Baroness Butler-Sloss, a retired senior family judge, has accused the campaign group Stonewall of “muddying the waters” around the law and transgenderism.
Butler-Sloss, a retired Court of Appeal judge, who was the first woman to lead the family division of the High Court, said that a balance had to be struck between the rights of transgender people and “people who are biologically women”.
Trans people have been “unhappily treated by being over-protected by activists” whose “unattractive” campaign has created a backlash, she said in an exclusive interview with The Brief, the weekly legal affairs email from The Times.
A supporter of <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/vSmZL/www.stonewall.org.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stonewall’s past campaigns for gay rights, Butler-Sloss, 90, went on to accuse the group’s recent leadership of misrepresenting equality law and having had too much sway over Whitehall civil servants and other public bodies.
“We should recognise that there are people who are transgender and be entirely sympathetic to them and recognise their rights,” said Butler-Sloss, before criticising Stonewall for lobbying for the replacement of ordinary female terms, such as “chest-feeding” for breastfeeding. She said that Stonewall was “muddying the waters”, which pushed away people who would otherwise be sympathetic to trans rights.
Start of a much longer article at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stonewall-muddying-waters-on-gender-law-says-former-top-judge-8xcvvn3d0
Can also be read at https://archive.ph/vSmZL