Sex Matters to seek judicial review on BTP searching policy

[southbiscay]

x.com/sexmattersorg/status/1872368242012131505?s=46

Good news - gardening in order.

Also there is an interesting comment on the GRA:If we lose and the court declares that a GRC changes a police officer’s sex for the purpose of searching members of the public, this would strengthen the case for repealing or reforming the Gender Recognition Act."

And it's good to see this bit bringing awareness of the fetish that is autogynephila to a wider audience: "The High Court will be asked not just to look at the meaning of words in law, but to consider the concrete facts relevant to the case, including the facts of autogynephilia; the way systemic weaknesses tend to act as magnets for abusers; the impossibility of “passing” for most men who identify as women; and the abusive nature of deceit as to sex where intimate procedures or searching are concerned."

Agreed. As said upthread, this is an important case as it highlights the risks to women and girls that too many aspects of transgenderism pose. Removing aspects of the criminal law about indecent assault & voyeurism and now the police! openly mandating state sanctioned sexual assault of women by men.
These are all the quiet bits that we're not meant to speak about as it's deemed "anti trans" yet this is at the heart of so many demands this ideology requires from women and girls - unconditional access to women's bodies for certain men.

It needs to be shouted from the bloody rooftops and this case will be one of the first to expose the reality.

£90,000 and around a year for a judicial review.

That is the reason the Equality Act is useless as protection for women. Whats the point of the SSE if it takes £90,000 and a year to insure we don't have to get stripped searched by a man?

The government needs to either confirm it never intended for men with GRC to strip search women or admit that was the aim so we can debate the purpose of the GRA.

"Whats the point of the SSE if it takes £90,000 and a year to insure we don't have to get stripped searched by a man?"

The point is to ensure that women don't get strip searched by a man, because as it stands, this could happen. I will welcome this if they win. You may or may not think this is worth £90k, people will donate or not, in line with their thinking about the worthiness of the cause and how they want to spend their money.

"If it is successful, it will make BTP ammend their policy, but will it lead to M&S updating their changing room policy? If it leads to more policy excluding men with GRC thats a start, but thats unclear.

I'm not sure why you are bringing M&S changing room policy into it. Have SM claimed this to be a goal/objective of the action, and if do, have they explained what the link is? If they haven't, why are you raising this as a limitation?

Also why is civil employment law overriding criminal law and safeguarding?

You aren't understanding what i am saying.

We have SSE in EqA, but how useful is it if we have to use expensive and lengthy judicial reviews to ensure that the an organisation such as the transport police to use it? Why aren't the government stepping in to protect women from being stripped search by men?

When i talked about M&S i was obviously talking about the reach of this judicial review. Can it be used to force other organisations to maintain SSE, or is this just one case of many?

Also why is civil employment law overriding criminal law and safeguarding?

There seems to be a lot of government bodies pretending this isnt happening.

This isn't really about single sex exemptions, which are optional in any case.

This is about the GRA. BTP are essentially saying that the law states that a man with a GRC is a woman. They are therefore upholding what they believe the law says. They may not even agree with it. But the alternative from their point of view may well be to be sued by officers with a GRC. I'd rather Sex Matters were doing the suing.

This action adds to the climate created by FWS. It is a specific example of how ridiculous the GRA is.

"We have SSE in EqA, but how useful is it if we have to use expensive and lengthy judicial reviews to ensure that the an organisation such as the transport police to use it? Why aren't the government stepping in to protect women from being stripped search by men?
When i talked about M&S i was obviously talking about the reach of this judicial review. Can it be used to force other organisations to maintain SSE, or is this just one case of many?"

I do think we are talking at cross purposes. I am struggling to join the dots. Maybe it's too much loafing around and eating crap food making me less sharp than is needed!

There are significant issues with the SSE clause not being used, but SM are not seeking to tackle this issue by focussing on SSE. Is your point that they should have focussed on this due to it having wider reaching potential? I think their decisions about what to tackle, why and how are based on legal expertise and how case law can subsequently be used to support subsequent litigation. I think MrsO has articulated this better than me.

As to what the government are/aren't doing. This is down to the government and I think SM do quite a bit of lobbying in addition to the litigation arm of their work.

I see what you’re saying and I was optimistic in the early days of legal cases and employment tribunals but despite multiple findings in favour of gender critical claimants the only changes that have been made are in the immediate organisations that were taken to court and usually the claimant involved has left the organisation.

There hasn’t been a discernible ripple effect through other organisations - for example on CrowdJustice there is more than one Social Worker engaging in employment tribunals for exactly the same reason in each case. And this is despite one Social Worker already winning her case against her employer for them discriminating against her for her GC beliefs.

I can’t afford to contribute endlessly to individual employment tribunals. We need the laws governing the entire country reformed so that we don’t have to keep fighting this battle one organisation at a time to get even a begrudging acknowledgment that they treated an employee badly.

If Sex Matters win against BTP then they will also have to take every other police force to court too because each police force has its own policies and they’ve all been influenced by TRA lobbying. And after each of the police forces, there’s the NHS, the Civil Service, the Fire Services, Ambulance Services, Councils, Schools etc. And then we have the private sector to tackle too.

I think a piecemeal approach benefits the government as it lets them off the hook for creating bad law and puts all the blame on individual organisations rather than the overarching legal framework within which anti-woman decisions are being made.

I see the victories like little cracks appearing in a dam. For quite some time there are only small leaks and nothing much appears to change but all the while the whole edifice is weakening until it suddenly gives way.

Hemingway wrote the same about bankruptcy. It happens gradually, then all at once.

I've been in the gender wars for 11 years. I'm not kidding myself that the dam is about to break any minute. But I'm more optimistic than I have been at any other point.

These court cases also have the benefit of keeping the issue in the media and peaking more and more people.

Biscay I sincerely understand your position and I absolutely genuinely hope you are correct.

I admire the women (and men) giving their time and effort to work publicly to restore women’s rights and protections and I know they can’t always do it on a voluntary basis but, even with as strong a wish to show solidarity as I feel, I can’t afford to keep contributing to every crowdjustice case or crowdfunder or new book or Substack and Patreon subscription. It feels as though gender critical activism is turning into a money-orientated ecosystem more than a grass roots campaigning/lobbying ecosystem. And I know that nowadays politics and money are intertwined but if we are going to be in this for the long haul I’m going to have to be more intentional as to where I choose to put my limited funds.

“If Sex Matters win against BTP then they will also have to take every other police force to court too because each police force has its own policies and they’ve all been influenced by TRA lobbying. And after each of the police forces, there’s the NHS, the Civil Service, the Fire Services, Ambulance Services, Councils, Schools etc. And then we have the private sector to tackle too. “

If SM win there will be case law that sets a precedence for similar policies and other organisations are likely to receive a different steer from their lawyers wrt their own policies than if they lose.

With regard to whether donations to support legal cases dries up - time will tell. If this board is representative, I think there is likely to be fewer donors. It may be that this will lead to those who donate donating more, to cover the difference, or they may fail to reach their target.

The GC ‘movement’ seems less united these days. My guess is that SM is likely to bring in fewer donations from those for whom KJK holds appeal.

I have more affinity with SM than I do KJK. I’m pretty sure neither employ marketing gurus, but if they did, I would conclude that I sit smack bang in the middle of SM’s target audience and considerably outside KJK’s. I share this as it provides context for my optimism and potential bias around SM’s approach!

’If SM win there will be case law that sets a precedence for similar policies and other organisations are likely to receive a different steer from their lawyers wrt their own policies than if they lose.‘

Maya Forstater’s employment tribunal appeal win set legal precedent and still people are having to hide their GC views at work (because of hostile policies or organisational culture) or they’re having to ask for help with CrowdJustice funders for employment tribunals because they’ve been discriminated against by their employers for having GC views.

Why aren’t the effects of Maya’s precedent-setting case more impactful and widespread when it comes to organisational policies and culture?

After isla bryson, the government didn’t sex segregate, they made exceptions. A man with a GRC can now only be placed in the womens estate if he has had his penis removed and has not been convicted of a sex and/or violent crime.

I'm guessing this will be starting point of all of these cases. Not an outright ban, but a compromise.

While theres a concept of legal sex, laws and policy will try to accommodate it.

"Why aren’t the effects of Maya’s precedent-setting case more impactful and widespread when it comes to organisational policies and culture?"

I think it because of the power of patriarchal forces and the strong appetite to keep woman in their place in ways that are not only masked but also provide a career of progressiveness.

Maya's win has made it much easier to win tribunals and legal battles. It is leading organisations to cave before cases reach court in those instances where they are residing adherence to the established president. It's a case of turning the tanker when a significant number of crew are invested in keeping it on its previous course and are trying their damndest to stop it turning. They won't win any cases where the Forstater president applies, but they will still try and avoid and evade where they can.

Organisations that have made and drunk the cool aid are likely to continue to try and evade the correct interpretation of the law even after case law is established. This will catch up with them as/when cases are brought against them. It is unacceptable and wrong that this is what it takes, but without established case law to challenge them, they have far more leeway and confidence to favour men over women.

I doubt it.

It is open to M&S to provide a single-sex changing room but it’s not obligatory. Many shops have unisex cubicles. The relevant law for provision of a single sex service would be the Equality Act.

A strip search on the other hand isn’t a provision of a service and the law that obligates same-sex searches is PACE. SM’s case is that breaching this law is state sanctioned sexual assault.

It sounds to me as though a fair bit of the heat in this discussion is arising because people are putting themselves under pressure to help fund everything, and then can't afford to do so. May I suggest a New Year's Resolution relating to that? None of us can afford to fund everything - well, JKR may be an exception, and wouldn't it be interesting to see a list of everything she's funded; sadly I don't expect a biography with that information to come out until after she and I are both dead... So what I do is to have a rough idea of an annual budget: an amount that is significant to me but that I can afford. I keep a list of the donations I make during the year and, as I've already decided how much I am going to spend overall, I do not feel guilty about the things I decide are not strategic priorities for me right now. My list will be different from yours or anyone else's and that's a feature not a bug.

The knock on effect on other organisations may not be that apparent yet - but it's there. The ripples take time to build. Those who have been wronged have more strength to come forward now but each case won means another HR department that will tone down what it is doing. The more cases there are the more lawyers advise their clients to settle/ their insurers start to say enough and the more the public perception changes.

I agree with the any one individual cant fund everything line. I also have an activism budget. Although I do feel bad about some of the ones I cant donate to it doesnt stop me donating to others. I pick cases that seem likely to succeed and have wide application, sometimes the ones where people are not getting much support and need it. Even a few pounds sends a message of support.

Do what you can when you can. If you cant donate write - to your MP, the press, companies who are getting it wrong. Fill in the online consultations. Let those with power know women wont wheest. We care and we'll keep telling them that and we wont vote for them or buy their products.

Specifically, I like to fund things where it seems to me that the case will have positive effects whether it is won or lost. This is one of those. It's well worth reading the Statement of Facts and Grounds - this makes explicit a lot of the things that we all know, but that cause TRAs and #bekind folks to froth at the mouth and call us bigots. Especially, it lays out the uselessness of making a distinction between GRC holders and non-GRC holders when you can't ask to see a GRC; the ease of getting a GRC while still having a functioning penis; the dual problems arising whether a man with a GRC is, or is not, mistaken for a women; the lack of any evidence that men with GRCs are less prone to sexual violence than other men; and the sexual gratification grounds underlying some men's choice to transition, including, to obtain a GRC. It connects these things to the practical working of a policy. The fact that this policy relates directly to sexual assault and the fear of it (whereas a lot of the successful cases so far have concerned fully-clothed matters of discrimination and harrassment) makes it an important addition, I think.

This case has no direct applicability to SSEs, but I think it does have (win or lose) the potential for indirect applicability. As others have said, the SSEs are voluntary - we have no legal means to force any organisation to apply a SSE. What we do have, as customers etc., is the ability to put pressure on organisations to apply them. But when we write to organisations, mentioning some of the things I listed above from Facts and Grounds, it is easy to be dismissed by people who think "that never happens" and have a picture of trans people as harmless and most-oppressed. Being able to cite things from this case - and the end judgement is likely to be useful for this even if the case is lost - may help.

Finally, concerning repealing the GRA. Personally I think it's not likely that we will ever literally repeal the GRA (the difficulties of what to do about existing GRC holders seem likely to be intractable); the strategy I think is more likely to succeed is getting it gutted, via clarification that what it changes is not sex for all purposes, but (public recognition of) gender. Combine this with gradual recognition that gender should have no effect on anything legally, and we're there: anyone can have a gender recognition certificate if they'd like one, and nobody else need ever care. This case, if we win, expands the range of purposes for which it is clearly agreed that a GRC does not change sex. It's difficult to imagine how, even if we lose this case, it can avoid undermining the GRA - even if, somehow, the policy is deemed lawful, all the stuff about how unworkable it is will be on record, in precise legal language, and that has to help.

I agree that losses are just as important as wins.

Its obviously nonsense that a man can or should be treated as if he was female in all situations just because he has a certificate. So a court case loss will hightlight the absurdity and the safeguarding failures forcing government to change laws and practices.

I agree fanofben

Neutering the GRA is likely to be both more achievable and more effective than repeal.
A Supreme Court judgment saying "of course it doesn't mean that men are actually women and certainly not for EA purposes, are you mad!?" would render the GRA to doing pretty much only what Saint Nicola told us the Scottish GRR act would do.

In terms of supporting crowdfunders, about 7 years ago I cancelled my donations to Greenpeace, Amnesty, Comic Relief and Action Aid (all of which have gone down the gender woo rabbit hole) and use that money to donate to the women's rights charities and crowdfunders.

I think the timing of the SM JR is good. It enhances the context in which other decisions are being made.

If the GRA was just giving people a GRC, it would be enough to make make it clear sex means sex in law. But the GRA gives men a new birth certificate and introduces the concept of legal sex and says they do become the same sex as women.

Every single time a service provide or organisations decides to introduce a policy including legal sex, it will be up to women to crowd fund to establish sex means sex. We are fighting legal sex being included along with sex.

I cant see it ever ending. Women will always have another battle and men will make gains when policies arent challenged or challenges are lost.

Thats not neutering the GRA, its working with it.

Neutering the GRA would be to remove sex from the act. Allow a GRC but not give the holders the illusion they have changed sex.

As others have said, the SSEs are voluntary - we have no legal means to force any organisation to apply a SSE.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the rape crisis case in East Sussex when that case finally gets heard. I think that case is saying that it’s discriminatory not to provide a single-sex service where one is required.

Both arguments have validity. But until the "Be Kind / Women Shut Up " mantras are overtaken by the "hold on, there's a problem here" reality, I can't see repealing the GRA being a runner. The tsunami of "but they just want to pee", be kind & TWAW" will currently drown out all the reasonable objections. As others have said, this is a monstrous tanker that's having to be turned round. Enabling the general public to see the awful reality of what's being demanded both from children and women isn't there yet. The print press are generally doing a good job of exposing the reality but the broadcast media are still in the grip of the LGBT lobby.
There's a place for all of this and like everyone else, I'm selective in what crowdfunders I contribute to. This is one of mine as I think the exposure of the anti social / anti safeguarding demands made by the men pushing this ideology will be significant .

To be honest, I'd probably feel less overwhelmed by the number of ongoing CrowdJustice cases if the Trades Unions were doing what they should be doing to support their fee-paying members and assisting them with employment tribunals.

I think it's frankly disgraceful that TUs are ignoring GC employees with viable ET cases for discrimination. The TUs shouldn't be making value judgements; if an employer had discriminated against an employee (and the employee is a union member) then they should receive the same help as any other employee. To be honest, maybe someone who has been denied assistance by their TU needs to take their TU to court for discrimination. Honestly, with the number of organisations and institutions that are failing to live up to their governing principles ,when it comes to interacting impartially with GC people, the whole thing feels like it's turning into a legal ouroboros at times.