‘Rights can be knocked out in a second’: older transwomen shocked by SC ruling

[RethinkingLife]

People may recognise the photograph and name of Christine Burns (Press for Change).

https://gendercriticalwoman.blog/category/christine-burns/

Christine Burns, a retired activist and internationally recognised health adviser, charts “a fairly straight line of progress” towards the passing of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, which allowed trans people to change gender on their birth certificate, marry to reflect their chosen identity and gave them privacy around their transition. That legislation “mattered so much to people” says Burns, while acknowledging that only a minority of the community have gone on to apply for a GRC.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/27/older-trans-women-shocked-by-supreme-court-ruling

The usual hyperbole with feeling “their safety and security has suddenly been removed”. Whittle features, of course. As does Roz Kaveney who neutrally would say to young people: “”don’t be scared, just be prepared to fight for your lives”.

These men obtained privileges by deception. They never had a right to what belongs to females.

They were convinced that they had rights relating to using opposite sex provision, and had been acting in line with this thinking, for a long time.

Even when getting the GRA enacted.

That started from the premise "people are already surreptitiously using opposite-sex provisions, and interaction with officialdom should uphold that pretence, rather than call them out."

They never stopped to actually arrange anything in law to give them the right - they just enacted a law to facilitate a claim to a right they didn't have.

Yes.

Truly remarkable that they published this set of grandparent stereotypes with scant mention of their role in bringing this about. Far less, recalling Burn’s surprise that Press for Change had succeeded setting up inevitable conflicts with women in achieving legislative successes beyond their wildest fantasies.

No wonder Trevor Philips now considers that he, and others, were actively deceived (I paraphrase) as to the true agenda.

It defies belief. But I guess they will want to hide their complicity.

But then self-ID became the shiny new object,

Point of order.

Self-ID was alive and well in the early 80s (if not before). I ran into it at Uni (freshers week), and had a spirited "discussion" with a SU grandee where I said it was a total crock and would inevitably lead to deliberate mischief. In this case it was all around race and ethnicity. But the principle is the same. In those days there was no "preferred not to say". I told the guy he could tick whatever box he wanted if it was that important. However the whole point of the exercise was to avoid people deciding other peoples race. I guess something must have happened in the past to make that seem a bad idea. (In the end nothing got ticked.)

The thing is you can get away with self ID for race and ethnicity, as they are all made up constructs anyway. Like gender. And religion.

TRAs: wanging on about genocide since 1977

Out if interest, where did that article come from? And who is the speaker - Whittle?

One analogy I thought of is this. Imagine you’ve got a perfectly decent house but you want to extend it. Stonewall and all your progressive friends tell you it’s fine if you want to build an extension. So you build a nice extension and happily live there for a while until the council comes along and says hold on a minute, you haven’t got planning permission - now you need to take the extension down. Naturally anyone would be upset - but they had no right to build that extension in the first place. The Equality Act has been misunderstood and misinterpreted for years. I wish some legal eagle had come along and clarified it much, much earlier, before the self-ID trend got out of hand and before Stonewall infiltrated every portion of society with its flawed DEI campaigning.

Exactly.

Stonewall wanted No Compromise and that's what they've delivered.

Transperbolic! Best word ever!

Angela Douglas.

The letter was published in Sister magazine Aug-Sept 1977. (Name and source at foot of the image.)

Janice Raymond published a selection in The Transexual Empire 1979.

The image seems to be from Dyke Quarterly #5 which is periodically findable on the Wayback Machine.

Yeah, it's interesting how it works with race and ethnicity. That's why I'm interested in things like the Buffy Sainte-Marie story and all the fake Native Americans who get exposed.

I'm a little invested in this because I have Romani ancestry. I don't call myself Roma because I didn't grow up in the community and have a quite sketchy knowledge of its traditions. But it's quite common to find people (let's be honest, women) who aren't Roma but claim to be, because they think it makes them interestingly exotic.

There's been a thing in Germany in recent years of young left-wing Germans who want to retrospectively fight the Nazis, who claim Jewish heritage on slim (or more often no) evidence, blag their way into Jewish communities and then tell the Jews that they're Jewing wrong. They're trans-Jews.

Race, ethnicity, religion are not objective and binary the way sex is. But the idea that you can self-ID into a group and nobody can challenge how you describe yourself is generally a bad idea.

"You did this to yourselves you fucking muppets. You sawed off the branch you were sitting on, and you were too stupid and arrogant to see you were doing it".

Nails it! 👏

Whittle likes to act all innocent but Whittle has been heavily involved in shitting on other women. I like JCJ’s tweet here, calling out Whittle’s lies:

https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1915099354831970595?s=61&t=eyxqR0PEXArt9SPlCOh4HA

Here, if the link doesn’t work:

Good grief, you'd think they were 14th century peasants, evicted from the land they'd farmed for generations, as opposed to men who helped themselves to women's spaces, women's services and women's language without even asking first.

what about the safety and security of the cis women to begin with, what about them ????

I would have expected a Prof with all those letters after their name to be able to write something that made sense - that tweet doesn't.

I am quoting a statement - I am not the originator of that statement.

Cisoleths are unwelcome, no matter how well-meaning.

No insight into the lives of women nor empathy on display in the mendacious framing of that article nor from the characters within it.

No sympathy whatsoever,

If they wanted to argue the finer points of the law, while Stonewall expanded trans to include pretty much anyone, they have had years to make their case.

Women have been trying to discuss this politely for years, but instead were told that even mentioning sex based rights was a sackable offence.

"We’ve always been respectful of women’s rights. In the 80s and 90s we were out on the streets along with them and they were alongside us in this fight."

Can anyone remember this?

The absolute fucking audacity of Whittle to say this when we still have court cases going through the system from women trying to get access to female-only rape support. The absolute fucking gall

but by the same token women have also supported other causes etc ?

Empathy, insight and understanding of others, let alone the ability to acknowledge the rights of others, seems to be pretty absent amongst trans activists trying to reshape society to enable their own selfish demands.