EHRC on Woman’s Hour 21/5/25

Yes, but it was presented in a way that I found to be baffling without knowing the background of Helen Joyce's Twitter thread.

Yes, I was baffled by the clarification.

Yes, but it was presented in a way that I found to be baffling without knowing the background of Helen Joyce's Twitter thread.

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?

I noticed that she ducked answering that.

Did any of you who listened to Woman's Hour hear the correction that Helen Joyce has asked them to make, on the grounds that what she said in her interview was repeatedly misrepresented in her interview with Amnesty?
Helen Joyce twitter thread

I thought she could have been clearer. She didn't want to answer some specific questions, which I inderstand for the reasons people have said, but it does give the impression that she doesn't know the answer. 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. Presumsbly baroness faulkner knows if I'm right but didn't want to say. I guess it is safer to say 'read the guidence' but basic principles could have been put across.
Nuala was asking in what circumstances the EA applies, and I think wanted her to explain employment, provision of goods and services, clubs & societies etc. But KF kept replying about pc's. Was nuala trying to get her to confurn that churches are bound by the EA? At times they were talling at cross purposes.
Between them thety managed to leave listeners with the feeling that the SC ruling could be 'overturned' by the ECtHR which is bollocks.

Anyway those are my criticisms. The dodgy line didn't help. But I think she did get lots if strong points across - it's the law now, you shouldn't wait. Everyone is expected to obey the rules, mostly based on trust. She also gave a really clear sense of the ehrc's role in all this.

The Houses of Parliament is a place of work, so the majority of their washroom and changing room provision should be governed by Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

So come on then - there are enough women who work there who aren't captured by the TRAs, so why don't they first start by making a formal complaint? Then pursue it further.

I was on the whole though, disappointed with her. However, it was one Woman's Hour and it will have reached a lot of people who hadn't realised what an issue it was.

Yes, so I think it would be helpful if we gave them practical examples not given in the interim update.

One point that she made clearly is that the draft CoP is complete & accurate with regard to guidance on the law but that they were looking for more practical examples that they perhaps hadn't thought of. Whatever feedback they get from the consultation isn't going to change their interpretation of the law or their advice on how to obey the law.

Bumping. Just done this. Have the guidance to hand while you complete it if possible as it asks about how you would change specific parts to make it clearer.

💯She was choosing her words carefully so as not to become a hostage to fortune. She didn't explicitly say that UK Parliament shouldn't wait for updated CoP but immediately ban male transexuals from female toilets just that they need to obey the law. She repeated many times that the law is in effect now & doesn't depend on the CoP.

Yes, it's an argument that we use on here, all the time.

'Are you saying that transwomen are not to be trusted, and they will violate women's boundaries willy-nilly.''

All in all, I think that interview was fine.

She managed to keep it general, the equality act, etc, discrimination applies to everybody, this has always been the law, years ago we told them that it was affecting women, this clarification has just addressed that.

because that's her job.

She wasn't about to get bogged down into the vagaries of transactivation.

but now everyone knows the law in terms of the equality act, and that she was pretty adamant that it should've been followed already.

She did say that it's up to individuals to respect the law. And she also said that you can ask for proof of sex, as long as you go about it in a diplomatic way.

Obviously, transactivists will target minimum wage waiters and shop workers over their hopelessly bigoted and discriminatory questioning.

But I happen to think that unpleasant though that is, it's rather spine strengthening for the authorities.

Baronness Falkner did talk about how civil and tolerant society is built on trust and on respecting the rights of other groups......the implication being, very powerfully, that anyone who seeks to undermine or wilfully circumvent the law and the protected category of sex is a wrong un'.

Yeah good luck to them causing fatigue in the opposition 😁

Of course, but I don't think they even have that amount of strategy to be honest. They are still taking shelter in pepetuating confusion and the illusion that reality and the law is whatever you want to be.

They've had the upper hand for so long, and so many people have bought into it heart and soul - they are going to need a while, and some very firm rebuttals, before it finally sinks in.

Nuala kept the onus on the service provider ie what can the service provider do or ask and fell one step short of saying "do they get to ask to see people’s genitals" (you could imagine her wanting to trot that old chestnut out as a gotcha). I wish Baroness Falkner had included in her reply how it is up to individuals to obey the law now that it is crystal clear more so than the service provider having to enforce the law.

They were both doing a little dance around that.

WI - Women’s Institute-I hope you were listening

Well, Kishwer Falkner certainly made things very clear, and in a steady, measured way. And in there the end there was nowhere left for Nuala to go to prolong the delusion that the Supreme Court ruling did not happen' or did not mean what it said.

And parliament should definitely take note too.

I agree. I think she is choosing her words carefully because of the backlash when she appeared on the Today programme shortly after the judgement (and was much more unequivocal).

Dud they use the "some may find this offensive" disclaimer?

I imagine that she's aware of how carefully she has to speak. She must be well used to being interviewed and speaking to the media but you could almost hear her pausing after every question, weighing her words, because she knows that any misstep or slip of the tongue will be seized upon and used as evidence of the law being contradictory or too complicated to implement ('if the EHRC don't understand it how is anyone else expected to?') etc. It seemed that she was trying to strike a balance between clarity and specificity and keeping to a more general 'look it up, take advice' line.

Yes, guidance like this would be challenged. That would cost maybe £100,000 and it would take a year or two to get a clear statement from a court.

But the game of the genderists here will be to undermine, to stall, to cause fatigue in the opposition, to drag it all out in the hope things will end up unmoveably bogged down in some horribly uncertain middle ground.

Also, she sounded a lot more tentative in person, than the written guidance.

The written guidance is fairly unequivocal.