NEARLY 75k!!!!

[ArabellaScott]

On THAT petition!

🙌

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4722618-petition-to-update-the-equality-act-thread-2

Great news.

My brain isn't working

“Under the Equality Act 2010, providers are already able to restrict the use of spaces/services on the basis of sex and/or gender reassignment where justified. Further clarification is not necessary.

Does this mean that even if it gets to 100000 signatures, the government won’t debate it?

Signed and bumped

It's possible, Myalternate. They can do what they want and respond how they wish.

Well that’s rather dispiriting 😟

The government’s response reads as if they've completely (hopefully not deliberately) misunderstood the purpose of the petition! 😫

It's as if it's been written by someone who has completely missed the fudging, misrepresentation and controversies of the last 7 years.

Moving on up

Their response doesn't reflect the purpose of the petition, does it? They really don't want to have this debate in Parliament

Ooh look

Also

seventy five thousand people are very sensible.

They are in deed.

Like to keep my hand in with special numbers, it will soon be time for another map of anger anger update that's in the 12 600s

Another one

I've signed and shared tonight also

Is there a thread about the government's response? It says there's no need to clarify, that it's clearly referring to biological sex, but what about Lady Haldane's recent ruling that EqA 2010 didn't specify biological sex so it could mean legal "sex" instead. Like Tesco is a "person" in legal fiction land.

And there is no need to embarrass us all over the internet this time either @ArabellaScott and the rest of you sods, as we've already signed.

Yassssss, I've got half a bottle of Xmas baileys left, tempted to chuck it in a champagne glass 👏👏👏

The response reads like some standard boilerplate cut and paste. In fact it reads much like the response I had from Kemi Badenoch when I emailed asking her for her support. I wonder if they are still working on something but had to issue a response as they were being chased for a reply so this is just the safe vanilla holding response without committing to anything? But at the same time the government has triggered S35 for much the same reasons of confusion that the EqA fosters. All made much worse by Lady Haldane’s judgement that a GRC changes a persons sex for all purposes in the EqA.

Practically a provider is not allowed to see a GRC so what do they do if someone they strongly suspect is male rocks up and shows a birth certificate saying female? This stuff needs to be properly discussed in Parliament.

I've signed. 🙂

Yes, that's the problem.
It seems to me (IANAL) that Lady Haldane got it wrong but I don't know if that judgement can be contested.

The practical issue is that despite the law, providers of services which should have has the exception applied so they remained single sex didn't - they just rolled over to 'gender' (often as not self id'd) despite there being no real basis for 'gender' as an exception to the usual rule of equality.

I can top you up, I found a full bottle in the back of the cupboard. was a pleasant surprise.

Yes, that makes sense. I very much hope there's a rapid and substantial shift towards all areas of civic society with any policies affecting women invoking the exceptions any minute now!