Mermaids vs LGB Alliance and Charity Commissioner - First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) Thread 4

[nauticant]

UPDATE: a transcript of the proceedings has been published and can be found here: lgballiance.org.uk/tribunal-transcript/

The Tribunal started on 9 September, witness testimony was heard from 12 to 15 September, and then, following a break, closing submissions are taking place on 7 and 8 November.

[This paragraph is probaby now redundant] To obtain access to view the proceedings, send a request email to [email protected] about case CA/2021/0013 - Mermaids vs Charity Commissioner and LGB Alliance and ask for permission to join. You then have to provide certain information and agree to a judge's direction in order to be able to join.

There is also live tweeting from www.twitter.com/tribunaltweets

Abbreviations:

J or judge: Presiding Judge, Judge Lynn Griffin
AJ or Judge: Assisted by Judge Joe Neville
MG: Mermaids counsel is Michael Gibbon KC
KM: LGB Alliance counsel is Karon Monaghan KC
AR: Karon is assisted by Akua Reindorf
IS: Charity Commission counsel is Iain Steele

(Also the witnesses, PR: Paul Roberts, JN: John Nicolson. BB: Belinda Bell, BJ: Beverley Jackson, KH: Kate Harris, and EG: Eileen Gallagher.)

Thread 1: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4629679-mermaids-versus-lgb-alliance-in-court-today
Thread 2: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4632780-mermaids-vs-lgb-alliance-and-charity-commissioner-first-tier-tribunal-general-regulatory-chameber-thread-2
Thread 3: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4633653-mermaids-vs-lgb-alliance-and-charity-commissioner-first-tier-tribunal-general-regulatory-chamber-thread-3?page=31&reply=121335177
Thread 4: ongoing

Witnesses for the applicant (Mermaids):

Paul Roberts - CEO of LGBT Consortium (12 September)
John Nicolson MP - Deputy Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT+ Rights (13 September)
Dr Belinda Bell - Chair of trustees of Mermaids (13 September)

Witnesses for the respondent (LGB Alliance):

Beverley Jackson - Co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance (13-14 September)
Kate Harris - Co-founder and trustee of LGB Alliance (14-15 September)
Eileen Gallagher OBE - Chair of trustees of LGB Alliance (15 September)

Witness Statements:

Paul Roberts: www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Paul-Roberts-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
John Nicolson MP - www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/John-Nicolson-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
Dr Belinda Bell: www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Belinda-Bell-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
Beverley Jackson: www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bev-Jackson-Witness-Statement-Exhibits-1.pdf
Kate Harris: www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Kate-Harris-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf
Eileen Gallagher (two statements): www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Eileen-Gallagher-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Eileen-Gallagher-Second-Witness-Statement-Exhibits.pdf

Submissions:

www.lgballiance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Volume-4-Submissions-CA.2021.0013.pdf

(Header format follows the gold standard established by @ickky)

post updated by MNHQ at OP's request in order to include the most up to date information.

I'm just back from a three-day residential course. It was nothing to do with sex and gender. There were five women and four men, ages ranging from late-30s to early 60s, most in their 40s and 50s.

Several times during lunch and in the evenings the issue of gender ideology came up in discussions — not that anyone except me used the phrase gender ideology.
Most of the women were indignant about various aspects of GI, including RSE and sex education, drag queens in libraries, teen mastectomies and general distaste for men in female-only spaces. Two of the men were aware of issues, two made a point of not getting involved in discussions. I was struck by how muddled they were and how they didn't distinguish between LGB and TQ+ and slid very easily into homophobia. There was very little nuance or in-depth understanding. I found the almost complete inability to distinguish between lesbian and gay people and trans, NB, queer and whatever else people distressing. (I'm a lesbian)

When someone said 'Oh, all drag queens are gay' and someone else added 'And we all know that paedos are mainly gay' and someone else added 'I wouldn't want my children in contact with them', and I said 'What do you mean, them?' they looked at me astonished. They meant LGB and TQ+ because they lump us all in together. When I later came out to them as lesbian they were 'oh, no, lesbians are different, lesbians are fine'. But still it went on — the confusion, the assumption that LGB and TQ+ are one big happy family and the poorly-informed interpretation of what constitutes transgender ideology. I did my best to put right some of the worst assumptions but I know they thought I was a pedantic lesbian bore.

I think many people think they have an excellent understanding of what's going on, while in reality they are very confused. They know they don't like what's they see and are picking up all sorts of random stuff from the internet, but don't have cogent understanding of how the GI movement started and what it's really about. None of the women I was with saw it as a women's rights issue. I think those of us who are lesbian or gay or bisexual are also starting to understand how 'other' we are still, despite the progress of the last few years. It's very troubling.

I think the rights and reality of women, and LGB, have been sabotaged by the Yogyakarta trojan horse torpedo.

The shocking thing is how easily it was to get people in organisations (sports etc) and governments to implement policies and laws to screw both women and LGB over. Indeed becoming 'flat earthers' and reality/science deniers without any critical thinking. And, joining the witchfinders mob in the process. Keir Starmers about how the 'cervix' question shouldn't even be asked. Implication of those who do not wish women to be walked over as being unacceptable. I suspect that quickly becomes 'evil'.

PIE tried in the UK before. Nearly worked for them too. Martijn in the Netherlands wanted their 'rights' recognised/accommodated as well. This time the activists went in to neutralise women first in order to diminish any resistance. Again orgs and legislators only too happy to enable that.

@pattihews well, the T always say they come with the LGB. The main and loud LGB organisations say no LGB without the T also.

they hear that, they look at the pride events with men in fetish gear near children, everyone celebrating and applauding along, what are they to think?

I mean really, it’s every year. How would you not think there is something seriously wrong when all the media, the organisations and the LGB are celebrating and embracing fetishes around children?

You mention they were also aware of “RSE and sex education, drag queens in libraries”. Again more reason to question why are the LGB and the mainstream society ok with this?

and they are onto something. Bc the goal of progressive ideology and of the queer ideology is exactly the erasing of boundaries for everyone and everything, “love has no age” etc

as long as the majority of LGB support this or not express their dissent, they are complicit. The backlash is not unwarranted, it’s not like people are supposed to know the fine points discussed here on MN. They see enough and they see what’s happening.

I think this week, possibly. next week, is Transgender something something week. I mean more than it normally is. No L, G or B, just trans.

I think those of us who are lesbian or gay or bisexual are also starting to understand how 'other' we are still, despite the progress of the last few years. It's very troubling.

Agreed. It's been overwhelming for me how much men hate being told 'no.' It is not that women love other women; it is the concept that women could be off-limits to them.

I think it's been a perfect storm - the incel movement, the availability of porn, the rise of TQ and then the outright misogyny we have seen over reproductive rights in places like the USA, Poland and Hungary.

You've just done what they did. You talk about 'the LGB' as if we were one amorphous lump. We're not and never have been. Most older lesbians stopped attending Pride etc a decade or so ago because of the kink and the infiltration of the adult babies and other fetishists. Your ignorance of the nuances and tensions within the LGB shows.

I'm a member of the LGB Alliance, the only major LGB organisation in the country. Stonewall is LGBTQIA+, it doesn't count.

Most of the LGB people I know do not support transgender ideology. Many of us have been protesting about this for years and have been completely ignored. That's why the LGB Alliance was formed, to try and give all of those of us who'd been individually lobbying MPs and councils and everyone else we could think of a communal voice.

You seem to ignore the fact that virtually the whole of civil society was captured before anyone knew what was going on. I and many others I know in the LGB community been jumping up and down and trying to warn people for more than a decade. Please don't blame me for trying to stop this shitshow.

I'm hoping that the disgrace of Mermaids might be a turning point.

Experimenting on children and males in female sport were always going to be the points of most resistance. They still went there though, the lack of respect for boundaries is astonishing, as is the fact that it's got this far in the first place.

@pattihews i know of LBT alliance, but most people don’t. I know of internal dissent, most people don’t.

that’s my point. They will lump you all together bc they’re is no public dissent (apart from lgb alliance but it’s new and small atm) and bc the majority of the organisations and of the lgb in public or in public facing roles are pro everything that happens, including men in fetish gear as submissive dogs being petted by children.

Lesbians taking themselves out of the pride , and it’s not all lesbians, let’s be honest, is playing to the majority.

lgb comes across as exactly one “amorphous lump” to everyone not privy to the conflicts within, bc until now ppl have chosen silence and removing themselves from pride, etc.

even the lgbt think most ppl think like them, why wouldn’t the “common people”?

One or 2 protests have happened where lesbians have been forcefully being removed from pride, but that is not enough to pierce the impression.

if these lesbians you talk about are so many etc, if they would have tried having their own pride to distance themselves from men in fetish, if there would have gone public otherwise, enough to be somewhat visible to the gen pop, then yes, you would have had reason to wag your finger at the public ignorance. As it is, yes, the silent lgb is complicit and the backlash is not unwarranted.

”Your ignorance of the nuances and tensions within the LGB shows.” Lol, nuances, you expect the mum and dad busy with raising children, facing lots of daily issues, another recession to be acquainted with your nuances?…

Christina I don't like how you are lesbian blaming here, sorry. I also don't like how you insinuate that lesbians are not parents, and that they do not face similar budget and living costs challenges. Please stop.

if these lesbians you talk about are so many etc, if they would have tried having their own pride to distance themselves from men in fetish

Gosh I wonder what happens when lesbians try to set up female-only groups. If only somewhere over the past several years that had been posted about on these boards! I guess we'll never know.

MM: If I as a man get a GRC and am living in my acquired gender, as a woman, and I am complaining of sexual harrassment, it is no good to say that I have rights to protection under GR, as that is not the issue. .. That is not the harassment I am facing. In that case, I do not see the point going forward of using this. .. it is about real people, in real life situations.

Did MM (for the EHRC) say that TW are be viewed as women when on the receiving end of sexual harassment? Is the implication that TW are also to be viewed as women when the perpetrator of sexual harassment? So, would that mean they are not dealt with, or risk assessed, in the same way as other males who commit sex crimes? That would be unconscionable.

Thank you for acknowledging the victim blaming and homophobia. This is exactly what I was alluding to in my earlier post. 'You've brought it on yourselves.'

Yes, we all saw what happened when lesbians protested at Manchester and Cardiff Prides, didn't we?

I'd suggest that the majority of people turning out to Pride are straight. It's when straight people start to complain about the kink that someone'll listen.

RC: I am now turning into the broken record. The final statute to address is offences and examinations. Person has right to request examination of certain sex. Either provision permits the complainer to request interviewer or Examiner is to be man or woman as appropriate.
RC: May be issue of different terms, that being gender, that I respectfully submit, playing my record again (missed).
This takes me back to outset, this case is about revised statutory guidance and what is meant by 'woman'.

Don't quite understand this. Did RC say that the right to choose the sex of an examiner (eg. in case of rape etc) can mean the 'gender' version of sex and not necessarily the actual biological sex? Because what, gender really is the same as sex?

AND

RC: it's for all purposes the GRC has that effect. That person with GRC, if that person has gender of female that person sex becomes that of a woman and she will share that PC with other women.

Wow! Like Gallileo, it really is time to consign this ridiculous stuff to history.

Forgot to add these bits to above post (and point about choosing the sex of your examiner).

RC: That guidance is lawful, it respects Inner House and definition of woman in guidance was provided by law, as a result of section of GRA, which has not been repealed or dissapplied by EA and its def of woman.

RC: No qualifier 'a woman registered as such at birth'. This petition should be refused.

I thought that because of this bit. If it doesn't have that qualifier bit, then sex is whatever you're having yourself.

I'm adding my voice to this, too (and as a bisexual woman I've never really seen myself as being part of the 'umbrella'). It is homophobic. It neglects the extremely brave efforts of women the likes of 'Get the L Out', who stood up against this mess in a climate in which it's incredibly difficult to do so. We saw the public censure they faced.

This kind of attitude is also tantamount to the old-as-the-hills rhetoric that women are always to blame for the misdemeanors of men. Even if they can't, they try to make excuses for it. 'But maybe he has depression .....'

I, for one, am sick to death of that particular noise, and mindful of a comment from a left-leaning lesbian feminist I saw on here a couple of years ago. She said that nowadays she would feel safer at a BNP rally than at pride. And it's alarming how far right this particular political pendulum has swung. Because this can't be recognized as anything other than male rights activism.

This coming from a lesbian - the very people pride/Stonewall et al existed to protect in the first place, who fought with them, who raised their organization to the prominence it now has. What a slap in the face and enormous betrayal this must be.

lgb comes across as exactly one “amorphous lump” to everyone not privy

Yes. This is one of the most pernicious aspects of this political movement, it is one it uses shamelessly in its own interests. It colonises a movement. It forces out all dissenters (in this case excluding homosexual lesbians and homosexual men from the word and movement for them), and then it claims that it alone speaks for the group they have hijacked, and that no one exists that disagrees with them because look - they are the homosexual movement and not one homosexual disagrees!

(Because they've all been disposed of.)

Women's spaces have worked the same way. 'There are no women with these issues' (because we have successfully excluded them.)

Evil is not a word I use lightly, but this is. The sheer nastiness towards others and the nicely spoken and revoltingly hypocritical and deceitful word salad as other people's spaces, rights and identities are destroyed, is wicked. The manipulativeness of shouting 'be kind!' and 'be inclusive!' while doing this to others is wicked. There are solutions that could work for all. This movement insists they can only be happy if they can see the losers suffer. Wtf is this being indulged?

In this context, know what I resent the most? I resent the fact that I'm becoming what they say I am. I was always on the left, I considered myself progressive. I've championed LGB rights; I am B myself. Bisexual, and I have my own initial in the alphabet soup, yet nothing on earth would nowadays persuade me to wear a rainbow lanyard.

Women who think like me are now being called bigots, on the wrong side of history, affiliated with the alt right and extreme republican Christianity - the people now trying to strip women of their own bodily autonomy and rights to abortion: the very abhorrent misogynistic stand I've spent my entire adult life fighting against. It makes me want to scream. How the fuck have they managed to DARVO us quite this effectively?

My ob gyn was a man. He'd seen me through IVF, I knew him and trusted him implicitly. He did a stretch and sweep. He was an excellent doctor. And I've been a victim of SA, so wasn't always sure how I would feel about this (I wouldn't want a man performing a pap test, for instance).

So - I don't mind, in cases where there's a professional, trusting relationship, being treated, even intimately, by a man. Would I shy or cringe from being treated by a trans woman? Yes, I would. And that's precisely because the kind of men who are insinuating themselves into women's intimate care on the proviso that they're female 'just like us', coupled with the reams of terrible stories about middle-aged transitioners motivated by fetishism and paraphilia, makes me feel 'unsafe'.

I'm not succumbing to the ridiculous arguments of the TRA lobby that GC women are stigmatizing an entire group and claiming all trans women are fetishists. But any idiot knows that predatory men WILL take advantage; that they are determined, very inventive when it comes to gaining access to their victims, and will go to incredible lengths to do so. In the meantime, they're getting their cocks out in women's lavs and filming themselves proclaiming 'you can't stop us, so rah).

Now, I'm the bigot. The right laugh, saying the left are eating themselves, but this isn't any 'left' I've ever experienced in my lifetime. They've done a serious fucking number on us. And yes, I'm really fucking bitter.

So sorry, I posted on the wrong thread. All the above was about the current Scottish case.

I'm really sorry you experienced that. I hope I would be alert to the homophobia in that situation, and speak up.

Unfortunately many lesbian and gay people do support a pride and of course it's hard to see who 'isn't' there- which is why the 'Get the L Out' etc protests have been so important to counter the likes of Christina's claims.

Reassuring though, that so many felt free to speak against transgenderism. I'm having a very mixed experience when I raise it.

Yes, it was interesting that people felt so free to talk about it. I didn't bring the subject up at any time, but there were a couple of women who kept seeing things through GC eyes. I do think people have stopped being so scared to say anything.

Article in the Times today about John Nicolson attacking Karon Monaghan on twitter:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/394930da-6203-11ed-8adc-caffed0685f5?shareToken=6fc18d0df8963647666ee06bcf1d917e

That guy is such a dick. The idea that she was finding him a challenge is absurd. He came across across as an arrogant knob on the stand and unnecessarily delayed proceedings by giving a lengthy political speech for every response.

Is it just me, or does he look a bit worse for wear in that picture?

If you want to see the tweet from Roddy Dunlop, the dean of the faculty of advocates, criticising Nicolson, it's here:

twitter.com/RoddyQC/status/1590857759876329472

Dunlop was responding to Nicolson tweeting this:

twitter.com/MrJohnNicolson/status/1590459091813806080

which for some reason, once it was tweeted, Nicolson decided to restrict who would be able to challenge reply to him.