EHRC on Woman’s Hour 21/5/25

I'm at work & can't listen.

Did Nuala go on and on about the poor menz in this interview?

I'm gearing up for a big complaint of bias & inaccurate reporting and NO RESEARCH (ignorance indeed) in Woman's Hour's treatment of this issue.

I’ve said it on other threads Sandie Peggie and the Darlington Nurses will be important to send a message to the NHS and other employers.

Baroness Falkner was very clear that Duty Bearers are the ones who must comply with the law as written.

Basically, that is who are liable to be sued if they get it wrong. So any Duty Bearers going “oh it’s so complicated let’s wait for the guidance” are running a huge risk.

No, because the SC were clear that sex=biology, woman = woman, lesbian= same-sex attracted woman. Men can't be women or lesbians.

It's not that simple. You could have a perfectly clear description of an illegally discriminatory group.

The default position is that groups, services, association etc are open to anyone.

If there is a legitimate aim (and for associations this is quite a low bar - 'because we want to' is sufficient in most cases) you can have a 'limited membership' group.

But there are rules on the ways in which you can apply a limit. You cannot exclude by protected characteristics - the old 'no blacks, no Irish' tenancy rules are totally illegal. But you can include only certain PCs - so you can have 'only women'. (There are some extra rules for race, so 'white only' isn't allowed).

You can have multiple inclusion criteria, but if you do so the members of the included group must all meet all criteria. A group for disabled lesbians can onky admit people who are women and same sex attracted and disabled; it can't allow disabled men, same-sex attracted women without a disability, same-sex attracted men etc.

So a lesbian group (PCs: female, same sex attraction) is fine. A group for transwomen attracted to women (PCs: male, gender reassignment, opposite sex attraction) would also be fine. But you couldn't have an association that included both groups because they have different protected characteristics, and you'd be illegally discriminating against the excluded groups.

What I think you could do, if you really wanted, is have a lesbian association and a 'sister' association for TW attracted to women (and possibly also one for TW attracted to TW). The associations could then hold some joint events. Like Scouts and Guides (if both were still single sex) having a joint jamboree.

Yes, I can imagine that could be possible but IANAL.

Perhaps there can be an exclusive association based on the protected characteristic of believing in genderism.

I’m not sure they’d be able to do it on the basis of being lesbians though, because they aren’t.

I’m not sure about this either and to me it seems the greyest of the various areas.

Is the reverse legal? Could men who claim to be lesbians start a group which excludes all other men, but welcomes women?

This. Baroness Falkner's not a lawyer: she is advised by lawyers such as Akua Reindorf. There's a risk that if she gets too definitive she will give the genderists a new toehold. So sticking to the legal line and leaving it to the actual lawyers to deal with, when required, makes sense.

Sadly she's not the best communicator and the sound quality of the interview was poor. Yet again, Woman's Hour, anyone without a good background knowledge who just happened to hear that interview would have found much of it opaque and ended up muddled and unsure about what had actually been said. This is not good journalism. Good journalism should clarify and inform. Robin Moira White and Amnesty blatantly misrepresented and deliberately misinterpreted the SC ruling and weren't forensically cross-examined and corrected by the interviewer. Helen Joyce and Kate Barker were held to much higher standards. This is not balanced and fair reporting.

I think it is easier to approach this by asking “does it say what it is on the tin?”.

If you want to welcome trans identifying men in your group of lesbians you can’t call it a “lesbian only group”. You have to title it so that Jo(anne) Public can decide whether or not they wish to self-exclude.

Giving what would effectively be a legal opnion on the spot would be so prone to making a mistake that I'd say that answer in her interview was one I was fully on board with.

There's some deliberate misunderstanding going on. The law is complex meaning that you have to pick your way carefully through it to get to right answers, but that doesn't mean it's actually in such a muddle of unclarity that no one can be sure what's right and what's not.

Maybe too afraid to get into the long weeds of identity with the possible result of insulting listeners of various persuasions. Rather, the near certainty of doing so.

Yes I expect so. I also think I've been too harsh on Baroness Falkner. She's the head of a body which has powers given to it by parliament, and her statements will be taken as pfficial, not opinion. She isn't a campaigner or polemicsist, she's a public official with many different pressures on her from different angles and has to speak with care. If anyone wonders whether the thing they want to run is lawful they have to read the guidence.

Manderleyagain "I mean, is it legal for a group of 25+ lesbians to include men with the pc of gr who fancy women in their association if they want? Is it? From what I have understood the answer is no, because that will do away with the basis that everyone in the group shares a pc, and so they have no defence for discriminating against everyone else. I am for freedom of association so I actually think that's an illiberal outcome, but I think that's the law."

My understanding is this group could include men who claimed to be lesbians as long as they also made all other men welcome (so a mixed sex group). Whichever the answer she must know it, why didn't Baroness Falkner just answer the question? Maybe too afraid to get into the long weeds of identity with the possible result of insulting listeners of various persuasions. Rather, the near certainty of doing so.

I’m listening to the interview now and remembering how frustrating it can be listening to Baroness Falkner. She’s very knowledgeable but can be very circuitous in answering questions. She speaks like the EHRC guidance i.e. lots of caveats.

available!

Oh no I missed it and it’s still not availability - but thank you for the thread!

That’s pretty outrageous, I hope Helen continues to challenge their misinformation.

Helen wanted an apology, not a clarification, as she says both Anita and Sacha from Amnesty International misrepresented her on Friday and made her look like she didn’t understand the Supreme Court ruling (which only defines a woman and sex as biological in relation to the Equality Act - as Helen knows and understands).

In fact, she is probably one of the few people who have actually read the document back to back, so it is pretty galling that they made her out to have not understood the ruling! Sacha can’t have read it as he thinks it’s only 30 pages long.

Some will be confused by today’s clarification from Woman’s Hour and they may think it means that in some circumstances Helen thinks TWAW. Very, very dodgy ground for Woman’s Hour to be treading if their “clarification” misleads people about Helen’s personal views.

I’m afraid I was a little disappointed in the Baroness today, it was all a bit vague and woolly compared to the absolute clarity from Sex Matters and the LGB Alliance.

Ahh yes, you've got to the source of my bafflement. As I heard the "clarification" it seemed to be saying that Helen Joyce considered that transwomen were men as far as the Equality Act was concerned and left the impression that she considered them to be women outside of that. That was so clearly untrue that I was thinking "What on earth was that?"

The wording on Woman's Hour was that Helen Joyce:
has asked us to clarify that when we quoted her [in the Amnesty interview] as saying transwomen are men and that’s what the Supreme Court confirmed, she was referring to the Equality Act and not to wider society or any other legislation.

Somone on X asked:
Why has Helen Joyce said she didn't mean "Trans Women Are Men" in general? … OK I have seen Helen's tweet below. Has her request for clarification been deliberately phrased by
@BBCWomansHour
so as to suggest that Helen thinks TWAW outside of the Equality Act?

Helen’s reply:
Who bloody knows? I DIDN'T request a clarification, I requested an apology for being misrepresented by Anita and Sacha as having claimed that the Supreme Court judgment related to laws other than the Equality Act! They are so unethical.

Baroness Falkner was careful not to step outside what is in the draft CoP that is out for comments.
The case of a large group of lesbians including men with the PC of GR while excluding other biological men needs to be explicitly spelled out as an example in the CoP. Personally I think that it's illegal as direct discrimination under EA2010 but it would need a man without the PC of GR to take this to court. If it was an example in the CoP there would be no defence.

It was baffling enough to pass me by without a clear memory of what was said.

So, for the purposes of the programme, it was quite effective.

What was the wording?