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, Eastern, I’m expecting Labour to do something that undermines women’s rights even more. For Labour, thinking on these topics is very much ideology-based rather than evidence-based. Their MPs and Shadow Ministers have made multiple public commitments to 'modernise' the GRA and to 'improve trans healthcare'. My worry is that this means further reducing the paltry limitations and single-sex exceptions that exist in the GRA to offer limited protection for women, as well as ignoring or undermining any Cass review recommendations for future NHS treatments offered to children.

I also agree with Floisme also that the Tories are (cynically) considering using women’s rights as a political inducement rather than addressing the issues while they still can.

What am I thinking?

I'm thinking fuck the Democrats and their crocodile tears over women's abortion rights - they had opportunities to secure them and didn't.

I'm thinking fuck Labour and their faux concern for women and children while chatting about ferrets, and also for not clarifying how they expect their changes to the GRA to impact single sex spaces.

And I'm thinking fuck the Conservative Government who've been talking about clarifying the EA for at least a year and who, on Friday, had the chance to show their support for Liz Truss's PM Bill but who, I assume, were too scared of the political fallout from supporting a discredited politician.

I think that about covers it.

FFS. Seriously. 🙄

Indeed.

Yes. Yes, all of that.

Sht. You are absolutely right.

The especially horrifying thing here is that in this country the tories are the republicans. Labour are the dems. And yet no matter what the tories are doing or why - here we are trying to get LABOUR to commit to protecting women and children, and they will not.

Nice try, but if the Tories really cared about women’s rights they’d have done something in the last 14 years.

Depressing

I know there’s not much I can change about what Labour do. I hope people at least ask for clarity before so willingly providing the mandate via votes

I’m pleased FWR is pushing on this and asking questions, as I can also see a fair few on here who don’t even want that

Indeed.

The Republican party has been described as "the dog that caught the car" about abortion rights. They'd been campaigning for decades on claims that they'd ban abortion – if only those meanies in Congress would let them.

Then Trump got elected partly by making specific promises to the anti-abortion lobby, who voted for him despite his admission of sexual assaults, explicitly so he would appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court judges to overturn Roe v. Wade. Which he did, and they did.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/17/trump-anti-abortion-pac-100258

Suddenly the anti-abortion lobby didn't need them any more, and the panic among Republicans was palpable. I remember seeing it unfold on social media (including MN) and within hours the messaging was basically "Shit shit, what to do. I know, it's all the Dems' fault! They didn't stop us hard enough!"

I think of this every time I see the Tories muttering vague things about how they'll do something to protect women's rights, not now, but soon, soon. Just give them a bit more time, one more chance.

They know fine well that if they genuinely secured women's rights, they wouldn't have anything left to dangle.

I did not say it was the Democrat's fault. I said fuck their crocodile tears. I don't believe them, just like I no longer believe any mainstream political party will lift a finger for women and children's rights unless they think it's politically expedient to do so.

I also remember some posters trying to shush us, here on MN, when any of us suggested that abortion rights in the US might be under threat.

Oh Roe v. Wade will never fall, they said. It'll never happen. Any talk of needing to shore up abortion rights is just grandstanding, picking a pointless battle which has already been won. Shush now, don't trouble your heads.

Worryingly, I also see similar being trotted out re abortion rights in the UK. "No, no, they'll never be under threat. You really shouldn't be bothering yourself about X or Y's long anti-abortion record or association with anti-abortion organisations. They'd never act on their lifelong convictions if in power."

Hi Floisme, I wasn't suggesting you personally did that. There was plenty of it about, though.

More important is keeping an eye out for the strategy of a group dangling things it has no intention whatsoever of enacting.

UK politicians have shown a great deal of eagerness to emulate US political strategies – by not catching the car.

Labour’s avoidance concerns me more

If they are let off being clear on anything we could see a sliding back

Some women have put in a lot to get the changes that are happening. It would be depressing as hell to see that go.

No worries @PerkingFaintly!

I think I'm equally disillusioned with all mainstream political parties and on both sides of the pond, although I tend to express it more about the left because, until recently I always believed they represented me.

This weekend though, it's tipped over into rage. I can't believe either party has the fucking nerve after their respective performances on Friday.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Deeds, not words.

Just do it ✔

Etc, etc..

I’m no fan of Starmer & Co’s stance on protecting women’s single sex spaces. At all.

But… why are the Tories only ‘promising’ to do this now, when they’ve had over a decade to submit new legislation? (rhetorical Question)

And if the rumours about Mordaunt, (replacing him before the election), turn out to have any sort of credibility then it all becomes moot anyway. She’s as TWAW as anybody on the Labour side.

F

It is beyond me how anyone could even contemplate voting Tory, whatever desperate promises they make now.

Do it now. Having it as an election pledge won't turn the tide in the election but a parliamentary debate now will expose labour's equality plans
The the next gvt assuming it is Labour have to decide whether to abolish it

Yes. Mordaunt as leader would finish any chance of me seeing Tories as the least worst unwanted option of a bloody awful field.

If you live in a Tory constituency, write to your MP to say WTF is this garbage?! DO IT NOW.

Might be advisable to calm down first...

Might be advisable to calm down first...

Fair point

Done

I take it you don’t live in Scotland! If the Tories are the alternative to the SNP in a particular constituency, there’s a potential reason right there. It’s complicated and a “lesser of two evils” kind of thing.

I said "if almost all of your campaigning." If it's not, then not. I think the point applies generally to gender critical people, and the organisations I mentioned.

You asked what I have done. In the past five years, my company has donated more than £100,000 to women's charities including the Orchid Project, a rape crisis center, Global Fund for Women, Womankind and others, and we are not a big company by any means.

I've made small donations to LGBT+ charities, too, but nothing on that scale.