Tories plan to amend Equality Act to protect single-sex spaces

[IwantToRetire]

Government considers manifesto pledge to overhaul New Labour’s equality laws in effort to protect women-only spaces and female sports

The Conservatives are preparing to revive Rishi Sunak’s leadership pledge to overhaul New Labour’s equality laws, in an effort to protect single-sex spaces and women’s sports.

Senior government figures are considering a manifesto commitment to amend the Equality Act, which the Prime Minister previously said had become a “trojan horse” for “woke nonsense”.

The commitment would include an <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/5ZIFq/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/13/fix-equality-act-restore-sanity-to-trans-debate/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">amendment to the 2010 Equality Act, passed while Gordon Brown was prime minister, “to make it unambiguously clear that sex means biological sex,” said a source familiar with the discussions. Such a move would “remove the current vagueness which is exploited to undermine women’s rights, security and competition in sport”.

It would mean sex being defined by someone’s biological sex rather than their affirmed, or “acquired” gender, making it easier to bar those born as men from women-only spaces and female sporting events.

It could also include <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/5ZIFq/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/04/biological-women-protected-equality-law-change/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a wider review of the legislation, which Mr Sunak said during his 2022 leadership campaign was used to “engage in social engineering to which no one has given consent.”

Part of a longer article at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/16/rishi-sunak-amend-equality-act-single-sex-spaces-sport/

Note: title says plans, sub title says considers!!

Article can also be read at https://archive.ph/5ZIFq

Yes - and about children who are simply collateral, as we are regularly reminded by a few.

It's got the usual posters rattled then. Curious.

Yes and children just thought I should have added them

Well, it's still about women. Because many of us feel quite passionately that bloody extremists from mad political lobbies should not be wrecking our families, teaching our kids extreme beliefs as truths, and sterilising and medically harming them.

A fairly good way to annoy women is to threaten and harm their children. It's a shame more men aren't bothered.

but this would just be an amendment to an existing statute.

Yes, I'm beginning to recall some of the discussions on this board last year and it was certainly argued that clarifying the EA didn't even require fresh legislation because it was existing law. Not a lawyer myself so I don't know if that was correct but it's interesting how we never heard any further about it.

It seems we can keep males out of female prisons now via the law and it hasn’t been challenged

I’d like to hear more about how far this can go in terms of who gets access where

Even if the EqA is a different mechanism, what’s the challenge and how likely is it to succeed.. and all that

@EasternStandard
'I can see if you’re male focussed you won’t consider women at all but it’s not really about the minority to us

It’s about women'

Well its women and also men who have peaked. I am married to one who has been wary of what is happening in terms identity politics and the shifts in this for over a decade. I have only recently caught up.

I will say this to @DadJoke although he knows it very well. This is not about being anti-trans or anti-minority. Its about protecting women's rights and the rights of children too. And by protection I mean that I won't stand by and see erosion of rights that were hard won and needed. Neither do I agree that trans rights include the right to mislabel me as 'cis' or require me to use language that does not make clear sense to me or most others. That is not equality, its bullying and manipulation. (The bigger issue is the protection of children - to stand by and do nothing is really unconscionable when so much evidence is coming to light, now that proper research is happening).

Edit: woman to women typo

Bravo

To be fair the Tories have been equally usless on a huge range of issues not just this. The gap between Sunak's statement of belief in something and then action on it is huge. If you read any of the more conservative papers most commentators are fuming about this on loads of things. That they don't seem to actually DO anything.

The key thing for me is that the Tories will not take anway any rights nor make the situation worse. They have moved a long way from self-id. I have no fear of the Tories doing that. On the other hand Labour almost certainly will make our situation worse.

"... so we think that perhaps we could include it if enough people look like they might vote for us if we do..."

I'll get excited when I see it in their manifesto as a firm commitment.

Only a little bit, though. Their track record on manifesto pledges and gender politics hasn't been impressive to date.

What pledge had there been on gender specifically?

@Gettingmadderallthetime if almost all your campaigning for “sex-based rights” is directed at reducing the existing rights of transgender people and not, say, fighting for reproductive rights, equal pay and an end to VAWG as most feminist organisations do, then you are anti-trans. It’s really easy to tell. Look at Sex Matters, LGB Alliance, FWS and other similar organisations. It’s just transphobia in the guise of feminism. The vast majority of such organisations understand that trans rights don’t conflict with women’s rights.

Man tells women how he will permit them to be women and feminist. While insisting his personal reality is theirs too.

In his, women's rights are not affected by men using them and their spaces and resources, and the women harmed and excluded just don't exist.

In mine, everyone eats rainbows and poos butterflies.

😂@Froodwithatowel

There's a long history of misogynistic men plopping on this board to lecture women for daring to centre children and women in our feminism.

Of course, the rest of the country are busy going over the top of that mountain and expressing their horror at the abuse of children and removal of women's rights - yet they still post on this little corner of the internet with just 6 women and a dog.

They must think that we're somehow influential? 😎

There are no sex based rights if men can be women, so yes, I am quite happy to say that I am campaigning against the right (actual or made up) of men to identify as women.

The GRA needs to be repealed.

I agree with you for sure. However I’d rather a Labour government who will do more for those who need it, rather than squeezing every public service until it collapses.

Plus I doubt Labour will ignore Cass, so I am presuming at least children will be protected.

The Tories considering making use of protecting women’s rights as a manifesto pledge rather than using their remaining time in government to settle the issue reminds me very much of the Democrats in the USA using the promise of codifying abortion rights as an election booster too - somehow the Democrats just never got around to actually writing the law that would protect abortion rights and then the Supreme Court took them away.

If the Tories don’t make the relevant legislative changes to clearly establish sex-based rights and protections for women, the EHRC and judges will continue to nibble away at them while claiming that interpreting the law via an ECHR framework supersedes interpreting it via the lens of domestic safeguarding legislation. That does nothing to protect women, children and vulnerable adults.

That's entirely up to you Lizzie, personally I don't believe any of them are prepared to put aside party allegiance or political expediency to sort this out.

I don't think my contempt for all mainstream parties could be any higher than it is right now.

The Tories considering making use of protecting women’s rights as a manifesto pledge rather than using their remaining time in government to settle the issue reminds me very much of the Democrats in the USA using the promise of codifying abortion rights as an election booster too - somehow the Democrats just never got around to actually writing the law that would protect abortion rights and then the Supreme Court took them away.

Same.

The abortion example sounds to me as pp think Labour will do something pretty bad

@DadJoke
'if almost all your campaigning for “sex-based rights” is directed at reducing the existing rights of transgender people and not, say, fighting for reproductive rights, equal pay and an end to VAWG as most feminist organisations do, then you are anti-trans.'

You are not only wrong about me being anti-trans, but make incorrect assumptions about my record on supporting women's rights. I have worked in one of the areas you mention (national level post - day job) in the past. How have you supported women's rights? Or are you only supportive of trans rights?

If women having equal rights and children not being sterilised and medically harmed is 'anti-trans' then what the actual fuck is 'pro trans' all about?

No current trans rights are under threat. Women's rights, on the other hand...

I can't speak for @UtopiaPlanitia but the analogy for me was a party (Democrats) weaponising women's rights for their own political gain rather than actually trying to fix the issue while they were in a position to do so.

But the outcome has been bad due to what came next

Is that what people are thinking?