It's probably already been said, but Freddy McConnell is a trans man, or trans-identifying woman.
Freddy has absolutely no issue with being treated as a man for some purposes and a woman for other purposes, because Freddy is the same individual who made a legal declaration that she intended to live the rest of her life as a man in order to get a Gender Recognition Certificate making her legally male, and then almost immediately embarked on a planned cycle of fertility treatment in order to have her first child. She has since had a second child.
She also took legal action when she was not allowed to be listed on her child's birth certificate as the father, and when she was pregnant with her second child she widely announced her intention to give birth in Sweden so that she could register the birth there instead. I have no idea whether she has any entitlement to maternity care in Sweden or whether she planned to pay for fully private healthcare, but in any case, her second child scuppered her plans by arriving early.
Suffice to say, Freddy thinks that the world revolves around Freddy.
Some thoughts about this article:
The Supreme Court judgment on the application of the 2010 Equality Act has rendered the UK’s system of legal gender recognition entirely hollow. It has ruled that men like me who have gender recognition certificates are defined as women in equality law, which applies to organisations ranging from workplaces to public services and sporting bodies. Vice versa for trans women.
Yes, Freddy, this was what allowed you to benefit from female specific fertility treatment, maternity and postnatal care, maternity leave and legal protection from pregnancy and maternity related discrimination, you ungrateful little toad.
For context, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 was passed after the European court of human rights ruled that the “intermediate zone”, between two sexes, in which trans people were then forced to exist was – and, crucially, remains – unlawful.
This is bad law. The European Court of Human Rights overstepped the limits of their competence here and unleashed chaos as a result. The UK only signed up to the obligations in the European Convention of Human Rights as it was drafted in 1953. People now attempting to read between the lines and find things relating to transgender rights are finding things which simply are not there. If member countries want to recognise transgender identities and make the decision to pass gender recognition legislation themselves, it is of course within their remit to do so. But they should not be forced to do so by an unelected supranational court based on imaginary legal obligations they never agreed to.
Under the Gender Recognition Act, I am male “for all purposes”, but the Supreme Court decided this is not the case under the Equality Act. In effect, it is not the case in public.
Yes, that's right, your right to swing your fist ends where other people's noses begin. That's called living in a society.
Having run what human rights organisations criticised as an unusually short six-week public consultation, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) will soon update its code of practice about how this legal interpretation of the Equality Act will be applied. This will then go to parliament to be approved by ministers, as things stand, with no opportunity for debate.
The law is the law. The only people who get to debate it are our members of parliament. The correct form of action here is to write to your MP and express your displeasure. But the EHRC has to abide by the law.
Far from clarity, experts argue that the Supreme Court ruling has created legal uncertainty and contradiction and that the EHRC’s response has been highly questionable. Rather than despair, as understandable as that would be, many trans people live in hope that their MPs are fair, ethical people, who have simply not had the opportunity to fully understand any of this.
It's not unclear, you just don't like the answer.
Things were so different in 2016. When North Carolina passed a shocking “bathroom bill” banning trans people from using the correct bathroom, the Labour MP Ruth Cadbury told the Commons that “a bathroom bill would never be passed here in the UK”. In the same debate, the Conservative MP Caroline Dinenage welcomed a new NHS policy prescribing cross-sex hormones to young gender-variant people, acknowledging this was “consistent with international guidelines”, a description that, were it not for well-documented lobbying, would hold today.
Things have moved on since 2016, thank goodness. Women's voices are finally being heard. The world does not revolve around what trans people want. The rights of all groups must be fairly balanced.
Maria Miller, a former Conservative MP, cited fairer treatment of trans prisoners as progress “on which Britain leads the way”. Concluding, she said: “Better protecting trans people does not mean diminishing the protections in place for women. It is not a zero-sum game and we should not allow those who attempt to paint it as such, and who try to undermine the position and legitimate rights of trans people, to succeed.” What on earth has happened? Today, any MP who dared say that protecting trans people and protecting women go hand in hand would incur the wrath of politicians and commentators from the right to the centre left.
Maria Miller is an idiot. The conflict between the demands of the trans rights lobby and women's rights is now openly acknowledged, including by the Supreme Court.
Perhaps current Labour ministers privately justify the state’s capitulation to the anti-trans lobby as political expediency.
Or perhaps some of them understand that no one is above the law.
What they probably did not hear is that the EHRC’s interim guidance also says a women-only gardening club with more than 25 members will be legally required to exclude a trans woman, even if she’s legally a woman, and even if her fellow members want her there.
And this point would most likely never have been considered by the Supreme Court had it not been forced to rule on whether trans women must be included in everything that is supposed to be for women. This is called being hoist by your own petard.