Transgender Judge Seeks Leave To Intervene in FWS Case re Legal Definition of Woman

[LoobiJee]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/mar/28/transgender-judge-seeks-leave-to-intervene-in-uk-court-case-over-legal-definition-of-woman

Another grift for the Good Law Project, who will once again take money from unwitting supporters to fight this utterly pointless cause.

Got to keep the fox basher in kimonos though, eh?

Well, actually, McCloud has taken the state to court before, while a judge. And won. Hence the reasonably well known ‘McCloud remedy’ which is benefiting many many other people (NHS employees, teachers etc etc).

The pensions case is different IMO. It's from an employment tribunal, and I'm sure we all recognise the right to take your employer to ET. This is intervening in a case that is about interpretation of law as passed by Parliament. Precisely the kind of thing a judge interprets supposedly dispassionately and impartially.

Autocorrect apparently had different ideas Sinner…

And 'for many trans people'? The GRA was intended for use by a tiny number of people with severe dysphoria, it certainly was not introduced so loads of transIDing people could 'live freely, authentically and openly'. That isn't what it was intended to do, and to this day we are still told GRCs are held by such a small number of people that they really don't matter or impinge on anyone else's rights. It's yet more having cake, eating cake, and keeping the rest of the cake just in case.

Can anyone explain why this Judge even cares about the GRC, or what the point is of a GRC any more? We now have tax and pensions equality between the sexes, and same-sex marriage, so that's several reasons out of the window. And the EA2010 protects trans people from discrimination irrespective of whether they have a GRC or not. From my various run-ins with @DadJoke I get the impression that he and I agree that this protection is every bit as good for non-GRC holders, albeit calculated slightly differently in terms of whether the discrimination is direct, indirect, or perceptive. In short, self-ID is already here.

And yet, obviously I am missing something, because this is an actual Judge, who must understand this stuff! What am I missing?

This judge has a GRC. Self ID is not actually here. In law the previous FWR judgement ruled female sex in the EA only includes men with a GRC. Men without a GRC are still men in law. Though it also suggested that this was inconsistent and in parts of the EA men with a GRC were legally men in relation to the EA. This judge wants to still be counted as female under the EA and if FWR win they won’t be.

Can you tell me what benefits a GRC-holder enjoys that a non GRC-holder does not? The example in the Guardian story was about equal pay. But, if a non GRC-holder is paid less than another man, he can claim direct discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment. So, still protected! It was such a rubbish example, and yet you'd think they'd give their very best example.

This case is actually only indirectly about the EA - it was directly about the Gender representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act. The result of the previous FWR cases meant an amendment was passed this week that under that act ‘women’ is defined as women or men with a GRC. Previously ‘women’ was defined as women and any man who identified as a woman as evidenced by a female name on a gas bill that you weren’t allowed to ask to see. In its original (unlawful) form a public board could appoint any man who self ID as a woman to enable ‘gender balance’, so a board could be made up entirely of men without a GRC. Now it can be made up entirely of men so long as half have a GRC. So a male GRC-holder gets the benefit of a female ‘place’, whereas a non-GRC holder wouldn’t. FWR says women should mean women so a public board is made up half of men and half of women.

Thank you. And, oh that is so ridiculous 😡

Is that ... is that usual?

Sarah Phillimore has published some correspondence she's received from McCloud.

I'm really surprised to see a judge behave like this.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1773253067640615012

Do you have a screen shot of the correspondence for those of us not on Twitter?

I'll give it a go! First 2 - MN has switched the order ...

Next 2.

Next 2. It seems to switch them every time.

Why does it always go from Lady Bountiful to Massively Indignant so quickly after women (politely) refuse the forced teaming and mansplaining?!

That male socialisation is hard to shake 😏

Thanks for the screenshots Arabella.

@theilltemperedclavecinist yes, I broadly agree with this interpretation, but it would be useful to get some clarity, which is why I am in favour of this case. It seems reasonable to me that a women’s shortlist should include trans women, and it’s reasonable there might be exceptions.

Does that actually happen though, or do you just believe it must happen because it follows on from the assumption that if trans women are "women" than trans women's experiences of "womanhood" must run on identical lines to the experiences of those people born female, including the challenges faced by those born female?

I say "woman" not to dispute trans women's "womanhood" but to acknowledge that the definition of "woman" under which trans women experience "womanhood" is entirely different to the definition of woman under which female people where historically always known, and under which concepts like equal pay were formed. It is, therefore, entirely reasonable to ask to what degree the group of people who are "women" by the new definition but not under the old definition do, in fact, share any of the challenges of the original group.

One might indeed consider that if the new group had chosen to go under any other name than "women", why we might ever be trying to make both groups fit the same set of laws and rights at all.

What a whiny, bad faith set of tweets from the judge. One might think they had been written in order to present or quote out of context to make it seem as if the judge was responding to outrageous remarks.

I'm very surprised that SP's beef seems to be that some men claiming a "civil right" to be treated as women haven't made any attempt to present as women; to my mind the problem is the civil right itself. How they present is neither here nor there. Concerning.

Why would a women-only shortlist include men who claim to be women, whether they hold a GRC or not? What would be the point of the list? What would the group have in common which merited being on a protected shortlist? A shortlist of the socially disadvantaged would make sense. I question whether men claiming to be women are socially disadvantaged, but even if that were the case, why distinguish between GRC holders and non-GRC-holders?
And more importantly, why leave out of the group other disadvantaged cohorts?

Laws should be workable and categories coherent and stable. A category of Women + Men Who Have Filled In Forms And Paid A Fiver is neither coherent nor stable. I phrase it like that, not to mock the concept, but because that is an objective description of the group. Women + Men Who Believe In Astrology makes as much sense as Women + Men Who Believe In GI. One group has an objectively verifiable, immutable, material characteristic, the second group holds a particular belief.

The only reason for a category of "women + men who claim to be women" is to indulge men who claim to be women.

I’m not sure of SP’s exact position on this, but from the earlier parts of the discussion, it sounds like her specific objection is to self-ID.

I think she might be one of the more middle-of-the-road campaigners who still feel concessions to transsexuals might be reasonable.

Of course the wheels always come off that one because as soon as you admit any man, you run into the problem that it’s “not good practice” to demand other men medically modify themselves to achieve the same rights. So the admission of any medically transitioned man, immediately results in any non-medically transitioned man having the same rights.

Lots of us started out objecting to self-ID but have gradually concluded the only way to protect women’s rights is to remove the GRA as it is fatally flawed because of that. There are still a lot of people arguing that middle ground though, to the point where there’s a significant split in our ranks at the moment.

Still, suffragists and suffragettes both existed and argued, but women still got the right to vote.

That's logically impossible. TW are the not women so can't be paid less as a result of being women. If they're one of the tiny tiny minority who pass (the fact that not one single well known TW passes, or one single TW whose been filmed harassing and intimidating women passes shows how unlikely it is) then they'd be discriminated against on the basis of falsely being believed to be women, not because they are women. I have nothing in common with a TW that I don't have in common with a man. Woman is not a costume.