HOW SHOULD HOSPITALITY VENUES TREAT TRANS PEOPLE?

Historically and currently, pubs, clubs and bars have been places that have welcomed a diverse range of people. In doing so, they have made adjustments to cope with a variety of different peoples’ needs. If we consider that the hospitality industry is more than just the licensed retail sector and includes hotels with spas, gyms and swimming pools, theme parks and leisure centres, then the vast scale of adjustments becomes apparent. Many of these adjustments are mandated by law, for example food safety and health and safety law; alcohol and entertainment licensing laws, are just three examples.

With the advent of new law in Scotland that supports self-ID for trans people, and the political furore created as a result of the UK government’s blocking of Royal Assent for this Bill, the issue of how hospitality venues should deal with trans people has become more prominent. Firstly, let’s look at the size of this minority. The national census produced information on the number of people in England and Wales who ticked the box identifying themselves as ‘trans men’ (48,000), ‘trans women’ (48,000) and ‘non-binary’ (36,000). The rest either didn’t specify or wrote in another gender. So, the number identifying as trans and non-binary in England and Wales is 126,000, or 0.21% of a population around 59 million.

Contrast this with the number of people who have peanut allergy. According to Allergy UK that is 1.76% of the population, or some 1,038,400 people. So, there are approximately eight times more people with peanut allergies than trans people. And this is not a comparison I make in order to trivialise the challenges faced by trans people - a person with a peanut allergy can die from anaphylactic shock if exposed to even tiny trace amounts of peanut in food products.

So, how has hospitality adjusted to the needs of people with peanut allergies – or food allergies more generally, which is a much larger number? The answer is new law and regulation and the provision of staff training around these issues has led to requirements in respect of the labelling of food products on packaging and menus, as well as staff training so customers are asked if they have any food allergies when taking an order. But what we haven’t done, either as an industry or more generally as a society, is reorganise our entire industry or society around the needs of people with allergies. What we have done is make a reasonable adjustment.

Trans activists campaigning for trans rights do seem to require us to reorganise the whole of society around the perceived needs of a very small minority. For example: the development of compelled speech, which has no precedent in English common law, such as the requirement to address someone by their preferred pronouns. The acceptance of ‘transwomen’ in spaces historically reserved for biological females – toilets, changing rooms, shower facilities, women’s prisons and refuges, women’s sports - are obvious examples. And the recent political uproar over the movement of a ‘transwoman’ - a biological male – into a women’s prison, despite his conviction for raping two women, illustrates how much institutional capture gender ideology has achieved on behalf of such a tiny minority of people.

So, how should those operating and managing hospitality venues deal with the practical questions arising out of the likelihood that these issues will increasingly manifest themselves in the public spaces we control? As a person who has held six alcohol licences and been involved in the operation of eight licensed premises, my starting position is that anyone who walks through the door with the intention of spending money in my business is offering me a compliment. And I’ve always been in favour of closing down the sales resistance department! That said, my welcome of a wide diversity of custom isn’t unconditional. I expect all customers to behave peacefully and in a civil manner towards others. And I have always segregated toilets by sex – Male and Female.

So, what about the access of ‘transwomen’ to female toilets – or for that matter, changing and shower facilities? My starting point is that ‘transwomen’ are not a subset of women, they are a subset of men. I don’t seek to deny access to female spaces just specifically for one subset of men but for all men. And why? Because sex segregation is how we ensure the dignity, privacy, safety and security of women and girls. We all grew up with this sex segregation at school. Everyone implicitly understood the reasons why. Only very recently has this been questioned.

Now, I accept that a ‘transwoman’ may genuinely believe he is a woman even though he is biologically male and retains full male genitalia. As a consequence, he may feel uncomfortable using the toilet or changing facilities reserved for his sex class. But females may also feel uncomfortable with the presence of a biological male in their spaces – regardless of whether he resembles a female stereotype. The reasonable adjustment that someone running a pub or bar can make is to rebadge the easy-access toilet as gender neutral, then no one is made to feel uncomfortable. The problem is that trans activists insist that “trans women are real women” when they are not. A woman is an adult human female, and no other definition makes any sense.

The UK Equality Act 2010 does not give trans people the absolute right to access so-called ‘cisgendered’ only spaces and services. In fact, it sets out many everyday situations where it is lawful to provide single sex services and spaces that exclude the opposite sex. These include circumstances where a person of one sex might “reasonably object” to the presence of a person of the opposite sex.  I refer you to the Equality Act 2010 – Schedule 3, paragraph 27 (6) and (7). This would certainly include toilets, changing rooms and shower facilities.

So, the key to this from a practical management point of view is to have a clear policy on the sex segregation of toilets and other female spaces; to provide alternative facilities for trans people where practicable, and to make clear that adherence to this policy is a condition of entry to the premises. 

I suspect that sooner rather then later a trans activist will deliberately seek to test the legality of 'transwomen' in female toilets or other facilities by finding a licensed premises that denies such access, and then testing it in the courts. This, I suspect, would go right up to the Supreme Court. This is why the big pub and bar operators will continue to virtue signal and avoid publishing a clear policy on this. It will be left to a brave, small operator to take this on.

Paul Chase