Australia’s Mona asked a court to reverse its ruling that allowed men inside a women’s only space.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/oHT6U
The problem I see is bigots using that as cover for their bigotry. “Sorry, this golf club is a safe space for people triggered by black people and women.”
The government would have to decide that the discrimination we like is ok, but the discrimination we don’t like isn’t. Which has incredible potential for abuse when the wrong people end up in charge.
Here’s my problem with that (reasonable) viewpoint.
I think there is a fairly reasonable distinction that could be made between those two scenarios such that it should not be difficult to write the related laws in a way that handles both circumstances appropriately. You can phrase it as “the discrimination we like vs the discrimination we don’t like” but I think that’s overly reductive.
No one using this example (and there are a few) finds it hard to see the difference between a safe space for women and a club for bigots. If we can perceive that distinction, we can describe it with words, and we can legislate accordingly.
Otherwise, we’re deciding not to let people who need them have safe spaces because assholes might take advantage of our permissiveness. I’m not OK with that.
I mean give it a go. Yeah, it’s easy to distinguish in a common sense sort of way. It’s very much not an easy problem to solve in coherent legal wording, or it would’ve been already.
I agree that discrimination against vulnerable populations should absolutely not be ok, and women especially should have safe spaces to escape abusers even if it’s difficult to make a legal argument.
Anyway, that’s going to have to suffice for my argument, my daughter needs my attention more than lemmy😅