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

So Maggie/Magnus is gay?

😂 Thanks for that, @CarefulN0w. It would have greatly amused my biology teacher mother-in-law who retired to Bourton and often took visitors to Birdland. I particularly appreciate the fact he was misgendered according to the Times. The comments BTL aren't having that and are unanimous that he was mis-sexed.

Poor Magnus!

Possibly gay. Or possibly just very horny.

Either way, I fully support Magnus to dress however he pleases, call himself whatever he likes, sleep with any consenting adult penguin who’ll have him, and live his best life in peace and security.

But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

#IstandWithMagnus #ThisIsNotaDrill

D'oh. Grabbed the wrong comment to quote.
@Snowypeaks that was in reference to your comment about Magnus/Maggie's sexual orientation.

Magnus must be thinking, humans, why are they so stupid? They really haven't got a clue...

Indeed!

He's thinking, "How the fuck did these melts become the fucking APEX SPECIES? Time for a PENGUIN REBELLION. We will mount a surprise attack while they're all figuring out whether they're a boy or a girl today."

We kind of deserve it TBF.

I imagine Ruth Crawford is currently on another lunch break, figuring out how the penguin fits in to the picture if the zoo applies for an animal passport with an F on it (still a heterosexual/homosexual male.. all good so far).... and then a £5 recognition certificate (there's bound to be some captured zoology society out there) because an activist has decided to Be Kind and support Maggie to be her authentic self.

Edited to add that we don't actually know Maggie/Marcus' sexual orientation. Evidence so far point to homosexual but Maggie/Marcus could still be enjoying a heady time experimenting with life without needing to worry about the pressure to know yet)

Those wanting more legal drama join us on the US Supreme Court case thread. You can listen in live:

Thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5222777-us-supreme-court-thread-united-states-v-skrmetti-december-4th?reply=140303091

It's an interesting contrast between the UK and US legal system. Children's transition and who had the right to decide about children's transition was decided by Keira Bell's judicial review (which finally said doctors should decide but also lifted the lid on doctors' poor decision making and led to restrictions on puberty blockers) And our Supreme Court has carefully discussed the implications of a legal certificate for just the Equality Act, quite separately, and not even broadening the question to safeguarding.

By contrast, the US Supreme Court case is supposedly about whether children can or should be physically transitioned and who has the right to decide... and yet it throws into question everything else to do with women's rights and trans rights whether girls "exist" as a group with rights at all. Everything seems to be in this case including the kitchen sink! For this reason (I think) it's going to be much harder for the US to come up with sensible outcomes.

Jumping in to ask for some clarification. Does anyone know why will it take so long for the court to reach a decision?

I've read it could be February or March until we hear the outcome. I'm not familiar with how the court works but this seems a really long time. What exactly are they doing for 3-4 months if not hearing any more arguments?

Trying desperately to make sense of the law (particularly the GRA and Equality Act) I think!

This is usual for the Supreme Court. They will be reviewing all the papers submitted and relevant case law. It may be that one Justice will write the leading judgement which others will review and concur with or it may be that one or more Justice may want to write their own judgement. There may be disagreement so we could have a majority judgement with one or two dissenting judgements.
They will take their time because the ramifications of their decision will have significant consequences for the rights (or perceived rights) of a group of people throughout the U.K.

And also they will be on holiday for some of the time.

Just the page numbers quoted in the case should give an idea of the reason for the long timeframe - the submissions ran into thousands of pages, before the judges even start on their own associated reading and discussions.

Meanwhile we can keep ourselves occupied with A O'N's speaking notes from the case, which he's made available on the GWS site: forwomen.scot/29/11/2024/uk-supreme-court-the-hearing/

Thanks all for the info. I rather naively assumed it would be like a criminal court where the outcome is usually decided within a day or two of closing arguments. I obviously need to learn more about the supreme court and how it works!

Adding what looks like it'll be a great interview to this thread:

Mr Menno and Michael Foran on sex in law, with this case as a central anchor for the conversation:

I haven't had chance to watch it yet but I'm looking forward to doing so.

I did think about starting a new thread but I think it will fit naturally here as a continuation of what's been discussed in all 3 of these threads.

'pregnant people' is contentious. Only women get pregnant.

Really interesting interview posted by @BonfireLady

indicates how ‘intersex’ was used as an argument by men wanting to be women right back to the 1960/70’s because at the time, DSD was the only legal argument for being able to change sex markers on legal documents.

These men also argued that ‘intersex’ was as much psychological as a physical condition to widen the band width of their argument to include plain old men with fully developed sex organs being able to change legal sex markers. Though the judge back then said ‘no’.

Seems that what they labelled intersex was eventually relabelled as transgender but underpinning the argument, the motive, remains exactly the same i.e. a demand to claim women’s experiences and spaces for themselves.

Even in this day and age, we still see it being used here frequently as a counterargument; some posters even being confused and thinking that it means some form of actual hermaphroditism in humans. It’s very much used as an appeal to sympathy, and concomitant exceptions being made by women, to allow access to female spaces on the basis of kindness. Entitled claims on women’s good nature are multitudinous by the GII movement.

Once you understand that all human DSDs are variations along the male or female development pathway and every person with a DSD is demonstrably male or female - that's literally how you know it's a DSD and which one it is - and also understand the difference between karyotypes (the chromosomal arrangement) and sex (the reproductive class of the body and whether it's formed around the production of large or small gametes, regardless of whether it actually does produce those gametes or not) - it really is quite easy to see that despite the great variation along human bodies, we really are all demonstrably male or female.

DSDs don't disprove that. In fact they are further proof of it; that despite these variations, everyone is still male or female, even if you sometimes need to look at further markers to identify it. There's no third gamete. There's no middle pathway. There are straight and winding male paths and straight and winding female paths but there's no path between them. Sex in humans is varied but it's also binary and immutable.