The Co-operative Group has removed a policy that explicitly allowed trans and non-binary staff to use gendered toilets where they felt “safest”, following new UK guidance on single-sex spaces.
The Co-operative Group has removed a policy that explicitly allowed trans and non-binary staff to use gendered toilets where they felt “safest”, following new UK guidance on single-sex spaces.
That’s a lot of nuance hidden by an upsetting headline.
While the Co-op may not be transphobic itself, single occupant gender-neutral bathrooms are a solution presented by transphobes who want to continue misgendering trans men and women under the veneer of a discriminatory ‘compromise’.
Trans people across the UK are having their rights marginalized.
How are gender-neutral bathrooms discriminatory? They seem to me to be the perfect solution.
Because requiring that trans people use them instead of the bathroom of the gender they identify as is still exclusionary and transphobic; it tells them that they do not belong to the gender they identify as and/or that they are a danger to cisgender individuals of that gender.
And if a site has no gendered bathrooms at all?
Then the UK law would require all such bathrooms to be single-occupant, something that may not be practical for large establishments where multiple patrons of each gender may need to use the bathrooms simultaneously.
The genderless, single-occupant bathrooms argument is a solution derived for a non-existent problem; transgender women are women and transgender men are men and instituting policy that disregards that is discriminatory.
It’s segregation unless you meet some nebulous criteria.
I’m not saying it’s good news, it’s just more mixed than you’d expect. Just criticising the headline.