Sonia Sodha in the Observer, calling out Labour...

[theilltemperedclavecinist]

...for its response to Kemi Badenoch's proposal to clarify 'sex' in the Equality Act.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/09/the-law-on-single-sex-spaces-is-a-mess-it-needs-fixing-not-political-point-scoring

I'm not convinced that this couldn't be fixed with the right statutory guidance, but I'm suspicious of Labour's motives for prioritising that approach over amending the law outright.

I hope to see some reactions on the Letters Page.

Thanks, she was so vocal last week, i expected a damn good column incoming. She's great in this issue (thank god as it dilutes the guardian app a little .)

She will know some of the people pushing the 'Badenoch as witch' interpretation personally or professionally, so is absolutely right to be calling them out. For political journalists and pundits not to understand the legal issues here ( or claim not to) rather casts doubt on their intellect. One in particular did a great job of unpicking the legal inconsistencies around Brexit and yet equality law (arguably simpler than international trade law) seems to have then stumped.

Thank you for link. A common sense approach to a problem that shouldn't be difficult to solve.

This is something which needs to be mentioned more often in articles like this:

some men who identify as female are open about deriving sexual fulfilment from doing so; that is their private business, but it is profoundly wrong to expect women to participate in that in public spaces

It is possible that not all heterosexual men who transition in later life do so because of a fetish, but are there any any statistics about what proportion of them do?

Studying patients who had felt like women at all times for at least a year, Blanchard classified them according to whether they were attracted to men, women, both, or neither. He then compared these four groups regarding how many in each group reported a history of sexual arousal together with cross-dressing. 73% of the gynephilic, asexual, and bisexual groups said they did experience such feelings, but only 15% of the androphilic group did. He concluded that asexual, bisexual, and gynephilic transsexuals were motivated by erotic arousal to the thought or image of themself as a woman, and he coined the term autogynephilia to describe this.

The above is from Wikipedia. I know we can't trust it, but given its very TRA adjacent editing, this must surely be the best case scenario. 73% of non-homosexual transitioners that he studied, were erotic cross-dressers.

Most of those men will have been cross dressing since childhood - and yet they have now re-framed it as " having known they were trans since childhood". They will not admit to the fetish aspect of the practice.

There does seem to be a lot of men who cross dress in this way.