Trevor Philips in the Times

Yes I think too few to bother with, was definitely a strand.

I think it must have had a great deal to do with vigorous lobbying from groups like Press for Change. They probably stuck to the line that there were very few of them and argued that they were closely allied with LGB groups, who were getting protection, as they were both gender nonconforming and some transsexuals and transvestites, as they would have been called then, were same-sex attracted. They could point to the fact that the NHS had set up special clinics to deal with gender issues for both adults and children.

As absurd as it sounds now, quite a few people genuinely believed you could be born into the wrong body. It wasn't just a gender dysphoria thing, it was a some kind of chromosomal mistake.

It was all deliberate tho. Not their fault, nothing they can do about it, agonising, the only thing to help is to identify as the opposite sex.

Because if people were asked do you mind if men come to work fetish gear, of course we all know what the answer would've been.

Hence the need to provide a generation of children who think they are trans. It's all retconning.

Sure, but the question is still "why"? Why, of all the reasons to discriminate against someone, is this worthy of protection more than other more worthy reasons?

What is special about the belief in gender identities?

I see your point and agree that the nonsense of 'gender' shouldn't have been included in the Equality Act. What next? Voting rights for my imaginary friend, who's a talking unicorn (and will give me her proxy vote)?

Gender reassignment was included in a spirit of tolerance and generosity, with no idea what it would grow into. I don't think many of us could have predicted it. I used to admire men who wore dresses and/or make-up, because I thought they were boldly fighting the old outdated sex stereotypes -- not planning to reinforce them!

Trevor didn't have a crystal ball to see the future. But I agree with everything he says in this article. He is a superb role model, and actually cares about women's rights and human rights.

Surely it was thing like
. you can't refuse to employ someone because they are trans
. housing associations can't refuse to house someone because they are trans
. GPs can't refuse to treat someone for ingrowing toenails because they are trans
so all the usual anti-discrimination stuff.

None of which rights of course have been removed despite the rhetoric.

Thank you OP for sharing this article.

Thanks, I'll gird my loins and take a look.

Good. The radio version of the Times can be mixed. There are some good speakers, can’t recall name but a female presenter used ‘both sides’ re abuse and violence which is incorrect and a cop out.

This has links to StillTish's articles on Glinner's substack:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4059873-Deep-Dive-on-the-Dentons-document

It's the documented explanation of how transactivation deliberately set out to, well, get where they've got.

If you go onto Graham Linehan's substack, and search on Dentons, he has a whole thing about it.

It's shocking. Take wine

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4985584-anyone-have-a-copy-of-the-dentons-report

This will explain all and there is a link to the report.

What's Dentons please?

I saw an interview with Phillips this morning regarding this issue. He stated that the EA '10 was intended not to give people who believe in "trans" the protections of sex, but to give them rights as "transgender people".

But this is still meaningless guff in the context of everything else we discuss here on MN every day. What rights are those exactly? Hiw are they different from sex? Why use the same words? Why is it separate from belief? And why does it need additional protections than already provided.

I agree with other posters that Phillips seems to have been naive or otherwise swindled here, if he did genuinely think this was the goal?

Talking Sense

Clearly not women in any way other than in their own head so…

Such a good article. I nearly spilt my tea when I saw this one underneath it. Why on earth give this the publicity unless it's to counterpoint the sanity above.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/trans-women-jo-clifford-supreme-court-gender-law-uk-7633kqrcx
🙄

Gender reassignment first made an appearance in the 1999 regs which amended the Sex Discrimination Act:

'““gender reassignment” means a process which is undertaken under medical supervision for the purpose of reassigning a person’s sex by changing physiological or other characteristics of sex, and includes any part of such a process;”.'

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/1102/regulation/2/made

When the SDA was folded into the new EA in 2010 the requirement for medical supervision was dropped.

I wonder if the EHRC as then constituted not only ignored relevant discussions that had already happened but had never considered or imagined edge cases such as Yaniv and the beauticians.

So it's a bit rich to hear Trevor Phillips talking about people who should know better who have allowed their organisations to become captured when that is exactly what happened at EHRC under his watch.

Yes, I read that yesterday, pencils, when you posted it.

And I'm really struggling with what he has said today. Because it appears as though he was just as duped as everybody else. but either doesn't realise, or isn't admitting it

I mean, I'm all for golden bridges but having spent over a decade banging our heads against the unworkable 'case-by-case' nonsense in the stat code, surely there must be some accountability?

'There should never have been the slightest doubt as to the meaning of the 2010 legislation.'

No there shouldn't but it's worth remembering Trevor Phillips' foundational part in the confusion. C&P from a post I made the other day:

On Trevor Phillips' watch, it was EHRC's job to write the statutory code for the new equality act. It says things like this:

'If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate.

'any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.'

I found the consultation documents on archived EHRC pages. Put the following links in web.archive.org for archive pages with downloadable links:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/equality-act-codes-practice-post-consultation-report

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/equality-bill-codes-of-practice-consultation/

The original draft of the stat code was very sensible and just went through what the EA says in clear language. That's not the version we ended up with. The post-consultation report says:

'Various transsexual stakeholder groups responded to the formal consultation and also participated in the parallel consultation events taking place on the non-statutory guidance. Feedback from the consultation events was incorporated into the employment and services codes where appropriate, particularly on issues of confidentiality, use of single sex services and the legal definition of transgender.

'A number of concerns were raised about the exceptions, in particular the exceptions for charities, single sex services and separate services.
These sections have been revised as a result.'

At the end of the document there is a list of those consulted which includes Press for Change, GIRES and a:gender (the civil service TRA org).

So it's a bit rich to hear Trevor Phillips talking about people who should know better who have allowed their organisations to become captured when that is exactly what happened at EHRC under his watch. It's easy to point at Stonewall etc., they have been dreadful, but the damage was done right from the start in EHRC's statutory code. It gave the TRA orgs a really solid basis on which to build their misinformation campaigns. Stonewall etc. have spent the past decade telling us that their guidance is fully compliant with the EA stat code and the worst of it is they were right.

All good points.

It demonstrates really that naive good intentions are easily exploited by bad actors, and that law makers must think one hell of a lot further than being 'kind'. With their cynical safeguarding hat on of asking the difficult questions and thinking the unthinkable - in particular 'how could this be exploited, what loopholes could be found and how could this be potentially used to harm others' and 'what if we're being sold a lot of emotive bunkum by bad actors with hidden purposes'.

A large part of why at the moment we absolutely do not want any attempts at a misogyny law which would end up being used as a weapon by the gender lobby to beat women with, and why the conversion law will end up bouncing around between houses hopefully for a very long time before going back to the long grass as it has every time a government has seriously started to unpack it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/12/sir-trevor-phillips-scorns-stonewalls-ironic-attack-uk-equalities/
(Dated 2022)

Trevor Phillips AT trevorptweets
Culture wars do matter, whether we like it or not. For critical race theory to succeed people of colour must fail. For trans activists to get their way, women must be erased. What being woke really means for race equality and for feminism in thetimes today.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/article/the-march-of-wokeism-is-an-all-pervasive-new-oppression-s7dw3s5lr
(Dated 2020)

Phillips on race in 2015
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02m37ld

He was suspended from Labour in 2020 over Islamophobia
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51797316
This is significant - he was talking about grooming gangs and cultural problems. Consider that Labour has had to roll back significantly on this and there was a review announced on the subject earlier this year (which again seems to have been killed off). My point here is that Philips was very firmly reading the room and stuck his neck out on it.

His BBC documentary on race is definitely worth a watch.

He was saying this way back in 2008
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/oct/29/social-exclusion-race-immigration
Special measures are needed to help the true losers from the economic recession - the poorer, white working class - if an anti-migrant backlash is to be avoided, the head of Britain's equality and human rights commission, Trevor Phillips, warned yesterday.

He is very much a Cassandra... And every single time he's been proved spot on. Ignore him at your peril is all I can say.

Above all else, he's as far removed from far right as you can be.