Guardian Letters: Would these even have been published a few weeks ago?

[BackToLurk]

Two letters from the Guardian, which I have a hard time believing we would have seen before the SC ruling

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/30/stonewall-policy-of-no-debate-on-trans-rights-was-a-mistake

Fantastic letters. Thanks for posting link.

This letter says it all. So sad. What a scandal.

‘I am the parent of a trans-identified young person who has nuanced views of the debate on sex and gender (Editorial, 23 April).

The reason the supreme court ruling feels like such a threat to the trans community is because for the last decade activists have misled them about the existing law, staked everything on the complete erasure of sex as a meaningful category in society, and framed any dissent as bigotry, transphobia or worse.

It has been catastrophic for a generation of trans-identified youth to have been misled into thinking that their wellbeing is dependent on everyone in society colluding in a pretence that biological sex can simply be overridden by gender identity, irrespective of context.

The consequences are all too apparent in the distressed response to what is a compassionate legal ruling that balances the rights of trans people (under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment) while identifying the specific contexts where sex will be relevant too.
Name and address supplied’

The question who will be facing the consequences of their actions?

Who is going to admit they messed up?

Who is going to apologise?

(Clue: Tumbleweed)

I couldn't agree more with that second letter. A whole sector of young people have been fed disinformation, radicalised by TRAs into disbelieving biology. Awful, awful, awful.

Who cares? The Guardian is a shitty newspaper, dishonest as they come.

Wow. Astonishing that the Guardian printed those! How very interesting to hear criticism for stonewall from an ex CEO.

CEO for one year only. Why? (I don’t know but..)

What the second letter writer wxpressed is something that bothers me a lot. And it's still going on, they are being told the SC judgement was part of a huge conspiracy to "get" them, and more fear than ever is being whipped up. It's very wrong.

Ben Summerskill was CEO from 2003-14 so not just one year, and arguably one of the periods of most success in gaining legal recognition for lesbian and gay people. His criticism of Stonewall should make a lot of people sit up and listen, but I fear this cult-like thought will take a long time to root out.

It’s purposeful misinformation to continue the intimidation so that people won’t give up or question their ‘found’ family.
It’s the only way to maintain a large scale immersive fiction and the status of most marginalised and vulnerable.
I’m horrified by this coercive control in plain sight and the pattern of abuse it attempts to conceal.

According to Wikipedia, Stonewall under Ben Summerskill's leadership took no interest in T issues, only LGB. If his successors had carried on in the same vein, there might have been no need for the LGB Alliance to have been formed!
I remember that back then we never heard the term "LGBT". According to NGrams, "LGBT" was virtually unknown until about 2006.

@transdimensional
That's an interesting chart to play with.

putting in lgbt and lesbian without 'rights', case insensitive from 1980:

<iframe name="ngram_chart" src="https://books.google.com/ngrams/interactive_chart?content=gay+rights,gay+and+lesbian+rights,LGBT+rights,LGBTQ+rights&year_start=2005&year_end=2022&corpus=en-GB&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false" width=900 height=500 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 hspace=0 vspace=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no></iframe>

Link doesn't work - sorry. Can play on the site from @transdimensional 's post.

He was CEO for eleven years.

Ben Summerskill is an incredibly sharp political operator. My view is that his success at Stonewall was at least partly because he's got a bit of a conservative streak. His approach was always that you don't raise an issue unless (a) it's got overwhelming support in the LGB community and (b) broader public opinion is ready for it. Lots of activists criticised him for being slow on marriage, but I think he's just got a very good sense of timing.

I'd like to hear his reasoning for steering clear of the T. Maybe he had his ear to the ground in the lesbian community (though that begs the question of why Ruth Hunt didn't), and maybe there's a bit of a hangover from that period around the GRA passing when Press for Change were very much taking their distance from homosexuals.

There are conflicting accounts about Stonewall and Ruth Hunt.
Julie Bindel says that Ruth Hunt invited her for a drink before her appointment and they discussed various items. It’s on her substack. 2014 Decca Aitkenhead wrote about her drinks with Ruth Hunt and said the issue of trans wasn’t mentioned.

Interestingly, however, just a few months later, in 2015, Owen Jones wrote a piece that mentioned trans issues and Ruth Hunt’s intentions: Stonewall is right to bring our trans brothers and sisters in from the cold.

My DGS was caught up in the madness, but we've been turning the corner for a few months now. Same for another friends DGS. Bit by bit, small steps

Sorry you’ve been through this @highame. My DD got caught up in it too and that letter really really hits home. So many vulnerable young people further damaged. Here’s to escape and a better future for all of them.

And yes, amazing the Guardian posted these instead of burning them. One step onto the Golden Bridge.

Yes, and all those 'allies' who have colluded and encouraged their friends into cross sex hormones and surgery know they have some responsibility for what their friends have done to themselves...and under what has turned out to be false pretences. The allies are most often the worst. The only thing they have to lose is their credibility...which is why they are digging themselves further in.

“activists have misled them about the existing law, staked everything on the complete erasure of sex as a meaningful category in society, ”

I misread this as ‘stalked’. It felt as though every hold out area was tracked and targeted and eliminated.

Lesbian groups? We’ll have those.
Women’s pond? Not for long.
WI- already done.

Sorry yes my mistake. He left and Ruth hunt took over - then the madness began. Ruth hunt has a core responsibility for all of this.

Why has it taken him more than a decade to speak up?

Good point - he's been very quiet over the past 10 years.

I have reason to think he was worried about the direction Stonewall had taken, so is it that he was just reluctant to break ranks and undermine Hunt when he was so identified with them? Was he waiting for that moment where he would be working with the consensus and not putting himself out on a limb?

If some journalist wants to do a sit down interview with him, now's the time.

Normal service seems to have resumed:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/04/labour-trans-people-dignity

For heaven’s sake mate, if you’ve got hayfever, just stick a hanky in your pocket.

It wouldn't surprise me if that second writer was on here. Very well reasoned and nuanced. So much sympathy for them.

On the subject of this article:

To be a transgender person in the UK over the past two weeks has been to wake up daily to discussions on how your life must be made smaller.

This has been the reality of womanhood for the past decade and more. Few people shared that particular concern when the boot was on the other foot - other than a few brave women who were vilified as pantomine villains.

I can vividly remember the terror I felt writing that piece, fearing it might spell the end of my career. Clearly, it did not. I am still a sportswriter, and broadcaster, and much else besides.

Unlike, say, Suzanne Moore...

In the language of the angriest online campaigners, transgender people only ever “barge into” spaces intended for the opposite sex.

This columnist must have missed the far angrier online campaigners threatening to punch, kill, decapitate or rape 'TERFs'. Cf. 'TERF is a slur'. There are numerous documented cases of it.

The disconnect between the reality of our lives and the way we are discussed by policymakers feels profound.

Such as, for instance, being accused of bigotry for attempting rational discussion about the actual content of the law as opposed to Stonewall's obfuscation, so long accepted as fact and transcribed into various public sector policies. Or of the disciplining and persecuting women who have dared to point out that fact, or to question what happens when two sets of rights conflict.

You can ban people like me from using a toilet that reflects our reality – the way society treats us, the nature of our changed bodies and even the updated sex (not gender) markers on our government-issued IDs. But you cannot force us to go back to one that doesn’t.

I confess that I can't even follow the meaning of these statements. Subjective reality does not equal reality. As for forcing people to swallow a demonstrably unreal belief system wholesale, complete with its made-up terminology and capacity to injure, silence, or render a person unemployable, the people with that unenviable track-record are not GC women.

Only one comment on the first letter: No Debate was what this aggressive lobby wanted. They should now be granted precisely that.