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

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.

In short - because people don't like telling men the word NO.

And now they're all whining and hand wringing and wailing about losing their rights.

It was never their rights to begin with. They TOOK women's rights, and no one told them no, so they let countless institutions along a merry path that this was not only the right thing to do, it was the law.

But they have finally been told a firm no, that's not yours, give it back. The trouble is, they've held onto it for so very long they fervently believe it's theirs, and it's always been theirs. And those institutions don't want to admit they were hoodwinked and look foolish, so they're along for the ride too.

And at last, we have an admittance of what they mean by those "trans rights" they can never define. Because they have rights as per EA 2010.

But the absolute tantrums are showing what they really mean, and what we've always known they wanted - access to womens spaces, in order to validate their belief, and hold the power that a woman cannot say NO to them. That's what they mean by "trans rights".

FT 'unanimous decision by courts a huge blow for transgender women'

'Huge blow for trans rights as court says you are not women,'

Not at the Independent.
Headline '

Some more. The tide really has, finally, changed.

This is the newstands today.

And what a fantastic picture!

Saw this on Twitter by Terf Rocks with the simple message 'no words needed'

Thank you for reposting this here @RedToothBrush I can’t keep up with all the threads and posts right now.

I want these statements about loss of trans rights challenged so the person or organisation repeating them actually replies, giving specifics. They won’t be able to and be correct!

The framing of the judgement is appalling in some quarters.

Ha! Funny you should say that. I’ve been snubbed by women because I questioned the bolloxness of ‘IWD’ 🙄.

They didn’t even question it when Transwomen were welcomed into IWD.

But then they also didn’t think it peculiar that people like fcking Sandi Toksvig welcomed transwomen (as women) into her ‘Women’s Equality Party’.

So there we were. But we’re here now.

OP you are spot on.

I posted a version of the following on another thread because there is now a whole movement about how trans people have lost. This was in response to someone saying that. It's actually alarming in how it's now being framed.

You completely miss the point then and one of the bonkers effects of trying to replace sex with gender in law.

I'll give you an example so it makes sense:
In law, the equality act is about treating people equally and to protect them from harms. It is not about thoughts and feelings.

A doctor NEEDS to treat a patient on the basis of sex not gender. If a doctor is forced to treat a patient on the basis of gender it creates an issue.

If gender replaces sex, legally if someone has changed gender, if the doctor recognises this, they would not be able to say anything. They would legally have to treat them equally with someone of the same gender. If they don't they are legally vulnerable to acting unlawfully under existing legislation. This creates a problem because if they do that they may do harm or simply be unable to treat them. This legally opens them up to a potential negligence claim.

Therefore as it stands doctors are in a damned if they do and damned if they don't scenario if the court had ruled differently. And this would have put trans people (not women) at risk of harm. This is because sex remains relevant at all times to those who have transitioned whether they want to admit it or not.
The ruling was about clarifying the law and what the intentions of the law were when it was written. It's plainly absurd to suggest that biological sex wasn't observed and recognised as being biological sex and separate from gender at the time the Act was written. This was 2010. It wasn't written by a far right government. It was written by a progressive government wanting equal and fair treatment for everyone.

The Act wrote exemptions in because it recognised that women had human rights to privacy and dignity (as written in law under the human rights act). This also protected women's sport. These rights were recognised and established.

However the law also still protected trans people - it is just not been properly understood and properly carried out. There is still a requirement for trans peoples privacy and dignity to be respected and upheld but how this is done must be through other solutions and not at the expense of the privacy and dignity of women.

The other telling exemption within the act was the recognition that sex could always be seen in transmen - this prevented them from inheritance titles if they transitioned. The reverse was not true for transwomen - they would not lose a title if they transitioned.

If sex had been replaced by gender, it would also mean that lesbians and gay men would have lost their same sex protections under law. Worse still in certain scenarios they would have risked been criminalised if they rejected someone on the basis of being of the opposite sex. This would have been a massive regression of homosexual rights.

What we have seen in the last 15 years is an erosion of this and a neglect for upholding women's rights in this area. And women smeared and attacked for trying to uphold their existing legal rights.
There is nothing Trumpian here in this ruling. This is pure old fashioned liberalism which has been poorly understood by people who don't understand that legal definitions are hugely important and the ruling is neutral politically.

Trans people in various ways, actually have their rights solidified and protected better due to this ruling. The area they have 'lost' in (they haven't - they've never had this right and have been acting unlawfully) is in access to single spaces. This highlights another problem. One of over reach and how they didn't want equality but they wanted the use of women (with or without consent) to validate their identity. This is not ok because it came at the expense of women in many ways and made them second class.

This ruling does not make trans people second class. It protects them and it means others solutions need to be found but it doesn't make them less equal.
This has been misrepresented hugely by the media for a number of years and this is appalling. At best it's legal illiteracy but at worse it's the deliberate attempt to undermine the law, remove the existing legal protections women have and to misrepresent this all whilst blaming women for being not accepting enough. This is no ok. It is sexist, it harms women, it harms gay people, it harms certain religious groups and ironically it harms transpeople.

Oh yes this!!!

AD may have said it too, it is true after all. However GG said it in her book The Female Eunuch. It is older than I am. So fcking sad.

It’s depressing isn’t it. It makes me suspicious of anything peddled to us in the media. International women’s day - what a laugh. YESTERDAY should be the real International Women’s Day.

Articles on women who got us here.

I’m not sure it’s over but we’re starting to shape the equivalent of post McCarthy /Orwell era.

Still far to go. But amazing those women did this.

I am not in the habit of copying my own posts but when I wrote this on the “empathy” thread I realised how strong my feelings are

“The Equality Act 2010 is 15 years old and consolidates earlier legal provisions including the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 which used a biological definition of sex.
This judgement interprets the law rather than changing it. This means that at all times sex in the Equality Act has meant biological sex. That is to say that from 2010 to today woman, man and sex in the EA has meant biological sex.
Every single policy, initiative, campaign, guidance, lobbying, website, statement, speech etc that stated woman for equality purposes meant something other than biology was misstating the law and was potentially discriminatory towards women.
How reasonable is it to expect women who have faced a 15 year systematic and at times aggressive campaign to unlawfully misstate and remove our legal protections to look for the middle ground?”

Every single crappy bit of guidance and policy, every women and people who identify as women, was wrong in law at the time it was done. It was wrong then and it is still wrong now.

Snap! Absolutely this

I agree with you. I hope people lose their jobs over this.

I think FWS and everyone have moved the dial magnificently but it’s not over.

Ah that would be satisfying to see - I left Twitter a while ago and am on Bluesky, where liberal soft-brained groupthink is the order of the day on this issue. (And I am a lefty myself, hence leaving Twitter) People ( -women!😥) in my sector I follow, news accounts, all "shocked", many making incomprehensible points about the judge "telling people what their gender is" (?!?! - have you read even the press release?) or saying what an awfully sad day for trans people and how "they shouldn't have to be facing this). It's so depressing, brains apparently fully disengaged.

But also the misogyny, and the conviction that being gender critical means someone is actively seeking some kind of bloody massacre of trans people.

Absolute props to the exceptional Helen Lewis and Sonia Sodha who are prepared to be present and clear on the platform about their reality-based beliefs, despite knowing they will be subjected to a torrent of pink and blue shit.

To be fair, there are other gc voices coming to their support - just none in my professional circle. 😬😬

Sorry, pedant's corner time, but didn't Andrea Dworkin say it?
Germaine Greer called it many years ago "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them

Tgis has made me so emotional. Relief but also anger at how much gaslighting we’ve endured. All the posters who would try to squash women speaking.

I was listening to the news and the equalities commission is working quickly to work out what it means for services. That’s momentous.

That only happened because FWS fought. Politicians delivered only lies. Bar a couple such as KB who tried but got the usual media / left push back.

So FWS and Sex Matters etc have effected the biggest change we’ve seen for a while.

And then I think this could have gone the other way and imagine then.

Well done to those rejoicing women, it’ll stay with me what you’ve done.

I have found myself in the same position of joy mixed with anger, but from another point of view.

I keep seeing posts that the trans haters have won. It enrages me that people think this is about hating transwomen. It is about protecting biological female spaces, that is all.

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.

Simple isn’t it, really? Men.

Germaine Greer called it many years ago "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them"

Edited to add: Yes the trans maidens are annoying but the men’s movement doesn’t need them. They’re just accoutrements for them. Funny that.

We all need to write to our MPs with a collated list of every person and organisation that encouraged and supported this travesty. Starting with Denton's document, and listing everyone on this thread. I am going to make a start today.
I am very grateful for this thread and hope it will be a comprehensive source document.
They all broke the law and should be held accountable.
Ignorance is no defence.
The public money wasted and the harm done to women and children is just shocking.

The endless young women sobbing on social media about the outcome. Declaring terfs truly evil and shouting about trans women being women was so depressing.
I feel intense joy at this outcome and rage at the stupidity that got us here.

i think you raise valid points in the OP. I think the answer is that there are specific issues in Scotland to do with the relatively small size of the country and the networks of people in power, and that lobby groups can gain disproportionate influence and there are no checks and balances on this. As the judgement notes, and I am only up to para 175, it is the case that funding became also tied to accepting that gender reassignment or what was de facto self-ID meant that one became for all purposes a member of the other sex, obfuscated by the language of gender. However this explanation only goes so far, as other larger countries with more robust political systems have also gone down this track. So one would need to look at all the reasons laid out at length in many threads over time on here as to why the self-ID position gained traction.

That it took at least ten years, with women losing their jobs, and giving their money, and facing violence, being arrested and so on, to get to this point is an indictment on civil society. The overreach of the state in policing this in the U.K. more widely was considerable. And yes, I do think anger is a justifiable response because the parallels with coercive control in the intimate space are considerable. One of the things I noted in the judgement was that the effect of this issue was that many organisations and institutions had ceased to even try to offer single sex spaces or provisions. That means, for example in my own workplace, female mentoring programmes no longer run, despite the known barriers which women face to promotion. It means that the breastfeeding space was turned into a gender neutral toilet. Etc. This will have affected women’s progression as well as their safety and comfort. And all that needs to unravelled and rebuilt, if it can be, and it will come too late for the many women already affected.

but yes again, massive thanks and gratitude that we are at this place and that women did challenge this in multiple ways, how ever large and small. But that we got here in the first place that it was necessary? Fuck, that’s chilling. And it’s good that sometimes words like chilling are used in the judgement.