For Women Scotland have lost their appeal

[ArthurbellaScott]

https://forwomen.scot/01/11/2023/court-decision-reclaiming-motion/

The court rules that in some cases, men with a GRC are women.

unherd.com/thepost/scottish-feminists-lose-appeal-on-definition-of-woman/

Informative piece from Michael Foran

It is nothing less than male supremacism fixed in law.

The right of males to use women's bodies for their own purposes with the woman's consent rendered legally irrelevant. And the threat of punishment if she protests.

Fuck that. You can fix in law what you want. If it's bad law, the population tend to break the bargain of following it. This fantasy stuff is falling apart more and more by the month, it's already ridiculous.

1. I'm going to take the opinions of people actually versed in law and policy above your own
2. because of the 'before the law' application of self id, many organisations in Scotland who can offer single sex spaces are not doing so, to the detriment of Scottish women.
3. what this ruling has absolutely definitely done, as it was to do with representation on public boards, is ensured that public boards can be entirely populated with males. No actual women (the cunty kind) needed at all.

Ain't democracy grand?

How can you exclude a "legal woman" with a GRC to prove it from women's services using the reasonable exception situation?

Even though I dont support the whole concept of this (ie the exemptions should have been written in relation to the minority to say when they could be taken as being the opposite sex) the law was written at a time that the TRAs had not gone into over drive. ie the expectation that people would behave resonsably and comply with the law.

Now we have TRAs going out of the way to breach reasonably behaviour to prove their point. On another thread I said something along the lines of having legislation that depends of what people feel or their ideological beliefs can only end in disaster as over time these will change and no longer be about a very few people who (as far as they were concerned) thought the were the opposite sex.

So what we get one badly written law with unintended consequence being the shaky base on which any number of other laws and custom and practice are now based, and open to endless re-interpretation.

I would prefer to have the EA re-written to make it clear that sex means biological sex, but that will be blocked because if that became the law ir would make the GRA unworkable. So then all sorts of people would say it was an infringement on the rights of vulnerable women, so yet again women would be expected to not insist on their rights because of course everybody is more important than women.

Oh FFS why don't they chain us to the kitchen sink while they are about it?

Micheal Foran law lecturer says..

This does not mean that service providers can never exclude a biological male from a women’s service, however. There is an exception in the Equality Act which allows for this exclusion if it is proportionate, meaning it is more likely to be lawful to exclude a male with a GRC stating they are a woman from a rape crisis centre or a changing room than it will be to exclude them from women-only hair salon or leadership training course.
These exceptions do not apply to associations or educational institutions, however.
The result of this case means that women-only associations, including groups organised for grassroots political advocacy or women’s support networks for victims of male violence will not be allowed to exclude males who have GRCs stating that they are women if that is why they are excluded. Similarly, associations of lesbians or gay men cannot exclude GRC holders on the basis of their biological sex.

because of the 'before the law' application of self id, many organisations in Scotland who can offer single sex spaces are not doing so, to the detriment of Scottish women.

But that was to do with breaking the law to make a point and / or they never said they were single sex.

Or their funders eg the SNP said they had to be trans inclusive.

People deliberately breaking the law doesn't mean that the law doesn't exist.

To repeat what I said up thread. This ruling changes nothing. Since the EA was ammended to recognise the GRA the minority group (trans people) were given more rights than the majority, those who know you cant change sex. But it was conceded that there were occasions that single sex services were permissable.

The fact that so many groups in Scotland chose not to use this option, is about the state of women's politics in Scotland. And as JKR has proved if you want to implement single sex services you can.

The real question is why a group that is more than 50% of the population have to give up their rights to accommodate an unrepresentative minority.

In a way this whole thread is pointless as nothing has changed. The situation is the same as it has been since the EA was ammended.

I am not sure why anyone wants to go on making the same posts over and over again.

We know our right have been impinged, how are we going to change it.

The madness of spending money on 2 cases asking people whose job it is to implement the law as written, to say something the law as written says something else is madness.

Can we move on?

Sometimes it feels like we relish going over and over again the awfulness of it all as it stops us from having to come up with actually doing something.

I wonder how this is going to impact on the Section 35 legal decision. I believe it was cited as potentially having an effect.

Oh for heavens sake!

Micheal Foran law lecturer says..

This does not mean that service providers can never exclude a biological male from a women’s service, however. There is an exception in the Equality Act which allows for this exclusion if it is proportionate, meaning it is more likely to be lawful to exclude a male with a GRC stating they are a woman from a rape crisis centre or a changing room than it will be to exclude them from women-only hair salon or leadership training course.
These exceptions do not apply to associations or educational institutions, however.
The result of this case means that women-only associations, including groups organised for grassroots political advocacy or women’s support networks for victims of male violence will not be allowed to exclude males who have GRCs stating that they are women if that is why they are excluded. Similarly, associations of lesbians or gay men cannot exclude GRC holders on the basis of their biological sex.

He said this after the Haldane ruling, even though everybody from Nicola Sturgeion and the Judge herself said it didn't.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED

I have no idea were these self important newbies who think they have found somehting to make a name for themselves are being listened to.

What we do know if that the tran narrative is making more and more people think we dont even have the Single Sex Exemptions.

Why is everyone so willing to go along with this narrative, let alone some random man who thinks he can pontificate in this way.

If everybody is so sure things have changed, then at least spend the money squandered on these 2 courts cases on taking a cases that says the single sex exemptions are as written and practiced by those who want to.

Quote from today's ruling

The exception provisions of the EA (in particular Schedule 3 para 28) apply to enable providers of single-sex services to exclude trans individuals, including those with a GRC who would otherwise be entitled to be included.

Threads like this go on and on and on saying things that just aren't true.

At least lets put our energy into acting on what is fact.

Which is stopping funders from denying recipients of funding from providing single sex services

Stopping providers of services for women from not bothering to provide single sex services.

The real issue is that despite lengthy threads like this on FWR and the odd article here and there the vast majority of the population dont care and neither do MPs.

That is the issue to address.

This is specifically discussed.

It seems a 'transman' will still be covered under pregnancy/maternity discrimination.

I mean, this is good for transmen. But none of it makes sense.

https://twitter.com/zeno001/status/1719738338872053954

After today's Court of Session ruling, will the @ehrc now issue guidance to groups wanting to abide by the law & allow in female individuals - those without a pen!s plus those who hold a pen!s AND a GRC - while lawfully excluding individuals who have a pen!s but don't hold a GRC?

https://twitter.com/lecanardnoir/status/1719777351653855542

A clever question. The @ehrc can only now admit that the protected characteristics of sex and sexuality are fundamentally compromised. It is no longer possible to uphold rights granted by the Equality Act.

Fucking ridiculous. I hate this shit.

Absolutely this.

Ah. Here we go:

'Alba Party Holyrood leader Ash Regan MSP has today urged First Minister Humza Yousaf to end his legal battle with the UK Government over the controversial Gender Reform Act.
Ms Regan’s comments are in response to the potential impact of a decision of the Court of Session in regards to a case brought by For Women Scotland against the Scottish Ministers.
The Inner House Court of Session issued its judgment today which ruled that a Gender Recognition Certificate does change a person's sex for the purposes of the Equality Act, and so men who have acquired a GRC are entitled to be included as women in the quota for public boards.
Alba Party’s Regan says this now means that if the Scottish Government are successful against the UK Government’s Section 35 legal case it would add further risks to the controversial Gender Recognition Reforms which she resigned from Government to vote against.'

https://www.albaparty.org/ash_regan_urges_first_minister_to_scrap_gender_reform_legal_battle

So they know how absurd this is.

*The real issue is that despite lengthy threads like this on FWR and the odd article here and there the vast majority of the population dont care and neither do MPs.

That is the issue to address.*

Women in Scotland are fighting tooth and nail against this. I know my MSP's must be sick to the back teeth of hearing from me. But we're fighting institutional capture. Our Government is the one driving this. Service providers dependant on funding from the Government are also dependent on the funding requirements set by the Government. I can't see any change on the horizon until seats are lost during the next election.

What's that often used phrase, Clown Land?
We have a law that openly upends biological reality, pretends that there are not 2 sexes, pretends that a man can legally be called a woman despite women being defined by our chromosomes and biological reality and ignores the fact that only women can gestate and birth a baby.

The terrible thing is that this will be changed down the line - but it will be on the backs of countless abused, raped and harmed women and girls. As women know and the current crime stats demonstrate, too many predators take advantage of all this.

Does this mean Beira's place can't be bio female only?

What about sports? Surely this means males with a GRC have to be allowed to compete?

Must be only a matter of time before there is a legal challenge on Beira’s place. Sports are a named exception in the GRA legislation so think we are safe on that point so long as sporting bodies are preparing to implement them.

Yes, indeed.

I'm very grateful we have Michael Foran's insight and expert input on this issue.

'Dr Michael Foran joined the law school in 2022, having previously taught at the University of Strathclyde from 2020-22. He completed his PhD in Constitutional Theory at the University of Cambridge and holds degrees from the London School of Economics (MSc in Law and Anthropology) and Trinity College Dublin (LLB).
He specialises in constitutional law with a particular focus on the rule of law, legal equality, and the common law constitutional tradition.
In 2022 he was a visiting researcher at the Common Good Project, University of Oxford. '

Not bad qualifications for a 'random man'.

The terrible thing is that this will be changed down the line - but it will be on the backs of countless abused, raped and harmed women and girls. As women know and the current crime stats demonstrate, too many predators take advantage of all this.

Oh 100% it will be changed. Even the most ridiculously virulent adherents of this ideology among our MSP's must be realising that the body of evidence is building up and the tipping point is coming. My MSP made shocked noises about Isla Bryson ('of course Isla should be in a male prison!') but went rather quiet when I pointed out the (many) previous cases that hadn't come into the public consciousness in the same way that the Bryson case did. The SPS had to do a rather embarrassing emergency 'guidance' change on the back of that after sitting on their review for 5 years. As the election gets closer, the number of defectors to other political parties is growing and the Bute House agreement is going to take an absolute hammering.

As I said previously, we're fighting this tooth and nail. But those in power need to be ousted for the institutional capture to lose its power.

Agreed.

Twitter is just a sea of the FWS tweet and lots of repeal the GRA tweets tonight!

That’s utter nonsense.

This case does prove that to be regarded as a woman , a “ trans woman “ must have a GRC. Same with a “ trans man” and remember this judgement has implications about everything from single sex spaces to maternity care.