As the owner of a busy licensed premises I wish there was more clarity on the provision of single-sex facilities. Licensing rules require that pubs provide toilets, and for years having male and female toilets was straightforward and understood by staff and customers alike. 

Pubs are sociable and lively places but they need to be run on clear guidance. One of the main objectives for licence approval is to maintain public safety. Customers need guidance as much as operators do.

It is not difficult to foresee how confusion between sex and gender identity raises issues in the hospitality trade. If a woman complains to staff that a man is in the women’s toilet then that situation can be dealt with appropriately with the legal knowledge that those facilities are for the exclusive use of women. However, if that individual declares they are not a man, whether a transwoman or non-binary, irrespective of how they present themselves, then what is the protocol for staff? What is the actual legal situation? 

Attempting to implement a policy which is not recognised or known by the general public could have disastrous consequences for any licensed premises, in terms of conflict between customers, legal liability and social media fallout. 

Many pubs seem to be already excusing themselves from having to deal with the potential conflict by making toilets “gender neutral”. In some this just involves taking away the signs on the door and replacing them with statements about what facilities they can find inside – cubicles or urinals. Is that even legal? it doesn’t appear to have come from any clear legislation. Do people prefer it? 

I think going unisex or “gender neutral” is a terrible proposition. I’ve seen them in practice and no one benefits, particularly women. 

My pub is small and in an older building. We have women’s and men’s toilets but no space for disabled or unisex toilets. We have very little trouble from our customers and incidents are few and far between but we have no official policy beyond the common understanding and historical norm of separation by sex. At the moment it feels like we are all fudging it with our fingers crossed that nothing bad happens.

I have considered getting clarification on how to deal with the issue if there is a conflict, but the only source of advice available was from pro-trans groups, effectively activist lobby groups. The buck should stop with government, but they have been among the most enthusiastic about transferring policy to lobbyists as opposed to taking hard decisions themselves. 

From a business point of view I yearn for clear rules and guidance from the government. The current confusion potentially allows for malicious behaviour. As it stands, any man could say “I’m non binary”. We don’t have a policy because we don’t know what the rules are any more.

The post Sex matters in the hospitality industry appeared first on Sex Matters.

What prompted me to write on this subject was the Scottish Parliament passing a law that enabled anyone to change their legal sex by self-declaration after living for three months in their preferred gender, and without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

This has obvious relevance for operators of hospitality and leisure venues dealing with trans customers, particularly trans women, demanding access to women’s spaces such as female toilets, changing rooms and shower facilities.

I’m not qualified to give detailed legal advice on these issues, so my article concentrated on the sexual politics of the transgender issue and iterated 10 trans myths and the antidotes to them. Pointing out that sex is binary, not a spectrum; that human beings cannot change their sex by any combination of chemistry or surgery; that “intersex” is not a third sex; and that a woman is an adult human female – all seemed to me to be simple facts that no one with a rational mind questioned until about five minutes ago.

But transgender ideology is not a rational creed and the responses to my article were swift, outraged, and hysterical.

Prior to its publication I discussed the article with Propel’s publisher, Paul Charity, who is a veteran journalist and former editor of a licensed trade paper, the Morning Advertiser. We both anticipated that the article would generate more than the usual volume of comments, and Paul joked that he would need to do an audit of his stock of tin hats.

The column was published online on Propel Opinion at 11am on 6th January and 18 minutes later Paul received his first email response. It was from a director of a pub-operating company and was favourable, describing it as a “brilliant piece”. The responses then came thick and fast – some favourable, congratulating Paul and me on having the courage to tackle such a difficult and toxic issue. But then the Gender Borg kicked in and the shrieks of hysteria began.

I won’t identify any of the complainers, but here is a flavour of some of the responses: the first was from a woman who works for a temperance organisation and who complained: “Why do you allow someone with such right-wing views to have a column every week and never offer any diversity or alternative view?”

Then we had a variety of responses via email and twitter that took aim at me personally – describing me as right-wing, transphobic, hate-filled, bigoted, ignorant, misinformed, small-minded and unqualified to comment. A repeated theme was my age – I’m 73 – and one reader suggested I had deliberately set out to offend and upset people, called me a “horrid old man” and advised me to take a long, hard look at myself and spend “a long stint in the corner staring at the wall.” So, off to the Naughty Step then.

The best ageist comment of all was from a woman who accused me of being a “misinformed, geriatric white man”. If someone who was young and black had written this article, can you imagine her describing him as a “misinformed, paediatric black man”? No, of course not. It seems ageism is the only prejudice to retain respectability and all you have to do is shout “Boomer!” at someone and you can dismiss their point of view without the inconvenience of intellectually engaging with it.

Indeed, all of the critics limited their remarks to personal attacks on me and not one of them engaged with the substance of the article. Another recurring theme of the responses was their interpretation of my criticism of transgender ideology as an expression of hatred for transgender people. If you criticise gender ideology ergo you hate trans people and want to deny their right to existence in the world. This is a device that enables the Gender Borg to avoid the need for debate at the level of ideas by dismissing them as hateful attacks on a marginalised group. Since I came out as a gay man 52 years ago I have known many trans people and have nothing but empathy for the position they are in. My objection is to a belief system that takes gender dysphoria out of the clinical context and into the social-justice context. This involves making the rest of society conform to compelled speech – pronouns – and requires us to collude with the delusional architecture of gender-dysphoric people and push them down a lifelong and irreversible surgical and medical path.

At first, when the responses came pouring in, Paul Charity defended my article, stating that Propel Opinion is a free-speech platform and that if anyone disagreed with my opinion, they could write a rebuttal piece.

But then some of Paul’s big corporate sponsors threatened to withdraw support and a number of speakers withdrew from an upcoming conference he is organising. Paul felt under siege and that his business faced an existential threat.

He was advised he needed a sacrificial lamb and so just before 5.30pm – six and a half hours after he published my article – Paul caved in, bent the knee to the Gender Borg and threw me under the bus. He published an open letter to all his subscribers apologising for the anger and upset the article had caused and stating that he was parting company with me as a columnist. Last Friday’s Propel Opinion has now been taken down in its entirety. I’ve been cancelled! The only way those opposed to the publication of my views could get at me was through Paul Charity, and the vulnerability of his business to corporate censorship. That is how cancel culture works.

For those who wonder why I wrote this article, I should explain that I came out as a gay man 52 years ago when public attitudes to same-sex relationships were very different to what they are today. I am appalled at the way in which gay history is being erased by a pernicious, anti-gay, misogynistic gender ideology that brooks no dissent; that won’t engage in debate but seeks only to censor and cancel.

I won’t be silenced.

The post Beware the Gender Borg: a cautionary tale appeared first on Sex Matters.