Is anyone judicially reviewing this stuff?

I'm in. Whatever I can offer I will bring. I have filled out that almost impenetrable GRA consultation, which is biased towards the trans agenda, and I refuse to stay silent. I am writing to my MP, to the editor of every national newspaper in the land, and to anyone else I can think of. I have a pen, and I'm not afraid to use it.

I would also contribute to legal expenses etc. Does anyone know the procedure for trying to reach Karen White's victims in the female prison to bring charges? Or would another angle work better?

I really think a legal challenge needs to happen. Could a legal challenge happen where a victim is forced to use a pronoun which doesn't reflect biological sex of attacker in court? Because isn't coercive control now illegal in law, and that is coercive control at an institutional level? As I said before I would very happily donate to legal expenses.

I would also give to crowd funder

Basically- it's a way to erase all past transgressions/ crimes.

Don't deadname, Susan (no idea if that's her/its new chosen name) by reminding anyone she is actually Ian Huntley, that's a HATE CRIME!

Surely these policies are SCREAMING out to be legally challenged? The crime stats thing has just been making me furious. More and more furious.

How is Teli constituted? It has sponsors but doesn't seem to have directors or trustees.
I really don't know much about the ways that different groups, organisations and funds can be constituted. It just concerns me that compared to, say, FPFW, this idea could involve quite big money. It would need a fund ready and waiting, and then could incur costs later if a case was lost, so there would need to be accountability and people who are responsible.

Anyway this is a complete derail of this thread, but my googling on this came up with a debate in the commons in 2017. Penny Maudant welcomes the consultation on the GRA to include removing the medical diagnosis etc., but also introduced a new bill to make it possible for trans people to apply to companies house to withhold their former name. That is, at the same time making it easy for any old crook to get a GRC and making it possible for that to cover up your crooked past.
Margot James argued against but ends saying "Transparency will remain a high priority for the register of companies, but we must consider her arguments and I will consider what she asked for as part of our review." Not sure which review she's referring to.

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2017-11-20/debates/45F8123F-2D20-4B15-9EEC-322D320C866F/CompaniesHouseAndTransgenderPersons

I am a bit stunned.

At this point i agree a charity is possibly problematic add also unnecessary.

I don't know about the status of campaign groups but that may be enough to support a claim and crowd find in support of an individual or other body that had standing to bring a claim.

Apologies for not being able to link this to the original thread (it's a MN thing). But Baracker wrote something that struck me as very powerful.

---Quotation starts

You are transexual with a GRC, you know that the law is on your side, that legally you have been issued an entitlement over women.
Men created the Yogyakarta principles for you.
Men lobbied for you.
Men in the House of Commons debated for you.
Men in the House of Lords debated for you.
Men made a law for you.
Men devised an authorisation process for you.
Men made judgements, set legal precedents for you.
Men created surgeries for you to tell you the male body could be made to 'look female'.
Men gave you a certificate to force people to pretend you were Female.
Men gave you legal rights over females.

You talk of your 'banishment' from Female spaces.
Of 'being willing to debate our rights' with us
Of 'finding solutions'

You say you're an intellectual.
Are you intellectually honest?
What you have is a legal mandate, from men, over women.
The question is, will you use it, once you see it for what it is?
Will you hold it over women and proffer us an opportunity to 'debate' our boundaries and our rights with you, holder of a male mandate?

Or will you reject it and see this abominable situation for what it is; yet one more example in a millennium long history, of men asserting dominance over women?

You have a legal mandate. It is not a moral one. It has always been immoral.

-----Quotation ends

One of my concerns with self ID is that it seems like it will make it impossible for authorities to collect sex based statistics to monitor whether they are discriminating on the basis of sex. Is this already happening (Statistics being collected for gender but used to consider sex based discrimination)? And would that be a reasonable test case? It seems to capture the erasure of women as a protected class issue that is at the heart of (my) concerns with self-ID.

We may not be able to have a charity because of restrictions on what charities can do. We may be able to have a non-charitable trust. I will do some more reading after work.

I've been trying to guide a number of people through the on-line GRE consultation document and despite the fact that I'm normally considered pretty literate some of it's been a struggle. I know a couple of people who've given up. They're not stupid, they're just not used to the language and they end up confused and scared they've said the wrong thing.

Is this something that could be legally challenged? Sure a public consultation on a change to the law that could change the human rights of 50% of the population should be expressed in words that the average person in the street can understand.

The Karen White case - we are not out of time for a damages claim for anyone affected by KW’s time in prison.

I am no longer in PI but there would be no problem to find no win no fee lawyers to take a case against the prison. That would be an easy win. The claimant addressees the matter to the prison - it is reasonably foreseeable that a sex offender would offend - and the prison pass it to the insurers. Insurance/costs for prisons rise and thus prisons have a financial risk whenever considering housing a man in with women.

Adding my willingness to support

I would give money to such a charity.

I would certainly be prepared to support such a charity.

Also, a charity would mean that we don't have to share all our strategy in the open. It is one thing to debate the problems and issues openly, but giving it all away just gives the AWAs even greater advantage.

I will support with some money (not that I have much) but I totally agree we need to do more to challenge those who have been scheming against us using the law for decades.

If I could offer more than money, I would. Sorry :(

bd67th I completely agree. A properly constituted charity would be easier to fundraise for too. But it would mean the trustees have to out themselves from the beginning.

On CWJ It's generally better to keep talking to other groups who have a similar mission (though I agree theirs is not the same mission). That would include FPfW etc too.

This is the most important thread on this board. Everyone make sure we stick within the rules of the site! We wouldn't want to lose it.

I agree. We need to be prepared and on the lookout for suitable cases.

Is there anyone prepared to set up a crowdfunding page or an account we can send money to?

Nothing like money in the bank to focus attention.

I think JR of the Leeds CC decision would be out of scope for CWJ: their focus is on male violence. www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/about/ The Karen White case would have been ideal for JR, but too late now.

We need a properly-constituted Women's Legal Defence Fund with trustees and all the rest of it to:

1. have a stash of ready money to pay court fees and legal fees.
2. maintain a roster of lawyers who will represent women's groups.
3. monitor for cases where strategic litigation could be useful and proactively contact potential plaintiffs (e.g. the victims in the KW case).

So that we can:

1. act promptly in time-limited cases without worrying about funding delays.
2. act for and with women who wouldn't otherwise consider JR feasible or even know it existed.

I don't think we should pressure CWJ to broaden scope because 1) they should set their scope, 2) plurality of activist groups is a good thing, 3) when an organisation's scope broadens too much, they risk internal conflict.

I am really heartened by this thread and would certainly be happy to contribute as generously as I could to any legal action. I'm not a lawyer but it's clear to me that this is a course we really need to take. Indeed, if legal action had been taken to enforce the protection afforded to women as a protected category earlier, I suspect we wouldn't be in the situation we are now.

I wonder whether we shouldn't start crowdfunding now and invite some of you here, and possibly others, (Helena Kennedy, author of Eve Was Framed, what about you?) to start looking for potential cases where a JR or equalities intervention needs to be made.

In talking to people on the street many of them have been aware of the prisons/ Karen White situation and most have been appalled by it. I know a woman fairly recently retired from the prison service who has said that she and her colleagues were waiting for a legal challenge on issue because certainly she and her contacts didn't like the current situation any more than we GC feminists do. Lawyers — is there a way to take this up that you can see?

I don't know whether these type of cases we're talking about fall within the scope of what they do, but the obvious place to try and get involved would be the Centre for Women's Justice
www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/

I don't know loads about them but I think they have crowdfunded before, e.g. on the Worboys case JR. Any case related to Karen White would seem to be within scope of what they do. Also some of the people involved would be sympathetic at least to GC views.

ATE insurance is what you purchase in order to protect yourself against the risk of paying the other side's costs. It is a standard part of legal funding these days.

I would be happy to contribute to any legal challenges, financially and in any other way I might be able to help.

*Not
*
Of course it would be better to be able to pay, I was just being realistic.

There is a strong tradition of barristers (I am one) acting pro bono. I don't think it's a "women thing" in this case (although I absolutely accept that more generally women do far too much unpaid work). A lot of barristers do feel they can and should use their skills to help worthy causes and I don't think there's any shame in tapping into that if necessary.

Thinking strategically it might be necessary to generate publicity via litigation (with lawyers acting pro bono if necessary) which in turn will lead to greater fundraising capacity so that future cases could be properly funded.