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Original poster

“It never occurred to us for one second that anybody would think of sex as anything other than biologically determined”

41 replies

IwantToRetire · 02/08/2026 22:03

As chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Phillips helped to shape the Equality Act 2010,which included protections from discrimination for people undergoing gender reassignment. He says he failed to anticipate the strength of the trans movement in subsequent years. “It never occurred to us for one second that anybody would think of sex as anything other than biologically determined,” he says. “It was an oversight on our part that you would get the rise of a movement based in fantasy. We never imagined that there would be people peddling the fantasy that you can just make up what sex you are. And it never occurred to me that people who make decisions on these things would be engulfed by this fantasy.

“The problem is that the grown-ups in the room have turned into cowards, and they are all running away from the fantasists. When I was a student, one of the things we fought for was that women could operate independently of men. Now, according to this new fantasy world, the one thing women cannot do is decide when they want to be separate from men. It’s not just outrageous, it’s insane.”

Just a couple of paragraphs in quite a long interview about many other issues: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/08/02/trevor-phillips-london-liberals-hated-britain/

Also https://archive.is/WF0sD

OP posts:
Used2 · 03/08/2026 08:42

SodThisHeadache · 03/08/2026 06:55

He's a good bloke, Phillips.

He spoke out about DEI having gone too far as well which as a black man, he can lol.

Used2 · 03/08/2026 08:41

CrumbocalypseNow · 02/08/2026 23:26

Why didn't all those who were part of putting together the Equality Act speak out right at the start when it was misinterpreted in the first place? When it has been clear that parliament were being ridiculous on the matter? It's been over a decade of this craziness to the point it's so entrenched it's a nightmare to unpick even with the Supreme Court Ruling. Surely if they'd spoken up then, someone would have listened?

Edited

Yes good point. He has spoken out a lot but maybe not soon enough. Perhaps he steered Baroness Falconer in the correct direction behind the scenes. She was a LibDem peer who was not captured by her party's nuttiness and suicidal empathy for a made up ideology.

SodThisHeadache · 03/08/2026 06:55

He's a good bloke, Phillips.

TheSandgroper · 03/08/2026 02:41

I read or heard recently an interesting with one of the Yogyakarta conference attendees. And he said “lesbians in any shape, form or effect upon never once entered our heads”. Which says it all, really.

@CrumbocalypseNow if you care to read the Parliamentary Papers leading to the development of the UK Discrimination Act, you will provide find plenty of submissions detailing the effects that GRA would have on women. That’s certainly the case in Australia when Julia Gillard changed our SDA.

But women get ignored. That’s all there is to it. Any submissions were unlikely to have been brought to the attention of the Minister or Prime Minister for consideration so they have perfect deniability (per Julia just recently 😡)

Original poster
IwantToRetire · 03/08/2026 02:06

Just to say I have found the thread I was talking about but the JV show link is no longer active https://www.channel5.com/show/jeremy-vine/season-2023/episode-27 where one of the panelists was Ayesha Hazarika

AI blames Harriet Harman not a relatively junior Spad, quote:

Trevor Phillips, the first Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and other early architects conceived the Equality Act 2010 strictly as an anti-discrimination framework to protect distinct, neatly defined, and immutable characteristics. 1, 2]

This deep division demonstrates that the Equality Act was not born out of a singular, harmonious vision. Instead, it was shaped by an intense tug-of-war between the original, biologically grounded anti-discrimination architects like Phillips, and a younger wave of political advisers whose ideological intent was ultimately struck down as unworkable by the UK's highest court. src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2K6n0I5BEPI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen> 1]

OP posts:
Original poster
IwantToRetire · 03/08/2026 01:30

CrumbocalypseNow · 02/08/2026 23:26

Why didn't all those who were part of putting together the Equality Act speak out right at the start when it was misinterpreted in the first place? When it has been clear that parliament were being ridiculous on the matter? It's been over a decade of this craziness to the point it's so entrenched it's a nightmare to unpick even with the Supreme Court Ruling. Surely if they'd spoken up then, someone would have listened?

Edited

From earlier threads on here and discussion elsewhere he may well have thought this but they farmed out the writing of the legislation to young eager Labourites. One of them even boasted about how the writing of the section on single sex exemptions was (in effect) a way of starting the process to maybe at a later date shift the balance of the protected characteristic of sex away from biology to identity.

Just think about it for a moment. Those who had not been "queered", ie people like Phillips of course just assumed sex meant biology. But what is most significant is that rather then writing the SSE to say that yes of course sex was biology, they actually turned it round so that is most instances a GRC would make legal sex the same as actual sex. And only in rare "proportionate" occasions would sex be allowed to be just biological sex.

Anyone who thought like Phillips and most of the world would have made the exemptions the other way round. ie single sex would of course be based on biology, and only on a very few, if at all occasions, would a GRC say that legal sex would be equal to biological sex.

And without saying there were actual secret briefings about this, there is absolutely no doubt that the wording of that part of the EA has been the trojan horse.

Because I am so bad with names I am not going to post any name, but I remember that there was a thread about how she explained this on the C5 show with the stupid and arrogant man who also has a BBC show. And for a while there was a clip of her saying this on the show's facebook page. But it got taken down.

Just think about. Why else would it have needed to be spelt out that if women support services were really good they would be allowed to have the right in a few instances of biological women only services. In the normal world it would have of course been obvious, natural that women only would be those born female.

Sex is the only protected characteristic in the EA that has another protected characteristic undermine it. The Judge in the Supreme Court ruling pointed it out, and it was partly because of this discrimination against the characteristic of sex that the ruling was made.

It has come up on threads recently but it was really common at one time that many of FWR said that repeal of the GRA was the only thing that would protect women's sex based rights.

I certainly cant see this impingement of women's sex based rights being taken out of the EA.

OP posts:
Imnobody4 · 03/08/2026 00:54

I have a lot of respect for him. He was thrown out of Labour for a while over accusations of Islamophobia.
He's a man of integrity.

OldCrone · 03/08/2026 00:12

CrumbocalypseNow · 02/08/2026 23:26

Why didn't all those who were part of putting together the Equality Act speak out right at the start when it was misinterpreted in the first place? When it has been clear that parliament were being ridiculous on the matter? It's been over a decade of this craziness to the point it's so entrenched it's a nightmare to unpick even with the Supreme Court Ruling. Surely if they'd spoken up then, someone would have listened?

Edited

Trevor Phillips has been speaking out against this for years. This is from 2018.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/article/trans-extremists-are-putting-equality-at-risk-fjv8skwz0

Archive link.
https://archive.ph/dy1bE

RogueFemale · 03/08/2026 00:00

CrumbocalypseNow · 02/08/2026 23:26

Why didn't all those who were part of putting together the Equality Act speak out right at the start when it was misinterpreted in the first place? When it has been clear that parliament were being ridiculous on the matter? It's been over a decade of this craziness to the point it's so entrenched it's a nightmare to unpick even with the Supreme Court Ruling. Surely if they'd spoken up then, someone would have listened?

Edited

This.

Screamingabdabz · 02/08/2026 23:58

Legend.

CrumbocalypseNow · 02/08/2026 23:26

Why didn't all those who were part of putting together the Equality Act speak out right at the start when it was misinterpreted in the first place? When it has been clear that parliament were being ridiculous on the matter? It's been over a decade of this craziness to the point it's so entrenched it's a nightmare to unpick even with the Supreme Court Ruling. Surely if they'd spoken up then, someone would have listened?

RedToothBrush · 02/08/2026 23:17

Trevor Phillips understands rights.

Which is good given his previous job. It shows up the fuck wits today.

DisappearingGirl · 02/08/2026 23:00

We never imagined that there would be people peddling the fantasy that you can just make up what sex you are.

Brilliant. Absolutely spot on. I actually didn't know who chaired the EHRC at the time of the Equality Act 2010. That's fantastic that he has said this, and so clearly.

Lins77 · 02/08/2026 22:33

Wow, strong words! And true, of course. Well said.

RogueFemale · 02/08/2026 22:33

So good to see sanity having a thorough airing.

GlosGirl82 · 02/08/2026 22:08

I could not LOVE this more - says correctly exactly what is going on. Reminds me of the Monty Python scene in Life of Brian where one of the MEN wants the right to give birth to a baby…

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