Women's rights general conversations - Thread 7

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 6.

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

This is the "Hannah" case (the alias of the teacher). There is a thread in Mumsnet somewhere. Tribunal Tweets were transcribing proceedings.

A Christian organisation were funding "Hannah", hence the relevance of the social media posts of Tribunal members.

Digging needed, if anyone feels so inclined!
This case is being fought by Sally Grover, creator and founder of Giggle, a women-only site, on the Federal court of Australia.

My spade has been duly brandished. I hope she wins.

Share token:

Teacher’s trans row tribunal collapses over anti-Tory slurs.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8acdac08-9939-48a5-859d-98fba8402e84?shareToken=2407c2ba2e71b52634cfc7ed6f9b6e911_

If anyone likes Jon Holmes's The Skewer on R4, this week's episode has some topical news of the kind usually avoided by R4!
It's a weekly news 'soundscape', if you don't know it, very clever, and samples songs, films and other cultural references to make paralells and point things out in interesting ways.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001xdj2

I also listened to, and enjoyed The Commune podcast @DameMaud , and have only just remembered where the recommendation came from - thanks!

Ah! Glad you enjoyed it @rhywlodes !

And thanks for your recommendation too. Will have a listen.

Just read this in Spiked

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/26/spains-trans-equality-law-is-a-predators-charter/

https://archive.ph/Z00Kj

Reminded me of the posters that rock up to say countries with self id are also best for women's rights, as though one necessarily has anything to do with the other.

Let’s hope the U.K. gvt are listening. Whether it’s one party or another.

Although I’m pretty convinced they do not and will not give a flying fck. We are only women and children after all, men are much more important. As they always have been.

That is the only explanation for this ‘trans ideology’ (aka male rights) takeover. It is enabled by men for men and unless all women stand against it, we don’t stand a fcking chance.

#I’m fed up of this shit.

The lack of pushback to the dystopian law is concerning

Excellent from glosswitch https://thecritic.co.uk/the-sadness-of-sceptical-man/.

A positive development. It’s almost as if they realised she was stating facts.

>>A government lawyer who faced legal action after expressing gender-critical views at work including commenting that only women menstruate has had the case against her dropped.
Elspeth Duemmer-Wrigley works for an arm’s-length body affiliated to the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and was due to appear at a tribunal this week accused of harassment.
The claimant has now officially withdrawn all accusations against Duemmer-Wrigley, who is a chairwoman of a civil service network that represents staff with gender-critical views.
The individual works for another organisation linked to Defra and is still suing the government department for allowing the network to exist.
Duemmer-Wrigley says the claims against her were “vexatious and without merit” and believes she was targeted as a figurehead of the Sex Equality and Equity Network (SEEN). The network has more than 700 civil servant members across 50 government departments who support the belief that biological sex is binary and immutable.
The anonymous claimant has accused Defra bosses of creating an “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and/or offensive environment” and is calling for a disbanding of the departmental SEEN network.
Despite the personal toll the case has taken on her, Duemmer-Wrigley is seeking to remain an interested party to defend the existence of SEEN across the public sector. “It has always been my position that this claim was vexatious and without merit,” she said.
“However, this does not end things. The claimant is still seeking remedies which would directly impact me, those who are gender critical within the civil service, and the SEEN network. For this reason I am seeking to remain on the action as an interested party, to ensure that none of these remedies are implemented.”
Duemmer-Wrigley raised more than £40,000 in public donations after being left to defend her case without the financial support of Defra. The funds will now be put towards other gender-critical litigation in the public sector.
Duemmer-Wrigley and other SEEN leaders wrote to the Cabinet secretary in October warning that civil servants with gender-critical views were being harassed and silenced, which is threatening the impartiality of the civil service.
She was accused of harassment over comments and posts made in the workplace. A comment that “only women menstruate” made in a seminar about female autism and a post listing the nine protected characteristics from the Equality Act were cited among the examples.
She said in a statement on Monday: “After so many of you generously enabled me to reach my initial crowdfunded target of £40,000, the claimant has now formally withdrawn the claim against me. I am incredibly grateful for the generosity of everyone who donated to my crowdfunder, without which I would not be able to continue.
“I have been overwhelmed by the swell of support for my case and touched by the kindness of all your messages.”
A government spokesman said: “We are unable to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

Hoo-bloody-ray! Much needed happy news.

Aoutsch! So on the money

As always.

I will be fascinated to see how the rest of this claim proceeds. I mean, it's mad and shit that we have to defend against this nonsense, but the arguments will be interesting. Because if it wasn't Elspeth, who was it??

Interesting segment in the women's boat race coverage (from approx 14.30), talking to a researcher and some of the rowers about the effect of the menstrual cycle on sporting performance, injury risk etc. (and a brief aside from Claire Balding about women's feet being different, so they need their own football boots). Short and not in huge depth, but great to have it, and the general research deficit in women's medicine, talked about on BBC1.

Women need their own football boots? I did not even realise.

How are women's feet different?

They didn't go into that, but from memory the proportions are different and the boots need to be rigid/flexible in different places.

https://rcpod.org.uk/blog/football-boots-qa-with-dr-katrine-okholm-kryger
But talking generally, the shape of women’s feet is different. We don’t have complete data on how it’s different, but I am working on that at the moment by doing 3D scans of elite female footballers’ feet to have a fuller understanding.
We do know things like the ratio of the toes to the foot length, to the area where the foot is meant to bend, will be different. We know the arch height is often higher in women. We know the heel is shaped differently, so irritation around the Achilles tendon is more likely to happen in women who play in men’s football boots.
Then we know that men and women move differently. We have different muscle masses, we have different power outputs, so the traction that we require to play optimally – the length of the studs, the shape of the studs, the number of studs – will vary between men and women

Engaged in a discussion on Threads and had this article cited claiming zero evidence that trans women in public bathrooms increases risk to women and girls. Anybody got any comments about it? www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/no-link-between-trans-inclusive-policies-bathroom-safety-study-finds-n911106

There's only an Abstract which makes certain general claims but no stats.
It's related to Massachusetts only. It's been heavily criticised for bias.

As for the Williams Institute study, Yvette Ollada, a consultant for Keep MA Safe, called it “totally biased” and claimed “there was an obvious conflict of interest on the part of the researchers and publishers.” Ollada alleged the study’s researchers shared their findings with those in favor of keeping the nondiscrimination law in place before it was available to the public and denied that same early access to Keep MA Safe.

To read the article itself, you have to pay £29.95. I'm not paying that to see if their study is indeed iffy as claimed. It's hardly an open and transparent document for all to see.

Presumably the person citing it as part of their argument has read it or are they citing an abstract and an article but haven't actually read the research?

I mean, they may have institution access but I'm sceptical....

It's not really an argument as such. It's me talking about safeguarding and several people, mostly TW I think, calling me a paranoid bigot talking about things that don't happen <shrug>

1st April and trending on twitter: truth is not a hate crime and fact is not hate.

I wonder if the Scottish police are busy today??

She’s kicking arse on the media rounds - trans activists are scared of her!