Equality Act - what next?

[ArabellaScott]

The petition to look at this seems sadly to have virtually ground to a halt:

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

Government have responded with a dismissive:

'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.'

What next?

We know that providers, while technically able to exclude males, just do not and will not. Nobody seems to agree on or understand the law fully. Legal experts get in huge tangles arguing about it.

The current situation means women are excluded from many women's spaces, there is no provision for single sex services apart from Beira's Place in Scotland, there are still males in women's prisons, and in hospitals.

What do we do if the government and EHRC won't listen? Whatever the law says, this situation is untenable.

Petition cards through people’s doors?
Here is where you get them:
sex-matters.org/take-action/make-the-equality-act-clear/

I am not on Twitter or Facebook etc.

It is very difficult to understand this petition. Even lawyers and the EHRC argue about how the Equality Act Sex, Gender Reassignment, and the GRA interact.

I too wish there were a one line meme and cartoon.

You could reach a wider audience by taping them to the back of the cubicle doors in the ladies loos, in places like pubs, shopping centres, stations etc. Although you'd probably need to make sure it's offset to one side, so it wouldn't be hidden if they've hung their coat up on the hook. Do the petition cards have QR codes linking to the petition? That'd probably make that tactic more workable.

I love this idea.

Have ordered some petition cards, and left a donation.

But I also agree that it is going to need a snappy meme or one liner from someone with a big reach, to get this over the line.

A short snappy phrase ...

Equality Act WTF?

Ask the government what a woman is

Think there’s no place for 🍆 in women’s spaces?

Sign the petition to clarify the Equality Act.

Great suggestions so far. Ultimately amending the act is an act of politics. It requires political power. So you can lobby and persuade those in power. that is what the peitition is designed to do.

Or actually have power ourselves. That means action within political parties. Even the Tories are reluctant to do anything right now. So we need more people inside not just the Tories but all the parties pushing sexual equality. That is how in the end we will change things for the better. The Tories right now are reluctant to do anything. Maybe time in opposition might change that.

Ask the government what a woman is
That is a good idea Arabella. That is catchy but they just (may) answer “Adult human female”. And then the problem is that an adult human female does not count in society if the female aspect, which is biological, has no clarity in law any more and can just as easily be any man so long as he has some ‘expression’ of femininity like a skirt and lipstick or a girl’s name.

“Equality Act WTF” is a bit too good! As in how the sex characteristics and sex reassignment characteristics interact with each other, and interact with the GRA, is a such a dreadful, tangled mess of badly working law that it should be ditched altogether ( but never will be). Also, I bet if you ask anyone on the street, 99% would not know what any of it is, or certainly not the implications.

We could put these on the petition site here though including “Think there’s no place for 🍆 in women’s spaces?”.

It isn’t just women either. Gay men, say, could find they lose a discrimination case for dismissal at work if the comparator is no longer other men, but a “legal” GRC man.

Also need to keep stressing that privacy is guaranteed.

Sorry, that response sounded negative. All those ideas are more than I could come up with.

Infortunately fromorbit · Today 08:03’s
course of action is the only way.

It's at a whisker under 84,000.

16,000 to go. There's 6 of us on this board, so if we take 2,666 each then focus on that, we can do it.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4722618-petition-to-update-the-equality-act-thread-2?page=29

I'm not on twitter, so I feel cheeky asking but could someone tweet any account that may have some reach and ask them to flag it. @glinner could do with tweeting it again. I was looking at the new thread on baby strippers, Oli London was on the twitter thread, he seems to be tweeting a lot of GC anti-DQ stuff. Perhaps he could be persuaded to amplify it? Are there any others?

It could very quickly get those 16,000 if someone famous takes up the banner or something outrageous hits the news. When everything was taking off in Scotland, there were around 1,000 new signatures per day.

This is close to JK Rowling's heart. She may tweet about it towards the end of the period, if it looks as if we won't get the 100,000.

If I wasn’t so ill I’d mock something up with this QR code, print it out and stick it around. Women’s loos in service stations, above the button at the road crossing, etc.

@EndlessTea I just used your caption on the petition site. I didn’t put your name though.

Unfortunately my explanation about GRCs and Render Reassignment muddying the waters for the characteristic ‘sex was a bit muddled.

We could use ‘Arabella’s’ for the next bumps.

Then shall we try to get more attention on Mumsnet itself by starting a FWR thread asking for captions to use on the petition site? Then people might also go to the petition site as well as be tempted to read, or add, a caption.

The Sex-Matters Campaign explanation could be posted by way of explanation so as to understand the interactions of Equality Act GR, GRC, and Equality Act Sex.

Maybe the thread title itself would attract people from other sites if someone can think of a resonating one. (We could not have it on ‘Chat’, say, as it would just get moved.)

If we could start something on Chat that's FWR adjacent.....I can't think of anything off the top of my head. We can post a link to the petition thread.

Right.

I'm not not in Twitter, and my Facebook page has 5 friends (yes, sent that already).

I'm getting ready to send this to a couple of WhatsApp groups I'm on.

How can I make it clear what this is about, without being chucked out of the groups.

Will of course, need to make sure that people know it is anonymous.

^IcakethereforeIam* · Today 10:06

If we could start something on Chat that's FWR adjacent.....I can't think of anything off the top of my head. We can post a link to the petition thread.

Wouldn’t they just move it from ‘Chat’ to ‘FWR’ on the grounds that it is about ‘Sex and Gender’ therefore not allowed anywhere else?

Also, I was told that linking the petition is not allowed on any site but the petition site.

I realise we were doing that but we’re just lucky not to get reported I believe.

We could try Chat and see . Even if moved to FWR it would get more attention than on ‘Petitions’.

Vebrithien this Campaign pdf from Sex-Matters tries to explain some things with photos. Unfortunately the details in the photos aren’t clear when you look on line.
sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Why-is-Sex-Matters-calling-for-clarification-of-the-Equality-Act-2.pdf

Then there is this from them, showing how ‘clarifying’ “sex” is biological matters not just for women.
sex-matters.org/take-action/make-the-equality-act-clear/

This is why the Government response so far is not really relevant (because without clarity the exceptions which give the right to sex based spaces could be legally challenged).
sex-matters.org/posts/updates/sex-in-the-equality-act/

Oral Evidence House of Commons transcript with legal experts speaking saying it needs to be clarified
committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/12639/pdf/

More Oral Evidence from the House if Commons Feb 10th, again showing the need for more clarity even among legal experts.

committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1693/html/

I'm sure there are several posters who are on Twitter, I've seen or followed links they've posted before? I only use Twitter to read rather than post or interact, and only have about 10 random people following me! We could create a new Twitter account though? Follow lots of famous people and organisations that could retweet? Maybe a few of us have the log in details and take it in turns, just an idea?

A legal opinion on the impact of the Gender Recognition Act on Sex based Rights.

mbmpolicy.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/impact-of-gender-recognition-on-sex-based-rights.-r-bull-11-feb-2020.pdf

I like this! Short and to the point

I've been posting links to the petition thread on other threads. I think that's okay. I think linking directly to the petition isn't permitted except on the petition board. Try starting a thread on FWR that links to the petition thread? On the safe side don't use the word 'petition' in the thread title. Perhaps test out one of the ideas upthread as a title?

I think the difficulty is that so many people who care and understand the issues are afraid to share on SM because of the threat of being ostracised, seen as a bigot, risk to employment etc. I feel strongly about this, but I’ve shared it with one just other person whose views I was already confident of.
My employer is regularly described here as woke, captured etc and I am frightened to be open about my (actually very moderate and majority held) view that clarification of the law would be helpful and that, in some areas, sex matters.
I’m even reluctant to give my name and address to Sex Matters. But if there were downloadable resources I could print off, I’d happily put them in public loos.

I think when something GC shows up 'in the wild' on MN it gets reported and, more often than not, moved. There's a handful of posters, I expect, who patrol the boards with their fingers over the report button. So, we can start a thread in chat but it would have to be robust enough to resist being reported.

I keep forgetting there's another feminism board. When I've looked it doesn't seem to have much engagement but I'll check and perhaps post the link on a likely thread or two.