At first I cheered, then I got angry at the years of bullying and misinformation women have been subjected to

Ridiculous

The News Agents podcast on YouTube was a disgrace. Lewis Goodall saying it should have been decided by Parliament and the poor trans, Jon Sopel looking as if he'd been personally inconvenienced and complaining about the celebrations outside the Court and Emily Maitlis looking furious implying we're to blame for populism and putting Trump in the White House.

That so many doctors, lawyers, nurses, judges, police etc decided, despite all they know about the world, that sex doesn’t matter has seriously eroded trust in the fabric of society.

that things went so wrong so fast, & people pushed an obvious cult based on lies & bullying has shocked me for years & still does.

it is surreal.

Yes …. Remember whenever asked about single sex spaces the answer referred to women’s safe spaces.

They have got very comfortable with lying.

Same.

No, they hear evidence and arguments from each side.
In this case, they also took a small number of written and oral submissions from interveners, if that is the right word.
The defender here was Scotgov, who have amply consulted with trans groups to write the policies being challenged in court.
I am only at para 175 but my understanding is that the judgement gives a detailed explanation how various intersecting pieces of legislation should be interpreted and following from that, why Scotgov was wrong in its interpretation of the law. In fact, the judgement goes as far as to say that any other interpretation than sex is biological would make the Equality Act incoherent.
The only reason one could object to the judgement is if one holds dearly to the proposition that biological men should be allowed into single sex female spaces, regardless of the law, on the basis of a piece of paper or the intention to get a piece of paper (and vice versa for women and men’s single sex spaces). The judgement lays out the problems with this proposition.

I am not sure where to put this.

Am I alone in thinking that all the Employment Tribunals and Appeals concerned TransWomen - and that there has been no case instigated against a TransMan?

I am not saying it's only affected women, because some men have been hounded out of jobs also, and being called Transphobes and Bigots.

just wanted to ask how is it possible that so many people and institutions were so willing to accept the misrepresentation that women's rights were subservient to trans rights.
And could this happen again?

This is not just about misogyny. That is not even the main factor.

This phenomenon has to be seen within the wider political context of "left vs right".
Over the last few decades, the left has all but abandoned the traditional concern with economic inequality, capital, and re-distribution of wealth.
The left used to be all about defending the "poor" from the "rich". That is no longer fashionable. It is at best a side-line.
Instead, economic justice as a driving force was replaced with "social justice".
The left became all about anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and identity politics.

The thinking of these people goes like this:

The left are the "good people". I am left-wing, I am a good person.
I must not let myself be a bad person.
Anti-discrimination is good.
Gay rights are good.
Trans rights are just like gay rights. (Note - this is the step where the logic is flawed).
I must protect trans rights to prove that I am a good person.
It is old fashioned to stand up for women's rights, like those mad bra-burning feminists of the 1970's - that is just so last century. Women are already equal. It won't make me look like a modern good person to prioritise women over trans. (That is, if women even enter their thought process - that is the misogyny, to forget women).

The left needs to get back to focussing on economic inequality and dump all the 'identity' crap.

Quite.

What sickens me most is Labour’s gaslighting. ‘We have always been clear’ no you fucking haven’t!!!!

Keir ‘some women have penises’ Starmer. The audacity boils my piss.

There have been comparisons made between TRAs and gasllighting narcissistic partners in abusive relationships - the use of DARVO [Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender] for instance.

This morning it feels a bit like that - yesterday was air-punching and victorious and the truth will out and justice has been restored. Today it's back to the familiar reverse victim/offender phase, look at us poor marginalised transfolk, look what those nasty women did to us🙄

It's a horrible feeling in personal relationships- just when you thought you had brought reality back into play - bang, DARVO!

This feels similar, and I'm angry about being made feel like that. In fact, I feel upset as well as angry, to tell the truth. Sometimes the political feels personal

It would be so much worse if I didn't have these threads to participate in, to know that we are all thinking and feeling similar things, in great numbers, so thank you all 💚 💜

Wow, the Indy is really doubling down! Going where the Guardian has thought better of going. They are going to start to look pretty silly and isolated. Well, I hope so, anyway! 😀

@TheOtherRavenI think we agree, read your post quickly.

I’m so relieved today but angry at the lies we’ve been told to take by politicians and institutions.

I want those people held to account.

Judges don’t consult though?

The fascinating part of the 'consultation' argument was that when women were asking for political consultation on this matter and saying that the law was being misinterpreted, there was a whole movement saying that women shouldn't be involved in discussions over equality saying that it was a trans rights issue only.

Again this is fundamentally missing the point that the act that's important here is the Equality Act. And the Equality Act is about balancing the rights for all protected characteristics.

Stonewall actively and deliberately tried to stop consultation which is why we ended up in court in the first place because various bodies failed to recognise what was law (and therefore not negotiable) and what was political (and how law is created).

This is legal illiteracy.

Judges don't consult. Politicians do.
Judges interpret what politicians have already written and then decide how actions fit with this already written law.
A consultation is not needed when deciding whether something is lawful or unlawful.

Brilliantly put. The stench of misogny over this issue has been overpowering to me and I have been bewildered that so many couldn't smell it!

My social media feeds are full of people sad and angry at this decision today, I am confused (and maybe need to change who I follow?!).

Why on earth should they be consulted? "Yeah these rights you weren't entitled to, but you stole anyway, care to make a case for us so we can let you hang onto them?"

Did they seriously think that's how it should have worked?!! If I get burgled, the judge wouldn't let the robber ask to keep my stuff just cause he wants it? 🤪

I honestly don’t know how I feel this morning….. elated, exhausted, emotional - but I think it’s going to take a while to realise what a huge difference yesterday’s judgement has meant to me.

This battle has occupied so much of my heart and head for so many years now, and I’m one of the lucky ones who didn’t have challenges to face in the workplace. The personal cost for me has been emotional not financial / practical. Even so, it’s been hard at times, and lonely. I’ve had very few people I could really be unguarded with, or who understood how much it actually mattered in terms of women’s rights and place in society. And I don’t judge them because I didn’t realise either, until I stumbled across a video of Magdalene Berns and began my own journey.

Not sure why I’m posting really, just wanted to mark this momentous turning point in the progression of things. Solidarity to all my sisters and brothers in the struggle!

Exactly! But let’s face it, none of the earlier court decisions - and the evidence and arguments of many, many TRAs presented at them - were deemed worthy of mainstream media, so as far as much of the general public are concerned, yesterday’s verdict probably came out of nowhere.

Now, I’m not saying that the TRAs have been living with buckets over their heads (I am) but…

I presume they’ve been living with buckets over their heads for the last 6 years while transwomen and their support [women/dogs/llamas] gave the evidence in court that was used by the judges at each stage of this process to eventually end up at the conclusion we have now?

Because the TW were extensively consulted - it’s just that the SC judges determined that their evidence and explanations came up short.

I'm baffled by this fantasy that no TW were consulted in the judgement -

the judgement was an appeal to overturn the previous decisions from previous cases, with intervenors explaining why they were appealing it and why it was wrong for women. (Using the EqA definition of women.) All of that side of things had already been extensively heard, with all the policies and practice under question written almost exclusively by TA lobby groups.

What should TW have been there to say? Emotive pleas to not get the law right or let women have equality even if that is the meaning of the law?

‘No trans women were consulted’, apparently, and it’s ’set back progress for transwomen by decades’.

According to a friend of mine, whose mates are shitting all over the only person brave enough to disagree.

I have now joined the conversation, carefully, saying it wasn’t a consultation but a clarification of the intended meaning of an existing law. That we can make new laws and policies, but not re-interpret them retrospectively.

I'm interested in this. Stonewall knowingly misrepresented the law for years, and financially did very nicely out of it. But could an organisation that implemented policies based on their erroneous advice sue them? Isn't there an element of caveat emptor here? If you're a massive big NHS organisation or university, for example, then you will have a huge HR department with the capacity to take advice from lawyers, either an in-house team or an external firm. If you are so stupid that you take advice instead from a bunch of unqualified activists, isn't that your fault? I don't know what a court of law would say, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.