Unisex toilets could become the norm after the historic Supreme Court trans ruling, the head of equalities watchdog the Equality and Human Rights Commission has suggested. The Telegraph has more.
Baroness Falkner, the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said “single-sex services” such as changing rooms and lavatories “must be based on biological sex”.
But she said that there was no law prohibiting trans people from using a “neutral third space” and trans organisations “should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces”.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that laws against sex-based discrimination should only apply to biological women.
Asked about the implications of the judgment, a Health Minister was unable to say which changing room a trans woman should use.
Karin Smyth said that “female changing rooms should be used by women”, but would only say that trans people deserved “dignity” when pushed on which facilities they should use.
The Supreme Court’s judgment is expected to lead to a series of changes across public life, including who can access single-sex NHS wards or join female teams in elite sport.
Lady Falkner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Single-sex services like changing rooms must be based on biological sex. If a male person is allowed to use a women-only service or facility, it isn’t any longer single-sex. Then it becomes a mixed-sex space.
“But I have to say, there’s no law that forces organisations, service providers, to provide a single-sex space, and there is no law against them providing a third space, an additional space, such as unisex toilets, for example, or changing rooms.”
Asked about the risk of trans people being excluded from facilities, she said that trans-rights organisations should push for more neutral third spaces to accommodate trans people.
She said: “There isn’t any law saying that you cannot use a neutral third space, and they should be using their powers of advocacy to ask for those third spaces. But I think the law is quite clear that if a service provider says we’re offering a women’s toilet, that trans people [presumably she means trans women, i.e., biological males] should not be using that single-sex facility.”
Lady Falkner said the NHS must update its trans guidance after the court’s ruling and that it also meant trans women could no longer take part in elite women’s sports.
Previously, trans women were given the same rights as biological women, allowing them to access female-only spaces and groups.
Although the Supreme Court said that trans women could not be discriminated against, the ruling means that they will no longer be treated the same way as people born female.
Let’s hope this isn’t where things end up – with trans people’s delusions abolishing single-sex spaces, the very thing the ruling was supposed to protect. Here’s a suggestion: why don’t trans people use the same toilets as everybody else, i.e., the ones that match their (biological, since it seems we have to clarify this) sex?
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Why differentiate between ‘elite’ level sport & non-elite? Men shouldn’t be playing in women’s sport at any level.
Doesn’t that depend upon the sport? Some sports aren’t especially physical like snooker?
Downtick was not from me.
Men at the elite level are much better than women at snooker, darts and pretty much any other sport I can think of. Chess. There are some women in those sports competing against men at the elite level but they are a tiny minority and never win much.
It should be up to women whether they want men competing against them.
Men are generally taller than women and have a reach advantage in both darts and snooker.
Some sports aren’t necessarily physical, snooker and also darts, however there are differences in things such as hand -eye co-ordination which adversely affect performance. I doubt a female darts player will ever be born to match a Luke Littler.
Men tend to be taller with larger body frames and therefore longer reach. A definite advantage for playing snooker.
Why should a biological man be allowed to compete against a biological woman in any sporting competition, at any level? There is no rational justification for it.
Yes this ruling should really translate to all other areas affected by this pervasive and toxic ideology. It needs to be eradicated from schools as a priority, but all sports also;
”The Sport England have already announced a policy review in the wake of this ruling. FA, ECB Cricket, England Netball and 50 other UK sports need to do the same and restore safe & fair sport for all females, at all levels.”
https://x.com/SportSEENuk/status/1912759610903085145
Absolutely.
With the greatest of respect to Mr Will Jones, please please can we stop using the word “gender” in this context. It’s utter nonsense, the corrupted language of the enemy. I think the correct term is “unisex”.
We already have legistation for provision of disabled toilets.
Hmm. That would be interesting.
Considering that large shops (like our local M&S) have two separate toilets, it would take quite a bit of effort to merge them or turn both into unisex toilets.
To start with, the urinals from the men’s would have to go. Or do they envisage us just happily having a wazz with the ladies passing by?
Well they don’t seem to mind in France. Budda Bar in Morzine had the those wanting to use the cubicle walking past the those using the urinals. Many a lewd comment…
I think the French are more relaxed about these things.
I remember having a wazz in the toilet at a French factory and the cleaning lady just waltzed in casually with “Bonjour, Monsieur” and started to wipe the mirrors.
In the UK the cleaning lady at least bangs on the door and announces that she’s coming.
Yes, the French do do a lot of things better. They’re a lot less wound up and generally just a lot more adult and common sense about things.
The children are allowed to be children, too. And they aren’t stressed about wondering where the boss is. They know the adults are in charge.
I’m very happy to live in France. There are just toilets, they are barely aware of all this trans crap, for them it’s just stuff that happens in the English speaking part of the world. There is one girl at my children’s school who is adamant to be referred to by a boy’s name, but everyone just treats her as a tomboy.
This is presumably happening in all parts of the world which are really run by the US democrats. It certainly does in Germany. Toilet accessoires for ‘menstruating men’ was part of the political agenda of the SPD and attempts to establish drag performances for children are underway¹.
¹ The secretary for domestic affairs of the free state of Bavaria also recently bragged about having the largest number of special police departments for hate crimes and referred to the jail sentence for the Deutschlandkurier guy because the Faesar-meme as “great win for freedom of expression” because the problem is really the many people who don’t dare to express themselves because of all the hate targetted at them, especially online, and he obviously wasn’t referring to woman’s rights activists but to the oh-so-suppressed trans and alphabetsoup brigade. Which means he’s essentially parrotting the UN “right to participate” stuff.
At Bubba Gump’s in Destin, Florida, they purposely put up confusing gender signs instead of men and women signs. When you are drinking, the signs become very puzzling! I ended up in the women’s bathroom!
We really have a serious epidemic of bossy people wanting to set rules for everyone. On everything.
Can establishments just be left to do what they want with their toilet arrangements without having some baroness and some human rights group trying to impose rules on them?
I’m pretty sure I’ve been to hundreds of establishments with a single private toilet. I’ve been to places with separate men’s and women’s. I’ve been to places where men and women share handwashing but have separate toilets. Establishments muddle through with what they can provide.
This whole thing is stupid. But as always at the heart of it are a group of little tyrants trying to impose something on everyone else.
One of those comments which deserve more than the one ‘up-vote’ I can give.
Have an uptick from me because neither of us could uptick Stewart twice.
There is of course a jobs for the boys element to this especially for local councils. I believe the modern term is ‘money laundering.’
Hear hear!
I am a man, so possibly not the best person to be commenting, but many places already offer toilets that are not predicated on your sex. You walk through a doorway and are confronted with a row of doors, behind which are individual toilets, with handbasin and dryers. If these are available in a certain Canadian burger chain, lounges at airports and other places, why can’t they be installed nearly everywhere. Frequently, my wife is inconvenienced by a long queue outside a ladies, that rarely happens outside a gents and this solution would equalise that problem.
There are rarely queues outside the gents because the gents aren’t having a cry about something and then re-doing their make up.
This post is brought to you by ‘Dogwhistle Posts’. Lets see who has a sense of humour…
I think it’s ridiculous that society must be re-jigged just to appease a tiny minority of the population. Plus, disabled toilets have always been unisex and exist in many places. The problem with all of this, however, is who is going to police the toilets? I mean, I can well imagine ( going by the meltdowns and general consensus of the transtifa brigade online ) that many men will just continue to use the female facilities and to hell with the consequences.
We’ve seen what a soft touch the police are anyway on society’s perma-victims, and how harshly they crack down on anyone opposing government-pushed agendas/ideologies, so I wonder how seriously they would take this if somebody reported a man in the ladies’ toilets/changing rooms when they only respond to 40% of shoplifting reports and appear to not respond at all to reports of burglaries. The state of UK society and the law now does not fill me with confidence on this issue because this ruling seems to assume that all MtF trans people are suddenly going to be totally compliant with it. It’s important to remember that for a lot of these autogynephiles ( as well as the predatory sex pests ) it is part of their fetish that they want to intrude on women’s private spaces and nothing to do with ‘inclusion’ and merely using the facilities in a normal, functional manner. So I guess we wait and see.
”I have perfectly designed large lockable family changing rooms in some of my clubs. I have offered these to transwomen to use but they have refused them.”
https://x.com/DuncanBannatyne/status/1912515187384504464
Speaking of the police, I wonder how this guy is taking the news. He sounds ( and looks ) like if Gollum had cross-sex hormones;
”This absolute creep is a cop in the UK. If you’re a woman, he now has the right strip search you and if you object you could be charged with a hate crime.
At the same time, mean tweets gets you jailed. The UK is going through an incomprehensible decline.”
https://x.com/Rob_ThaBuilder/status/1912118130651902401
Anyone who applies is barred.
What a bloody disgrace.
Speaking of disgraces, another female traitor incoming! Who the heck is this though? She looks like somebody inflated Christopher Biggins and gave him a sex change. And of course, the obligatory hair;
“[J.K. Rowling] believes… that if you’re born a man, you can’t ever be a woman.”
”Labour MP Carolyn Harris: “Biologically, she’s correct, but… when you introduce this level of hate into a debate, rationality goes out of the window.”
Which do you find more irrational? The statement of biological facts, or the belief that males can become females?”
https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1912843780274729074
Surely ‘gender neutral’ is not a recognised state of biological existence? Gender neutral toilets are mixed sex facilities. Similarly with the term ‘unisex’. Again, this really means mixed sex. A gender neutral toilet is used by both males and females, however defined.
Provision of a third space is not neutral either. If both trans men and trans women use it, is is not single sex or gender. The third space, if used by trans only, is a denial that they are men or women. To describe the trans as ‘trans people’, as the Minister does here, is again to wipe a way their designation as men or women. Biological men and biological women are both people.
On the one hand trans women cannot be discriminated against. On the other, they are no longer to be treated the same as biological women. If not treated the same, how can they continue to be regarded as women?
Sex is always biological because it’s a property of individual animals from a sexually reproducing species. Let’s please just avoid these silly contortions.
Apart from that, I already wrote this yesterday: The outcome will obviously be insitutional and lobbyist pressure to abolish single sex facilities because of them being “anti-trans discrimination” and of accusing people who use them as “transphobic.” Eventually, asking for the Lady’s toilet in a pub will become either a hate crime or one of the harassments employees can sue their employers for.
The latter might not be achievable. But it’s certainly something certain people would very much like to have.
In all the houses I visit they have just a toilet that anyone can use. Sometimes rules are applied, usually by the women, over both the use of the seat and its position when vacated.
One batchelor uncle of a childhood friend insisted that all men sat down whilst using his as he didn’t appreciate mis-aimed shots soaking into the carpet.
When I worked in Sweden in the 1980s, all the office blocks I worked in had individual domestic style toilets for universal use with doors opening out directly into the corridors.
A blanket ban on all urinals and the provision separate cubicles instead would solve any privacy issues. I notice many men choose to use cubicles anyway, especially with the popularity of track suits which generally require men to bare their backside just to pee.
A typical fudge.
If you have seen the latest from Lioyds bank in response to the defintion of a woman. Can I suggest that all biological females who have accounts with Lloyds or any of their businesses close their accounts and move to other companies that recognise and do not want to erase the biological female. If Lloyds want to be the bank of confused men and those who hate women let them be the specialist provider to this segment of society. Women the genuine articles should not stay where they are not wanted.
I am sure Lloyds will do well.
Pandering to the mental illness of a tiny minority is going to cost this country an absolute fortune.
I have no problem with a third space, I will use it myself, all us boy/boys can, indeed we can convert existing men’s toilets/changing-rooms into third-space facilities and in the fullness we can call them ‘gents’.
“Dignity”? What’s dignified about the pretence, self-delusion caused by mental illness?