Defenders of Single-Sex Spaces Should Avoid the "We Can Always Tell" Claim

The Girls' Spot Gym Debacle

(Audio version here)

There is currently a furore going on around the forthcoming women’s only gym, The Girls’ Spot, on social media. The owner of it, fitness influencer, Natalee Barnet, made a post in 2021 declaring it to be open to trans women and indicating that she felt criticism of this decision to be transphobic. She posted again earlier this month indicating that she had rethought this decision and explaining why she felt it important that the gym be for biological women only. She offered a refund to any of the small number of donors who could have contributed under the impression that it was open to trans women. She has since attracted significant support from gender critical feminists and significant criticism and abuse from trans activists.

In the debate going on around this, one particularly common challenge is being made which I think is a deflection and one defence is being made which I think is a mistake.

When gender critical feminists and others argue for the need for women’s single sex spaces, it is common for trans activists to respond to this with a demand to know how, precisely, such a rule would be enforced. Often, the challenge is accompanied by a facetious comment about the need for ‘genital inspections.’ Often, defenders respond to this challenge by asserting that people can always tell what sex somebody is. I think that response is an error both factually and tactically.

When a law, rule or policy is implemented, it is completely reasonable for people to inquire how it will be enforced and also to raise concerns about the practicality of enforcement. However, sometimes, and particularly in this scenario, the challenge is issued by people who want the rule not to exist at all and is used as a substitute for making an ethical argument for why it should not. It is particularly likely that someone is doing this if they are being facetious. People engaging seriously with the issue of effectively protecting single sex spaces typically speak of things like the need for a common form of ID that includes biological sex while people wishing to derail serious conversations and obstruct the goal of achieving that typically speak of things like genital inspections. The latter wish to imply that, because we cannot police single-sex spaces & categories with 100% percent accuracy in practice, the aim to have them is futile.

This is false. In reality, we frequently have to make rules that cannot be enforced in a fool-proof way and in a wide range of scenarios. For example, the rule, "No urinating in the swimming pool" could be responded to with "How are you going to stop people?" There are chemicals that can reveal someone doing this, but the rule more often indicates a code of conduct that people are expected to adhere to. We might think that such a notice should not be necessary, but it functions as a message that the pool owners are aware of such unpleasant behaviour and on the alert for this. This tends to increase pro-social behaviour in us social mammals (especially if it includes an image of eyes.) It also removes any benefit of the doubt from offenders!

Similarly, in my youth, pubs often had a "Singles Night" but they could not possibly check that attendees were, in fact, single. Nevertheless, by stating clearly who the night was for, it established an “honour code” and removed any plausible deniability from anybody who misrepresented their relationship status. There is an unambiguous intent to deceive when a married man (or woman) attends a Singles Night that cannot be explained away as just happening to have forgotten to put his wedding ring on or mention that he was married.

A very serious example of a law that is particularly hard to enforce is that which criminalised rape within marriage. I was aware, as a baby feminist, of the non-argument that went "How are you going to enforce that? Make people have video cameras in their bedroom?" This was a particularly ludicrous suggestion at the time because cameras were not easily concealable and few people owned one. It is now, at least, possible for the victim of any kind of domestic abuse to record evidence of this. This remains difficult, though, and without it, evidencing marital rape beyond a reasonable doubt remains very difficult. Nevertheless, the law was needed because it codified an important shift in moral and social expectations and gave women who could prove it a means of redress which, previously, they had not had.

Anybody engaging in deflection intended to imply that, if we cannot easily enforce a single sex rule with 100% accuracy, we cannot or should not have one, is best responded to by having their fallacious reasoning pointed out to them. Nevertheless, I often see people responding to a facetious, bad faith question about the enforceability of single sex spaces by engaging with it on its own terms as though it were a legitimate objection and not a deflection. This takes the form of claiming that this isn’t an issue because we can always tell what sex someone is. I think making this claim in defence of single sex spaces is a mistake for two reasons. It is not true and it is not an effective defence of single sex spaces.

It is not true because some trans women naturally have a smaller build including their hands and feet and do not have a particularly square jaw or observable Adam’s Apple. They may ‘pass’ convincingly enough for incidents in which unethical individuals have deceived straight men or lesbians into sexual activity to make the news and become the cause of discussion about whether this constitutes sexual assault. (I’d say “Yes.”) Some biological females can be suspected or assumed to be men. This may be because they naturally have a squarer jaw and larger build than is typical for women or because they favour a ‘butch’ aesthetic or because they identify as trans men and take testosterone. Perhaps the individuals claiming to always be able to tell really do have an enhanced sex-detector which can be relied on 100% of the time, but most people do not and we need to consider such issues as they affect most people.

It is not an effective defence of single sex spaces because it appears to accept the implication that a rule being difficult to enforce means that it should not exist or cannot exist in the first place by seemingly accepting the demand to prove that a rule can always be enforced reliably as a valid objection to its existence. If defenders of single sex spaces allow themselves to be pushed into indefensible positions like "We can always tell," they then become vulnerable to having that defence discredited by a single incident of not being able to tell. It is much better to say that, in the vast majority of cases, a person’s sex can be determined accurately by looking at them and that it is still worth having a single sex rule even in cases where it cannot.

I fear that The Girls’ Spot, having now drawn the wrath of trans activists (including death threats), may well be subjected to 'tests' of the claim that one can always accurately assess sex by activists who are passing trans women, passing trans men or whose sex is ambiguous. This is particularly worrying because if this happens as a form of activism, the individuals will not simply work out and leave without anybody being any the wiser, but will attempt to cause disruption, distress and even fear. Trans activists may not like that some women, for feminist reasons, religious reasons, experience of sexual trauma (such as that experienced by Natalee) or because they simply prefer to exercise among others of their own sex, want a single sex space, but they must allow private business owners to create one. This does not reduce the number of gyms already open to trans women, and there is quite clearly a demand for it.

I suspect that a few encounters with the kind of man who believes women at the gym want male attention even if they are not aware of it might well make Natalee’s gym seem appealing. Those who believe no women should want a single-sex gym need to argue their case with women who agree to discuss it with them, not try to prevent one from existing by intimidating the owner of it or stop it from functioning by gaining access to it and then intimidating the members. Threatening behaviour certainly does not help their case.

Nor do facetious demands to know how such a policy will be enforced that refer to ‘genital inspections’ help the cause of making women who want single-sex spaces more open to including trans women in them. This implies that it is inevitable that trans women will simply overrule the clearly stated boundaries of the female gym-owner and gym members and insert themselves into the space without the consent or even the knowledge of the women for whom it was created. This does a disservice to all the trans women who will do no such thing and will instead use a gym that is open to them. (It also strengthens the case for repealing the Gender Recognition Act, 2004).

Unfortunately, some individuals almost certainly will attempt to gain access, especially now the gym has become a target for trans activists. There will need to be a policy and the options are not, as is so often implied, "Be prepared to inspect gym members' genitals" or "Give up on having a single sex gym." Defenders of women’s single-sex spaces would do well not to argue in ways that implicitly accept the need to be able to tell an individual’s sex in 100% of cases in order to designate a space “single-sex”. A clearly stated rule about to whom the gym’s services are being offered has utility even if its existence cannot, in itself, eradicate the possibility of deception. Ultimately, as with my previous examples about peeing in swimming pools, misrepresenting relationship status & rape within marriage, the strength of having a rule for something that is not always easily enforceable is that it sets up a clear social expectation and there is a form of redress when that rule can be shown to be broken.

Having a rule and expecting people to honour it will only work with the honourable, of course, but there are more of those than we sometimes think when involved in online debates! Most people have no wish to disrespect sex-based boundaries either for predatory reasons or to make a political point. Most people who use a gym simply want to improve their fitness and would prefer to go to one that is open to them. Trans women in London who wish to use a women’s gym can easily find those designated as such which also state clearly that they are open to trans women, and don’t need them all to be open to trans women. (It would be entirely acceptable to have gyms only open to trans women too). Even those who think all women’s gyms should be open to trans women will only have a subset who are willing to be authoritarian activists or attempt deception over it.

By having a clear rule, The Girls’ Spot’s single-sex designation will be respected by the honourable, and the dishonourable will be revealed more clearly as such by lack of plausible deniability. In cases where the rule can be shown to have been broken, the existence of a clear policy is grounds for revoking that individual's membership and leaves them less space to claim to have been unfairly treated because they will have signed their understanding of and commitment to abiding by the membership rules.

Is this perfect? No. But if we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, we never achieve any good at all.