Prof. Kathleen Stock WPUK speech at House of Lords. Important disection of the key issues for MPs, policy makers etc with ref to The Trans Equality Report.

[R0wantrees]

Women’s Place talk: full text House of Lords Oct 10th 2018

"As I hope is clear to everyone by now — thanks to campaigns like that of A Woman’s Place and Fair Play for Women — when it comes to developing public policy around legally changing sex, there are several sets of interests at stake, and not just one.

To put it in a nutshell: if you’re going to make it very easy for members of the biological male sex, socialised as men, to get the word ‘female’ written on their birth certificates, you are going to get at least two problems, simply put:

· more opportunities for some males to harass females, because now males can be more easily legally treated as females, and so have greater access to females.

and

· an undermining of the positive actions which have historically promoted equality of opportunity for females; because now some males can ‘self-identify as females’ and so get access to these opportunities (all-women shortlists being the obvious example).

You are also going to get a lot of confusion for questioning, gender-non-conforming, children, working out who they are in a world in which ‘changing sex’ is now apparently easy.

So the question for all of us is: how to balance these competing interests?

I want to talk about how, in attempting to answer that question, public organisations are being misleadingly advised, sometimes with harmful results.

I take it that the selection of advisors on a particular issue should follow four basic and commonsensical principles:

· All groups affected should be represented

· Advisors should have relevant expertise, and should advise only on areas where they have expertise.

· Advisors shouldn’t have backgrounds which undermine their credibility.

· Advisors should, where possible, appeal to independently verified evidence to back up their views." (continues)

medium.com/@kathleenstock/womens-place-talk-full-text-house-of-lords-oct-10th-2018-b1f3d70c4559

Wow - what a great speech, accessible and really nails all the points. Thanks for posting the full text Rowan.

That's one excellent speech. Thanks op. She says it straight. I might send it to my MP too.

I suggest everyone clicks the link rather than just reading it here. Usually more hits means more easy for people to find.

My link re Karen White was to exemplify how ideology replacing robust safeguarding on a sex class basis, can lead to.

That was an awesome speech, shame there isn't a recording. I have sent the link to my MP in the hope that the researcher he (says he will send) sends to the meeting will read it prior to attending.

It's all good and obviously, I was aware of many of the examples she uses. But this one made my jaw drop with an almost audible clang:

• Indeed, any academic discussion at all of females, as such, is increasingly vulnerable to rejection. For instance, I was recently told of an article written on vaginisimus, a female medical complaint, which was rejected by a journal partly on the grounds that the author of the article assumed that vaginisimus was something only women could get. I’m not joking."

Brilliant breakdown and critique of the travesty that was the Maria Miller led "Women" and Equalities Committee Trans Inquiry. Brava Professor Stock.

VickyEadie

It's every single issue with the word woman in it. Even vaginismus.

It's this sort of pernicious, left of field, attack that is difficult to articulate, but is nonetheless completely visible to women.

Sport, rape refugees, prisons, etc, are all concrete issues. That can be held up and observed by anyone.

But it's this determined creep to disappear the word woman in everything that is, to me, the most worrying.

Brilliant. Calmly exposes a complete clusterfuck of a scandal.

I am actually quite distraught that this basic, 101 level of "how to run a governmental process" needed to be outlined to the so-called "experts" by a laywoman.

What in the holy hell passes for fair, transparent and just governing if these most obvious principles are routinely discarded without a second thought?

Fabulous. Utterly fabulous.

And gets right to the heart of a power imbalance against women which is based on people without credentials exploiting other's desire to do the right thing, without thought to their experience, judgement or credibility.

But there in lies the problem.

Its an embarrassment to institutions to admit they've been duped and its a threat to the power and influence of TRAs.

As good as that speech is, the will to do a wholesale retrospective reassessment of this, perhaps my still not be there.

It needs to be, as the consequences of the failure to do so are enormous.

It's this sort of pernicious, left of field, attack that is difficult to articulate, but is nonetheless completely visible to women.

Exactly this.

This is amazing!

Thanks Spartacus

Awesome! Please do click on the medium link - the author will know how many people have read her work which she should know as it is very clear and helpful.

That’s so bloody good.

Wow.

I'm emailing my MP again about the meeting next week and including a link to this. His twitter has no mention of any of this stuff so maybe he is clueless.

Although being an SNP MP it may be pointless...

It is a very good speech and analysis, but this is what MPs should be fucking saying and thinking. How ridiculous that they can't and won't. Spineless cowards.

Indeed. What happened to personal courage? They're all such craven careerists with a very few exceptions.

What a fantastic speech. It demonstrates the difference in approach to this whole issue from the calm, rational and questioning tone of Prof Stock to the poorly sourced, opinion-as-fact and often hyperbolic tone from the transgender lobbyists.

Her statement regarding the rejection of research papers relating to female biology, and in particular female pathology and disease is chilling. To take her example of vaginismus. This is a disease which can only affect women and is common, particularly after birth injuries and associated with a high psychosocial impact on women’s lives. And yet despite all this, for many years the treatment approach was (and in many cases still is) not looking at the biomechanics of the pelvic floor and interplay with psychological and physiological factors such as pain response, but some sort of Freudian throwback psychoanalysis, which can best be summed up as “women need to be less frigid.” To think that developing evidence based treatment for this, or indeed any other disease affecting women, is hampered by the feelings of trans activists, or fear of causing offence, is both ludicrous and infuriating. It demonstrates why, in 2018, women still need to be able to talk about their biology, their bodies and their needs without having to defer to anyone else.

Unless the content of this talk gets a wider audience, then organisations like Children in Need will continue to throw hundreds of thousands of pounds at the likes of Mermaids and Transgender projects.

Where was the due diligence before grant-making? More importantly - have the grants made by Children in Need done more harm than good?

Or was it a case of 'if they are good enough for Maria Miller and her Committee then they must be alright'?

I suspect that it is the latter and that's why it's a scandal.

One day, someone will write a book or make a documentary about this outrageous state of affairs.

AHRC = Arts and Humanities Research Council (so academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, history and so on)

ESRC = same for economics and other social sciences

Government-funded bodies that give out grants to academics. Getting one of these can make or break an academic career ...

Brilliant speech Kathleen.

I think the point about needing more academic expertise in this is really key. Vice chancellors really do need to pull away from lobby groups and work to create a climate where academics can lend their expertise to this important issue without fear for their careers.

Who could argue with that speech. Brilliant work by Kathleen Stock.

Absolutely brilliant, and so, so restrained. When you think of what could have been said, entirely justifiably, about some of the characters she mentions.

Thank you Prof. Stock for putting this so plainly and on behalf of so many.

ROwantrees a brilliant thread too.

And right now I'm so so glad I stumbled upon MN so many years ago. To all you incredible Women (and I'm hoping some men too)