Kemi Badenoch: Diversity obsession has led to Kafkaesque madness (KB for PM?)

[IwantToRetire]

Another really straightforwarded down to earth practical commentary of where chasing the rainbow has led us. And ideas on how Government cant, without being dictatorial help solve the mess.

The root of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Equality Act 2010, often exploited by those with a separate agenda. The Equality Act is a shield, not a sword. It is about preventing discrimination, not social engineering. There are no protected groups in the act, only protected characteristics. A white man is just as protected on the characteristics of race and sex as a black woman, yet many believe the act is there just to protect minorities, when in reality it protects us all.

Many companies’ diversity and inclusion activities are falling foul of the law; for example by confusing legal positive action and positive discrimination, which is illegal — except when selecting political candidates (a handy get-out-clause Labour devised to use all-women shortlists). Encouraging people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply for a job or go for a promotion is positive action, and legal. Restricting applications for a position to a certain group is positive discrimination and most certainly isn’t. This has led to increasing calls for the Equality Act to be scrapped. The act is 13 years old and could be improved but the issue is not the law. It’s bad actors misrepresenting it to suit their agenda.

Many of these laws were written at a time when institutions knew how to self-regulate. Someone proposing a terrible idea would be checked by colleagues in the organisation. Today, those colleagues are scared of being called bigots for disagreeing, so they say nothing. What the Farage and Sawers cases have done is show that this problem is getting worse. Long-held tenets of liberal democracy — freedom of association, freedom of conscience, the presumption of innocence — are being tossed aside in favour of dubious inclusion strategies that themselves fall foul of the law. In some cases they’re cancelling people before any wrongdoing occurs, leaving them with no way to prove their innocence.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kemi-badenoch-banking-scandal-natwest-niigel-farage-wdp3mmq0w
Also available via archive.ph

You aren't able to deny them opportunities at work or to participate in society based on the fact they are trans
Of course you aren’t, and rightly so. How is this treating them as though they actually are their acquired gender, though?
Pronouns are just a courtesy, (or compelled 🙄), the vast majority still know perfectly well what sex trans people are.

What are you opposing about this?

I oppose the utter mess this is starting with the GRA which puts a lie into the Law, confuses sex and gender and opened to door to all this madness where women are having to fight tooth and nail to have single sex provision, spaces, services, sports.

Conservatives are trying to clarify the EqA to make single sex provision based on biological sex exactly that with no frippery around proportional means to a legitimate aim which is nonsense word salad. To make sure that single sex spaces are just that - single sex based on biology and nothing else.

Amd what is the difference with the Conservative EA policy? They are also not proposing any changes

They are and Labour are opposing any clarification.

Quite

Quite what?

the vast majority still know perfectly well what sex trans people are.

So why the big secret about whether or not they have a GRC?

So you are proposing no protections for trans people? Repeal the GRA, sex based provision only?

That's a big change too. And won't seem necessary to most. Which was the point i was making upthread.

God knows 🤷🏻‍♀️

What protections are trans people so terrified of losing? The (presumed) right to access female spaces?
Females have a right to keep male bodied people out of their spaces, why should this be ridden roughshod over?

I agree with you that its not OK to deny people opportunities based on gender and its not a big deal.

I'm not sure really when I say about legal recognition why the reply is either "you are a TRA and think people can change sex!" or "what do you mean, that's no big deal"

It is no big deal for someone to have a GRC if sex based provision is also made, entirely uncontroversial position I thought. Yet seems to somehow result in confusion.

Thanks for this, it puts it clearly.

I agree about the word salad in the EqA and needing biological sex as the definition

If a space needs to be single sex at all why in any case would males be appropriate

The law is too weak to clarify it for us, hence the mess

The right to not be sacked/chucked out of shops/beaten up because they are different I think....

You can keep males out of female spaces and still respect people's trans identity

Where might there be a single sex space where a male with a GRC is appropriate?

Where is it, to use their word, legitimate to allow it?

If the answer is no where then the EA should be updated, which is what one party is going for and the other is opposing.

That’s a basic human right. Nobody is trying to take it away from anybody.

Women also have a basic human right to feel safe from predatory males in toilets / changing rooms - there is a very real attempt to remove this right from them.
How many trans people are actually being sacked, chucked out of shops, etc?

I support that right. Any every person who screams 'transphobia' when a man isn't allowed to compete in a women's race or use a women's toilet or be housed in the female estate if they are sent to prison etc. is making it harder to focus on the actual transphobia. They are enabling actual transphobia - which is already illegal. Trans people do have the 'right' not to have this happen to them and the protection of the law if it does. Which is as it should be. Repealing the ridiculous and misogynistic GRA will not remove those rights. It will just make it clear that men of any identity do not have the right to use female spaces.

The right not to be sacked or thrown out of a shop is different to the right to single sex spaces

Or should be, for women and girls

If gender has no material impact in any aspect of legal life, there is no need to get a certificate which legally allows you to pretend to be the opposite sex. Pretend away, it doesn't need gatekeeping. The very fact of having this 'lets pretend reality is as you wish it was rather than it actually is' law is being heard by entitled men as a carte blanche to behave in narcissistic, anti equality and entirely selfish ways.

Religion has no material impact in legal life, yet it's still protected

But yeah, thats why I dont understand rhe uproar about making the GRC process easier

It only alarms me if the GRC is being used for access to single sex spaces

Religion has no material impact in legal life, yet it's still protected
What’s that got to do with the price of fish? How does a person’s religious beliefs actually impact on anyone around them?

EqA as biological sex is the way to go

Labour oppose this.

You can still protect gender in other ways without GRC access to single sex spaces

People who vote Labour will not get the EqA revision and women and girls will lose out.

@AdamRyan Please explain your position?

Everything is 'on the one hand but then on the other'. Your view of the EqA is simply wrong. Your view of how single sex spaces and services looks rather innocent to me. How do you think that a service provider could deny that service to a GRC holder given the Haldane ruling? Also, by extension, since nobody can ask anybody if they have a GRC, single sex providers have to assume that anyone who claims to be a particular sex must be treated as being that sex.

And again, if the conservatives are so pro women=adult human females, why haven't they updated the law to clarify this at any point in the last 13 years?

That's not correct. There is provision in the EA to exclude males from single sex spaces, even if they have a GRC.

Single sex providers can exclude males if "proportionate". That means a womens hairdresser couldn't refuse to serve a TW, as not proportionate. Someone who does intimate waxing could.

So again, what are you asking for here?

Self ID was the threat, and policy being made on the basis of gender identity not sex. Luckily that threat has receded some what, largely thanks to GC feminists campaigning and some nasty males identifying as women, showing off the wolf in sheep's clothing nature of "identity".

But you don't need a religion recognition certificate to state what religion you are do you? That's the relevant point. The minute you start issuing formal things people think there's a reason for it. If we said 'your sex can't change and your gender is a personal matter and spaces are segregated by sex' then there is no need for certificates.

has anyone said they're pro women? In my view they're just not actively doing their very best to dismantle women's rights as quickly as they can - unlike Labour.