It is now clear exactly where the bollocks Fair Play for Women are spouting is coming from...
According to her bio, Dr Nicola Williams is a research scientist, specializing in biology, who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry. It does not mention if she has legal qualifications. It does mention if she has studied gender studies. It does not mention any tertiary level qualification in a humanities subject at all. It does not mention any professional position within the third sector. According to her bio, her position at FPW is voluntary making her an unqualified amateur.
Yet she clearly feels qualified to take the extreme position Women's rights hanging by a thread!
Either she is a genius, seeing something that all those people with academic or professional experience have missed. Or perhaps she is completely y
out of her depth.
I fully support the right of trans people to live free of fear and discrimination just the same as everyone else
Except Nicola the campaign you are part of is creating a climate of terror amongst the transwomen I know. Fully transitioned medically and legally, they don't want to use a changing room for fear of running into a GC feminist. (BTW GC feminists on MN have threatened to stake out the Ponds on Hampstead Heath and ambush any transwomen who tries to use them)
But if someone who still has their full male anatomy wants the right to enter women's changing rooms, or refuges, or to compete against women and girls in sports, and women have no choice about that, that takes away women's most fundamental right: the right to say no to male-bodied people entering our space
By full male anatomy I am assuming this means a penis. Well the thing is that a transwoman with a penis already has the right to enter women's changing rooms or refuges subject to the exception in the EA. If she means someone who has not transitioned at all, then they don't and won't have this right.
Some trans campaigners want new rules that would mean any man who simply said "I am a woman now" could legally become female, getting along with it unchallenged access to women's changing rooms, hostels, NHS wards and other female-only spaces
She does not say which trans campaigners. Mainstream campaigners are arguing for the Irish system - which requires a statutory declaration before a commissioner for oaths (with a penalty of up to 2 years in jail for a false declaration). She then suggests that becoming legally female gives unchallenged access to sensitive female spaces. But of course it doesn't. Under the EA it is reassigning one's gender that gives access subject to the exceptions.
There would be no official way to tell who was male for purposes of single-sex overnight sleeping accommodation, for women's refuges,... Our sex-based rights will still exist on paper but will be impossible to use on the ground.
If a service provider knows someone is a transwomen and the situation fits into the EA exceptions then they can exclude them. It is that simple. If they can't tell then it is exceeding unlikely the exceptions would apply.
It is worth noting that in 10 years of this provision being on the statute books, there is only one reported case of gender reassignment discrimination, which on the facts clearly did not fit into the exception.
She then goes for the usual suspects. The attacker at Hyde Park who is described as a "trans activist". I don't condone the violence, but this is one individual acting on her own. And she also mentions the Women's Place bomb threat - where we don't even now if it was made by someone fighting for trans rights. She tries to tarnish an entire community and their allies by picking on the actions of a few isolated incidents. This is the typical act of an aggressor in a civil rights struggle.
Sadly after Brexit and Trump we live in a post truth world where all that matters is having an opinion.