just how pathological animosity towards the female sex has become for men such as you. But take heart: you’re far from alone in harbouring such bitter and skewed views about the opposite sex on here. Not a terribly healthy… Read more »
Nice strawman, lol. As I’ve explained to you before, it’s ‘feminisation’ that’s the problem.
What strawman? I’m holding a mirror up to your highly edited version of a situation, whereby you seem to think men bear no responsibility at all, and you don’t like it. Hurts your fragile ego, I guess…😉
This is one problem easily solved by Artificial Intelligence, as a kind of Door Guard.
If any male or “male with bits removed” comes through the door of a ladies loo, he will be instantly zapped in the missing nadgers by a small laser beam, causing him to flee.
Ditto the “females with bits removed” sneaking into the mens room.
Sorted.
🙂
Will an AI be able to be charged with assault?
The outrage here is that we have something called an equalities watchdog that considers itself tot have the power to set rules on what we can and can’t say.
My response to this “guidance” is this. Fuck the equalities watchdog, I don’t know who they are, I don’t recognise any right of this “watchdog” to tell me what I can and can’t ask. How dare they try to tell me what I can and can’t say. Fuck them.
There are other laws that apply, not just the one Equalities Act.
Any police involvement will consider these other laws, and whether such a challenge is harassment.
The Crocodile Dundee approach is probably best.
“Only kill what you can eat?”
So if a young girl enters a public toilet followed by a man dressed as a woman it will not be appropriate to challenge him. This is setting a dangerous precedent for pedophile activity.
Complicated isn’t it. I have no answers that will work in 100% of cases.
No-one ever does. We still need rules, though, but we also need to understand that rules can (and should) be broken.
Clear evidence:- mustache, beard, hairy arms and legs, adams apple, make up put on like a 5 year old would do, 6ft plus. Clear evidence is provided by your eyes and ears. Irrefutable. We are given a sense for identifying the sex of someone by looking at them or hearing them. There is no need to see the meat and 2 veg to know its a man.
There you go again, suggesting we should use our own judgement. Typical.
😉
Sadly, a lot of people don’t want to use their judgement, especially in an area that can be quite complex to interpret.
“…quite complex to interpret.”
I can count on the fingers of one fifth of a hand’s worth of fingers the occasions when I was genuinely not sure if it was a man or a woman.
It’s frequently rather more nuanced than your description.
Yes to the description you offer, but I would say that someone who is that much of a caricature is nothing like the danger of someone who is quite difficult to recognise as originally male.
The world just isn’t the lovely simple place that makes hard and fast rules usable.
The most important point here is the “discrimination or harassment” bit at the end.
If you challenge an individual entering a toilet you risk that person either suing you or setting the police on you.
As we can give out blue badges and generous benefits for people with minor mental health problems, as transgender people are undoubtedly suffering from mental health issues and, we are told, represent a tiny portion of the general population, let them use the toilets for those with disabilities. No issues then as they are all unisex, single occupancy. As we keep being told, not every disability is visible.
“undoubtedly suffering from mental health issues”
Perhaps they are not having transitioned or in the process of doing so, the mental health problem is usually when they think they are living a lie.
Sorry to be crude but if you have doubts grab a handful and squeeze. That should clarify the situation without having to ask the question in most cases. Remember to wash your hands afterwards!
Yes and you may get more than you bargained for. Men dressing up as women is often a fetish (there’s a name for it, can’t remember) and comes (ooh er missus) with the usual very male symptoms of arousal.
Grab a handful of what? I know someone who is a pre-op MtF and has breasts as well as male genitalia. The person concerned lives with a female partner and has absolutely no interest in anyone else.
Any attempt to do what you suggest would be an assault and would not help to protect women in such a case.
Why were they in a female space to begin with?
Who? I didn’t say where they were, and I actually have no idea which toilets they frequent.
342 pages?
Yes, that was my immediate thought.
341 of them were trying to identify what a woman is.
“not always possible to be sure of a person’s sex from their appearance”
Lily Savage
Danny La Rue
Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham – aka Les Dawson & Roy Barraclough.
And have these idiots never seen Panto?
Do any of our lords and masters actually live in the real World?
If I catch a trans woman going into a women’s only space with my daughter in there, I assure you I’ll be very rude, combative and offensive!
Unless they actually do something that is an offence then you would probably be making a difficult situation worse.
I would be protecting my daughter from a mentally ill person. Those of you performing mental gymnastics to justify this behaviour are very much part of the problem.
No, we’re really not. I have a daughter myself, she is friends with a couple where the male-born person is transitioning but as yet has complete male genitalia and the female-born person describes herself as lesbian. Not a nice simple thing is it?
No one is fooling anyone, the male-born person appears physically female to most other people, both of them have suffered considerable trauma that has led to their life choices now they are well into adulthood.
Whatever your opinion of the general principle, it simply is not possible to apply fixed and inflexible rules to any of these situations, in the same way that people who live as their birth sex are also of varying attitudes and actions in all sorts of ways.
We’re supposed to learn as we grow up, sadly a lot of people seem to keep their prejudices and never reconsider how that affects everyone.
I’m on the same page as you. As a person who is neither prejudiced nor has an absolutist attitude to anything in life, I recognise and acknowledge the nuances at play here. Seemingly I have a rare ( round these parts, anyway ) ability to treat people as individuals as opposed to apportion collective blame or show generalised hostility to entire groups of people based on their shared ‘protected characteristics’. This is also why I’m careful to state I’m anti-Islam, not anti-Muslim, and not conflate the two.
People are individuals, first and foremost, and not all MtF trans folk are dangerous perverted freaks to be collectively treated with derision and viewed with suspicion.
Thanks Mogs, I am accumulating down votes at a rate of knots, that usually means that I’m on the right track but some people here (who purport to be sceptics) are actually rather fixed in their attitudes.
FTAOD I am less tolerant than my daughter on this, she thinks that some of my views on the whole “gender” thing are not good, I merely point out that she should have heard the views on male homosexuals in the 1970s that were common in my schools and in my workplace in the 80s and 90s.
Some sense needs to be applied, one size fits all is a fiction in both society and hosiery.
“I am accumulating down votes at a rate of knots, that usually means that I’m on the right track but some people here (who purport to be sceptics) are actually rather fixed in their attitudes.”
😅 Oh that just means you’ve unsettled the ‘hive mind’ which inhabits the DS echo chamber. Take it from a long-time dissident who wears their ‘Outlier’ badge with pride.😁 The herd doesn’t tolerate free thinkers who are unafraid to voice opinions which deviate from the approved script and diverse viewpoints are decidedly unwelcome.
And they sure are over-invested in these things>👍👎for some unfathomable reason…🤔 Maybe they believe it makes one iota of difference..🤷♀️
I’m sorry, but a “transgender woman” is a man in woman’s clothes unless he’s had the operation. If he can’t face going into the gents’, then he should used the disabled one.
Fun fact – they’re still a man after the operation!
You can chop your bits off, but you can’t change your sex.
Every body cell still contains the XY chromosome.
The “bits” are secondary sex characteristics, not the primary.
This is true, of course, but I would refer you to Mogwai’s posts further down. If they’ve had their body modified to match their desire to live as a woman, then they’re less of a threat in a female space.
Except full transition is rare.
The ‘threat’ isn’t the argument, it’s the fact they’re biologically male.
No, they’re not less of a threat! They’re still capable of ogling women and children in the ladies room, and female body-changers are also still capable of ogling men & boys in the mens room.
And what if actual men and women do the same thing? It’s perfectly possible, and almost certainly unwanted, but if they have the correct chromosomes it can’t be dealt with under this ruling and guidance.
Umm… then he’s just a man who’s had his genitals removed voluntarily. I don’t want anyone crazy enough to do that anywhere near my children, or wife and sisters.
Not all MtF trans-identified people are ”crazy” or pose a risk. You can’t exactly get more proof as to the courage of your convictions than living as a woman and having your body modified in this way. I bear no ill will or make any assumptions about such individuals. Of course they’ll never be a woman or female just because they now have a fauxgina instead of a penis but I wouldn’t feel threatened by them and I’d happily use female pronouns when addressing them. And it goes without saying they shouldn’t be entering the female category of whatever sports they might play competitively due to the advantages they’d still have but in all other areas I’d accept them as a ‘woman’. But the problem in this scenario: Toiletgate, is who’s going to be the Genital Police, stood at the door and checking dubious-looking patrons? Bearing in mind that you can get some very masculine-looking women who are often butch lesbians, or just women who naturally look androgynous.
Isn’t it rude to address people with pronouns? My parents always told me it was.
As in “She’s the cat’s mother”. Quite.
Not all MtF trans-identified people are ”crazy” or pose a risk.
That’s my impression too.
The problem being that you cannot tell which of them are a risk and which are not.
Yes they are. Body Dysphoria is a long recognised psychiatric disorder. It involves various physical attributes – some think they are a blind person trapped in a body with perfect vision, some a one-legged person trapped in a two-legged body, other think they are a woman trapped in a body with the wrong sex organs.
For most they desire surgery or intervention so their physical self accords with their inner self.
Psychiatric disordered people are unpredictable.
Yeah a manly looking lesbian caused alarm in the ladies changing room at our club – someone said “you can’t come in here” before she realised it was a woman. She seemed Ok with it and to be fair if you dress like a man and have a buzz cut then it’s going to happen.
I don’t like the idea of any sort of man in a ladies loo, though I am a bloke so my own skin is not in this game. I equally don’t think some kind of “genital police” is great. And I don’t like the idea of the state interfering in this either. We have had single sex loos for a long time and it generally worked ok, think we should just go back to whatever we were doing before.
And that’s fine, as long as the militant trans people are prepared to back down.
We shall see.
“Not all MtF trans-identified people are ”crazy” or pose a risk.”
Correct, but they’re all mentally ill. Taking part in their fantasy only serves to make things worse.
Some of these people are living what you describe as a fantasy, but some are actually fully invested in their transition for reasons that should not need to be explained to others. I don’t know how to square this particular circle but there are entirely harmless people who are going to be made to suffer if enforcement of this guidance is excessive.
”Taking part in their fantasy only serves to make things worse.”
Not with the type of people I’m referring to. If grown men are making informed decisions about their bodies and lives and find peace and contentment presenting and living as the opposite sex then I totally respect their choices. I’m not about treating people like freaks just because their life choices might not be exactly mainstream, particularly if they’re not harming anyone else.
It’s important to distinguish these individuals from the others who’ve jumped aboard this particular bandwagon due to being opportunists: the autogynephiles, which is a purely fetishist behaviour, and the predatory perverts who have weaponized this whole ideology as a way to gain access to their victims when in settings which make them more vulnerable. These two types of men are also usually straight and hang on to their meat and two veg, therefore are explicitly not welcome in female private spaces.
No man should be welcome in a female only space. It’s really that simple.
It would be easier if it were that simple, but it just isn’t. There are always shades of grey, I know people who are in exactly this situation and I suspect it will cause them quite a lot of problems if a black/white approach is taken.
Sex is binary, despite the pseudo-scientific nonsense spouted by activist scientists.
Yes, sex is binary, but human behaviour is not. Whatever this legislative ruling and guidance says, there are going to be cases where the letter of the rules will not help in resolving the problem. You will simply cause an alternative problem where, for instance, an MtF transitioner is forced into using a gents toilet and is assaulted by some intolerant person in there because they don’t look male enough.
Is that what you want? Because it’s problem caused by insensitivity and black/white decision-making without sufficient information.
To be honest if they are discrete in a toilet and look vaguely female I wouldn’t notice . It is the in your face trannies that irritate me.
“Transgender woman” is a made-up nonsense description, like “slithy toves”.
Brillig!
He is still a man no matter what bits he has had chopped off