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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Linda Bellos prosecuted in private by trans activist **Thread title edited at OP's request**

203 replies

SturdyEarmuffs · 28/08/2018 00:06

DM link here

It's a private prosecution by an activist who wasn't at the talk but watched it online. CPS declined to take the complaint further but this individual decided to take out a private action.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
7
R0wantrees · 30/08/2018 10:13

TELI ,Trans Equality Legal Initiative was co-founded by Tara Hewitt, Jess Bradley and Michelle Brewer (possibly other co-founders too)
website: www.teli.org.uk/our-team/

"The Trans Equality Legal Initiative is a new initiative aiming to provide the ultimate forum for the discussion of trans rights in the United Kingdom. Covering important legal areas such as healthcare, education, justice and international protection, the initiative will be at the forefront of trans rights, bringing together experts and activists from across the legal and LGBT spheres.

It is our belief that strategic litigation is a very important tool in the advancement of trans rights, and this will be at the forefront of our efforts as we explore the various issues facing the trans community."

"Our Vision
The Trans Equality Legal Initiative works to build a collective and strategic response to the widespread and entrenched discrimination and inequality experienced by members of the trans community. The founders came together with this aim after the Government released the 'Transgender Equality Inquiry'. This was the first Government Inquiry into the discrimination and abuse suffered by members of the trans community in the UK. The report outlined the systemic discrimination faced by this community in almost every aspect of their private and public lives.

Through TELI, we hope to bring together human rights lawyers, third sector trans activist organisations, academics, equality and diversity experts and members of the trans, non-binary and queer community to pool our knowledge, expertise and skill base to inform both strategic litigation and to assist in lobbying for clear and concrete measures to secure equality and safety for members of the trans community. We also hope to consolidate expertise in this area of law to help inform practitioners and activists.

Strategic litigation is often a tool of last resort but can, when used appropriately, effect real change in how the Government responds and addresses wide scale discrimination. The founders recognise from their own practices that it is only through working cohesively and strategically from both a policy and legal standpoint that real and substantive change is made. The founders are committed to realising this change."

The inaugural conference was in 2016.

relevent discussion about TELI on recent threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3325882-WEP-conference-questions-for-panel-of-trans-rights-advocating-barristers

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3325623-Jess-Bradley-a-government-advisor-on-womens-rights-suspended-by-NUS-over-indecent-blog-Part-iii

Linda Bellos prosecuted in private by trans activist **Thread title edited at OP's request**
Linda Bellos prosecuted in private by trans activist **Thread title edited at OP's request**
heresyandwitchcraft · 30/08/2018 22:19

This has to go back to front page news.

TeiTetua · 30/08/2018 22:32

The Wikipedia page on "Private Prosecution" says The [Crown Prosecution Service] can also prevent a private prosecution from continuing by taking it over and then discontinuing it. The CPS supposedly will do this only where there is not enough evidence to make a proper case, or where a prosecution is against the public interest or could cause an injustice. In reaching this decision, it must balance the public good against a duty to preserve an individual's right to prosecute under the 1985 act.

Maybe a person who feels that a private prosecution is actually a public persecution (!!) where no crime could possibly have been committed, could petition the Crown Prosecution Service to take the case over and drop it in this way.

BraveAndStunning · 30/08/2018 22:43

Ahh, is that it's aim?

Test case, you say?

Linda Bellos prosecuted in private by trans activist **Thread title edited at OP's request**
BraveAndStunning · 30/08/2018 22:57

I'd like to know what the TELI - Trans Equality LEGAL Initiative are doing about Jess Bradley exposing her penis to the world

theOtherPamAyres · 30/08/2018 23:28

@TeiTua

You are right. The CPS covering the Magistrates will intervene and take over the prosecution - to stop it. CPS's guidelines point out that they will only intervene if someone tells them about a case, or if they hear about a case through the media (which is a bit hit and miss).

Linda's case has already been through CPS and did not reach the 'charging standard', so they wil be keen to intervene and stop.

In V's case, they will want the opportunity to review the evidence against her, to see whether it meets the charging standard.

CPS policy on private prosecutions:

www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions

RedToothBrush · 31/08/2018 08:05

That article takes an interesting line.

No one wants to return to the bad old days when James, now Jan, Morris had to travel to Morocco for surgery. But that doesn’t mean we should all have to submit to the tyranny and intolerance of the Trans Taliban.

Jan Morris once quipped that when she dies, she will be remembered with a small back-page headline: ‘Sex Change Author Dies.’ No, she won’t. She’ll be remembered for her talent, her courage and her humanity.

Which is how it should be.

It's bound to upset and ruffle feathers.

Charliethefeminist · 31/08/2018 08:21

Does that mean someone needs to tell the CPS.

carceralfeminist · 31/08/2018 08:24

Let's see what Wiki says the Taliban's gender policies are:

From the age of eight onward, girls were not allowed to be in direct contact with males other than a close "blood relative", husband, or in-law (see mahram). Other restrictions for women were:

  • Women should not appear in the streets without a blood relative and without wearing a burqa
  • Women should not wear high-heeled shoes as no man should hear a woman’s footsteps lest it excite him
  • Women must not speak loudly in public as no stranger should hear a woman's voice
  • All ground and first floor residential windows should be painted over or screened to prevent women being visible from the street
  • Photographing or filming of women was banned as was displaying pictures of females in newspapers, books, shops or the home
  • The modification of any place names that included the word "women". For example, "women's garden" was renamed "spring garden".
-Women were forbidden to appear on the balconies of their apartments or houses
  • Ban on women's presence on radio, television or at public gatherings of any kind
ReginaBlitzkreig · 31/08/2018 08:27

LittleJohn defends Bellos. We are living in strange times indeed. I keep hearing that Happy Mondays line "You're twisting my melon, man" in my head.

R0wantrees · 31/08/2018 08:38

LittleJohn comment from article linked above:
(extract)
"Indeed, she should be. Unlike Morris’s willingness to acknowledge the genuine feelings of those uncomfortable with the concept of gender fluidity and sex-change operations, the militant ‘trans’ lobby is now the most bigoted, intolerant pressure group in modern Britain.

Not only do they refuse to countenance dissent, they aim to destroy anyone who dares to challenge their rigid, doctrinaire creed.

Their latest, unlikely, target is Linda Bellos, a lifelong feminist from the far-Left fringes of the Labour Party.
Bellos is a black, Jewish lesbian, prominent in London local government circles during the Wolfie Smith years — a Corbyn, Livingstone and Barmy Bernie Grant acolyte back in the Eighties.

Like many other veteran women’s campaigners, including the writer Germaine Greer, she has fallen foul of the trans stormtroopers and is facing a court appearance for a perceived ‘hate’ crime.

Having fought for decades for equal representation for women, Bellos objects to plans for transgender candidates being allowed on all-women Labour shortlists.

She is also appalled by the violence directed towards feminists who oppose trans fundamentalism, especially a nasty assault on a radical feminist at a rally in London’s Hyde Park.

Bellos, a pugnacious character who still plays football and boxes at the age of 67, told a meeting in York that if any of these characters attempts to assault her: ‘I will take off my glasses and thump them.’ This was enough to have her reported to police, who for once displayed a modicum of common sense and declined to charge her. But the trans headbangers weren’t deterred.

They have now taken out a private prosecution and Bellos will have to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, accused under the Public Order Act of using threatening language which could cause alarm.

No one would mistake me and Linda Bellos for political bedfellows. But although we’re diametric opposites on most issues, I’ve always admired her conviction, passion, honesty and willingness to speak her mind, regardless of what the hell anyone else thinks. Free speech, however, is anathema to the modern breed of political activists — none more so than the deranged trans lobby.

In their warped universe, anyone who so much as wonders out loud whether someone in possession of a full set of wedding tackle should be allowed to call himself a woman is a heretic who must be silenced for ever.

The Government hasn’t helped by cravenly agreeing that anyone can choose their gender simply by filling in a form. So 50 years of hard-won women’s rights can now be overturned by the New Kids on the Block of the victim culture, simply because they are prepared to shout loudest and intimidate the opposition.

The fears about men ‘defining’ as women just so they can use female toilets and changing rooms are well-founded.

Earlier this week, the Equalities Minister Victoria Atkins was slaughtered for, quite reasonably, urging caution over the increasing number of children and teenagers being referred by gender clinics for life-changing surgery.

And whatever you think about all-women parliamentary shortlists, it’s clearly absurd that a biological woman should have to give up her place to a bloke with a seven o’clock shadow in a frock and Jimmy Choos, just because he’s decided to ‘identify’ as a woman that morning.

It’s outrageous that someone such as Linda Bellos should be dragged before a court simply for stating that she’s prepared to defend herself against violent trans fanatics.

Let’s hope the magistrates decide she has no case to answer. Yet from her old comrade Corbyn, now leader of the Labour Party, has come not a peep of support.

It shouldn’t be necessary to restate that the minuscule number of people in Britain who genuinely feel trapped in the wrong body should be entitled to our understanding and, if necessary, appropriate treatment on the NHS.

No one wants to return to the bad old days when James, now Jan, Morris had to travel to Morocco for surgery. But that doesn’t mean we should all have to submit to the tyranny and intolerance of the Trans Taliban.

Jan Morris once quipped that when she dies, she will be remembered with a small back-page headline: ‘Sex Change Author Dies.’ No, she won’t. She’ll be remembered for her talent, her courage and her humanity.

Which is how it should be."

Freespeecher · 31/08/2018 12:09

Only just catching up with this story now.

You'd have thought the TRAs would have been more understanding of Bellos' position. After all, her comments make it clear her punching someone would only be in self-defence, making her actions a response to the 'Literal Violence' we hear so much about.

jeaux90 · 19/09/2018 12:10

Bumping this back up. Just seen on twitter that Linda is crowdfunding for the expenses related to this. Won't link because mumsnet doesn't like it

jeaux90 · 19/09/2018 12:19

Sorry it's on gofundme.

R0wantrees · 19/09/2018 12:40

Linda Bellos, 'The Social Construction of Gender'

(extract)
"It is they who call any of us women who disagree with them TERFs and any critical thing we have to say about ‘gender’ is apparently transphobic and sufficient for us to be boycotted or ‘unplatformed’ as has happened to me on a number of occasions. I can imagine how unhappy some of them would be if I were to call them ’racist’ every time they disagreed with my views.

Gender is a man-made notion and I mean specifically a notion dreamt up by men and it is unhelpful to the fight for equality that women still have to gain equality in most societies. This is why some of the most backwards-looking political regimes (Iran comes to mind immediately) welcomes and support Trans women because Trans reinforces that system of power called gender that oppresses women.

I know men and women who have transitioned from female to male and more from male to female and I have been persuaded that theirs have been real physiological needs, but it does not frankly matter whether I understand and/or support them or not what is clear is that the new politics of Trans is about men’s’ power and privileged being asserted by claiming in the UK a right to enter women's hard-won spaces- such as the Hampstead Ladies Swimming pond, Changing rooms and other spaces fought for by women at a time when previously we had been confined to our homes, under the ownership of fathers, brothers and husbands. This is the history that is uppermost in the minds and hearts of feminists who know that women's freedom has been won at a hard price. I for one will not give it up lightly. They can put me in gaol if they insist but I stand with all for women and girls."

Twitter: twitter.com/BellosLinda

R0wantrees · 19/09/2018 12:44

Just seen on twitter that Linda is crowdfunding for the expenses related to this. Won't link because mumsnet doesn't like it

Someone else (Mia Peters) is crowdfunding for the expenses caused to Linda Bellos and Venice Allan by the court case.

Linda Bellos has tweeted her gratitude for both the moral and financial support she has.

jeaux90 · 19/09/2018 12:47

Must be two funds then, she tweeted the gofundme link about an hour ago.

Needmoresleep · 19/09/2018 12:48

At third of the way to their target in less than an hour!

jeaux90 · 19/09/2018 12:53

It's sad we need to do this. Just checked sorry Rowan it's the same fund run by Mia.

SPOFS · 19/09/2018 12:59

I wonder if her old pal Jeremy Corbyn will give a couple of quid?

Mumsnut · 19/09/2018 12:59

Donated

VickyEadie · 19/09/2018 14:39

Am away from home and poor internet access - could someone PM me the link to donate?

SPOFS · 19/09/2018 20:08

Yay! It's at 2k already! Smile

OvaHere · 19/09/2018 20:21

Donated. This prosecution is ridiculous.