In the midst of the backlash over the Supreme Court decision and EHRC guidance, self-proclaimed 'progressives' who support gender ideology at the expense of sex-based protections need to be asked two simple questions. The 'what is a woman?' question was used to very good effect and in my view, it's time to move on to these:
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Do you accept that being born with female reproductive anatomy is a characteristic on the basis of which people have been marginalised, disadvantaged and abused?
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If the answer to question 1 is yes, can you explain why you take the view that this particular marginalised group is one that is not deserving of explicit protection (by 'sex' meaning 'sex') in the Equality Act?
I have been involved in these discussion since before 2015 and I know that these points have been made many times over by people more articulate than I am. But like many here, it is particularly frustrating to me when the likes of Amnesty International or the ACLU in the USA position themselves as the defenders of Human Rights while championing such a regressive, misogynist, homophobic movement.
I have rarely if ever heard the question put to anyone in that way, or heard them challenged on why their enthusiasm for intersectionality doesn't at the very least include female reproductive anatomy as a valid intersection with their new definition of 'woman' (but rather re-casts being part of that uniquely marginalised group as possessing 'cis privilege'). I don't subscribe to the idea that there is such thing as a 'woman' gender, but even if I did, logic would suggest that, just as it's reasonable for there to be specific groups or programmes for those who are both women and disabled, or both women and black, or both women and Muslim, it is also reasonable for some things to be for 'women' as genderists would like to broadly understand the term, and others to be for those who are both 'women' and also of the group born with female reproductive biology. But no, oppression on the basis of biological sex has to be completely disregarded as a valid axis of oppression. If JKR had set up a service specifically for women who also had a disability, or were also immigrants, would that service be branded 'anti-rights' by Amnesty?
Sorry for the rant. What do you think of the questions, how would you improved them, and how do we get them asked of the right people?