Equality Act Was unusual in that it wrote down in detail all the single sex exceptions. Laws written in earlier times just took it as read that males couldn’t get into female spaces especially for girls
Aleardo Zanghellini is a Professor of Law and Social Theory at Reading University. He recently published an article in the Sage Open Journal on Philosophical Problems With the Gender-Critical Feminist Argument Against Trans Inclusion.
He does not define what he means by “trans inclusion”. But over the course of the article it becomes clear he does not mean general inclusion in employment, housing, healthcare, or in public life. Specifically he means inclusion of people who identify as trans in single sex services provided for members of the opposite sex: ““[t]oilets, changing rooms, girls’ youth organisations, hostels, and prisons” and so on.
The article is largely an extended diatribe targeting the public philosophy of Professor Kathleen Stock. Zanghelli also criticises ‘gender critical’ thinkers in general for publishing primarily on sites such as The Conversation and Medium. These platforms he says “offer us both the opportunity and the temptation to…
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Jun 02, 2020 @ 11:08:39
Yes you are right, single sex spaces pre-date the Equality Act and the sex discrimination act before it.
But once you generally outlaw sex discrimination, then you have to say when sex discrimination is allowed — single sex spaces don’t just exist, they exist because of rules and policies that discriminate (legitimately, where there is a good reason).
Before the Sex Discrimination Act you had pubs that wouldn’t serve women at the bar (and before that professions that barred women…), so you have to be able to say when its ok to discriminate based on sex and when it is not.
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Jun 02, 2020 @ 11:24:45
When American courts were trying to make sense of equal protection under the law, they developed a concept of suspect classifications. In some ways of classifying people are suspect because it was an immutable characteristic with a history of animus and so on. They admitted you had to make value judgements about what was and was not discrimination when you treat people differently.
There is nothing new about denial that blokes are bigger. To be frank, when women women were seeking to enter the military in combat roles, the arguments that men were bigger, stronger and more aggressive was simply dismissed.
An ex-military mate of mine pointed out what I found to be the best arguments against women in combat positions in the army, but not the navy or air force. He said that the experience of the Russian and Israeli armies is that no amount of military discipline can stop men seeking to take extraordinary risks to rescue wounded female soldiers stranded in the battlefield.
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