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

Separate and single-sex services, such as women-only counselling groups, may also be permitted, where their provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

There should be no may about it nor that utter crap about proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Separate and single sex services should be the default. Why should women have to tie themselves in knots and plead for this most basic of consideration and rights?

FFS women only counselling groups may be permitted, well thank you very much powers that be for that shall we send you a bunch of flowers as a thank you for being so incredibly generous?

Excellent.

@GailBlancheViola Yes. Only 'may' not 'must'. Every official response I have seen to women / groups that raise this (and I have now seen loads) only expresses concern for the males, never once for the women. Not even once. That's why they don't bother with the 'proportionate aim'.
Religious women, or abused women, or those who are gender critical, are seen as not worthy of consideration or inclusion at all.

Thanks @Chariothorses and @ChaChaChooey.
That Jaguar case rang a bell but I think my brain refused to retain it because it seemed to be based on a very odd reading of the law, or of enbyism, or of both. Surely only works if being nb is part of a journey from f to m or vice versa?

Still not entirely caught up with the proceeding but my considered analysis is what a complete fucking mess.

A complete fucking mess as well as being a complete disgrace, I should say.

Yes, it's nonsense. That claimant would have met the criteria for section 7 anyway as a "transitioning" MTF.

The SG lawyer must so wish she hadn’t said that.

Don't anyone say it for a third time! 😂

Let’s be fair. If you haven’t been paying attention to these cases the way we do and you accept a case your clients presumably presented as hate groups trying to overturn trans rights or some such. You then discover the relevant law is a complete nonsense, your client is completely unreasonable and insists on you presenting irrelevant crap while refusing to give you the answer to questions they should know (how are we defining women? Female? What does living as a woman mean? How can you swear to live as a man but also try to get pregnant?) and the judges are both baffled and annoyed at you. Also you started out earnestly believing in trans rights and now your on a case representing said rights but also upsetting trans people for doing it wrong. And you’re not sure what you believe anymore.

well at that point you need a flow chart of how you ended up in this mess when you just wanted to help what the government told you was the most vulnerable and oppressed people on earth.

Following on from comments about being able to see a GRC, it seems to me that if Scotgov win on the basis that "women are women and transwomen who have GRCs, but are not transwomen without GRCs", then that will provide a good basis to press the government to provide guidance giving force to the idea that GRCs should be provided for inspection in order to justifiably discriminate between those who hold GRCs and those who don't.

Thank you also from me.

And to the judge at 47:30 of the second afternoon for the hilarious “because that would seem to be predicated on male physiology being different”

Kabooom!

I was vaguely reminded of architecture “Crit”. When you look like an absolute fool, and have no one but yourself to blame!
Fantastic stuff.

Following on from comments about being able to see a GRC, it seems to me that if Scotgov win on the basis that "women are women and transwomen who have GRCs, but are not transwomen without GRCs", then that will provide a good basis to press the government to provide guidance giving force to the idea that GRCs should be provided for inspection in order to justifiably discriminate between those who hold GRCs and those who don't.

YY I agree.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/27/transgender-people-have-right-to-be-recognised-in-legally-acquired-gender-court-hears

Why are the Guardian publishing articles like this as though the court have decided already?

@Circumferences just because that's what the court was hearing on Day 2. On Day 1, the Guardian had a headline about the course hearing about women's rights, I forget exactly what, but it was posted at the time.

I've been trying to talk to my kids about this case in neutral terms (in part because I don't want them disclosing my terfy views to my woke acquaintance, in part to avoid the knee jerk "mum is wrong" at this age, in part to practice the other side's arguments and in part so that, when they one day know my views, I have modelled talking respectfully about people I disagree with).

My 14yo DD's reaction to the idea of a pregnant man lacking legal protections to do his legal sex change was outrage: WHY WOULD YOU BECOME A MAN AND THEN DO THE MOST FEMALE THUNG EVER??! And it serves them right for being such an idiot.

And I said something #bekind like, but the law is there to protect everyone, and also some of the provisions are there to protect the baby. And I've just caught up with the SG government saying that in the light of the declaration to live as a man, they are not relevant to the case.

Which I take to be a position much closer to my 14yo DD's than mine.

It was more a comment re what can happen when a barrister/advocate is looking towards the door at the end of a difficult session. She got there straight afterwards, because after the next difficult question she found 'stapler problems' so they broke early for lunch.

But none of this would have been a recent discovery for her. Ruth Crawford had already represented Scottish Ministers earlier on the process which ended up here, and she wrote the Scottish Ministers' case for them, that was submitted to the Supreme Court ahead of the hearing.

I eventually did get to the end of yesterday's session of the Supreme Court proceedings. Towards the end of his reply, I was struck by Aidan O'Neill KC making a point about the modification a few years back to Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014. This was the infamous situation where Scotgov wanted rape victims to have control over the gender of those who would forensically examine them but not their sex. Eventually after considerable pressure, Scotgov changed the wording to substitute "sex" for "gender".

O'Neil pointed out that this change, expressly done by Scotgov with a very clear purpose, would be undone by what Scotgov were pushing for in the Supreme Court.

I'm quoting without reading so someone may have answered this but the man in question is Gareth Roberts.

https://x.com/oldroberts953?lang=en

In response to this...Gareth Roberts.

@nauticant
I think that was what caused Mridrul Wadhwa, late of that parish, to throw a hissy fit and leave the SNP. He was furious that a raped woman should be able to choose the sex of the person doing an intimate exam on her after she had been raped by a man.

[Note to MN: These are correct sex pronouns for MW. The lawyer for the Scottish Ministers told the Supreme Court just the other day that a male without a GRC is a man, and MW does not, we understand, have a GRC.]

I have only watched a very little bit of the coverage so far as have had a very busy week, and only read some of the threads (I'll get to it in time) but I do find the pontificating about obscure legal points a teensy bit FUCKING ENRAGING.

Dolatowski, all 6ft 5 of him, committed crimes against two girl children in women's toilets. The parents of those children could not safeguard them effectively because those toilets were labelled 'women's' and they reasonably assumed this meant sex not gender. They were lied to in a way which directly affected their ability to safeguard their child. It's quite possible those children were not the first, we all know many voyeurism and indecent exposure crimes are not even reported but they create a toxic environment of fear for women and girls. And they often lead to worse behaviour. See Dolatowski, see Couzens.

Whilst these supreme court judges look all astonished and discuss what 'living as a woman' means (personally I would say it should be having a body organised around the production of large gametes), children are being harmed. One child is too many. Remember the girl who suffered serious injury when a boy kicked in the door of her toilet cubicle in a - in fact - mixed sex toilet in a school (probably mislabeled as 'girls' or 'female')?

I'm beginning to think the court cases are achieving sweet FA. What we need is more decent men and women just saying 'no, this is enough' to abusive men. A societal shift.

And what about safeguarding law? Has this been mentioned at all? Do male teachers with a GRC get to share with girl children on school trips? That's not going to end badly at all (sarcasm). Safeguarding in schools requires sex segregation (for some purposes). Or is this bit of the law being ignored in favour of men's wants yet again? Why is safeguarding law - designed to protect CHILDREN - seemingly the poor relation to the EA 2010, it's utterly ludicrous and incredibly wrong.

The six words amendment -

https://www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,six-little-words-for-the-word-gender-substitute-sex

Re - Wadhwa -

'Once again, it was left to survivors to ask directly for support and to call out the inconsistencies of RSC’s position. One explanation for RCS’s stance is that it risked upsetting Wadhwa. In the event, he angrily left the SNP declaring he he could no longer call it home after they whipped MSPs to vote for the amendment. In an intemperate exchange with Shona Robison, Wadhwa declared that the amendment would not give survivors what they wanted and that MSPs had gone along with “those who promote the bigoted contempt for a minority group and have hijacked survivors trauma to further their cause”.'

From - forwomen.scot/24/09/2024/edinburgh-rape-crisis-rape-crisis-scotland-mridul-wadhwa-and-sandy-brindley/

Bloody well said!!!! I completely agree with you, this adherence to gender identity ideology runs a coach and horses through effective safeguarding and it worries me that so many adults/professionals with responsibility for safeguarding (and training in what doing it effectively entails) have just abdicated responsibility (and good sense) as soon as someone utters the magic phrase ‘gender identity’.

@Waitwhat23
Thank you. It beggars belief that a man like that enjoyed so much power and influence, and was allowed to behave as he did and damage women so much.

I enjoyed his closing, he tackled a lot of the points raised efficiently & succinctly. His research & that of his team has been exceptional throughout. I find it jarring listening to him 'mansplain' as he joked 'patriarchy' at times but his grasp of the issues, the long history of law-fare to carve out women's rights undermined by Scotgov's ridiculous position was impressive.

I can't call how this will go. When it sounds like we've nailed it, I still can't be confident as I have zero clue about the technical sides of the case & where the pitfalls are - despite the case FWS made being really strong (IMO).

I found it ironic listening to Ruth Crawford for Scotgov, and getting herself tied up in knots at times. I'm sure she was counsel for Scotgov on the FPFW Scottish Census case, which Scotgov won after an FPFW appeal on their 1st round loss. The pressure there was different as there was limited time to take it further & FPFW counsel had to be replaced with v short notice for the appeal. FPFW counsel was all over the place with confusion over language being used & what it meant. That was an easy win for RC. This time I think the bonkers pretzel logic being thrown at this by Scotgov was just a nightmare to make any sense of, so a lot more difficult to make much sense of it. Them's the breaks 🤷🏻‍♀️