Stonewall Guidance: police, girlguides, schools, charities...

[Oldstyle]

It's clear that the various illegalities, bogus definitions and inappropriate advice being used by police, girl guides, schools, councils are is not down to a simple misunderstanding/misreading of the law. The common denominator is Stonewall and it's deliberate.
Whether they are directly acting as advisors or when their campaign materials are used as the cut&paste starting point for trans policies, the results are invariably the same:
Sex & gender are confused, the protected characteristic of 'sex' disappears and 'gender assignment' becomes 'gender' or 'gender identity'; our right to free speech and freedom of belief is dismembered by ever-widening accusations of transphobia or hate speech; children's safeguarding issues are undermined and parents not informed of decisions or actions that affect their child; legislation requiring separate school toilet facilities for girls & boys is ignored; biology gives way to lessons on gender identity, often couched in the most sexist and regressive manner.
An increasing number of academics & women's rights activists (gay, straight, trans) are suggesting that Stonewall is the primary source of the problem. Obviously we need to call them out each time their guidelines undermine existing rights & responsibilities but what's actually needed is a more wholesale change of policy & priorities. Ideas welcome.
Meanwhile, if you haven't already signed this petition, please do, and please share as widely as possible. www.ipetitions.com/petition/dear-stonewall-please-reconsider-your-approach

I was wondering this morning could legal action not be taken against Stonewall for advising the wrong protected characteristics? They are leaving organisations open to being sued. They are giving wrong illegal advice

Likewise the GRA consultation when they actually left off sex from their submission online form to fill in.

Two shockers for me:

1. That the T was only added to Stonewall's campaigning in 2015, after the current CEO Ruth Hunt took charge. This has led to a very different more agressive approach, whilst using the good reputation built through earlier work.

1. That some of those on Stonewalls trans-advisory committee choose not to give their names - yet clearly have huge influence across Government, the public and charity secotors and industry. Aimee Challenor, to her credit, does. Are her colleagues concerned that their backgrounds would not stand up to scrutiny. This is an issue when opposition to Self-ID in part relates to motivates behind why someone would want to identify as a woman.

Mumfun legal action in these cases would certainly seem to be appropriate but I don't think legal aid is available for such cases any more so it would need to be crowdfunded I guess. Maybe that's why no-one seems to have tried to do it yet?
Needmoresleep Amazing / frightening how much they have achieved in such a short time! I'd forgotten about their anonymous committee members. Surely a red-flag. Or at least a reason for questions to be raised.

I was wondering this morning could legal action not be taken against Stonewall for advising the wrong protected characteristics? They are leaving organisations open to being sued. They are giving wrong illegal advice

I wonder if there are cheaper ways of achieving this? Nic Williams is responsible for a revision to the EHRC guidance - I wonder if a concerted campaign to contact everyone whose policy development was based on Stonewall and/or the flawed EHRC guidance would be effective?

They are leaving organisations open to being sued. They are giving wrong illegal advice

I don't think it's that simple for two reasons:

1. Some random charity's opinion is not legal advice. They may be implying the law is on their side, but what they are actually doing is persuading people to change practice, and organisations can do this. Using misleading arguments to achieve this is not illegal.

1. Their interpretation of the law is not completely batshit and hasn't been tested. The law uses sex and gender completely interchangeably. The EA states that protections for gender reassignment apply from the moment that an intent to do so is stated. There therefore is an argument that the sex protections in the EA do not apply to biological sex but instead to legal gender, including intent to change gender.

Now clearly that is not what the EA was intended to say but the barrier to testing this in court is to high for many organisations to risk.

Yes, Stonewall is a problem, but why are the police of all people working on the principle that the law, as it stands, is outdated and to be ignored or interpreted in this way? I would expect the police to work from a fact-based position and err on the side of caution. If you read the police Trans Toolkit, it states that (paraphrased):

• Trans is anyone in the (Stonewall) transgender umbrella, including crossdressers, two-spirit, etc.
• Individuals who "transition" (no reference to GRC so, in effect, anyone on their own say-so) should be helped to erase their digital footprint
• The employment records of individuals who transition (i.e. anyone, on their own say-so) should be changed by marking the person as having left the force and creating a new record for them after the transition
• Warrant and ID cards should be changed, and gender fluid individuals should be issued with two (or more - why not?) cards so they can use a different ID depending on where their gender identity is at on a given day.

It's an unholy mess, but I agree with donquixote that the EA itself is problematic.

Professoress yes it's an unholy mess.
But we could probably live with the mess if there was integrity on all sides. The bigger problem is that the ambiguity & confusion in the legislation is being weaponised, used to underpin the sort of lunatic guidelines that the police have just produced, and that are circulating in schools.
It's hard to know how to stop this. A case-by-case grassroots response isn't the answer but, as Donquix says, testing in in the courts is probably beyond our individual capacity in this Davina vs Goliath situation.

I was thinking about this this morning too, actually (must be something in the cornflakes), but from a slightly different angle - what is it that's caused all these organisations to outsource their policies to Stonewall? Is it really just fear of getting it wrong plus the LGB halo effect which causes uncritical acceptance? Laziness? Austerity cutting out the jobs of those who would have done this in-house? And - there's no good way to phrase it - is there an "ick" factor here? Are those in management simply not very good at thinking about the physical side of trans, eg operations, toilets, and would just rather keep it at arms' length and "bring the experts in", as it were?

I was also wondering if any other charity/campaigning group has their material accepted without question? At a guess one of the biggest groups looking for changes/acceptance/understanding/adaption in schools and the workplace would be autism related - are those groups' advice taken on so easily? I'm floating autism in particular because it's also relatively new in terms of media attention at least, but I could ask a similar question about eg adaptions for the partially sighted, space for breastfeeding, a place to pray, returning after cancer etc.

Why does Stonewall get a free pass and does anyone else?

It's an unholy mess, but I agree with donquixote that the EA itself is problematic

Agreed - it's why LadyJustice was so keen on encouraging people to respond to the EqA consultation that closed in early October tho' it was such a pest to do (very unstructured).

Some time ago I was reading a Beat Officers guide to policing crimes and incidents involving transgender people. Oh good, I thought, because it's a confusing area for those at the sharp end and some clarity was needed.

I had expected to see:

• some statistics from that particular Force on the extent of the problem,
• a description of the police powers: what laws came into play, points to prove and some definitions

And then I saw that the booklet had been produced by Stonewall. It as a crock of unhelpful shite.

• the statistics were based on a national victim survey of LBG as well as the T people, so not a lot of use
• the definitions were Stonewalls', without reference to any statute
• there was no guidance on reporting, recording, interviewing, charging standards, evidence, fast-tracking, CPS involvement (you know - the things that you need to know to do the job properly and fairly).

I can imagine that a lot of those booklets were binned as useless and unhelpful, but that officers kept quiet for fear of appearing transphobic.

What was missing was input from actual, real CPS lawyers and the information about the source of decisions about (things like) recording the 'gender identity' rather than the sex of detainees. Where did that come from and how? A custody officer needs to know that!

I've really been down a rabbit hole and some extraordinary tangents, as I've traced the emergence of laws to protect trans people from hostility.

If you are interested, It started in 2003, with the passage of the GRA through Parliament and was designed to protect those people undergoing gender reassignment only. It was ramped up by Lynn Featherstone when she was a minister at the Home Office for Equalities and Criminal Information. Here's an interview with her, in which she talks about how her civil servants produced a Transgender Equality Plan from out of nowhere:

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-reflect/person/lynne-featherstone/

I just want to add that I totally agree that we need to target Stonewall. They are dangerous and have been going after women's rights for some time in a totally calculated manner.
Just the fact that they have a really worrying bunch of individuals advising just about everyone about dismantling safeguarding for women and children is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I'm keen on any good suggestions about action we can take.

My employer paid Stonewall £6,000 for training 20 people.

Good god. We have to get the message out there - Aimee Challoner Sarah Brown and beardy creep should not be advising anyone.

she talks about how her civil servants produced a Transgender Equality Plan from out of nowhere

How reminiscent of Sir Humphrey and the National Integrated Database!

www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=yes-minister-1980&episode=s01e04

Sadly, we should not forget for just how long some infamous organisations had their headquarters and several staff members in the Home Office. (Even keeping their organisation's materials there so that they could not be discovered if police raided the homes of committee members.)

spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/paedophile-information-exchange-hq/

See also the appendices of this book: ianpace.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/betrayal-of-youth-1986-including-the-contributions-of-middleton-owens-faust-tatchell/

Entryism for other social and political purposes might not be be unthinkable and some of the intentions behind GRA 2004 may have a very different point of conception than the extensions that are proposed currently.

The possibility of entryism is both worrying and highly likely Arran - certainly looks as if we are heading in a PIE-esque direction.
Re Stonewall, they seem untouchable at the moment. And ridiculously expensive at £6000 for training 20 people! On the possibly straightforward issue of a charity in receipt of government money having anonymous trustees, is that actually permitted? I imagined that the Nolan Principles of public life would require transparency / full disclosure. Is this actually legal do we know?

what is it that's caused all these organisations to outsource their policies to Stonewall?

Ambiguity of legislation and following the government’s example? The GRA consultation was framed as a consultation of trans people to better serve the needs of trans people. Safeguarding doesn’t seem to have featured in this policy area at all. Combine this oversight with the recent focus on hate crime and the vulnerability of trans people, and it’s easy to see why so many organisations have gone overboard with their policy.

I have no idea how it could be rectified at the national level when the government is in chaos and the opposition has explicitly abandoned women. We just need to focus on the two systemic issues that are becoming more visible each day: 1) the widespread harm to children and 2) the fact that acceptance of the TWAW dogma means that we no longer have the language to describe safeguarding risks and incidents, or the ability to prevent them.

crsacre: how do you know this? did you do an FOI request?