Keep Prison Single Sex closing

[TinselAngel]

Just announced on Twitter.

x.com/noxyinxxprisons/status/1798973161276412028?s=46&t=PSGltfjrMyZmBtYq2-AVIQ

"After considerable thought we have decided to close KPSS down. Our last day of operation will be 30th June 2024.

We have agreed that Kate will continue to support and work with the individual prisoners, former offenders, and CJS whistleblowers with whom we have relationships. Kate is contacting everyone individually to advise them of this.

We have some materials still available and can post these out to whomever wants them: our email address will remain live, so please use this to contact us. All reports and leaflets are also available on our website which, together with our Vimeo, we will maintain as a resource, although content will not be updated.

It is no longer possible to make a donation to KPSS and all regular donations have been cancelled - however, please do check your own accounts. Our PayPal account is now closed. Both KPSS shops have been closed.

KPSS USA is unaffected by this decision. Their work will continue. Please give them a follow @NoXY_USA Any funds remaining after closing down KPSS will be transferred to them.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us. Between us we achieved some truly great things, including two Ministry of Justice policy changes that centre the safety and rights of women in prison. Be proud of what you have done, because none of what KPSS achieved would have been possible without you."

This will be tested in the BRCC case. And a couple of other ongoing cases.

I think Foran is useful because he describes very clearly how all the various moving parts of the law interact (it's not up to him to argue how and whether the tests set by the law are met in practice). I did though feel it excessively dry and legalistic to say that discrimination re gender reassignment will be harder to justify than re sex, when we all know that sex is the reason why we want to discriminate re GR in the first place. But he just sees different words that need parsing. Typical lawyer.

Can we please stop quoting Foran - as said up thread he "just doesn't get it".

I think people should quote who they please. Yours is just one opinion amongst a barrage of other opinions and there is no reason to think your insights are more correct than the next person with a view. This will be decided in the SC and in the meantime it’s hardly surprising that service providers and those running associations or sporting bodies will be nervous about implementing the SSEs.

Yours is just one opinion amongst a barrage of other opinions and there is no reason to think your insights are more correct than the next person with a view.

On the issue of SSE and provision of services he is wrong.

Nobody else says this. Not the people who implement it or regulate it.

If he is trying to say there is a loop hole that trans activists could use, then he should say that clearly.

He may well be right on other issues, but he isn't here.

So it is pointless quoting him, because as an academic dilettante he can indulge in speculation.

What is crucial if real life as lived and how the regulations work.

@IwantToRetire

Can you spell out what exactly you think Foran has got so wrong? What claim are you quoting? It's a question of interpretation, he's a lawyer. There isn't much case law.

I don't think he's right either. I think he talks about things convincingly but I certainly don't regard him as the go-to, or listen and embrace unhesitatingly. I know he's become the expert for some GC groups/prominent individuals but I think there are other commentators who are more in the right ballpark than he is and who don't get much of a look-in (and this is a thread about KPSS ceasing operations...)

Regardless of your position on this it is perfectly legitimate for other posters to put forward ideas from lawyers / academics or others who do not share your view.

I don't think he's right either. I think he talks about things convincingly but I certainly don't regard him as the go-to, or listen and embrace unhesitatingly

I don't do this either, but I think he makes interesting contributions.

It is a question of interpretation, but in the R v Green case a GRC was the determining fact (that didn't apply to Green so Green lost) which would have made the legal comparator a woman rather than a man. I think that was an appeal judgment, so it's one of the few pieces of case law.

As a lawyer, Foran is partly speculating about what a court would decide on these issues - which is not necessarily the same as what people on this board would like a court to decide.

IIRC his prediction for the Section 35 case was pretty spot on, so I think he's worth reading. He's an academic lawyer, he doesn't pretent to be a safeguarding specialist.

Seriously? I think it is plain that I am talking about how the SSE work.

Lady Haldane explained it.

The Labour Party has explained it though tried to tone down the implication by saying "safe spaces".

99.9% of providers of women only services know and implement how the SSE work.

His mental indulgence in something totally other is irrelevant.

So to ave having to type it out again I am quoting myself from an earlier post on this thread:

... as written (irrespective of whether it is a good law) someone with a GRC becomes "legally" the other sex, and so can on occassion whether Boards or whatever be taken to be that opposite sex. But in the instance when the law recognises that sex is real, same sex (ie biological reality) is desirable (but must be proportionate!). So a biological male with a GRC can be excluded from a same sex service for biological females. (which more people could use but dont) ...

Also to be really boring, surely most of us want to change the EA so that sex means biological reality which then means SSE aren't needed and we get to the nub of the issue which is:

If there is no legal obstruction to providing women only services, how many people would actually do it?

(Sorry the issue of single sex services is more important to me than the FWS case issue which is about equal representation, in their example, Boards.)

99.9% of providers of women only services know and implement how the SSE work.

Where are you getting that figure from?

This is the KPSS analysis from last summer

kpssinfo.org/uk-legislation-sex-gender-pdf/

I would be interested to know too given the NHS, police force, sports, schools, rape crisis centres, universities who are all ignoring it.

But in the instance when the law recognises that sex is real, same sex (ie biological reality) is desirable (but must be proportionate!). So a biological male with a GRC can be excluded from a same sex service for biological females. (which more people could use but dont) ...

I know this perfectly well. But in reality it's not actually that simple, is it? There are no hard lines written into the law. The GRA does create some form of legal "woman" status for men. We know this. It needs to be thrashed out in court whether and how it affects the sex based exceptions.

He's not actually a lawyer either, he's a lecturer in law. And not for particularly long either.

At this point as this is just a never ending circle of "opinions" as to how the law is written and how it is implemented (ie what is happening in real life) lets wait and see if the FSW JR shifts that.

Which is the purpose of the case.

What we say and think unfortunately counts for nothing in terms of legal reality.

What we say and think unfortunately counts for nothing in terms of legal reality.

Yes, so if people want to discuss the various legal opinions and unpack them, I see that as a good thing. It's good to be aware of the flaws in your (general you) own arguments.

What we say and think unfortunately counts for nothing in terms of legal reality.

I think we can probably all agree on this at least.

I'm not convinced fully by any one of the legal opinions I've heard, tbh. Not to say they aren't what the court will decide, and I'm not a lawyer. Just can see issues with all of them. It really is a fucking mess.

IIRC his prediction for the Section 35 case was pretty spot on

As did nearly everyone else, including many in the SNP who just saw it as a way of illlustrating Scotland isn't independent, and were criticised by some for wasting money on it.

Whether it helped the SNP's reputation in Scotland and I dont know.

I dont think anyone thought they would win, because it would up turn so many existing legal structures between the 4 nations that make up the UK and the UK Parliament.

But courts can be radical.

Wasn't there a move by the Tories, or in fact didn't it go through, that there should not be any Judicial Reviews of HoC decisions because of Gina Miller.

Having the GRC is only the first step. Yes, he lost because not having a GRC meant the relevant comparator was another man, and he wasn't disadvantaged relative to the other men. With a GRC he would have had to prove disadvantage relative to the 'other' women and that requires evidence. Exclusion alone doesn't prove there's unacceptable disadvantage, because there might be ways of meeting his needs that don't require inclusion in the women's estate. Furthermore, even if he is significantly disadvantaged, that could still be justified in order to meet a legitimate and proportionate aim (such as safeguarding, or avoiding illegal discrimination re another PC). It's only this last step that we've been debating. Is there a LAPA that justifies discrimination re GR? And how would it be different if we were thinking about the PC of sex? It might seem obvious to us, but I bet the High Court could spend a week on it!

As I've said, I think this is a result of the law being a big mess. It contradicts itself and makes no sense.

Probably because it's trying to solidify bullshit into law. You can sort of do it with sophistry, but at the end of the day male and female are separate categories by definition. It's like trying to legalise up as down.

You are right. Much better we ask a conveyancing lawyer about this than a legal academic specialising in constitutional and equality law.

Or make a legal case for 2+2=5.

You can do it with words but only by disregarding or breaking reality. And words are based on reality, and have to apply to reality, even if they are signifiers in their own right. Untethered from reality they descend into gibberish.