For Women Scotland in Supreme Court - thread 3

[nauticant]

The proceedings in the Supreme Court took place on 26 and 27 November 2024.

Previous threads discussing the proceedings:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5182666-for-women-scotland-heading-for-supreme-court

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5218934-for-women-scotland-in-supreme-court-thread-2

The video of the proceedings over 2 days in 4 sessions can be found here:

https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042.html

If she thinks this court case is a waste of time, what is she proposing we spend our time challenging instead? Because that video was all over the shop with no coherent plan of action - apart from insulting people on her own side and saying that all this is the fault of women who are handmaidens and with no mention of any men being culpable (which of course is the first rule of misogyny).

You can't go to court to demand an entire law is overturned. Most people don't even realise there's a problem, as evidenced by the judges in the case last week. But you can be sure they do now.

Anyway, I've never seen a video of hers before but this one was a waste of 28 minutes - she didn't make any of her points clearly enough for even me to understand, so what hope has any normie who hasn't encountered this before.

I wish she was (still) posting here - some dialogue with the women on this board would actually strengthen her arguments no end, by pointing out the contraditions and non sequiturs.

I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying how I think it looks to her.

You say you have not seen her videos before. Well, they are quite like that one. She's hardline and uncompromising and prepared to be disliked. That's her thing.

Her strength is that she has given a voice and a way to be active to women when there was not really anything else, through Let Women Speak. She provided grass roots activism and visibility on this issue for all women. Adult Human Female was her thing too, and her clothing gives women a way to ' Be the Billboard' and be activists and visible through that. Its absolutely bloody brilliant for spotting other GC women too. I'm quite grateful for her role in this movement, even if her stance and tactics are often not ones I would use myself. So finding a way for everyday women to be involved in the GC movement and to feel part of a movement I think has been her big contribution to the GC cause.

I admire KJK though I don't take everything she says that seriously. And I don't think KJK's take is completely unreasonable, I share some of her worries. But there's no chance at all of suceeding in doing "the one thing that will really end this battle" right now and I'm very happy that Sex Matters and For Women Scotland put together such a strong case.

Win or lose this case has been a chance to have someone say out loud, in court, in public, the things that women have been endlessly silenced and punished for even trying to whisper. For Women Scotland's Aiden O'Neill declared "Women's Rights are Human Rights" in his barnstorming closing speech and that's got to be worth a few quid in itself!

Thank you for posting this.

I've just clicked on the link and it's no longer there. I presume that means she's deleted it??

From reading your comments it sounds like she has somewhat missed the mark with this one. There was a great comment from a PP on this thread about gradualists (of which I'm definitely one) and absolutists. I guess it's not a massive surprise if/when the absolutists get annoyed with the gradualists. Whether it's helpful or not it's another matter. Hopefully her deletion (assuming that's what she's done) is a recognition of this.

The link from @Xiaoxiong does say deleted but I found it on You Tube. I watched it this afternoon.

With regard to the issue of the judges' inexplicable ignorance of the law, women's issues and the world of trans as evidenced by their questions, I have a feeling that there was a lot of legal theatrics going on. "Please explain it so that even a sixty year old judge can understand". "But I don't understand..." is perhaps legalese for "that doesn't really make any sense."

Every country, it seems, these days, has an GRA equivalent. The UK abolishing it and becoming an outlier seems vanishingly unlikely in the real world, isn't it? There was all that malarkey about whether other countries' laws are comparable to ours.

One of the reasons the judges ask questions is to give the parties a chance to fix a hole in their argument, or to try and poke a hole in their argument. At times, that means they will play devil's advocate, putting up arguments that may not reflect their personal thinking to see what response they get.

They will have read the submissions from all sides before the hearing, so they will understand what the parties are arguing. But they have to be careful that they don't use their own, perhaps limited, understanding of a subject rather than listening to those who have greater understanding. That can mean asking questions that seem naive to those who understand the subject, but the judges need to check that their understanding is correct and do so without putting words in peoples mouths.

Sometimes questions have a subtext that should be apparent to the lawyers but may be less so to others. You are unlikely to hear a Supreme Court judge say to a lawyer, "are you really sure that's what you want to say", but that may be the subtext to some questions. A "please explain this" question may mean what it says on the tin, i.e. that the judge genuinely doesn't understand something, but it is equally likely to be a signal to the lawyer that there is a hole in their case that they need to fix if they can.

It would be nice if she acknowledged that it was a win/win scenario as outlined by ** above but she doesn't

Personally, I don't need anyone to agree that it's a win/win for me to see it like that. Particularly any of the people coming at it from totally different angles. Neither would I expect them to!

Sure she doesn't have to agree with us, it certainly doesn't change my view that it's win/win - but why so insulting? Why the pot-shots at "women in suits with trolley bags"? To what end? (I acknowledge I may be taking that line a tiny bit personally, as a suit-wearing bundle-toting lawyer who faced sexism in the City...)

I guess I just thought KJK was a pretty shrewd tactician from seeing some of her previous actions (billboards etc) but this kind of friendly fire has really baffled me, especially in the context of how important this and future court cases could be in protecting women's rights and getting the GRA repealed. I also hope it doesn't give a chilling effect to future legal action, if people think they're going to be attacked not just by TRAs but from their own side as well for challenging this shit in court.

I thought I read somewhere the decision is likely to be handed down in the spring - is that correct?

I also hope it doesn't give a chilling effect to future legal action, if people think they're going to be attacked not just by TRAs but from their own side as well for challenging this shit in court.
Hopefully this won't be the case, simply because so few people will have heard of her or care enough about what she thinks.
I'm dimly aware that there are some growing divisions, courtesy of Twitter.
But despite these divisions creeping on to quite a few MN threads I only have the very vaguest idea about them. They always seem to have the character of Old Skool MN storms, featuring head girl types, so I pretty much scroll past them.
I imagine that is most people's reaction, although I appreciate it is hard for anyone who has been vocal in relevant twitter spats to feel that kind of detachment.
Honestly I wish fewer MN threads got sidetracked by angst about someone who more or less just seems to exist in the weird world of social media influencers

That's a good point. I've been on here years and this is the first video of hers I watched so I am probably overestimating her influence.

@user19385567 I saw somewhere that the decision is expected in spring 2025.

I always thought it was quite clear that KJK thinks the best way to repeal the GRA and safeguard children is political.

That's why she set up a political party.

What's happened in the USA convinces me more that she is right than I'd previously believed. All this chip , chip, chipping away and suddenly in the US people are free to say men can't become women!

I do think it's legitimate to question where the many hundreds of thousands of pounds in court cases have got us. Not very far and this is more true for working class women, poor women and children than for middle class women like Maya who are now safer recognizing biological reality in their workplace.

I do feel that most of the court cases are for women of a certain class and almost by definition, given how punishing those court cases are, it's not poorer or more vulnerable women and children. And there has been little to no discussion at all of the way in which GI (and the GRA) fatally undermines safeguarding law.

Even Rachel Mead's case didn't even consider the impacts on the very vulnerable people supposedly supported by social workers of denying sex exists or is relevant to safeguarding. It was all about Mead's right to a belief as an employee (fair enough, it was an ET) but the reason she held that belief was because of the importance of being able to name reality when trying to support vulnerable people. The importance of being able to speak the truth for safeguarding reasons.

I see that social workers are now free to hold GC / sex realist beliefs and not be sacked, but given SWE are completely captured, it is not at all clear that they are allowed to recognize that sex matters for safeguarding and in doing their jobs.

And this should be the most important thing, especially for children, I agree with KJK on that. Yet it's not even an afterthought in most legal cases as this court case shows.

She also explictly says that legal challenges, articles, books, etc and being gender critical has become a professionalised industry in and of itself and women don't actually have any desire to win this fight as it would then be over too soon and they would be out of a job. (This argument could easily be turned against KJK herself.)

I haven't seen the video, but I'm not following this point. How is it different than any other political issue? Does KJK think trans activists don't want to win either, because they want to just spend their time agitating and complaining? Does she think feminists don't want an end to sex discrimination, totally and absolutely everywhere, because there would no longer be a need for feminist activism and writing, beyond historical studies and reflecting on the past? Does this hold for other activists?

This case is a judicial review, so it's a response to the actions of the Scottish Government. Other cases have been in response to issues claimants have suffered at work (e.g. Maya Forstater, Jo Phoenix, Roz Adams). How is this an industry in itself? Or does she mean the lawyers? If Aidan O'Neil and Ben Cooper were not dealing with cases like this, I'm sure they'd have other work. The same applies to Balfour + Manson, the solicitors' firm on this case. Who then? Michael Foran and Kathleen Stock could go back to writing on other topics. The same holds for others.

@themostspecialelfintheworkshop the court cases are necessary to break the stranglehold on the political sphere. Politicians have been advised by Civil Servants who have been advised by Stonewall.

Whatever the outcome of the case, the political dialogue will change because it’s one thing to say a bunch of “rights hoarding dinosaurs” have got the law wrong but quite another to say the Supreme Court has.
The cases have helped push the narrative back from the law is what a lobby group says it is to the law is what legislation says it is.

No one approach is going to be the answer and repealing the GRA would be politically toxic in the current climate. However, if the effect of the GRA is far more tightly ringfenced and it loses its magical untouchable status because of that then I think a political solution becomes more feasible.
Due to the FPTP voting system it is very difficult for small political parties to make much headway so we have to work in a way that reflects the political reality.

@themostspecialelfintheworkshop you've raised some great points here.

When I'm talking to my daughter's school about her safeguarding, I'm focusing on how important it is that not everyone believes we have a gender identity, that we need to remember the difference between belief and facts in order to safeguard. The idea that "gender critical belief" can win tribunals is irrelevant - and I say as much.

I'm still a gradualist, so take a different approach to "nothing short of repealing the GRA will do" but it's impossible to centre safeguarding if we're looking at two beliefs equally: the belief that everyone has a gender identity and the belief that sex is immutable. That's just battle of the beliefs. Sex immutability is a belief as much as the earth being a globe is a belief. Courts can rule on scientific fact being true. But that argument is academic.

Safeguarding relies on facts. So does plenty of other stuff.

Edited to add: I've said this on previous threads too: that the Nolan principles and Teaching Standards mean that staff shouldn't share their personal beliefs with students, particularly where the students are vulnerable. That's why it's so important to focus on lack of belief in gender identity (which is also protected in law, under the Forstater case) instead of "gender critical belief"

Hopefully that's where this court case will differ from others. The judges are seeing what happens when belief replaces fact - and how ridiculous it is.

impossible to centre safeguarding if we're looking at two beliefs equally: the belief that everyone has a gender identity and the belief that sex is immutable. That's just battle of the beliefs

Yes, this is so true @BonfireLady I do find it worrying how much of the framework around schools is couched in terms of 'rights' and EA 2010 which is largely inappropriate in schools. Children should have the right to be safe in school first and foremost. Safeguarding law has precedence over gdpr (stated clearly in kcsie) and it should over the gra and ea2010 too.

If you want to get to the bottom of why she feels personally about some people, she's always open to questions.

She said she'll speak to anyone, about any of it.

Conversations on here tend to go round in circles, because people aren't willing to ask her directly.

Agreed. I hadn't fully appreciated that safeguarding doesn't legally supersede the EA but does with GDPR. Interesting.

Also correction to my comment above.

That should have read "courts can't rule on scientific fact being true."

That's why gender critical belief won the case. No court would arbitrate/decide between creationism and the big bang - they aren't there to determine fact. Even in this case they are determining if biological sex is legally important, not if it's actually real. Although obviously the two go hand in hand.

It didn't need court cases in the US, what happened was that a relatively small group of highly important swing voters became well educated on what had been going on and were appalled by the doublethink and suppression of free speech about reality and other Democrats were educated and appalled and stayed home.

Small single issue political parties can be very influential in voting decisions even if they don't get many /any elected representatives - see Brexit.

I'm not at all arguing the court case is pointless, however the lack of attention to safeguarding is concerning and may cause harm.

I can see the point of view that these cases aren't valuable and I understand that point of view. I hope it's wrong though. We'll see.

As far as I'm aware there has been no legal analysis of the interaction between safeguarding law and EA / GRA (ianal). However safeguarding doesn't work and can't happen if EA and GRA take precedence (same is true of GDPR of course which is why that has been settled as it states in kcsie presumably).

What has happened on the ground though is that GI has upended safeguarding in ways that are inconsistent with the other laws around keeping children safe and limits on their autonomy.

Shame Lang was banned for saying the above (more or less) as I'm sure she'd be clearer than me!

The fact that lawyers are happy to wang on about 'rights' laws endlessly but somehow just ignore safeguarding law when it comes to children is IMO a wholesale throwing of children under the bus. I guess keeping children safe just isn't interesting enough for them or something.