Whilst we are being told that GRA will make no difference to women, please remember what Stonewall are currently campaigning for

[BedTaker]

The narrative around GRA reform is that the Equality Act remains unchanged and so women will still be able to access single sex spaces using the exemptions in the EA.

Now, apart from. Lady Haldene's recent court ruling throwing into question what the definition of 'sex' and 'woman' even means in law (biology or paperwork), and requiring urgent clarification, Stonewall have this on their website right now as one of their 'recommendations' to the Women and Equalities Select Committee:

A review of the Equality Act 2010 to include ‘gender identity’ rather than ‘gender reassignment’ as a protected characteristic and to remove exemptions, such as access to single-sex spaces

www.stonewall.org.uk/women-and-equalities-select-committee-inquiry-transgender-equality

At the moment, even those males with a GRC can be excluded from female only provision in certain situations. The above reads to me as though Stonewall want to remove those exemptions so that that would not be possible. If anyone is able to clarify this I would appreciate it.

Stonewall is the biggest 'LGBT' charity in the country, so this is fairly significant to me, even if its unlikely to ever be changed. I don't think they are going to stop until women do not have anywhere they can exist away from males.

I’ll be really interested to see what the Charity Commission do if there is a complaint about Stonewall - maybe we need a concerted effort here?

Everyone was silent when they appointed Aimee Challenor to their trans advisory group that worked with / advised schools. Challenor's history of active engagement with paedophiles and failure to understand safeguarding resulted in Challenor being kicked out of the Greens. Stonewall evidently supported their views and gave them a position.
Silence from the Charity Commission and all the government departments funding Stonewall - so I'm not sure how much these institutions are interested in rooting out corruption?

To be fair, safeguarding ignorance and corruption are not the same. Aimee to date is not charged with any offence and they are free to hire Aimee. If Aimee puts in place harmful policies that affect the public that's when the charity commission can step in. I'm guessing stonewall isn't stupid enough to give Aimee a pen.

Didn't women on this forum make formal complaints to Scotland's charity commission (not sure of its name) at the time that Edinburgh RCC had deliberated broken the EA re single sex provision, and nothing happened.

I remember reading the thread at the time (former longtime reader of FWR) and I think complaints also went to funders, and maybe also Edinburgh RCC Management Committee - though doubt they would even have bothered to reply.

So agree, what we need is some sort of support / campaign network so that every time single sex provision is not legally supplied we can take joint action.

Signalbox: Sorry to be a pedant but I think it’s “exceptions” rather than “exemptions”.

Sorry I think I started that. Sometimes my tired brain just goes well that's how the word starts and that's how it ends and disregard how accurate the letters in the middle.

So apologies to all and please mentally replace exemptions with exceptions everywhere I wrote it. 😊

Like, speaking to other trans people there's little appetite for changing anything about the Equality Act or the statutory code, it works fine and has done for 12 years (and so did the sex discrimination legislation before it). SSEs so very rarely impinge on our lives.

Funny about the tantrums TRAs threw when the EHRC clarified that it was ok to exclude trans people from single sex spaces not intended for their sex, then.