At first I cheered, then I got angry at the years of bullying and misinformation women have been subjected to

[IwantToRetire]

The Supreme Court has said the word sex in the EA means biology - fantastic! Credit due to FWS for persisting.

But why did we need a court to say this?

Because TRAs have spent years spreading misleading information.

So then you have to ask why, for instance, was Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre able to advertise a vacancy as being under the Single Sex Exemptions but appointed a man who self identified as a woman.

None of the institutions in Scotland did anything to tell them they were breaking the law. Not funders, not politicians, not charity overseers - not even the organisation representing Rape Crisis Centres in Scotland.

Is this a specifically Scottish problem? In other parts of the UK posts advertised using the SSE no other women's service provider has done this. (As far as we know). Some women's service providers only offer SS services, some offer SS Services and also trans services, which shows they know the law. And advertise accordingly ie whether SSE or transinclusive.

When and who is going to investigate how those with power colluded to undermine the meaning of the SSE. And why Stonewall law was allowed or even promoted.

And we know the poison of the misinformation has spread particularly in more social, informal settings across the UK, and even the right of lesbians to be lesbian ie same SEX attracted.

But the added bonus of today's ruling is that with the judgement that sex is biological then the instance that the case was first started about, eg representation on boards, means companies can not include trans women to improve a companies SEX equality achievements.

And also now women's sport, women's changing rooms, women's toilets, women's (Ladies?) pond, and .... are going to mean SEX based.

So as I know there are many other threads celebrating the FWS victory today, just wanted to ask how is it possible that so many people and institutions were so willing to accept the misrepresentation that women's rights were subservient to trans rights.

And could this happen again?

I agree with you. I hope people lose their jobs over this.

I think FWS and everyone have moved the dial magnificently but it’s not over.

Snap! Absolutely this

I am not in the habit of copying my own posts but when I wrote this on the “empathy” thread I realised how strong my feelings are

“The Equality Act 2010 is 15 years old and consolidates earlier legal provisions including the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 which used a biological definition of sex.
This judgement interprets the law rather than changing it. This means that at all times sex in the Equality Act has meant biological sex. That is to say that from 2010 to today woman, man and sex in the EA has meant biological sex.
Every single policy, initiative, campaign, guidance, lobbying, website, statement, speech etc that stated woman for equality purposes meant something other than biology was misstating the law and was potentially discriminatory towards women.
How reasonable is it to expect women who have faced a 15 year systematic and at times aggressive campaign to unlawfully misstate and remove our legal protections to look for the middle ground?”

Every single crappy bit of guidance and policy, every women and people who identify as women, was wrong in law at the time it was done. It was wrong then and it is still wrong now.

Articles on women who got us here.

I’m not sure it’s over but we’re starting to shape the equivalent of post McCarthy /Orwell era.

Still far to go. But amazing those women did this.

It’s depressing isn’t it. It makes me suspicious of anything peddled to us in the media. International women’s day - what a laugh. YESTERDAY should be the real International Women’s Day.

AD may have said it too, it is true after all. However GG said it in her book The Female Eunuch. It is older than I am. So fcking sad.

Oh yes this!!!

OP you are spot on.

I posted a version of the following on another thread because there is now a whole movement about how trans people have lost. This was in response to someone saying that. It's actually alarming in how it's now being framed.

You completely miss the point then and one of the bonkers effects of trying to replace sex with gender in law.

I'll give you an example so it makes sense:
In law, the equality act is about treating people equally and to protect them from harms. It is not about thoughts and feelings.

A doctor NEEDS to treat a patient on the basis of sex not gender. If a doctor is forced to treat a patient on the basis of gender it creates an issue.

If gender replaces sex, legally if someone has changed gender, if the doctor recognises this, they would not be able to say anything. They would legally have to treat them equally with someone of the same gender. If they don't they are legally vulnerable to acting unlawfully under existing legislation. This creates a problem because if they do that they may do harm or simply be unable to treat them. This legally opens them up to a potential negligence claim.

Therefore as it stands doctors are in a damned if they do and damned if they don't scenario if the court had ruled differently. And this would have put trans people (not women) at risk of harm. This is because sex remains relevant at all times to those who have transitioned whether they want to admit it or not.
The ruling was about clarifying the law and what the intentions of the law were when it was written. It's plainly absurd to suggest that biological sex wasn't observed and recognised as being biological sex and separate from gender at the time the Act was written. This was 2010. It wasn't written by a far right government. It was written by a progressive government wanting equal and fair treatment for everyone.

The Act wrote exemptions in because it recognised that women had human rights to privacy and dignity (as written in law under the human rights act). This also protected women's sport. These rights were recognised and established.

However the law also still protected trans people - it is just not been properly understood and properly carried out. There is still a requirement for trans peoples privacy and dignity to be respected and upheld but how this is done must be through other solutions and not at the expense of the privacy and dignity of women.

The other telling exemption within the act was the recognition that sex could always be seen in transmen - this prevented them from inheritance titles if they transitioned. The reverse was not true for transwomen - they would not lose a title if they transitioned.

If sex had been replaced by gender, it would also mean that lesbians and gay men would have lost their same sex protections under law. Worse still in certain scenarios they would have risked been criminalised if they rejected someone on the basis of being of the opposite sex. This would have been a massive regression of homosexual rights.

What we have seen in the last 15 years is an erosion of this and a neglect for upholding women's rights in this area. And women smeared and attacked for trying to uphold their existing legal rights.
There is nothing Trumpian here in this ruling. This is pure old fashioned liberalism which has been poorly understood by people who don't understand that legal definitions are hugely important and the ruling is neutral politically.

Trans people in various ways, actually have their rights solidified and protected better due to this ruling. The area they have 'lost' in (they haven't - they've never had this right and have been acting unlawfully) is in access to single spaces. This highlights another problem. One of over reach and how they didn't want equality but they wanted the use of women (with or without consent) to validate their identity. This is not ok because it came at the expense of women in many ways and made them second class.

This ruling does not make trans people second class. It protects them and it means others solutions need to be found but it doesn't make them less equal.
This has been misrepresented hugely by the media for a number of years and this is appalling. At best it's legal illiteracy but at worse it's the deliberate attempt to undermine the law, remove the existing legal protections women have and to misrepresent this all whilst blaming women for being not accepting enough. This is no ok. It is sexist, it harms women, it harms gay people, it harms certain religious groups and ironically it harms transpeople.

Ha! Funny you should say that. I’ve been snubbed by women because I questioned the bolloxness of ‘IWD’ 🙄.

They didn’t even question it when Transwomen were welcomed into IWD.

But then they also didn’t think it peculiar that people like fcking Sandi Toksvig welcomed transwomen (as women) into her ‘Women’s Equality Party’.

So there we were. But we’re here now.

Thank you for reposting this here @RedToothBrush I can’t keep up with all the threads and posts right now.

I want these statements about loss of trans rights challenged so the person or organisation repeating them actually replies, giving specifics. They won’t be able to and be correct!

The framing of the judgement is appalling in some quarters.

Saw this on Twitter by Terf Rocks with the simple message 'no words needed'

This is the newstands today.

And what a fantastic picture!

Some more. The tide really has, finally, changed.

Not at the Independent.
Headline '

'Huge blow for trans rights as court says you are not women,'

FT 'unanimous decision by courts a huge blow for transgender women'

how is it possible that so many people and institutions were so willing to accept the misrepresentation that women's rights were subservient to trans rights.

In short - because people don't like telling men the word NO.

And now they're all whining and hand wringing and wailing about losing their rights.

It was never their rights to begin with. They TOOK women's rights, and no one told them no, so they let countless institutions along a merry path that this was not only the right thing to do, it was the law.

But they have finally been told a firm no, that's not yours, give it back. The trouble is, they've held onto it for so very long they fervently believe it's theirs, and it's always been theirs. And those institutions don't want to admit they were hoodwinked and look foolish, so they're along for the ride too.

And at last, we have an admittance of what they mean by those "trans rights" they can never define. Because they have rights as per EA 2010.

But the absolute tantrums are showing what they really mean, and what we've always known they wanted - access to womens spaces, in order to validate their belief, and hold the power that a woman cannot say NO to them. That's what they mean by "trans rights".

I'm interested in this. Stonewall knowingly misrepresented the law for years, and financially did very nicely out of it. But could an organisation that implemented policies based on their erroneous advice sue them? Isn't there an element of caveat emptor here? If you're a massive big NHS organisation or university, for example, then you will have a huge HR department with the capacity to take advice from lawyers, either an in-house team or an external firm. If you are so stupid that you take advice instead from a bunch of unqualified activists, isn't that your fault? I don't know what a court of law would say, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

‘No trans women were consulted’, apparently, and it’s ’set back progress for transwomen by decades’.

According to a friend of mine, whose mates are shitting all over the only person brave enough to disagree.

I have now joined the conversation, carefully, saying it wasn’t a consultation but a clarification of the intended meaning of an existing law. That we can make new laws and policies, but not re-interpret them retrospectively.

I'm baffled by this fantasy that no TW were consulted in the judgement -

the judgement was an appeal to overturn the previous decisions from previous cases, with intervenors explaining why they were appealing it and why it was wrong for women. (Using the EqA definition of women.) All of that side of things had already been extensively heard, with all the policies and practice under question written almost exclusively by TA lobby groups.

What should TW have been there to say? Emotive pleas to not get the law right or let women have equality even if that is the meaning of the law?

I presume they’ve been living with buckets over their heads for the last 6 years while transwomen and their support [women/dogs/llamas] gave the evidence in court that was used by the judges at each stage of this process to eventually end up at the conclusion we have now?

Because the TW were extensively consulted - it’s just that the SC judges determined that their evidence and explanations came up short.

Exactly! But let’s face it, none of the earlier court decisions - and the evidence and arguments of many, many TRAs presented at them - were deemed worthy of mainstream media, so as far as much of the general public are concerned, yesterday’s verdict probably came out of nowhere.

Now, I’m not saying that the TRAs have been living with buckets over their heads (I am) but…

I honestly don’t know how I feel this morning….. elated, exhausted, emotional - but I think it’s going to take a while to realise what a huge difference yesterday’s judgement has meant to me.

This battle has occupied so much of my heart and head for so many years now, and I’m one of the lucky ones who didn’t have challenges to face in the workplace. The personal cost for me has been emotional not financial / practical. Even so, it’s been hard at times, and lonely. I’ve had very few people I could really be unguarded with, or who understood how much it actually mattered in terms of women’s rights and place in society. And I don’t judge them because I didn’t realise either, until I stumbled across a video of Magdalene Berns and began my own journey.

Not sure why I’m posting really, just wanted to mark this momentous turning point in the progression of things. Solidarity to all my sisters and brothers in the struggle!

Why on earth should they be consulted? "Yeah these rights you weren't entitled to, but you stole anyway, care to make a case for us so we can let you hang onto them?"

Did they seriously think that's how it should have worked?!! If I get burgled, the judge wouldn't let the robber ask to keep my stuff just cause he wants it? 🤪

Brilliantly put. The stench of misogny over this issue has been overpowering to me and I have been bewildered that so many couldn't smell it!

My social media feeds are full of people sad and angry at this decision today, I am confused (and maybe need to change who I follow?!).