Best Of

I've got no idea if what the Home Secretary has proposed will work, but that sure as hell is a change of direction, and at least to my ears it sounded like some thought had gone into the proposals. It will be interesting to see how the public receives these plans.

It's going to need opposition votes to pass IMO but it will get through. The Tories can't be seen to oppose this and neutralising Reform on immigration helps them as much as it does Labour.

Realistically for this to work I think some kind of HRA reform will need to be enacted to dissapply the ECHR on matters of immigration and asylum and dare the judges to overrule Parliament.

How does Starmer survive that? Having to use opposition votes to get through an act the public love and his back-benches hate will surely rip his last hints of credibility to shreds, and be quickly followed by a leadership challenge he'll lose as he can hardly use opposition votes for that one.

I think this is the winter fuel payments mk2 - he'll march them all up this hill, and march them all down again 12 hrs before the vote when his whips tell him he's going to lose his party's part of the vote come what may.

I thought it was pretty shoddy that the Tories didn't even offer their vote to pass the welfare reforms (on reasonable terms).

It wouldn't surprise me if they did the same here. Opposition for its own sake.

I don't think Starmer would have taken them up on it if they had. And his standing, with both party and public, was much higher then.

Back when Starmer was in opposition, I recall posing that amoungst the reasons why I wouldn't ever vote Labour was that whilst Starmer might seem moderate and reasonable, he still had lined up behind him a motley collection of left-wing gouls and demons he wouldn't be able to control.
It seems I wasn't wrong.

Some of the comments on here remind me of the bad old days, when homophobia was a thing, and stupid hetero men didn't want gay men in the changing rooms because they felt threatened.
In reality, of course, the last men that the gay men would be interested in was the chaps who thought that gay men couldn't control their urges in the presence of non-gay men.

Polar opposite.

I have absolutely no qualms sharing the mens changing rooms with any other men, whether they be straight or gay or identify as women.

The problem is not men not wanting to share the men's changing facilities.

The issue is how to deal with those men who do not want to use the men's facilities.

Some suggest those men should be in the women's facilities. I think encouraging sex-neutral facilities for those who do not wish to use their actual sexes facilities would be much better than showing your penis in a woman's one.

What do you think?

I'm going to ignore what the current law says for a second, because this is a politics site and debate is generally around how the law should be, not how it is.

3-4 years ago I felt the wave of pro-trans activism had gone too far. Attacks on gender critical women and the creeping social pressure towards stating your pronouns.

And I've never really understood what gender - as distinct from sex - means on a personal basis. I am, factually, a man, but I don't feel any parts of my personality are defined based on that. Equality between the sexes is the key thing - people can be whoever they want to be from a social perspective.

I now feel like that balance has been restored, largely thanks to gender critical women such as Cyclefree, but also more widely. I was on that side when debating people I knew.

But for me, I was never convinced that toilets were the correct battle ground. Women's toilets have private cubicles. They have a shared space not dissimilar to gender neutral toilets that are legal. Any other actions (public display of nudity etc) can be dealt with as they occur.

Women's prisons, women-only shelters, shared female changing spaces - I agree should be man free. But I think a reasonable compromise for trans people is they can generally use facilities of their chosen gender so long as they use private facilities within said spaces (e.g. toilet cubicle, private changing cubicle).

Now what Labour should do is work out what their position is and update the law accordingly. Not drag their heels in court over the fact the current law doesn't say what they'd like it to.

Facilities extend beyond the cubicle alone. Should a woman cleaning herself up forced to be sharing the space with men? The law says no, which is why universal facilities need individual, lockable basins not just loos.

Some public toilets have private male/female cubicles and a shared sink area. I think that's fine.

As I said, I'm not debating what the law says. I'm debating what I think it should be.

I have never seen that, and do not think it is fine.

Women should have some privacy from men at the basin too.

I've got no idea if what the Home Secretary has proposed will work, but that sure as hell is a change of direction, and at least to my ears it sounded like some thought had gone into the proposals. It will be interesting to see how the public receives these plans.

It's going to need opposition votes to pass IMO but it will get through. The Tories can't be seen to oppose this and neutralising Reform on immigration helps them as much as it does Labour.

Realistically for this to work I think some kind of HRA reform will need to be enacted to dissapply the ECHR on matters of immigration and asylum and dare the judges to overrule Parliament.

How does Starmer survive that? Having to use opposition votes to get through an act the public love and his back-benches hate will surely rip his last hints of credibility to shreds, and be quickly followed by a leadership challenge he'll lose as he can hardly use opposition votes for that one.

I think this is the winter fuel payments mk2 - he'll march them all up this hill, and march them all down again 12 hrs before the vote when his whips tell him he's going to lose his party's part of the vote come what may.

Forgive the foray into toilet use which I know gets rather too much attention sometimes but what does 'implementing the law' look like at, say, John Lewis? They have three types, signed Men, Women, Disabled. There is no additional wording relating to transgender and no policing on the door of what people's birth sex (or disability) is as they enter whichever one they decide is right for them. What (if anything) do JL need to change as a consequence of the Supreme Court clarifying what 'sex' in the Equality Act means? Do we know?

The disabled ones are sex neutral. Those who do not identify as their sex can use them.

Problem solved. Not rocket science.

I'm not really asking whether it's a problem. I'm just wondering what has changed (in this example) due to the SC ruling.

Eg is it that you now commit an offence if you use the 'wrong' toilets? Or is it this was always an offence but now it has to be policed and enforced?

I genuinely don't know, do you?

I do not believe it is an offence, but do believe it is the law. Some things are laws without being offences.

Eg planning regulations require non domestic properties to have single sex facilities or universal ones. Universal ones have different standards, requiring an individual wash basin behind the lock, whereas single sex ones can have communal wash basins.

Facilties can choose single sex or choose universal, AFAIK, but if they make it universal it needs to meet the requirements. If its single sex, well that means women-only in women's facilities.

I don't quite follow your 1st para. Isn't breaking the law always by definition an offence of some sort?

I suspect like me the minutiae and the politics of public lavatories just washed over you and you lost the will to live.

My only understanding of public conveniences is that the male versions all look like the aftermath of a H block dirty protest. No wonder ladies don't want a c*ck in a frock sharing their space.

Forgive the foray into toilet use which I know gets rather too much attention sometimes but what does 'implementing the law' look like at, say, John Lewis? They have three types, signed Men, Women, Disabled. There is no additional wording relating to transgender and no policing on the door of what people's birth sex (or disability) is as they enter whichever one they decide is right for them. What (if anything) do JL need to change as a consequence of the Supreme Court clarifying what 'sex' in the Equality Act means? Do we know?

John Lewis should hang a new sign – Stuff the Disabled; Anyone's Welcome. It is ironic that trans and terf activists are so ableist. In the old days you could unobtrusively tell men from women by whether they took a newspaper to read in the cubicle but it's all Smartphones now.

At a previous place of work a youngish lad took his phone into the lav and continued to read and scroll with one hand as he did his directional business with the other standing up at a urinal. He was definitely a bloke.

Multi-tasking? - are you sure?

With so much real politics going on, in both UK and US (and myriad countries inside the EU), and we’re discussing trans women, again?

Some people have a demented obsession with punishing already marginalised members of society.

Its not about that, FFS. Its about preventing men, who have had no surgery, no hormone treatment, claiming to be a woman, changing in a single sex space and allegedly asking women in that space why that aren't getting changed in front of him.

You may think it punishing trans people, but its actually about protecting the rights of half the species.

Yes but what about the ones who have had the surgery and the hormone treatment? The world is not binary and never has been. That is why athletics has for decades tested hormone levels, not cervixes. This is partly why the whole area is a mess.

As an aside, A Boy Named Mary has just lost the 4.10 race at Newcastle. It always pays to follow Cyclefree's tips in Safer Gambling Week! Boy Named Sioux runs in the 4.40.

The area is a mess because of the bad faith trans actors. There is an interesting theory about the rise of trans and social contagion.

As I understand it no cases have been brought against men who have had surgery and are actively on hormone treatment. Its always when men maskerade as women that causes issues.

As a rule lots of people who will happily disrobe in front of members of their own sex, do not like to do so in front of the opposite sex. A few months ago at my son's swimming one of the dads met a woman that he clearly knew, and for some unknown reason she came into the men's changing room for a chat. So the other six dads very carefully dried bits off, or chatted, or did anything else but drop our swimming trunks to get our tackle out. (She eventually realised).

Why should women have a man with a penis in tatty boxer shorts in their changing rooms simply because he says he is trans?

There are also bad faith people on the other side too, @turbotubbs.

My view is that you should -as much as possible- treat people as they wish to be treated, or not demonise other groups for having different views to us. If a friend of mine wished to identify as 'they' or 'she', I would obviously accede to their wishes and would hope other people would do, irrespective of their personal beliefs, because that is common human courtesy.

All too often people on the gender critical side of the debate drop into outright rudeness. Sure, you may believe that only biological sex exists, but that doesn't give you the right to be a dick (so to speak). I don't believe in God, but I wouldn't think for a moment about ridiculing another person't belief system.

I would never suggest otherwise. The outer edges of the debate are massively toxic on both sides, amplified and fuelled by likes on social media. In my personal life I have met several trans people and what they call themselves etc is their own affair. But we have reached this point because of some bad actors and then the system penalising those who complained (Peggie vs NHS Fife, Darlington nurses vs their employers). In both cases those complaining were the problem, not the man in the single sex space. The Darlington is egregious. A fully intact man, allegedly either trying to impregnate his partner or at least conserve the possibility of using his sperm to do so, wandering round the womens changing room in boxer shorts with holes in, asking women why they weren’t undressing in front of him. And the employers wanted to ‘educate’ the nurses…

A bit like Trumpmand the BBC, toilets has derailed this a bit on here. While toilets can be an issue, most (all?) women’s toilets are cubicles. The real problem is changing rooms, women’s refuges etc.

The reason women’s refuges are required is to protect women from men who have injured or assaulted them. No sane person or organisation should believe that biological men should ever be allowed in such refuges. We need to accept that all men are capable of predatory behaviour, and prevent their behaviour, especially against vulnerable women.

And yet, consistently the Scottish National Party and the current U.K. government argue differently. As does the fox killer, for it is he.

Both governments have been infiltrated by Stonewall to their and our detriment.

See also the BBC, not that the right thinking folk on PB are willing to accept it.

With so much real politics going on, in both UK and US (and myriad countries inside the EU), and we’re discussing trans women, again?

Some people have a demented obsession with punishing already marginalised members of society.

Its not about that, FFS. Its about preventing men, who have had no surgery, no hormone treatment, claiming to be a woman, changing in a single sex space and allegedly asking women in that space why that aren't getting changed in front of him.

You may think it punishing trans people, but its actually about protecting the rights of half the species.

Yes but what about the ones who have had the surgery and the hormone treatment? The world is not binary and never has been. That is why athletics has for decades tested hormone levels, not cervixes. This is partly why the whole area is a mess.

As an aside, A Boy Named Mary has just lost the 4.10 race at Newcastle. It always pays to follow Cyclefree's tips in Safer Gambling Week! Boy Named Sioux runs in the 4.40.

The area is a mess because of the bad faith trans actors. There is an interesting theory about the rise of trans and social contagion.

As I understand it no cases have been brought against men who have had surgery and are actively on hormone treatment. Its always when men maskerade as women that causes issues.

As a rule lots of people who will happily disrobe in front of members of their own sex, do not like to do so in front of the opposite sex. A few months ago at my son's swimming one of the dads met a woman that he clearly knew, and for some unknown reason she came into the men's changing room for a chat. So the other six dads very carefully dried bits off, or chatted, or did anything else but drop our swimming trunks to get our tackle out. (She eventually realised).

Why should women have a man with a penis in tatty boxer shorts in their changing rooms simply because he says he is trans?

There are also bad faith people on the other side too, @turbotubbs.

My view is that you should -as much as possible- treat people as they wish to be treated, or not demonise other groups for having different views to us. If a friend of mine wished to identify as 'they' or 'she', I would obviously accede to their wishes and would hope other people would do, irrespective of their personal beliefs, because that is common human courtesy.

All too often people on the gender critical side of the debate drop into outright rudeness. Sure, you may believe that only biological sex exists, but that doesn't give you the right to be a dick (so to speak). I don't believe in God, but I wouldn't think for a moment about ridiculing another person't belief system.

I would never suggest otherwise. The outer edges of the debate are massively toxic on both sides, amplified and fuelled by likes on social media. In my personal life I have met several trans people and what they call themselves etc is their own affair. But we have reached this point because of some bad actors and then the system penalising those who complained (Peggie vs NHS Fife, Darlington nurses vs their employers). In both cases those complaining were the problem, not the man in the single sex space. The Darlington is egregious. A fully intact man, allegedly either trying to impregnate his partner or at least conserve the possibility of using his sperm to do so, wandering round the womens changing room in boxer shorts with holes in, asking women why they weren’t undressing in front of him. And the employers wanted to ‘educate’ the nurses…

A bit like Trumpmand the BBC, toilets has derailed this a bit on here. While toilets can be an issue, most (all?) women’s toilets are cubicles. The real problem is changing rooms, women’s refuges etc.

The reason women’s refuges are required is to protect women from men who have injured or assaulted them. No sane person or organisation should believe that biological men should ever be allowed in such refuges. We need to accept that all men are capable of predatory behaviour, and prevent their behaviour, especially against vulnerable women.

And yet, consistently the Scottish National Party and the current U.K. government argue differently. As does the fox killer, for it is he.

Both governments have been infiltrated by Stonewall to their and our detriment.