It's worth following the Baroness on twitter - she seems very on top of things and is continually asking for evidence of various things, this thread was started because she wanted evidence that people had challenged M&S about their changing room policies.
Baroness Nicholson hosted and chaired the WPUK House of Lords Meeting.
"A Woman’s Place is in the House of Lords
London
Wednesday, 10 October 2018
Tickets: 70+
Venue: House of Lords Committee Room
Speakers: Kathleen Stock, Julian Norman and Raquel Rosario Sanchez, Baroness Winterbourne (Chair)
In addition to our public meetings, we were invited to organise a panel discussion in the House of Lords hosted by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne.
Around 70 people attended this invitation-only event."
womansplaceuk.org/a-record-of-womans-place-uk-meetings/
There are two speeches available, Julian Norman & Kathleen Stock's.
Kathleen Stock's speech critiqued the deeply flawed Women & Equalities 'Trans Inquiry' led by Maria Miller MP
medium.com/ @kathleenstock/womens-place-talk-full-text-house-of-lords-oct-10th-2018-b1f3d70c4559
Julian Norman (a barrister specialising in Human Rights) outlined the legal background to the GRA.
(extract)
The background to the Gender Recognition Act (“GRA”) was the case of Christine Goodwin, who took the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the government’s failure to recognise her in law as a woman breached Article 8 ECHR. She had suffered discrimination, including being unable to marry her male partner, difficulties caused by an unequal pension age, and detriment caused by her birth certificate showing her as male, which outed her as trans whenever she was compelled to show it.
The government maintained that the interference with her private life was proportionate. The Court upheld the complaint, pointing out at §87 that there was no threat of “overturning the entire system” given that the number of transsexuals in the UK was estimated at only 2,000 – 5,000, and at §91 that although there would be legal repercussions these were not insuperable “if confined to the case of fully achieved and post-operative transsexuals.”
The government responded by introducing the GRA as a mechanism by which this small group could reconcile their new identity with the state." (continues)
concludes:
"Failure to share someone’s belief is not the same as mockery or disdain for it. It cannot be beyond the wit of the legislature to protect the beliefs of those who believe they have an innate gender, protect the rights of others to agnosticism on the point, whilst also maintaining sex based protections.
My final point is this: If gender identity is innate, then the cultural norms attached to the female sex, which we call gender, and which have historically served to oppress women, are not a bug, but a design feature. A philosophy which seeks to ascribe women’s oppression globally and historically to something innate within them – whether that is wandering wombs, or phrenology, or evolutionary psychology – has never ended well for women. We should be extremely slow to codify in law such a perspective.
womansplaceuk.org/julian-norman-in-house-of-lords/