Written statement at 2.30pm today: First Anniversary of the FWS v SM ruling

I think that this is a pivotal moment for trans activists. Now is the time for compromise and discussion about trans people's place in our society. Men cannot use female facilities or take places for women, that is totally off the table. But there are compromises like do they want to campaign for gender neutral spaces to be standard in addition to male and female, or do they want to "widen the bandwidth of what it means to be male" ie men can wear dresses, makeup, carry handbags, be called Gwen etc and are welcomed into male spaces. I don't know which is more acceptable, I suspect the former but who knows.

Wow that Reddit discussion is quite something. They don't seem to actually counter any of the points made other than what is clearly a misunderstanding or perhaps an error in Hansard where Rosie Duffield seems to suggest that smaller men should not be in the male category for the purpose of parkrun. That's clearly not in line with GC beliefs so I'm not sure why they've latched on to it.

And making them very smugly too 🙄

I see they are getting worked up over Rosie Duffield saying in Hansard

"I think it is fairly obvious that the hon. Gentleman is a man, to be honest. I think the majority of the human race could tell that. If there is a much smaller person running in that category, they simply do not belong there."

However, that's the uncorrected version of what she actually said!

Go to 14:52:36 for the guy asking the parkrun question and Rosie is straight after.

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/3c7187b2-a408-41df-84c3-892eeb0b4dab?in=14:52:36

Phillipson's supporters are not helping her, firstly because they are not making any reference to the legal framework and secondly because it's unlikely that what they say she fed back to the EHRC would have taken eight months to draft. There's a simple way to move this on: publish Phillipson's letter to the EHRC. That won't happen, of course.

From the Time (the denial):

archive.ph/ajmXl

Sources close to Phillipson said they “completely dispute” that she asked the regulator to “tone down” the guidance. They said the request was that the EHRC ensured there was clarity for all kinds of services and that the code was accessible and robust.

It's not clear, even if we take the denial at face value, that it's in compliance with:

Section 14(7) of the Equality Act 2006 says that before issuing a code the EHRC shall submit a draft to the Secretary of State, who shall either approve the draft and lay a copy before Parliament or give the EHRC written reasons why she does not approve it. The legal framework does not envisage this as a back-and-forth process of backroom negotiations between the government and the EHRC.

nitter.poast.org/SexMattersOrg/status/2044038030315405765#m

The irony is that Falkner was Lib Dem. Her interview on the Difficult Women podcast is fascinating because she's practically a typifying 20th century Lib Dem: real world effects vs moral grandstanding, emphasis material reality, frank assessment of costs, universal and objective equality and an insistence on reason and well argued policy. She talks about it directly. Current Lib Dem trends are practically an inversion.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5493671-difficult-women-podcast-baroness-kishwer-falkner

Yes this. My MP is a Lib Dem with teenage daughters. How he lives with himself given the Lib Dems extremely harmful misogyny I don't know.

I thought the juxtaposition of Marie Goldman saying 'oh the poor men who want to be women who won't get their fetish stoked piece of paper now' compared to the comment about murderers and rapists being housed with captive unconsenting women in prisons rather highlighted the morality and values of each side.

Lib Dems very much not on the right side of history, or indeed sanity, on this one.

Do check out the oppositions comments https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1slfo0r/parliamentheldadebateonthesupremecourt/

“Putting "we can always tell" in the permanent Hansard record sure is one for the books, Very Normal Behaviour ”

Not the slam dunk this lad thinks it is.

Oh mine too. And mine got bested by a leaf yesterday

Can I just say? I've always thought that your current username is the best one on this whole site, makes me laugh every single time!

...apropos of nothing...

as you were

No way was that 2018! I remember changing my username to WeBuiltCisCityOnSeeingSouls.

It’s shocking and depressing how long we have been fighting for this. Would they ever just get the fuck on with it.

inarticulate day today.

They do, very often. Whittome, for example. Less intelligent than my cat, by a long way.

I've just finished watching. She has to be a GC plant. She just has to be. If not then she's just not very bright.

It seems to be a pre req for Lib Dems selection. People think Lib Dem are harmless but they are very anti women rights.

Thanks! And thanks to @TheNoWord too. 👏🏻

It's depressing that such morons get elected.

IIRC it was Marie Goldman, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Women and Equalities)

All credit to @TheNoWord for knowing who everyone was!

I haven't RTFT and I only had a chance to see Rosie Duffield speaking, so haven't done my homework – sorry. But who was the absolute twit of a woman who intervened to say that the poor TW wouldn't be able to qualify for their GRCs if they couldn't use women's bogs to help them "live as a woman"?

I completely agree! I think Sandie Peggie is taking the Royal College of Nursing to court on the basis that they refused to represent her in her case against NHS Fife. I haven't heard much about it, but she is a warrior (with funding), so hopefully it will go the distance. It is such an important area to have addressed, from a political perspective, as well as the basic protection that women should be able to expect.

About that hate crime.aggravator - this is adding gender identity, as well as sex, as aggravators. So trans identifying people who are already covered under the pc of transgender identity will presumably be covered twice?

It happened to me a few months ago too - they've renovated the loos in one of the railway stations I use and I inadvertently started to go towards the mens' - a bloke stopped me and pointed me towards the ladies.

How did he know I was a woman. I wasn't wearing heels or a dress!

What needs to happen is for a load of women to take a union to court to reclaim their fees for the past 20 years when they fail to represent them in upholding their right to single sex spaces (i.e. the law).

Especially the public sector ones where a large chunk of their money comes from the women they're throwing under the bus.

Yep the unions are a fucking disgrace on this. To the point that they won't represent women like Sandie Peggie or Jennifer Meille or the Darlington nurses. They should be ashamed of themselves. It really makes me quite cross!!