Reaction in other countries?

[DuesToTheDirt]

I'm not sure if this has been covered elsewhere - there are so many threads! - but what is the reaction in other countries to the SC ruling? I'm sure not everyone around the world is focused on women's rights in the UK, but when it has been covered in the press, what is the slant? Favourable, or do they think we're unsympathetic right-wingers?

Of course it has relevance outside the UK. In all western countries women are fighting for the definition of woman to be biological female in law because otherwise we don’t have any defendable sex based rights. As it stands, in NZ, we can’t have female only provisions because men could take expensive legal action where it exists. They might lose but they might win and there is not enough money in NZ to pay for these types of court cases. So female only spaces no longer exist. In Australia- tickle vs giggle, the first round was lost and Sal is risking everything to take it to the next round. The relevance of the UK judgement is that a country which still houses our head of state is having an open and honest discussion about women’s rights and where they conflict with the rights of men wishing to be women. And women have shown there that biological women are real and their rights trump those of men sometimes. That discussion is not possible in NZ but it is hoped that those in power here will be aware that there are two sides to this and that women are suffering silently. Hopefully some will gain confidence and eventually look to their conscience on this and do what is right.

You are right of course, the issues are the same across multiple countries. It's just a tactic to try and stop the public thinking there might be something to look at here. First tactic is complete refusal to cover anything to do with the topic. Second tactic, once something has to be reported in the media is to pretend it's nothing to do with women, its far right vs progressives, or nazis vs trans people. Third tactic, once reputable institutions overseas are doing things which have to be reported on is to dismiss it as having no local relevance. Not sure what they'll try next, lol.

I think the whitewash version was something like the Cass report identified a few problems with the Tavistock not having multi-disciplinary teams and decentralised service provision, but we already have all the good things so nothing to see here.

It doesn't immediately impact the legislation in other countries, but our legislation is remarkably similar (not 100%). We also have anti-discrimination legislation that covers discrimination on multiple grounds, including sex, pregnancy etc. We also have had a 'gender' grounds added, and like in the UK it is pretty all inclusive (ours is gender id, UKs is gender reassignment, but so broadly interpretable it could be the same thing). We also have another set of legislation that allows people meeting certain criteria to change their sex/gender on documentation. We also have all the same issues related to the words sex or women clearly used to mean a biological definition in some parts of the legislation, but no clarity on issues of how to actually make sense of that. We also have all the same background social issues of female people existing and having certain biological realities, the issue of rights for pregnant trans men is not clearly dealt with, lesbians are currently banned from holding single sex events, a late transitioning TW who became a CEO or STEM expert would be counted as a women for awards etc, sports. The ruling provides a very clear outline of the issues both legally and socially, and Ben Cooper provided the court with a path to navigate the law that maximised equality for as many groups as possible within the existing legislative framework, albeit leaving some social issues to be resolved. There's no guarantee that our courts will give the same outcome, but I think the ruling will give the judges a lot to think about, and from a source they would likely give weight to.

Of course the UK Supreme Court ruling has relevance in places other than the UK.
Both Australia and New Zealand have Westminster systems of government, and common law inherited from the British.
The reason Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner has made a public statement criticising the UK Supreme Court ruling is because of its relevance to us. They didn't release any statements in response to Trump's executive orders.
I hope the way things are unfolding in the UK will provide a way forward for Australia, so that sex is recognised in law here. But it might take a while.

"...people seem to erroneously think that the SC ruled that trans women are not women. They didn’t."

But they did. The judgment literally says at para 265

"The meaning of the terms “sex”, “man” and “woman” in the EA 2010 is biological and not certificated sex.

If you are not a biological woman then you are not a woman.

Now, you may say something like "Oh, but that's just for the purposes of the EA 2010"

And you would be right.

But the EA 2010 impacts so many different areas of everyday life that the practical upshot of this is that, for almost all intents and purposes, transwomen are not women.

The SC accepted that there is still a place for a GRC as it:

100 ... the Act continues to have relevance and importance in providing for legal recognition of the rights of transgender people ... in recognising their personal autonomy and dignity and avoiding unacceptable discordance in their sense of identity as a transgender person living in an acquired gender. We also agree with the Scottish Ministers that the GRA 2004 is concerned with relationships between private parties as well as between the transgender person and the state.

I will say, what has distressed me most about coverage in Australia, whether it's been neutral, positive, or negative, is that it completely ignores the existence of trans men, and the effect of the SC judgement in ensuring that trans men are covered by pregnancy discrimination legislation.
I got cold chills reading the ABC article linked above. Then felt a little melodramatic. But, honestly, female people just don't seem to really exist in their own right down under at present.

Just to add - in Australia we have seen what happens to women's rights when our equivalent of the EA is interpreted as 'woman is a gender identity'. Women are being taken to court to prevent anything female-only from existing, whether it's a female only app, a lesbian gathering, a swimming pool that was penis-free, and are losing as the very legislation that was supposed to protect us is used against us. Yes, the ruling was only about one piece of legislation, yes, the government could amend it, but even if nothing else, your EA is not a weapon to prevent single sex services from existing.

Yes, trans men have been completely ignored. But if you look at all the legislation, it's pretty clear that trans men weren't the focus. And in the court case, even the lawyer for the Scottish Government completely threw trans men under the bus saying they wouldn't be eligible for pregnancy protections. And trans men are complaining on reddit about being used as a gotcha by trans people and allies, which will put them more at risk. I'm not one to use the word patriarchy much, but it's never been more clear than in how completely disregarded all female people are in all of this.

I am in Singapore and the Straits Times ran 4 articles - all from wire agencies with their own 'balance'.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/uks-top-court-says-legal-definition-of-woman-refers-to-biological-sex

https://www.straitstimes.com/sport/sports-bodies-have-no-excuses-on-trans-rules-after-court-ruling-campaigners

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/pm-starmer-welcomes-uk-top-court-ruling-on-biological-sex-in-equality-laws

India's Tomes of India ran a poll on the Supreme court verdict after mostly positive article about JKR and the pro verdict is 78% for the Sc and 22% against.

Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/120374206.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

All over Asia, media ran mostly Reuter's cover of the verdict :
https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/610076

Here is a non-wire report in Japan Today with comments - overwhelmingly positive!

https://japantoday.com/category/world/uk-supreme-court-to-rule-on-landmark-legal-challenge-over-legal-definition-of-a-woman

"aCtUaL fEmInIsTs"

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

And the legal wonks at the Harvard Kennedy School - shallow and petulant analysis.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/understanding-implications-uk-supreme-courts-ruling

Unless the rest of the world has completely different humans to the U.K. then it is relevant. We are just ahead in the discussion due to all the factors we have here, mumsnet, jk Rowling, brave women etc but the rest of the world will be forced kicking and screaming to confront this issue too not least because international sporting competitions will encourage it along.
it’s not going to be sustainable to have some countries fielding trans women on their athletics team while others cannot for example.

Yes, there is a long history of courts in Australia taking account of decisions made by the UK senior courts.

I’m in the US (San Francisco Bay Area) at the moment and it’s been pretty muted. I’m generally progressive as is everyone I know here. But there really hasn’t been much noise around it. One friend who is particularly vocal on trans issues posted a few horrified comments on facebook and the New York Times had a truly ignorant article linking it with the far right. But generally the right don’t care that much and the left are too focused on Trump. I think it would have been different a couple of years ago.

You will find that the majority of the world's population in Asia, Africa, East Europe etc is not at all captured by this nonsense, so it is western countries, especially the anglosphere, that is behind.

But the UK deserves praise for being ahead of much more captured countries. Is the battle over? Not by any means. Women can win at the highest court in the land and yet what they find is the media, universities, corporations and celebrities closing ranks against them. Fighting back against captured institutions will take decades.

Isn't it mainly the shared language thing though? The whole stupid idea started in America so obviously Anglophone countries were more vulnerable to it than most.

Think about the social contagion aspect of it for young people and then think about how much of the internet is in English. If you're from Eastern Europe and your English isn't great, you'd be largely shielded from it.

But don't ever let anyone tell you that trans people are marginalised and powerless.

Not when the trans rights lobby has captured almost the entire establishment in the way that it has.

The predominance of English, the cultural super power as well pre-eminent scientific and academic power of the US is certainly a factor in driving these ideas downstream to the English speaking countries. Trans id is most popular at our local universities where some of our young learn it through the whole intersectional social justice shebang in the humanities.
However I do think that culture (say a less individual-centred one in Asia) and religion play a part in shielding us from the contagion. Social values are slow to change and sometimes that is a good thing. Even the most trans friendly countries - India, Thailand. Taiwan- are not going to go gaga over self-id anytime in the future.

Been out with the kids all day so it’s taken a while to come back to this.

There are still ways in which trans women will legally be treated as women, the GRA 2004 still stands and it isn’t just to give trans men and women positive vibes. The SC was clear, for example, that previous rulings about how trans women with a GRC should be treated as women for pensions purposes from the date of their GRC still stand. That has little bearing on how biological women are treated but reflects the scope and rational of the SC decision.

I don’t see the legal principle the SC established other than what the text of the EA tells us about parliaments intent - the only real principles it is based on are the bog standard principles of statutory interpretation of the specific act in front of the court. The impact of their ruling doesn’t change this.

It is open to Australians to argue that the Aussie equivalent to the EA should be read in the same way as the U.K. legislation was by the SC. But if it is or is not it will not be because of a divergence or agreement on gender critical thinking but on the very specific wording of the Australian statute and its interplay with other legislation. I believe the SC were right in their legal analysis but that’s what it was. A technical, legal analysis. Whilst I appreciate how strongly people feel about the resulting impact, that doesn’t mean it has read across anywhere else.

According to an American "Feminist" news site, apparently male Police officers in the UK can now search woman using the excuse " I thought they were a Trans woman".

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16DAZaE4me/