December 19, 2024 - 1:00pm
The Government has quietly broken another promise it made to women. Not the Waspi cohort this time, although that was bad enough. Now Anneliese Dodds, the laughably-titled Minister for Women and Equalities, has given a pat on the head to men who want to use women-only spaces. The announcement was sneaked out in a dry statement from the Government’s Office for Equality and Opportunity earlier this week, and amounts to nothing less than the acceptance of an informal policy of self-ID in shops, gyms and refuges.
The change is buried in a report on the way organisations interpret the single-sex exception in the 2010 Equality Act. Earlier this year Dodds’s predecessor as women’s minister, Kemi Badenoch, launched a call for evidence to discover whether public and private bodies were wrongly suggesting that people have a legal right to access single-sex spaces on the basis of self-ID. Badenoch takes a robust line on men who want to invade women-only spaces, but the responses have fallen into the hands of a government much more open to the unrelenting demands of trans activists.
According to Dodds, the replies indicate that some organisations are operating a policy of allowing men to access single-sex spaces which “correspond with their self-identified gender”. But, she argues that this is not a breach of the law so long as they don’t “incorrectly suggest that this is mandated by the Act”. Companies can allow men into women-only toilets and changing rooms, in other words, as long as they claim it’s their own policy and not based on the act.
It’s self-ID by the back door, as Sex Matters was quick to point out. “It’s a green light to any man who wants to get naked in front of women, in spaces that are supposed to be women-only,” the organisation declared on X yesterday. Dr Michael Foran, a leading expert on equality law, thinks it may not even be legal. “Important development on the govs [sic] position on single-sex services, suggesting it is lawful to operate a single-sex service on a mixed-sex basis determined by Self-ID,” he wrote online. “I don’t think this is correct,” he added with admirable restraint, pointing out that it might amount to indirect discrimination or harassment.
It certainly appears to break Labour’s manifesto commitment to uphold single-sex spaces. It also contradicts Keir Starmer’s insistence, during the general election campaign, that it’s “very important” to protect them. Does his government care? Not likely. Labour’s eagerness to suck up to Stonewall and PinkNews in Opposition hardly suggested the party could be trusted with women’s rights.
Even Labour’s most disillusioned supporters, however, did not expect so many announcements penalising women within months of the election. This week the Waspi women affected by changes in the state pension age, who were promised “fair and fast” compensation by Starmer when he was leader of the Opposition, were rewarded with a slap in the face. At least half a dozen members of his current Cabinet made similar pledges, which they’re now content to ignore.
Labour used to be the party of equality. Now, it’s notorious for a series of broken promises. Starmer’s own problem with women has long been evident, but this latest in a series of betrayals suggests his government is happy to treat them with contempt too.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeThey are a sad shower of a political party. They are closest in spirit to Trudeau’s rabble where there are murmurings that his party may become extinct like the Canadian conservatives once did.
I actually think that in the UK this is more likely of Labour than the Tories. The Conservatives can reinvent themselves but Labour risk being completely discredited by British culture aside from their trade union funders.
I’m not sure what the tories can ‘re-invent’ themselves into at the moment. If they go left to recapture the seats the Lib Dems got last election they’ll lose even more support on the right to reform, likewise they go right and lose yet more support to LD on the left of the party. I could be wrong but it seems they are caught in a bind between two sides and don’t know which way to turn.
Labour have broken their promises to everyone and everything as is their wont. The disheartening truth is that they’re just continuing on from 14 years of betrayal and lies from the Tories, and from Blair and co before that.
Although Reform have done little yet to convince me they have the means and competence to turn the ship around they simply cannot be worse than the saboteurs and traitors who have destroyed the UK over the past 30 years.
Hopefully the Waspi women will get their compensation. Sounds like they were very badly treated. Maybe men will be allowed to identify as women and get compensation too.
Should swathes of women really be compensated for not having – or pretending to have not – read a newspaper, watched the news, planned their retirement for an entire period of twenty years. Do people trading in their righteous views on equality for geld deserve anything ?
I just found out that I won’t get my (mens) pension until I’m 67 instead of at age 65. I definitely didn’t get a letter telling me about the change, so please can I have the missing money + some compensation for the shock ?
There are very few who could possibly be entitled to any compensation. The ones who were moved from the original dates, which were broadcast far and wide on every medium, could say they should have been notified sooner when the goalposts moved for the second time. However, anyone who was half awake would have been wise to keep their ears and eyes open when the goalposts were moved the first time. I just snuck in under the radar and got my pension at 60, only to find those retiring later have had a much larger pension awarded which gets much bigger proportionately with every % increase. Soon these Waspis who have been apparently so hard done by will be receiving a pension twice that of the “lucky” ones who retired at 60. The government righted one wrong by creating another.
Did anyone really believe Labour on this issue? Unlike the WASPIs who were shamelessly courted and lied to (but I still believe shouldn’t be compensated) if there was a single woman who took Starmer at his word on allowing single-sex spaces then they are fools and deserve it.
It’s a bit harsh to say ‘they are fools and deserve it’. I do think they should have been less trusting, but when you have a face-to-face with your MP, or a shadow minister if you’re a women’s rights or gay rights charity, and they look you in the eye and guarantee it and even put it in the manifesto, it’s a little difficult to call them liars before the fact.
The second point is a fair one but look at all they have said before the election cycle got going. They haven’t said “We were wrong on trans, sorry.” This is the difference between conviction and convenience. I hated Corbyn’s policies, but at least I believed he would do what he said – the Brexit vote being the exception. Starmer got in as an empty vessel, just Tory bashing, and it worked. Why would they do anything else if the electorate is going to reward them with a stonking majority? This is what the Conservatives and other parties like the Greens and Reform warned people about pre-election. Look at the Lib Dems; even worse than Labour and it got them their highest seat total. The electorate were not taken for fools, it was there in plain sight and they thought they would give the Tories a kicking rather than about the country’s future. Fools is too kind a word.
It’s bad, I agree. But here’s another take on this. Companies wishing to cave on the issue can no longer hide behind “we can’t do anything about it, guv, it’s the law”. They will now have to justify themselves when challenged (challenges which will surely come). This means they have to decide whether explicitly to align themselves with genderism at a time when it’s becoming less fashionable and less cost-free.
After the hysterical tone of the article your comment was a bit of good common sense. Thank you.
Companies are not being forced to toe any kind of line. What the author objects to is them not being forced to toe her line.
In formulating their own policy, companies could easily consult with employees and/or customers to see what their preferences would actually be. Or even seek out innovative ways to avoid conflict.
Ah, the “hysterical tone” putdown perfectly reveals the line you prefer.
Hysterical. Used by a man against a woman talking about women’s rights. You should have gone the whole hog and asked if it’s her time of the month. Presumably you’d be OK with companies denying access to black people if they’re not forced to toe the line – otherwise known as abiding by the law. The EA protects rights according to sex as well as gender identity so companies are, indeed, compelled to protect women no matter how this far left ideologue tries to squirrel out of her devotion to minorities over all others by pretending that as long as a company makes clear it’s, er, not following the law everything’s tickety-boo.
I am never not horrified by you people. Like I horrified with peadophiles, domestic abusers, animal abusers, an all other psychopaths, sociopaths, and NPD types.
The callousness, driven by the twin impulses of your internal sense of absolute superiority and ideological purity, and your dehumanization and hatred of all who disagree and have to suffer the consequences of your mentally ill inability to think freely and examine both sides, is just the same.
You’re perfectly able to completely discount the feelings, experiences, and the humanity itself of the people that have to live with the infliction of your beliefs and deal with the disastrous consequences.
Make no mistake, being humble and willing to look at your own views, and reconsider or modify them if they turn out to be causing serious harm, is the easiest, most straightforward thing in the world.
However it’s a trait virtually no full-on Leftist has. Their ideological zeal could not possibly be in need of correction. How could it when it’s something they believe, and they already know they’re superior morally and intellectually to the ‘Right’? And so they actively mock, dismiss, abuse, belittle and ridicule anyone who dares to point out the victims that are being create due to their abhorrent narcissism.
‘Hysterical’? Right. Thousands of cases already of men going into women’s dressing rooms to watch them and their children, flopping their dicks out, and then screaming discrimination if called out. Just because they’ve put on a wig and women’s underwear and they know that a certain groups of Left-wing mentalists have enforced, via fear tactics, a certain zeitgeist that paints anyone who dares oppose their antics as ‘transphobic’.
The mitigating factor that you’re pushing for trans rights out of decency would be somewhat compelling if it wasn’t for the fact you people are invariably the most unpleasant, disgusting, arrogant, and obnoxious bigots in society. You champion causes like a psychopath child molestor like Jimmy Savile puts on charity events. It’s a way to convince people you have compassion for others, but it’s empty and self-serving only in most cases. It’s just a compulsion, like Owen Jones, to constantly feel like your more humane and moral than others, and making damn sure everyone knows that. While at the same time having an out-group you can project every ounce of unhappiness, resentment, and hatred you have onto.
I wish you’d all just disappear. You’re dangerous and deeply destructive. Not rational, reasonable, sane, and balanced at all. You’re whole Marxist schema is pathological unhinged and designed to tear down everything that made society great.
John Lewis, amongst other businesses, has recently imposed mixed sex changing facilities for female staff and customers. As a woman who has worked and shopped at both John Lewis and Waitrose, I don’t recall being asked for my opinion, and women I know who currently work for the business weren’t asked either. ‘Companies could easily consult employees and customers’? Don’t make me laugh.
“As a woman who has worked and shopped at both John Lewis and Waitrose, I don’t recall being asked for my opinion”
Yes you did. When women like you demanded “equality ” – not equal opportunities, but “equality” as in women are exactly the same as men, which is why John Lewis will be hauled over the coals if they had a gender “pay gap” or fewer women directors.
Turns out that sort of make believe equality turns up where its not convenient for women, such as your toilets.
“women like you”!! We ask for equity which is completely different to equality, you silly wee man. Equity levels the playing field and gives women the same opportunities as the other 49% of the human population. It doesn’t mean that men should have access to the spaces we fought long and hard to get to keep us safe. Decent men stay out of these spaces because they know bad men don’t have forehead tattoos to identify them as bad men. You might need to think about getting your forehead tattoo’ed!!
‘Innovative ways to avoid conflict’? Sounds very devious to me.
Also, the idea that companies will consult their employees and customers is laughable.
Policies will be developed and implemented, and any subsequent complaints will be ignored by organisations who have already sold our to the ideology.
This is a cop-out by another female minister pandering to lobby groups at the expense of women.
Exactly, but what about public places used by a variety of people and organisations? Village halls, for example, could decide only its employees can decide who uses which toilet facilities, and the users have to like it or lump it. What if a dance group with small girls was using a hall and a man decides he wants to use the ladies facilities, there could be safeguarding issues.
Indeed.I think there’s a case where a man has been playing cricket against 12-year-old girls because, presumably, he says he’s a 12-year-old girl. He’s injured several people yet the ECB is content to let this happen. Like you, I have concerns around safeguarding. I hope he uses separate changing facilities, but who knows? After all, we’re always told that transpeople are the most vulnerable, etc.
I contacted a popular national cinema chain recently to query what they meant by ‘LGBTQ-friendly’ on their website? Would my nieces have to potentially share a toilet with a man? Yes, they said, basically, and asked if I required a refund. (I hadn’t yet bought tickets and we decided to not go to their cinema.) The legal challenges argument is all very well, but Labour also made a manifesto promise to tackle violence against women and girls; challenging the policy of companies like this after an assault has taken place is no use to girls like my nieces and will increase the likelihood of, rather than do anything to reduce, violence against them. Labour has effectively lied its way into power and is now betraying many of those it guaranteed to support.
I went to the Castle Cinema in London. Glorious interior, dedicated to the love of film. Mixed sex lavs. So in an interval there are men taking up the ladies’ spaces. Emailed to complain. Didn’t even bother with a response and was also removed from the mailing list.
That sounds about right. Expect to see more of this in future.
When I wrote ‘challenges’ I didn’t mean specifically legal challenges. I meant, for example, media (and social media) naming and shaming where in response organisations can no longer hide behind the law.
This is a really good point. I would like to learn more of the detail however.
Any organisations/companies which develop policies detrimental to women’s spaces can then be named and shamed, as they should be.
If I self-ID as a member of Parliament, can I have all the benefits that MPs are entitled to? Including subsidised dining?
And boozing. Don’t forget the booze
And claim it back as a work expense
That could explain labour’s decisions, they aren’t simply drunk on power, and their feeling of self righteous superiority, they are also drunk
In Switzerland they put issues of this kind to the public in the form of a referendum. It’s a shame we don’t do this more in the U.K.
Because your authorities are afraid of the result. For the same reason, Macron introduced the right to abortion into the French constitution not through a referendum, but through a roundabout way available in the French legal system. Generally speaking, the presence of the right to abortion in the constitution is the most blatant attack on Western tradition.
.
PS. I will say right away that I am not a fanatic and not a supporter of prohibitive measures. It is just that the abortion issue is not the constitutional issue. Many people find this difficult to understand, but try to think about it more carefully.
They(the government) don’t like it when the public gives the answers it doesn’t want. Brexit for example, Cameron flounced off in a huff, and the rest of the conservatives made a half assed job, but not to worry, by the time Two Tier has finished selling Britain out, it will be back under the heel of Brussels, and Tony Blair can apply for the EU presidency
Labour believes in two tier equality.
Labour Keir style believes in nothing.
He believes in Marxist, and quite possibly Islam
The men who are keen to access female only spaces are the last men that should be allowed to access female spaces.
No men should be allowed but most of us understand that women have a right to privacy and space away from many. The men that think this is unreasonable are weird.
1960. What would people do then?
Do it now. Offended? Good. 1960.
Crazy.
Author doesn’t mention the case currently being heard in the UK Supreme ct which is considering the definition of a woman. Exactly when the judgment expected I’m not sure but one assumes in the new year. Obviously the Government will be aware of this and is probably waiting to see the Ruling.
I’m sure those interested won’t miss it as likely to be a major story when it concludes.
Everyone knows about it; it’s not news. Nor relevant to what Labour’s just done.
Labour breaking a promise? Sneaking something in through the back door?
Surely not.
The statement, while disappointing, contains in it the important concession that the Equality Act does not mandate that services must be mixed sex based on self-ID. This will make it easier to ask why companies persist w a self-ID policy. Michael Foran may also be correct that it is unlawful, as the EA does mandate single sex services. If an individual cannot change their sex based on self-ID & has no Gender Recognition Certificate there is no lawful basis for them to access a single sex service for the opposite sex. The outcome of the For Women Supreme Court case will influence this, but only in cases where a GRC is involved.
The assumption that it is OK if the man has a piece of paper saying he is a woman or has had bits cut off or added to his body does not make him a woman. All the laws in the world will not make him so.
I hope the For Women case succeeds & it is confirmed that the definition of a woman for Equality Act purposes is biological, & not determined by possession of a Gender Recognition Certificate. But the case was brought because a previous judge ruled GRCs do change sex for all purposes not specifically exempted in the original Gender Recognition Act, so the law at present is uncertain.
“It’s a green light to any man who wants to get naked in front of women, in spaces that are supposed to be women-only,” And at least as importantly, any man who wants to see women get undressed in front of him! Remember that guy who’s invaded the nurses’ changing room at a hospital, hanging about asking hesitant women if they were going to start changing yet.
Never seen so many manifesto promises broken so blatently and with such speed. This degree of cynicism is going to reorient politics – it has consequences. By 2032 we will have passed through the 4th turning into a different political and monetary system. Given recency bias events preceding the rubicon leap (with or without violence) matter.
Another trip to court for campaigners is required. Shameful.