Naomi Cunningham; interview in Holyrood magazine

[IDareSay]

Fascinating stuff:

“When the Gender Recognition Act passed in 2004, I was already kind of 10 years into being an employment lawyer, and I was aware of it. It vaguely clipped my radar. I kind of thought, very niche, that’s not going to cross my desk, and shrugged it off. So, I didn’t wake up until about 2017, 2018 and what woke me up was Anya Palmer, who is a barrister at Old Square. She was Maya Forstater’s barrister, and she was one of the group of people I was talking to. I was following her on Twitter and she was tweeting about this subject, and it started to educate me on it. She was the person who had the brilliant idea of running a case on religion or belief discrimination, on what’s now called gender critical belief. And I remember pulling some very sceptical faces about that when she was first discussing it, even before she found Maya, before she found a client."

www.holyrood.com/inside-politics/view,naomi-cunningham-im-fuelled-by-rage-and-ive-been-lucky

Really? I've certainly had a lot of gender essentialist things said to me...

You can't be an astronaut you're a girl
Boys are better than girls at maths
Why do you like football, you're a girl?
Please don't wear combats and a tshirt, you look like a man
Why don't you make more effort with your appearance like other girls?
Ladies don't whistle
Women who use Ms are either divorced or feminists

What I like the most (and there's a lot to like) is that she doesn't get bogged down with feminist theory or tribes or how many angels on the head of a pin bollocks.

It's very simple. A man is a man. And if you start using other words for him we're screwed.

Be More Naomi is my new motto.

Just my two'pennorth. I don't think the term 'conservative', with a big or small 'c' is particularly useful, much like left or right wing. All the historical definitions just don't apply.

I agree. The idea that its just small or big c conservatives that believe in sex stereotypes is demonstrably wrong. The whole premise of the GRA, embraced by a wide range of people, is that 'woman' and 'man' are roles that anyone can perform.

On FWR years ago, extremely left wing feminist were saying that these men were socially women - accepted and treated as women therefore are women. Very much gender is a performance or role that we are given. Basically, Gender Studies and how many conservatives are seeking out those courses?

Now the claim is that there's no right or wrong way to perform man/woman and its a mind thing, but thats still a stereotype, just one that isnt visual.

I think it gets confusing because there are average sex differences that aren't stereotypes - height, strength, even things like risk taking. So its easy for people to assume that trans is linked to these differences and not just toys they claim they wanted to play with as children.

I think as a society we are far more gendered than gender critical. We have just moved away from some stereotypes- the idea of man and woman jobs, but not all.

@CuriousAlien Really? I've certainly had a lot of gender essentialist things said to me...
You can't be an astronaut you're a girl
Boys are better than girls at maths
Why do you like football, you're a girl?
Please don't wear combats and a tshirt, you look like a man
Why don't you make more effort with your appearance like other girls?
Ladies don't whistle
Women who use Ms are either divorced or feminists

I've never heard any of those from an actual living human being.

I did encounter the outgrowth of the maths one, in that our convent school did not routinely offer higher level maths at Leaving Cert level fifty years ago. That was apologised for, even back then, and has changed, long since.

None of the others. My colleagues used to get annoyed 20 years ago when the government department dealing with maternity leave assumed they used their husband's names, which hardly any of them did. And all adult women have been 'Ms' in my experience for well over 40 years.

I have sometimes wondered whether Ireland a less gender essentialist than the UK.

I wonder if we will see an increase in cases settling before they reach court, once one side realises they're up against Naomi Cunningham and just go uh-oh, we're gonna lose

It tends to be government organisations, and they dont seem to have a problem with the time and money spent on these cases.

@DeanElderberry then it makes sense if you have never met a gender essentialist. I can really relate to the bit in the interview when she says she was instinctively feminist as a child. I felt that way because of having to endlessly refute the nonsense that was spouted at me. It wasn't an identity or an intellectual position, it was just obvious that gender essentialist was not reality.

Also, you don't have to venture far from this board on mumsnet to see all sorts of gender essentialism. That's not irl though I suppose. School gate is another place I hear it.

Alessandra is right. The GRA and PC of GR must be repealed. The fact we now have it in black and white that Palmer was scouting for a test case is useful. Hopefully we can now all see that we've been properly fucked over by GC as a belief instead of having law based on reality. Safeguarding must be restored ASAP.

I disagree that that is what fucked us over. The GRA is what fucked us over. Ideological capture of the professional class and public institutions is what fucked us over.

People forget just how hopeless it was in 2019.

No I haven't forgotten. But if Maya had lost, the government would have been forced to act. Instead we've been left with the useless idea of a "belief". Tell me how that stops men making school children call them Miss, or how it's stopped men accessing swimming changing rooms? It hasn't. Nothing has changed. And it won't until those bits of law are repealed.

Alessandra has been right all along and she's been monstered for it.

It carved out space for women to object. The reason there could be pressure was because women could ask to be taken seriously. I very much agree with AA on the GRA, but I don't share her view of the Forstater case.

And I don't believe "the government would have been forced to act" if Maya had lost. Why?

No. It carved out space for lawyers to endlessly litigate that women "don't believe" the man in their changing room is a man. It has not stopped them going in there. And now we know for a fact that was the intention all along. I find that useful as we can see (prove) we've been had.

The interesting thing about talking about taking that to court before an opportunity even came up is that we've done the same on here - we've talked about how what was needed was a woman taking her employer to court for allowing a man in the changing room and that is now happening.

I disagree with both AA and Sex Matters on some things. I've been in this a long time, and I've come to my own conclusions. I know women who I greatly respect disagree, I don't believe we'd have got anywhere without either the Forstater judgment or a similar one.

Neither the previous government nor the present one would ever repeal the GRA, because it would put us in breach of the ECHR.

There are ways to make it less damaging (e.g. repeal Section 22, tweak the Equality Act if needed post FWS judgment) but a Labour government is v unlikely to do this. I'm sure they see it as a v minor issue compared to Ukraine, state of public services, state of public finances etc.

"Boys are like this, girls are like that" is gender essentialism and it's fecking everywhere. It's even often assumed to be common knowledge so it's not always explicitly voiced, but it underpins huge injustices and assumptions.

It's also the foundation of gender indentity belief.

I don't think it would breach the ECHR which is another area we've not got to having a full discussion on because it's always about "balancing rights". (Or if you're so minded, it will upend the Good Friday Agreement - a line so ridiculous you can't even know where to start).

Goodwin can be overturned. The GC groups never want to discuss this. Keeps the billable hours going though.

What a great read that was. And - whatever our differing views on the legal issues - I suspect we all identify with ehis:
"Rage does still fuel me because there are so many things to be profoundly angry about: the grooming of children into mental ill-health and physical mutilation; the gas-lighting; the bullying and silencing and cancelling; the corruption of so many of our institutions; the sheer waste of time, money and energy on dealing with such obvious nonsense."

Really?

I've encountered it a lot.

I studied engineering at university. We had to do a practical course in welding, riveting etc.

The tutor stood up at the start and said women couldn't be engineers and he didn't agree with us being there.

A visitor to our office asked if the girls were capable of the maths. Thankfully my boss put him right.

Nuns at my Irish Convent school 35 years ago had conniptions when numbers were down in Honours maths and Physics one year - there was a meeting where they challenged us to think again about subject choices

That was very moving. She's even more wonderful than I thought she was.

I thought her comments about not knowing all the history, etc, of feminism were really interesting because I'm the same. The Maya judgement (the first one) peaked me as well and I've been so preoccupied with what's happening at the moment that I have not had time to go back and fill in all the history and context.

Wogan (interviewing Thatcher on being interviewed by (male) political commentators): "They don't seem to make any concession to the fact that you're a woman."

Thatcher: "No. Why should they? I don't make any concession to the fact that they're men."