Excellent from Trevor Phillips

I think we need all the allies we can get. Why look for ways to be offended?

There are some vicious comments about what Philips has said. Trans gone mad, basically.

Thank you Trevor! So well articulated 😊

And possibly, a degree (admire TP though I do) of entirely unwarranted trust in decent chaps and sensible authorities.

In much the same way that Boris Johnson could get away with so much, for so long, because our political system was set up on the assumption that office-holders wouldn't deliberately lie: TP and his compadres probably thought that 'they' would never be batshit enough to put, eg, male rapists in female prisons, or expect women to play contact sports with grown-ass men pretending to be laydeez.

I didn't have the language of grooming 30 years ago, or institutional capture. I do now.

I think many in government and who write these acts do believe that women are happy to include transexual men in our spaces, and that men would never lower themselves to pretend to be these transexuals.

Then the law was written to ensure these men were protected from employers and services providers. And not a thought given to sister, mothers, aunties and daughters.

Yes I agree. He must know that people will dig stuff up about his past record. Much better to come clean.

If he delegated and then signed off the 2011 Code of Practice without due care and attention, that was inexcusably sloppy.

I wonder if that is why he appears to be specifically talking to men in that article.

There's no doubt many men don't get it. They might get it intellectually, but they don't get it day to day, because they don't live it. Which is why, I believe, sport was such a pivotal point. Because men absolutely do get sport.

i've posted this before, but it's relevant to him trying to make men understand that the women they're not thinking about are their mothers, wives, daughters etc. it's not just a nebulous concept, it's people they love.

A man will go to his graduation party having achieved the highest possible marks in his 'degree in feminism', being back slapped all round for understanding women so well, empathising with them, having such great compassion for them, a true feminist who totally gets VAWG.
^^
And then leave the building at midnight, pissed up, clutching his degree, weave across a dark, deserted car park without a second's thought, and blithely get into an unlicensed cab.

I recall an interview where TP explained that they didn’t see any of this coming, that sex was always bio sex to them and that they had no idea that it (the Equality Act) would be so egregiously misrepresented or used to harass women. I believe him because I think most people would have seen it that way at that time.
It’s easy to think other people should have known better and condemn them for it without being honest about what one would have done oneself. I’ve just read the piece again and thought it even better written, well-judged and well paced than I did first time through.

But you are assuming that men perceive this problem from the same perspective women do.

I wasn't assuming anything about men aside from exactly what I said, which was

"They [men] just had to do two things: listen to women and care enough."

Which is what you did: you listened to your wife and then cared enough [to learn more, act on what you had learned or what your wife had told you, etc.]

Anything else you took from what I said was your perception, not anything I said or even meant.

He really does need to come clean about the part he played in this.

If his finger-prints are all over it, then he is culpable of complicity. If he delegated and then signed off the 2011 Code of Practice without due care and attention, that was inexcusably sloppy.

Either way, although his stance since then has been in favour of common sense and he has acknowledged the detrimental impact, he can't keep dodging responsibility for the fact that this all took place on his watch.

He has shown bravery in standing up for what he thinks is right several times on controversial issues and paid a price for it. It is a different sort of political risk to admit that one has been wrong about something, even duped, but far better to bite the bullet and be honest about it rather than try to shift the blame. And the sooner the better.

What he could have said as a genuine ally.

Except I don't think Trevor Phillips delegates his thinking to Artificial Intelligence 🙄

"Ally" eh? Not the sort of talk we hear often around these parts. More of a reddit thing really.

But you are assuming that men perceive this problem from the same perspective women do.

It's not that simple

I'm a man. I didn't fully appreciate all the detrimental consequences to women of the view that "trans-women are women" until my wife explained them to me point by point

Don't assume men see the world the same way you do, and don't assume that if they don't see the world the same way you do that they must be at fault.

I'm sure you don't see the world through my eyes, but i don't blame you if you don't. Men and women are different and you aren't me.

I think the problem @Foodgloriousfoodie has is that they identify Trevor Philips as primarily a man, and therefore he is part of the patriarchy and cannot possibly have anything valid to say about the rights of women. He can't possibly be an ally to women and he can't possibly help men to understand the problems women have with views like "trans-women are women"

That - of course - is @Foodgloriousfoodie's problem to reconcile, not Trevor Philips's nor anybody else's.

If he's that marvellous then why was the previous EA stat code, produced under his leadership, so terribly shit?

You don't think maybe he just thought it wasn't relevent?

I think that's probably the point of it.

I wonder if the issue here is whether or not kids can or should have gender reassignment isn't really a legal question?

If kids could in fact qualify for it, and if it should be a protected class, then yes, it would also include kids.

More and more I think many of these issues come down to the medical field and the fact that they have shat the bed on this issue to an extent that is almost unimaginable. Schools, the toilet questions, and all the rest. It all comes down to this medical and scientific quagmire.

Trevor is that rare creature, the man that gets it. Who has empathy and respect for women and girls. That is one for my vanishingly short list of men who really get it. And a shaming for all the women who ought to get it, but don't - all the lesbians who have had nothing to say about womens' hard fought rights being destroyed, all the rich and famous women who could have been brave and fought for us, but took the cowards way out. All the powerful women who scolded us outspoken women and told us to be kind to the men destroying our safe spaces should hang their heads in shame that a man states the obvious common sense when they refuse to. If only there were more like him.

I think that describes a lot of people with this issue.

They think, of course men wouldn't be in women's prisons, three year olds wouldn't be trans, the state/medical profession would never allow that.

I remember telling my mum that the policy of the prison service here in Canada was that men who self-identified would go to women's prisons - she actually didn't believe me and questioned where I had read it and whether it was a real news source.

It actually ended up being kind of a red-pill experience for her, suddenly all kinds of things she had believed must be hoaxes or disinformation became possibly real.

Trevor Phillips was often helpful to his political masters by denying the relevance of racism to particular situations; I suppose you can't head a very political quango without some ability to compromise.

👏👏👏

'In a previous life, as Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I had a hand in writing this country’s equality laws, in particular the 2010 Equality Act. It never occurred to any of us that there could be any confusion or dispute over the meaning of the words man and woman.'

Utter bullshit.

Trevor Phillips was Chair of EHRC when they produced the 2011 stat code.

It said things like this:

'If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate.

'any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.'

I found the consultation documents on archived EHRC pages. Put the following links in web dot archive dot org for archive pages with downloadable links:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/equality-act-codes-practice-post-consultation-report

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/equality-bill-codes-of-practice-consultation/

The original draft of the 2011 stat code was very sensible and just went through what the EA says in clear language. That's not the version we ended up with. The post-consultation report says:

'Various transsexual stakeholder groups responded to the formal consultation and also participated in the parallel consultation events taking place on the non-statutory guidance. Feedback from the consultation events was incorporated into the employment and services codes where appropriate, particularly on issues of confidentiality, use of single sex services and the legal definition of transgender.

'A number of concerns were raised about the exceptions, in particular the exceptions for charities, single sex services and separate services.
These sections have been revised as a result.'

At the end of the document there is a list of those consulted which includes Press for Change, GIRES and a:gender (the civil service TRA org).

Trevor Phillips oversaw the original TRA capture of EHRC.

Enough with the fawning! I'm glad he's speaking up now but he has never acknowledged his HUGE part in the removal of our rights in the first place.

but the discussion should remain grounded in evidence rather than fear or hostility.

This is what women have been trying to do for more than a decade. The hostility did not come from us, and we have been the ones experiencing the fear.

We have offered and produced evidence. TRAs have only ever offered lies, exaggerations, intimidation, and threats.

At the same time, this debate should not be framed as though trans people have no rights or protections.

Women never said that trans people had no rights. We have always said that they have the same rights as everyone else. What the TRAs want are additional rights, lots of desires, and for women to have no rights.

And they also wanted No Debate.

I also think institutions should be transparent and consistent about how they apply the law, rather than allowing public pressure alone to shape policy.

Who doesn't want this? I'm fairly certain Trevor would as well. Unfortunately that has not been happening.

We will not resolve them well if we caricature one another’s concerns or turn every disagreement into a culture war.

Again, women have not been doing this. TRAs turned their unreasonable demands into a war.

And, finally, who said Trevor needed to be an "ally?" He's his own person, with his own opinions. To whom is he supposed to be an ally?

He's writing as a man. His target audience is, above all, men. He's using rhetoric to make his points forcefully. And he's saying men have responsibilities here. As they do.

Claims of patriarchal paternalism in this context feel as unjustified as arguing it's racist to speak of to black and white keys on a piano.

Yes, pianos have differently coloured keys. This doesn't mean they relate to race. Yes, women are often positioned as defined by and secondary to men. This doesn't mean that's being done here.

Your version, if you will excuse my bluntness, is wordy without any justification for the amount of words; waffly sophistry; and a "Be Kind" borderline apologist statement that would make any moderate TRA (if there is such a person) proud, except for the fact that they weren't able to force the guidance to remove all women's rights.