Get the violins out - Stonewall is "in crisis"

I can't donate to all the many worthy campaigners and causes because there are just too many; Sex Matters and LGBA are my picks for a regular contribution and I am thoroughly delighted with the returns on that investment this month.

Delighted to see Sex Matters are going straight to the root of the problem.

There is serious work to be done now holding people and organisations to account. And for LGBA doing the work that Stonewall should have been doing and aren't. Organisations with any sense should go to Sex Matters and LGBA now for advice. They've done the footwork, they're months and years of thinking ahead of anyone who believed Stonewall Law.

The law is not optional, and if it is permitted for it to be controlled and broken and driven - as SW has tried to do for a decade - then there's no point in continuing to have a government or make laws.

Absolutely this.

I am angered as much by Stonewall's disregard for the rule of law as I am by their disregard of women's humanity. Without laws, we lose our common expectations and standards of behaviour. Without laws, we lose our ability to hold transgressors to account. Without laws, we don't have an agreement even about something as simple as whether it's OK to punch people or which side of the road to drive on.

Without laws, we don't have rights, and when I say "we" I mean everyone, including trans people.

No one with a milligram of legal nowse would report a charity to the Charity Commission for intervening in a court case. They wouldn't have grounds to do so, based on this list of grounds. It's well-established that we don't punish people or organisations for starting or intervening in court cases in good faith because that would interfere adversely in due process, and we presume good faith because not doing so would also deter engagement in the justice system.

Giving incorrect advice to organisations and doubling down on doing so when corrected is definitely within th scope of "a charity not following the law, with damaging consequences to its reputation and public trust in charities generally".

Us replying to your forum post is "telling you to shut up"?

Do you understand how forums work?

I've actually got a teeny tiny violin. My DD gave it to me as we have a long standing joke about tiny violins. I'll have to dig it out 😂

Women are not ganging up on anyone they merely want the rights they have (and always had) in Law to be upheld and respected. That's it.

A certain group with the connivance and support of various organisations helped themselves to that which did not belong to them and then rained down abuse on women who asserted that the Law did not allow that.

It should never have happened and the fault for it happening lies solely with the group who refused to abide by the Law, ganged up on women and those organisations who enabled them.

I feel no sympathy or sadness whatsoever for them.

You do understand they started it, right?

There's been a mass 'ganging up' on women by TQ orgs and individuals for a long time, the worst of it materialising in the last decade.

They have been working in a strategic, targeted and relentless effort to remove women's rights globally.

Women are just, rightfully, fighting back.

Your post is a very 'why is Ukraine so mean to Russia?' vibe.

'ganging up'..... oh I can't be bothered.

I see Stonewall did quietly lose the 'not yet law' bit from their response but yes, some big, hard penalties need to start coming down and fast. The law is not optional, and if it is permitted for it to be controlled and broken and driven - as SW has tried to do for a decade - then there's no point in continuing to have a government or make laws.

Yes it is really sad that Stonewall earnt millions of pounds from incorrectly advising pretty much the whole country that women didn't have certain rights.

By your own admission, women are marginalised group. Its sad that even though they aren't a minority they STILL didn't get respected enough to realise how much removing their rights to single sex protections harmed them.

There were other workable solutions available. None were good enough for Stonewall, because Stonewall hates women. This has got nothing to do with women being in competition with transpeople and everything to do with Stonewall enabling a landgrab on women's rights rather than respecting women's rights and working to come to a third way.

I'm over the disinformation and the bullshit that being pro-women's rights is anti-trans. This has NEVER been the case. Its been framed in this way purely because its been an attack on women from the start.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh dear.

Its a bank holiday weekend.

Hope the bods at Stonewall can afford to pay the overtime and haven't got plans booked.

Poor loves.

Rather misleading to paint the judgment as anti-lgbt -

• The LGB Alliance, Scottish Lesbians and the Lesbian Project intervened on For Women Scotland's side
• The judgment was at pains to stress that gender reassignment remains a protected characteristic and that trans people have the right not to be discriminated against, and so on.

The term "lgbt" is itself misleading as it seeks to forcibly team together groups whose interests do not always coincide, especially in terms of the more extreme T activists.

Do you accept that the definitions of ‘woman’, ‘man’ and ‘sex’ as set out in the SC ruling already apply to the EA 2010 as the current law?

I’m not sure where the ganging up comes into it.
It would make sense if there were any single sex spaces left in the entire country (apart from convents (?) and girls’ schools). Staff in the NHS were told that using the words “woman” and “uterus” in the same sentence would be a disciplinary offence at work. Nurses have been suspended and lost their jobs for not wanting to change in front of males. All councils, national governments, unions, charities, public services, the judiciary and the police subscribed to the gender identity ideology despite it being unlawful. Please do explain who was hanging up on who? Please provide examples - esp lesbians and trans men pregnancy rights

Are women “ganging up” against lgbt or against men who demand access to their spaces, threaten them, assault them and wear offensive womanface?

I find it really sad to see a marginalised group (women, who were never the minority) gang up against another marginalised group (lgbt whatever).

Sad. And yes, I know I'm going to be told I'm either wrong, delosuonaly, or my posting style is not to your taste. Go ahead, it's been said on this site before, nothing like being told to shut up by so called feminists.

and let's not forget spelling or autocorrect. Fill your boots.

Totally worth it. A strike to the head will create maximum damage. Other smaller charities won’t chance it. We will need examples like Uni of Sussex in all sectors to get this rot out and replaced with a proper balanced and equitable provision.

(But as you rightly say, if Sex Matters take it up that does get the truth out there.)

I'm wondering if it's really worth Sex Matters' time to pursue Stonewall. The public image given by Stonewall's statement is that everyone has left the building except the cat and the tea-lady who is now writing their legal advice.

Well thankfully, whether Stonewall give in or not, it will all inevitably come to a head by Monday now anyway.

I’m glad the media picked this up and that there are going to be so many people and organisations watching this with interest over the weekend now. Mermaids and others who’ve taken the same stance of “well, it’s not the law yet” will also have to decide whether to back down or fight it out to the end, and companies who’ve been saying “but we don’t understand” will suddenly have the clarity they’ve been waiting for.

Like you, OP, I’m glad Stonewall were stupid enough to be so emphatically wrong, and so glad Sex Matters are on the case, as it will highlight the fact that the EA is already the law for anyone still in denial.

Well, as Stonewall say on their website "This does not constitute legal advice". You take Stonewall's advice at your own risk not theirs.

It’s a bold move though isnt it?
The student regulator just fined Uni Of Sussex £585,000.
Even before the SC the EHRC were flexing in Scotland… Labour won’t stand in the way if they strike the SNP. I’m thinking it’s only a matter of time before NHS Fife are fined.
If there’s mass resistance then someone is getting a big fine - it’s just a question of who?

I was thinking just the same
I think MF is the very definition of “mission driven”
fabulous!

It is ironic because one of the complaints about the SC ruling is that no trans voices were heard, and Maugham said it’s because no trans organisations wanted to apply to be interveners because they didn’t want to be reported to the charity commission