Naomi Cunningham; interview in Holyrood magazine

101 replies

IDareSay · 08/03/2025 08:03

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

OP posts:

PriOn1 · 10/03/2025 19:13

illinivich · 10/03/2025 09:09

There's a complicated relationship between stonewall and the government - stonewall lobbying the government, the government funding stonewall, meaning companies assumed stonewall is reflect government intentions regarding trans and gender reassignment rights. It doesn't help that politicans never clearly state what their intentions are.

But regardless of what the government, stonewall or companies want to happen, TRA is always going to come up against safeguarding. And its safeguarding rather than free speech or employment rights that, imo, is the key to ending this sooner rather than later.

Isla bryson is an example - a man can identify as a women, the government can protect him through his transition but if that results in a man in a womans prison, the government has failed in its responsibilities. A piece of paper cannot change the risk to women, and woman rights to speak about it doesnt solve it either. Being allowed to say 'hes a man' is a start, but isnt enough in itself. We are at risk of it just being framed as one opinion of many.

Its not mayas case that will force the government into action, its failures such as isla bryson. Its just how to get the government to act before safeguarding fails rather than responding to them.

One of the obvious difficulties is proving these laws are unsafe is related to the relatively small numbers of men taking advantage. Though there are many more than the government probably predicted way back in 2010, in most areas, the predatory men abusing it are still few and far between. Thank goodness we stopped self ID or the problem would have been massively exacerbated.

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