Melanie Field: the former EGRC expert behind Labour's women's rights policy

[LetsTalkTwaddle]

Word has it that Melanie Field, who was one of those behind an attempt to oust Baroness Kishwar Falkner from her position heading the EHRC, is the woman who is telling Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner what to say when asked about women's rights.

Last year Kishwar Falkner came under attack for alleged bullying and transphobia, which she was later cleared of. Melanie Field left the EHRC thereafter and set up as an independent adviser. It's Field, I'm told, who is behind the 'biological women and other, traumatised and vulnerable women who've been born in the wrong body' line that Keir Starmer et al are trotting out.

Field has also written an article on why the Equality Act is just fine and needs no clarification: she was apparently one of the key people who drafted it.

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/melanie-field-389901148

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-we-need-amend-equality-act-protect-womens-rights-melanie-field-dyewe?trk=publicprofilearticleview

The previous head of the EHRC was David Isaac who also acted as Chair of Stonewall during the time he was in official office. Melanie Field was working in the EHRC during his period in the EHRC.

Elsewhere GC groups have noticed that Stonewall and other trans groups have gone very quiet about the use of the phrase 'biological women', which they would once have protested about, because TWAW. There's speculation that Stonewall and allies have agreed to pipe down in order to enable Labour to pursue the 'Biological and other women' line.

I await with trepidation delight the wonders that an incoming Labour administration will visit upon us.

they're just going to try a more circuitous route than before and try to flannel the electorate into it.

That was Labour’s position on the SNP’s handling of the gender reform bill - that Labour would have made a better job of the messaging and comms, and that Labour would take the public with them when they dealt with it.

Labour politicians think that 'the plebs' can be brought along to believe all the correct and proper things with education. Apparently, the transmission of thought and ideas only runs in one direction for them.

This is such an important thread. Reflecting on all I have learnt over the last few years about the ways in which the GRA was brought in, the back room deals that have resulted in guidelines and policies that have harmed women in prisons, hospitals, refuges etc., the hidden networks and dodgy deals, the dismissal of valid concerns and now the evidence that the TRAs are getting ready to bounce back, with a government ready to listen to them … this makes me very, very afraid. They seem to be holding their fire but once the election is done, they will be ready to go. Expect self-ID in all but name in the first few months of the new Parliament. Time for us to get ready, too.

It is important.
The good thing is that the backroom deals are now being exposed.
Sleights of hand in speeches, definitions and legislation are now identified - eg Stonewall's secretive removal of cross dressers from their definition of tran
The public now realise that there are politicians and other citizens who believe that men have the right to have access to naked / sleeping / vulnerable women and girls without their consent.
The employment and other tribunals exposing discrimination and bullying of women and men into complying with illegal demands from this ideology.
Cass exposing the lack of evdence will lead to countless medical malpractice cases and hopefully lead to the cessation of schools gaslighting girls in particular into believing their bodies are wrong and that a sex change will fix them.

And - as night follows day - Starmer will have his Bryson moment. The continuing stream of sex offenders and murderers being exposed in the press & prosecuted will gurantee that. He'll have to explain why the social contract that safeguarded women and girls from men when vulnerable doesn't matter to him & why he sacrificed women's safety for his preferred little group of confused "traumatised" men. .

I completely agree. If you're going to do backroom deals to let men in women's spaces, Isla Bryson is just a question of time.

And there will be repeat clips of Starmer saying, I will protect women, I will protect women, alongside pictures of the men he failed to protect them from.

Guaranteed.

Because once it's about lying, cynically, it's not just about women's rights, it's about every person in the land who wants to show up a politician.

And if the last week has shown us anything, people are on it.

Kemi, J K Rowling, Jane from London, and women everywhere who are finally wising up to what's happening.

The curtains are open, the sun light is blinding, and however frantically stonewall and Starmer try to pull them closed, it's too late.

OO I have had a reply hidden. It included a link to a crowd funding page for a rape victim denied single sex rape support by mistake. Forgot this isn't allowed.

My post said one day the Labour party will have to explain why they are deliberately excluding vulnerable female abuse victims from support. Why KS said services that exclude female abuse victims because they can't pretend men are women are 'working well'.

They know female rape victims like Sarah are being denied access to any female only rape support, so left excluded and traumatised. She is having to go to court just for a single female only group alongside all the mixed sex ones - even though most victims are female .

They know Children of Transitioners wrote a report proving Labour are deliberately excluding female victims of male abuse from any support whatsoever (as every formerly female only group is now mixed sex ), punishing survivors if they can't pretend men are women.

Labour should support both single and mixed sex abuse support, but won't on ideological grounds. Stonewall would be cross with them as it means recognising men who say they are women are men, not women. So Labour actively and deliberately support harming vulnerable abused women instead of recognising reality. The cruelty and lies are heartbreaking.

fovas.wordpress.com/response-to-stonewall-2/

I think you are too confident.

Cass exposing the lack of evdence will lead to countless medical malpractice cases and hopefully lead to the cessation of schools gaslighting girls in particular into believing their bodies are wrong and that a sex change will fix them.

There will not be a cessation. Last Sunday Bridget Phillipson confirmed that they intend to reject the parts in the new guidelines intended to prevent the teaching of gender identity [the idea that the body can be wrong for the mind].

They intend to bring in ‘Ban conversion therapy for T’ which mean affirming without due counselling that a child/teen/young person who thinks their body is wrong is correct, even though a separate factor might be the cause of their dysphoria.

Now we learn that this Melanie Field, who was apparently let loose in writing this muddled Labour law in 2010, had all alone erased the commonly understood meaning of the word sex without anyone knowing. People like Janice Turner writing more recently about clarifying the Equality Act have never said this is what happened before. She simply explained the word sex had become conflated with gender over time and that is why it needed clarifying.

This thread and recent developments are horrifying to me.

The lying, the obfuscating, the hounding out of their own reasonable opposing voices on this, and the sheer smug zealotry and authoritarianism over something so important, is appalling. I find it particularly insidious.

Some thoughts. First, on 18 June the Welsh (Labour) government quietly announced that it might not pursue its electoral quotas bill, which it had previously promised to take to the Supreme Court if necessary, until 2030. It was a bill that would have brought self-ID in by the back door in Wales. So they've put it on a shelf where they can reach for it at any time once the election is over, but meantime a lot of voters in Wales think that self ID is no longer a live issue in Wales and that they can safely vote Labour.

Second thought is that not long after that, Starmer et al started to parrot the 'biological women and other vulnerable and traumatised women born in the wrong gender' and 'safe spaces' line.

Third thought. On 27 June Stonewall removed crossdressing from under its trans umbrella and has now gone uncharacteristically quiet. So any man who presents as female that they don't like the look of — Isla Bryson, for example — can be categorised as just a crossdresser, while Eddie Izzard, say, is trans. So the 'good' men in women's clothing are transgender, and the 'bad' ones are 'just' crossdressers and nothing to do with the transgender movement.

Fourth thought. On 28 June Melanie Field publishes her piece about how the EA 2010 is absolutely fit for purpose and creates categories of 'legal sex' and 'biological sex'. Which as finer brains than mine have pointed out here, doesn't make any sense.

Fifth thought. According to my contacts within the Labour Party the Labour LGBTQ+ groups, most of which are TQ+ dominated, have gone uncharacteristically silent.

Sixth thought. Labour has pledged in its manifesto to bring in a total conversion therapy ban which would also include transgender conversion — which means that anyone who wants to talk to trans teens about their desire to transition could be accused of trying to convert them. How this can sit alongside Cass I don't know, but Labour made it a manifesto point. Along with making a GRC easier to obtain. They didn't have to commit to either of these things: they are not huge vote-winners. But they did.

From where I'm standing, Labour has learned nothing from the SNP debacle. I'm told that in Wales Mark Drakeford went from being an admired social sciences academic firmly based in evidence and research — a person rational women liked and trusted — to a true trans believer. He was in office for years and avoided ever, I'm told, speaking to any group who opposed GI. His deputy and those around him refused to meet opponents. Is Starmer is the new Drakeford?

Speaking of Wales, if anyone is within hitting distance of Swansea tomorrow, this looks as if it might be very worth attending. I'd love to hear what that panel of women make of what's happened in the last couple of weeks:

www.taliesinartscentre.co.uk/en/performances?id=60133&returnURL=%2Fen%2Fall-events%3Fpage%3D1

I thought that link would bring up the graphic but it doesn't. It's Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce and Akua Reindorf in conversation with Jo Phoenix.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/being-wrong-about-sex/

'Here’s my recent(ish) experience of changing my mind. It’s also my second attempt at an answer to the fast ball of a question Melanie Field, EHRC’s Executive Director, bowled at me at the end of the talk “After Forstater” I gave at my chambers last week.

Thank you for this thread op.

Thank you for reading. It's scary, isn't it? I know women in Wales who feel helpless and hopeless as a result of what's happened there. When you're being governed by a radical misogynistic idealogue presenting as a kindly shambolic grandfather it can really mess with your mind.

I can't help wondering if Starmer is a younger, beiger, version of Drakeford. I'm not sure Sturgeon ever really believed in GI, which is why I'm not including her. But Drakeford was susceptible and Starmer clearly isn't going to budge on this. I'm told that Gordon Brown was influential in the Drakeford government. I don't know whether this is true, but I think he's also advising Starmer. At the risk of seeming like a conspiracy theorist, does anyone have any idea about where Brown stands on this?

Just read this in the Naomi Cunningham article: hope it's okay to cut and paste: it's in the public domain. It shows Melanie Field's argument up for the BS it is:

Lots of people will reasonably object to the presence of a person of the opposite sex in a changing room or a communal shower, for example. But imagine you’re a woman using a communal changing room marked as for women only. Imagine you’re undressing – you’re starting to take your knickers off when you look up and meet the eye of someone who is obviously male. You object, don’t you? Probably quite strongly; and reasonably so. You probably get dressed again and leave in haste; depending on the strength of your feeling and your prior life experiences, you may complain, sue – or simply leave and never go back.
Now imagine that man smiles at you and says “It’s ok, I’m a woman – I’ve got a certificate to prove it.” It doesn’t make you feel any better, does it?
A “person of the opposite sex” in this provision can only intelligibly mean “a person of the opposite [biological] sex.”

I love the way Naomi writes: so accessible, so sharp.

I have just looked and cannot find anything.

In 2009 Peter Tatchell wrote against him
because he was against gay marriage (not against gay civil unions). So GB right have thought sex meant the usual sort of biological male and female.

@ArabellaScott I also just read that response to Melanie Field as we were looking at the same document in the other thread. It might be me, but I couldn't see what the actual "fast bowl" question Field asked was?

That's a fair point.
I suppose I can't believe that even our captured politicians can look at Cass's sober and chilling conclusions about the lack of evidence for sterilising children and young people and think it's OK.
Surely they must see the constant revelations about some of the men leading this movement (here and in other countries) and their determination to erode boundaries, remove safeguarding from children?

https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-admins-rachel-levine-met-with-wpath-as-he-pushed-for-removal-of-trans-surgery-age-restrictions

Suspect I'm seeing in Labour a sense of ethics and care for vulnerable children & women's rights that just isn't there. 😥

Melanie Fields blog and posting on LinkedIn in strikes me as someone who desperately wants to believe her work was perfect.

When Stonewall has every major employer and institution in the land favouring men's wants over women's needs as a result of her work, telling us it's clear is risble.

Her name rings a bell from the Garden Court chambers and Allison Bailey debacle, wasn't she at a meeting there which was quoted in the case?

That's interesting. Was there a publicly available transcript?

No, I couldnt see it!

The fact that Labour are enacting all of this 'out of time' and against mounting evidence is what makes it all the more dystopian, for me. We know we're being lied to; manipulated; having words change their established meaning; being accused of thought crimes and hate crimes.....they know they are lying and manipulating too.

It really does feel like an Orwellian period we are entering.....and I reckon Starmer is going to be an out and out autocrat. He's displayed those traits amply already.

I can't find a record of it.

https://thecritic.co.uk/by-stealth/

This quotes her, she was right in the thick of it.

I wonder if her current fence sitting where she's saying " we need to start discussing it" is driven by her new status as an unemployed consultant looking for someone to pay her to waffle on confusingly for money. These lefty consultants are surprisingly good at spotting free market opportunities to extract cash for bullshit. She can explain how it works perfectly in her mind for a daily rate.

She claims in the LinkedIn thread to not be advising Labour but has the awful Translucent CEO thanking her, you know the one, turned up to drown out FILIA in Portsmouth with friends drawing penises on the courtyard outside.

the Equality Act, and later on same-sex marriage legislation, both of which involved complex balancing of competing rights

This is quite simply not true.

Same-sex marriage does not involve any competing rights. If two partners of the same sex choose to marry, they are not affecting anyone else’s rights.

The Equality Act attempts to limit the harmful effects of the Gender Recognition Act on women’s rights, while also upholding men’s claimed rights to pose as women. What an impossible mess.

But the transgender issue has nothing to do with homosexuality, including same-sex marriage. Linking these two separate issues is just an attempt to throw a smokescreen over transgenderism, which by definition undermines women’s rights.

Got it.

Should be timestamped at right place: go to 1:13 if not.