Legal Feminist article - Revisits AEA v EHRC

[OvaHere]

legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/09/21/schrodingers-pcp/

Really pleased Naomi had this revelation whilst sat in court.

Obfuscation of language, so clearly pointed out once by our own Barracker, means that even legal arguments cannot be made in plain terms rendering women who need to name the problem on a back foot and judges who cannot see the wood for the trees.

Excellent article and I agree.

That we now have a situation where the law is being applied at once in two completely conflicting ways is ridiculous - this is very badly made law that no one will face up to and address - with women always the losers, is wholly aggravated by language that obscures the problem.

Women have to be able to name their needs and problems, even if it is perceived as rude for them to do so because of their entrenched subordinate position in a sexist society. No one is suggesting for a moment that male born people should politely suffer in silence while placing the needs of others above their own.

Why could that JR not have been appealed?

@Tibtom

Why could that JR not have been appealed?

Probably in part money but it's also becoming clear, as mentioned in 3 JR cases now that judicial reviews have limitations. The judiciary is advising that direct claims (suing) are the more appropriate medium.

I think this is a flaw in the system because there should be mechanisms to challenge discrimination in the law and incorrect interpretations without individual women bringing lawsuits and all that entails. Which is why we've tried the JR route first.

I read that as arguing that if a service is justifiable as a single sex provision, then it does not need to include people based on different protected characteristics. So there is no need for a female only service to include a male that has gender reassignment than a male that is disabled.
They are separate protected characteristics, so there is no sense that one should override another. So a meeting exclusive to black females does not need to include white females or black men.

We’ll, that makes sense to me. If I ever need to discuss the equalities act, I will be able to!

Since the AEA’s contention was exactly that – that the gender reassignment provisions provide no protection at all to trans persons without a GRC so far as the operation of single-sex services is concerned – what this boils down to is “But on the claimant’s approach, the claimant would win!”

Brilliant yet frustrating stuff. I couldn't quite pin down what was bugging me about this, and it's set it out nicely.

Blimey all went a bit over my head. But the last paragraph is all you need, really:

Thinking, speaking and writing of “trans women” or “transsexual women” primes our minds to conceptualise trans-identifying men as a kind of woman. They are not: men are still men – however they identify, whatever they wear, and whatever treatment they may have undergone to modify their bodies to look more like women’s bodies. Those of us who would defend clarity and rationality in this area of the law need to hold that line.

Crikey. You know something is total bollocks when any explanation, pro or con, makes you're eyes bleed when read.

The common sense application of the EA must be that a single sex service can operate without including any member of the opposite sex, ever. Bits of paper or a name badge notwithstanding.

It is very dispiriting that senior members of the judiciary don't understand that this is where undermining shared understanding of language and compelling speech (courtesy of the ETBB) has landed us.

It's interfering with logic and rational processes.

Presumably the exceptionally biased Bench Book alongside the training of the Judiciary by a secret trans lobby group no doubt promoting their preferred version of the law rather than the actual law as it is written might have something to do with all this? Sadly the taxpayer is not allowed to know which secret Trans groups undertook the training or the content.
This article by a barrister is very enlightening about what looks (to a non lawyer) rather like corruption of the judiciary with fake facts and Stonewall law:

policyexchange.org.uk/publication/prejudging-the-transgender-controversy/

They really do struggle to grasp that the EA2010 protection is exactly what it says it is - protection against discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment.

Doesn't let you break through the single-sex exception permitting discrimination on the basis of sex.

People are allowed to discriminate against you on the basis of your sex - in certain circumstances for a legitimate reason. Your gender reassignment is not relevant for that. It's permitted sex discrimination.

(As I understand it's a bit more intricate - a service can use either legal sex or actual sex for the permitted sex discrimination - so either GRCs work or don't. But self-ID is not allowed for permitted sex discrimination.)

The gender reassignment protection is protection against transphobia-based discrimination. It no more makes a transwoman a woman than the sexuality-based discrimination part makes gays straight.

It's also very clear that it was assumed that, where "transsexual women" could be included in women-only spaces (like ladies' changing rooms with separate cubicles, as I think is the example given in the EA), it was because it was assumed that they would be very post-op and indistinguishable from women, and so the women using the single-sex space wouldn't even notice.

It's so obvious that this is not the case even for most transwomen who have had all the surgery, nevermind the average TW who just self-IDs.