#ehrc

[bodhrancomedy]

[moo-the-monster]

its important to me that you guys know the EHRC DRAFT guidance isnt a law banning trans people from bathrooms. you know that right. not only is it a draft right now (meaning MPs have 40 days to raise issues -- write to your MP!!) but it is guidance. businesses do not have to ban trans people from their bathrooms. they also have to provide genuine justification for why a space needs to be single sex when new single sex spaces are created. transgender people are also still technically a 'protected group' under the EHRC code, as little as that might mean

the issue is of course that this makes spaces unsafe for trans people, as people are within their rights to claim that they are 'threatened' by transgender people in their spaces. it's still bad. but it is not a mandatory law and it is not illegal for transgender people to be in same sex spaces. telling people this is the case is frightening already vulnerable, mentally ill trans people, as well as emboldening transphobes to think they have the right to do a lot more than they do

[cptapathy]

Illustration: Ella Baron/The Guardian

Source

[purpleweredragon]

Scrap the Bathroom Ban

🚨This is urgent🚨 Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, has a decision to make. The EHRC, a regulator mired in contro

Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities, has a decision to make. The EHRC, a regulator mired in controversy over anti-trans views, has sent a new draft Code of Practice to our Equality Act which would lead to the exclusion of trans people from public life.

Their draft tried to turn our equality laws into a bathroom ban, mandating the blanket exclusion of trans people from gendered spaces and services. Even if a business or association wants to remain trans-inclusive, they’d be told they must exclude us.

The EHRC rushed through more than 50,000 responses to its consultation on this draft using AI, and have now sent their final proposals to the government. We don’t get to see their final draft until it’s been decided on behind closed doors, but media leaks and the EHRC’s own public statements make one thing clear: they haven’t changed course.

Act now. Ask your MP to urge the government to scrap the bathroom ban and demand any new Code of Practice ensures providers can lawfully include trans people in their services.

[windcarvedlyre]

The way the new EHRC guidance on the 2010 Equality Act (article about it here) speaks about trans men especially takes the cake for me; it's not only transphobic but deeply misogynistic if scrutinised for 5 seconds.

Specifically this:

13.145 If it is justified to provide a separate or single-sex service, then it will not be unlawful discrimination because of gender reassignment to prevent, limit or modify trans people’s access to the service for their own sex, as long as doing so is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim (schedule 3, paragraph 28).

13.146 For example, a trans man might be excluded from the women-only service if the service provider decides that, because he presents as a man, other service users could reasonably object to his presence, and excluding him is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. 

If it is otherwise policy that our assigned sex determines which single-sex spaces we have access to, regardless of our gender identity, and that anyone assigned female at birth should therefore be treated as a woman, then it follows from these points that a woman can be effectively stripped of access to women's spaces based purely on presentation. Either there is a threshold of masculinity in appearance over which a cis woman's entitlement to women's spaces can officially be objected to by others, or gender identity does matter but only in situations like this where it can be used to exclude people, and the latter would make the EHRC's stances even more incoherent and discriminatory.

The implications of this should be appalling even for TERFs.

[1thousandminus7]

Hey so the EHRC submitted their shitty ass trans exclusionary guidance to Parliament today.

If you're a Brit please consider writing to your MP and explaining why this is unenforceable in any way that preserves our dignity and privacy, and why it is going to unfairly impact gnc people, both cis and trans, with no measurable benefit to the safety of anyone.

I'd recommend giving the guidance and the consultation reports a read to ensure your points aren't redundant or incorrect.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/news/draft-services-code-practice-laid-parliament

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/

[dicketysplit]

‘just let trans people use the disabled toilets!’ because it’s not like anybody else actually needs to use the 0-1 accessible toilets available in any given venue, is it :))))))))

it’s not like suddenly sending anyone you suspect of being a ✨filthy tranny✨ over to the accessible toilets will make those toilets less accessible to people who actually need them :)))))))))))))

[jackalpants]

For business owners in the UK, the important part of the new (and extremely transphobic) EHRC advice is this:

13.179: There is no type of official record or document in the UK which provides reliable evidence of sex. [...] Therefore, it is unlikely to be proportionate or practical to ask for further evidence of a person’s sex.

This means that if someone comes up to you and says hey, there's a trans person using your loos, kick them out, you may have to ask the customer discreetly "hey, sorry, I got a complaint. Can you confirm you're using the right loo?" and if they say "Yeah I am" you are DONE.

That provides as much defence as you can get; you've asked, you got a confirmation, and after that point it is not your business. The customer can call the cops if they wanna make a big deal about it but if you go "hmm I don't believe you" and kick out a cis lady you'll be sued into fucking paste.

And I'm running a campaign to raise the chance of it being a cis person literally as high as I can get it, to be clear! Like, that's the stick, the Chaff Project and a high rate of false positives. Kicking someone out is a LEGAL RISK. Accepting the answer you're given is NOT.

That is all you need do.