Published on Press For Change (http://www.pfc.org.

uk)

Why 'Women-Only' space must include trans women

PFC Briefing paper
May 1998

Press for Change is a political lobbying and educational organisation, which

campaigns to achieve equal civil rights and liberties for all transgendered
people in the U.K. through legislation and social change.

A transsexual is a person having the physical characteristics of one sex and the
psychological characteristics of the other. [New Oxford Dictionary 1992]

[Mission Statement 1995]

1.00 Extract from Press for Change Statement of Aims and Objectives:

4.00 The Press for Change campaign will work towards achieving…
4.01 The right (of trans people) to live in their proper gender role without
harassment, ridicule or discrimination.

2.00 Why do some owners of women-only space seek to exclude trans women?

Prejudice against transsexual people is usually founded on ignorance and/or

fear of a perceived threat.

2.01 It is understandable that many people remain ignorant of transsexualism.

People get mixed up between sex and gender, and think people are "changing"
sex out of some kind of lifestyle choice or other superficial reason, or that trans
people are "sick" or "perverted".

Obviously this level of prejudice is easily dealt with by providing proper

information and above all by just meeting or knowing someone who is “out” as
a transsexual person. This usually dispels any fears.

2.02 A more difficult issue to confront is prejudice which is based on the

understanding that if transsexual people are what we say we are — that is, if
trans women are really women and trans men really men — we represent a
threat to many of the deep-rooted assumptions on which our culture is
constructed, for example that there two sexes and everyone must belong to one
or the other, that sex and gender roles are purely cultural and boys and girls are
different only because socialised differently and that equal opportunities will
necessarily lead to equal representation.

Trans people themselves differ on the "nature v nurture" argument, but we do

know very well that sex, sexuality and gender are not necessarily congruent,
and we illustrate the mutability of all these "grey scales". We also illustrate that
the gender identity for any individual is innate and if strongly felt,
unchangeable, not acquired.

Therefore transsexual people have been viciously attacked by some so-called

feminist theorists (Janice Raymond being the most famous): transsexual
women are told that they are men who are parodying a stereotype of a woman;
transsexual men are told that they are betraying their lesbian sisters by not
being masculine women. These arguments would be laughable were it not that
they can lead — and have led — to extreme prejudice and to acts of violence,
never mind exclusion from community resources to which the rest of society
has access.

3.00 Exclusion is unrealistic

It is not possible to tell who is or is not a trans woman. Many trans women look
like born women, many born women present an ambivalent or masculine
appearance. Unless the individual chooses to reveal her status, no group can be
sure it does not include trans women.

It is difficult to construct a "test" by which an individual qualifies as a

"woman". Some women with female on their birth certificates have XY
chromosomes (owing to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or another intersex
condition), many women are unable to conceive, and a few women have "male"
on their birth certificates owing to having been reassigned during childhood.
Common sense says the only workable definition of a woman is a person who
so defines herself.

4.00 Exclusion may be illegal

4.01 The legal position following the case of "P v S and Cornwall County
Council" has yet to be resolved in a formal court judgement, but the indications
so far are that such a judgement would be likely to go in favour of the trans
person.

4.02 P was a transsexual woman who was offered promotion as a male, but was
dismissed when she told her employers of her intention to undergo gender
reassignment. Her case was brought to the European Court of Justice after an
Industrial Tribunal found it could not deal with the case under British law. The
case was supported by the Equal Opportunities Commission. On 30th April
1996 the Court of Justice found in favour of the plaintiff.

The Court found that there was a breach of the 1976 European Union Directive
on equal treatment, which guarantees men and women the same rights. The
Court heard that Article 5 precludes the dismissal of a transsexual person for
reasons related to gender reassignment and that the principle of equal treatment
for men and women means that there should be no discrimination whatsoever
on the grounds of sex. The judgement declares it illegal to discriminate in
employment against a person on the grounds of their wishing to undergo or
having undergone gender reassignment.

4.03 Whilst the judgement refers to employment, transsexual people have been
seeking to extend its implications. In one case, a trans woman who was
working as a voluntary prison visitor was granted £60,000 compensation when
the agency with which she worked tried to stop using her owing to her
transsexualism. In another, a trans woman was refused access to a women-only
college course, but the college backed down when threatened with a legal
challenge.

4.03 Given that owners of single sex space are generally obliged to admit one
sex or the other, a women-only space which excluded trans women would be
logically obliged to admit trans men!

5.00 Exclusion is unfair

5.01 Whilst the life experience of trans women may in general differ in some
respects from that of born women, there is such a range of experience amongst
all women that in any group of women brought together for social, leisure,
educational, work or other reasons, there will be some experiences common to
all and others unique to each member.

5.02 Trans women, whatever their history, live as women, and therefore face
the same discrimination, problems and issues as other women. They may have
had a particularly rough time and need the support of other women — some
extreme examples being womens’ refuges and rape crisis centres. They may be
particularly in need of the "safe space" provided by women-only facilities,
being generally perhaps more vulnerable to harassment and intimidation from
men.

6.00 Challenging Exclusion

6.01 A challenge is more likely to be successful and to enable everyone to feel

comfortable long term if it is based on building bridges, rather than
confrontation. On a preliminary level, it is important to educate the excluding
group or individual, and to put some of the arguments outlined above.

6.02With feminist or lesbian groups, an additional appeal can simply be: how
can you who believe in your own right to self-definition presume to tell me
who I am?

6.03 When all this falls on deaf ears, majority views can win the day: recently
at a Torquay swimming pool, where the manager tried to make a transsexual
woman change in a separate room, all the other women using the centre went
and changed in the room with her!

6.04 Finally, there are the courts, and the ground has been laid for a legal
challenge.

Source URL:
http://www.pfc.org.uk/gender/why-women-only-space-must-include-trans-
women