International Women's Day - Speak to your MP

Working links, I hope.

resistersunited.org/visit-your-mp-for-international-womens-day/

www.theyworkforyou.com

Today is International Women's Day.
I will be meeting with my MP to ask him to write to Penny Mordaunt, Minister for Women & Equalities, asking for clear Government guidance on how the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act 2010 should be used.

I always have this excuse (I am identifying as a women today) ready when having to quickly visit the Ladies.

Thank you for the links and I'll certainly be doing as you suggest.

On an equalities but not single-sex note I was shocked to read in the paper this morning that women are overlooked in other important ways - one being dummies used in simulating car crashes for testing purposes are always built to a male anatomy, female internal organs being obvs rather different, and some new drugs being calculated for strength / reactions etc only for a 'standard' male body.
Publication of this report may have been linked to International Women's Day, I didn't notice, but with all respect to the OP, just at this moment I would rather my MP was concentrating on other matters.

As my MP calls his assistant 'Sugar Tits' I somehow don't think it would have much effect..!! ???

Last week I needed the loo but the ladies was out of order and closed. So I went in the mens with my husband standing outside. Told him to tell anyone I was a man today. Hate this sharing space stuff.

Ah well, it's not that long ago we were saying "We have to keep our children safe - keep Blacks out of our washrooms". Perhaps we can regress that far in this group.

I'm sure some of you know the effects of this sort of protest. There have been a number of cases of bouncers committing indecent assaults on women who "Didn't look female enough". Is that the agenda of older women? Many of us aren't so pretty any more.

SueDoku - You may have Mark Garnier who as the Brexit Minister called his assistant ‘sugar tits’ and sent her to buy sex toys - but other people have Andrew Griffiths who as a minister made sexual demands over a series of 2,000 texts sent to two barmaids!
Don't think HE will be worth a visit either.

I am more than happy to support anyone who feels they were born in the wrong gender. However, we also have to feel safe, and I am sorry MaryXYX, but this ambiguity can and does cause problems. I am not sure of the answer. Perhaps 3 loos etc in future. Male/Female/GN? It isn't the loos that are really the problem, it is other areas where women are now feeling unsafe. It is wrong to belittle that fear.

I don't think it's ambiguity that's an issue. Maybe, knickas63 it's a fear of the unknown?

www.grrlalex.co.uk/what-is-transgender/

Here is a picture of Alex Drummond, who is an advisor to Stonewall.
Should we happily accept people who look like Alex, as being women.
And if we do, what about people claiming to be women, who look like Alex and haven't bothered to put on a skirt and a necklace?

Now this is the kind of woman I would have liked to be:
www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12131326&fbclid=IwAR32uzegpduKGOksqZXHltmkUKdLYwiPFDD_39ZloGtxBhp6bkQyDOw_abo

Here's a picture Of Harnaarm Kaur the youngest woman to ever grow a full beard, she's in the Guiness Book of Records. You see you can't just judge by appearance
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37305050
On International Women's Day let's contact our MPs about Period Poverty and the young women who are missing school because their families can't afford tampons, or about the families who use foodbanks, because more women are suffering from the use of zero hours contracts. OR about the woman who committed suicide when her benefits were stopped and the inquest blamed staff who acted in breach of the guidelines www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5572663/DWP-investigated-suicide-mother-nine-benefits-stopped.html

This 'sort of' came up in a thread about something else a week or so ago when a poster mentioned school toilets are now unisex. I had no idea. Am planning to ask my GD's when I see them. I did mention on the thread if anyone knows why but no one responded. Is it due to the problems of transgender pupils and not having the facilities to provide loos for every kind of person? So bung 'em all in together to save the cost of providing different rooms. I am not sure how the boys use urinals? And I think it's awful when the girls have their period or need a bowel movement. Knowing boys may be sniggering in the next cubicle.

Re grown ups, yes, what happens mid transition when you have taken the drugs, haven't got the beard, but still have a penis? Go into a female changing room where there could be children also? Someone I know, who is TV said he has heard of cases where prisoners have claimed to be women, moved to a womens' prison, then raped.

What a complicated society we now live in but I'm not sure how lobbying my MP can solve the problem of 'safe spaces' when I can't myself figure out what the answer is quite frankly.

Blimey Fennel remind me not to upset you

I can't bear mixed sex toilets, they smell as bad as the gents do, have wet stinky floors, the seat often left up and then I have to touch it to put it down, a lot of young people say there is no problem with it, but they probably have never had the luxury of a nice clean wash room just for women.

Unisex toilets I HATE ,simply because men dont aim properly,and we sitting with our trousers down and them ending up in a "pool" is disgusting, sometimes Diabetics have used the toilet and the "pool" is "sticky" besides.I am happier to wait until I find a female toilet thank you.
I am ready to be hanged by GNs now.

I've been in some pretty foul women's toilets and the only time I've used a gents (at a motor way service station) it was perfectly clean.

fennel is it the executions or seducing which appeal to you ?

Neither - as a little girl I hated the Nazis. They took my dear Dad away for 4 years. b'h he returned, not like many other Dads.
I admire that lady and her sisters, just hope there wasn't retribution for what they did.

ps I should have said the execution.

fennel I wasn’t mocking you, she was a remarkable woman, thank you for the link

Brilliant news on International Women's Day.
We have just secured the first conviction on a woman who performed FGM on her daughter.
Perhaps we're taking it seriously now.