Trans sibling in law

Please provide citation of the "wrong" my learned colleague, as my tutor at law school used to say, the difference between debate club and law school is in the citations, so far you've only engaged in a debate club and attempts, weak one at personal attacks.

I have no interest in doxxing myself as the more you answer, the goalpost will keep moving from then "where did you train" and so on. Been there, done that, provide citations and I will happily engage, I will otherwise keep ignoring most of the debate club posts as before.

When does the SIL magically become the BIL ?

But Re application of SC judgement Michael Foran comments:

‘In FWS, the Supreme Court set out the legal test for when a Gender Recognition Certificate does not apply to sex-based legal rules. This test is not confined to the interpretation of the Equality Act and can be used to determine the meaning of sex-based rules in any other area of law. The default in our law is that sex means biological sex. This has been settled and clarified in Corbett v Corbett, Bellinger v Bellinger, A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, Croft v Royal Mail, Green v Secretary of State for Justice, For Women Scotland No.1, and now again in the second For Women Scotland case.’

As his background in law can be checked, I think it sensible to follow his guidance.

I’m a lecturer in Public Law at the University of Glasgow. I hold a PhD in law from the University of Cambridge, a MSc in Law and Anthropology from the LSE and an LLB from Trinity College Dublin.
My first book, “Equality Before the Law” (Hart 2023) is based on my doctoral thesis which won the Yorke Prize from Cambridge.

Using male pronouns for females is a very obvious deviation from how people speak also.

Rock. Hard place.

If you don’t don’t think that is a very obvious deviation from how people normally speak, then I can’t help you.

Pronouns exist for a reason and their contrived absence is notable.

It really comes down to what sort of relationship the OP wishes to have with her BIL and his family. But let’s not pretend it’s not going to be obvious to him and everyone around him that her views are hostile to trans people if she speaks the way you suggest.

She might be fine with that, but she shouldn’t do it expecting to be able to retain a close (or indeed any) relationship with her BIL.

Have I misunderstood the T.H. v. THE CZECH REPUBLIC ruling?
Having only read part of it, it seems to be about the requirement to undergo sterilisation before allowing a person to obtain a GRC (or whatever equivalent they need to change ‘legal’ gender)

We don’t require such drastic measures, so it has no impact on our SC ruling that finally and thankfully, recognises that Woman means a biological born female.

I think we should do @AidaP the courtesy of allowing him/her to answer the question.

I personally know at least four people who are from other countries, speak English as their second or third language, and have qualified as solicitors in the UK. Two of them subsequently moved to other countries to do other things, and one of those has now returned to London and resumed practising as a solicitor. (I personally am a UK qualified solicitor currently practising in another country.)

But all of them would easily be able to confirm that they are qualified solicitors, not barristers, and none of them would post such an obviously wrong interpretation of the law on a public forum and cite the fact that they are a qualified but non-practising solicitor-or-barrister to support their interpretation.

I think the U.K. stopped having public bathrooms at the beginning of the last century.

I

Thank you @MissScarletInTheBallroom for clarifying that this is about @AidaP replying "Yes - fully trained, not practicing" in response to "Are you a Solicitor or a Barrister?"

We should also recall that @AidaP has mentioned English being a 3rd language and the professions of Solicitor and Barrister are not separated in the same way as the UK in all other countries (as you can see in US legal dramas where the same lawyers perform the functions of both Solicitors and Barristers as an intrinsic part of the drama) so I guess the training in question took place in another country with totally different laws to the UK and where there's no distinction between the legal professionals who are the primary contacts for members of the public needing legal services, giving advice, conducting negotiations, drafting documents etc vs the legal professionals who provide the courtroom advocacy.

So the non-answering of this question is really just more proof that @AidaP just knows very little about UK law and is just here to scold us.

It is. That is a demonstrable fact, with a whole context behind it in which the Scottish Government has done nothing but speak for trans people, usually to the detriment of women. Cf. Isla Bryson, NHS Fife and a whole raft of other examples.

Imagine your DH comes home after work and you need to say 'Oh I bumped into John at the train station today. John told me that John is dating a new man. John went out with this guy last week and John seemed totally smitten. I really hope it works out for John.

Very easy, because most people's verbal communication isn't conducted in such convoluted language. Given we're not living our lives in a D. H. Lawrence novel, spoken language rarely sounds like this. Thus:

'Earlier today I bumped into John, who's in a new relationship. Hope it works out for them!' (Them being John + new partner, for the clarification of yet more inaccurate language and using plural pronouns in the singular)'.

There is simply no need to make a big song and dance out of it. Contrary to the above poster's position, avoiding gendered pronouns in this way is the respectful response. No one has to compromise their principles, and no one is at risk of being offended if they're referred to in a way they dislike.

In a profession in which I work with trans people on a semi-regular basis, this kind of linguistic contortionism becomes second nature with practice. It's the safest option for everyone concerned, particularly in settings where people's preferred form of address can't necessarily be remembered en-masse. It's not difficult: you simply switch to the passive voice and keep your language concise (always a good idea anyway).

You are 'respecting' someone's choice of identity in calling them by the name they prefer. The rest is just a whole lot of unnecessary angst, wind and hot air. Believe it or not, as long as the rights of some groups don't encroach on those of others, the rest of the world doesn't greatly care how individuals see themselves.

Ah thanks. I was searching for posts specifically by AidaP and containing either of those specific job titles.

A timely piece from Hannah Barnes https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-report/2025/06/do-our-politicians-understand-the-supreme-courts-gender-ruling

@AidaP

"So while you can still not believe in transgender people and their ability to change sex,"

Trans people are not magical. We don't have any more ability to change sex than any other human being.

Here you go @RareGoalsVerge.

I have looked through the whole thread and cannot see any post where @AidaP claimed to be either.

@AidaP

"It's not unlike telling someone "you have no right to exist""

It's totally unlike that, because nobody here is saying trans people don't have a right to exist, let alone advocating for others to think and say so.

@AidaP Can you please answer the question about whether you are a solicitor or a barrister? If you really are one then you should be able to tell us which.

Exactly @Merrymouse- the poster is falling into the trap, as many trans rights activists do, of believing there is a hierarchy of rights with “gender reassignment” trumping sex based rights.

Yes, I don't like the fact that some people are allowed to retrospectively falsify their birth certificates, and that they aren't subject to the same level of scrutiny as the rest of us when it comes to criminal records checks.

But that's all they are allowed to do.

GRCs mean very little. Once upon a time they meant that trans people could marry someone of the same sex when the gay and lesbian people whose coat tails they had been riding on for years still didn't have that right. But that's no longer the case. You may not like that, but it's true.

@DramaQueenlady

" Good luck in the loo when you come face to face with a transman, who's drunk and can't wee straight and your next to use the cubicle they come out of! 😂"

The immense majority of transmen don't have a neo-penis, let alone a functional one, so they have to sit down to pee, like most other female people. You'd think they'd sit down even more when drunk...

More broadly the EA protects women against sex discrimination. You can't do that if you include people of the opposite sex in the definition of 'women'.

This is complete nonsense. Falkner has never claimed that the guidance is the law. It’s guidance, and they have enforcement powers. The law is the law and the EHRC are bound to follow it. This is what they are doing. “Trans women” are men and female only spaces are segregated for the benefit of women and girls, not men.

Yes, a GRC protects a qualified right to privacy.

You seem to be arguing that the right to privacy is absolute. That is where you are on shaky ground.

Not at all, the judgement absolutely removed rights from us as the change is on definition of what counts as sex/gender in this act, and the FWS specifically reworded it in a way that means possessing a GRA no longer applies. Which means where previously trans person with a GRA could access single sex services just fine, now they cannot, that is a direct loss of rights.

More legal illiteracy.

People were interpreting the law incorrectly. But the law said that you COULD exclude for certain exceptions on the basis of sex AND ALWAYS could.

The problem comes with over reach and the wording of the law in defining gender reassignment as:

A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex

Thus it lumped everyone with a GRC together with everyone who didn't have one. You cant legally treat someone with a GRC differently from someone who claims they have started transition for this reason.

Thus if the sex of someone in that group on paper is different to the facilities or services they wish to use, they can't use those facilities or services. But since they are the same group they must be treated equally with everyone else in that group.

And the law has sex exemptions. And the biological sex is the relevant point.

How FWS worded it is irrelevant. The Supreme court agree that that unless it meant biological sex the law just didn't work. That was the entire premise of the case BECAUSE the implementation of the law wasn't working for women and was creating situations which were actively discriminating against women.

Why doesn't the law work if you don't recognise sex?

Well for starters, who are the transpeople? How do you tell someone trans from someone who isn't trans if you can't use biological sex as a reference point?! I could claim to be trans and you couldn't argue with it. Anyone could.

Well let's take the doctor with the transwoman patient. If the doctor is acting in the best interests of that patient they HAVE to refer to sex not gender. If they are banned from doing this because of the feelings of the transwoman the doctor is in an impossible position. The transwoman will not receive medical care equal to everyone else if the doctor treats them as female. In a worst case scenario this risks malpractice on the part of the doctor. So the doctor is damned if they do or damned if they don't legally. Treat like a male and they are risking 'discrimination' but treat like a female and they are risking harm to the patient and the legal ramifications of that.

The ruling thus PROTECTS transpeople. Doctors can't pick and choose when the law applies and when it shouldn't.

Or take the lesbian. All lesbian protections are lost the second you decide a male can be a lesbian. Some forms of discrimination include insisting that lesbians should 'try' males.

The Supreme Court ruled that they had NO CHOICE but to rule how they did or the law doesn't protect women, homosexuals OR ironically transpeople.