Naomi Cunningham’s response to Prof Norrie’s post on University of Strathclyde’s blog on the SC decision

[Lolapusht]

Yikes!

Gender Doesn’t Matter

This is a brilliantly written piece. Still reading it, but my goodness Naomi is incredible.

UK Universities, take note: this is what promoting academic freedom looks like!

This is a surprising approach for an academic lawyer to take to statutory interpretation.

I don't know if Naomi wants to be a judge, but that's a great bit of judicial understatement.

I'd just come here to post a link - but IDK if i am stupid but i am apparently unable to copy/paste links from the bar these days.

That is a bloody FANTASTIC piece of writing.

It's a brilliant piece. Thank you Naomi.

This rhetorical move is familiar in the wider debate, but it is disappointing to see it repeated by a distinguished academic.

This is just delicious.

I had smoke coming off my phone after reading that, it is a blistering piece. IANAL but her legal arguments make sense, and her ripostes are excellent to the rubbish arguments in the first piece.

Eg which said men who say they are women are simply carrying a “spare Y chromosome” in each of their cells.

I tried to read his article, and got as far as the point where he cites Reddit as the source of his statistics 😂

It’s a wonderful piece and the final sentence sums it up for me. I have been so deeply disappointed by so many male friends and acquaintances over this, for this very reason: they don’t see us as fully human and to them, our rights do not matter. Real litmus test …

Wonderful. I am off to read it. She has such a way with words.

Boring but useful tip, if you have an iPhone you could try screenshotting the text and then copy & paste from the screenshot/photo. In other words you can now screenshot from photos on iOS

I want to be Naomi's friend. I mean, she might be awful in real life but imagine being around such a fearless, intelligent, articulate, blistering woman. Her article is as relentless as parenthood 😉

The "expert in family and LGBTQ+# rights" genuinely gets two of the 2010 EA protected characteristics wrong in the second paragraph of his piece.

How can there not be professional consequences for such blatant incompetence?

I was going to post the most brutal bits but there were too many! The opening is exquisite then it just gets better and the conclusion is even better.

As my DC would say “Hope you’ve got some burn cream…” 😂

i don't have an iPhone and tend to use MN and the internet on my laptop anyway.

But it is a thing now. You used to copy the link from the menu bar and paste it in your message/emale/post and there was a link. Now you get just the headline. For most things it's ok because there is a share button which gives you the link (extra steps but ho hum) but on that blog - nothing.

Wow what a great piece of intelligent and articulate writing - Naomi you are AMAZING! 🙏

... it may be questioned whether the fact that no public body has seemed to think it was a problem that women’s rights were being almost universally violated can be taken as evidence that all was well.

Ouch!

If you are using an internet browser, the url (web address) should show in the top bar of your browser.
You just copy and paste that.
What browser do you use ( chrome, firefox, edge etc)?

If you're on some app, it might be different.

Brilliant final sentence.

Wow, lost for words. Amazing work there, thanks for sharing.

It just shows how beclownerating gender ideology is when a topp legal mind ends up coming out with that and puts it on the university website under his own name.

Fair play for them giving NC a chance to reply.

Aoutsch

'Blistering' indeed!
I loved when she compared 'carrying a spare Y chromosome to':
It is as sensible to define insects as mammals encumbered by a spare pair of legs.
😂
No offence intended I'm sure to a certain multi-legged coleopteroid who frequently posts here

“Norrie’s call for kindness is in truth a thinly disguised demand for submission.”

I ❤️ Naomi Cunningham so much.

I suggest it’s deliberate rather than incompetence.

He's just "holistically" quoting them 😂

Wow. What a missive. I’m so glad people like Naomi exist!!!

THANK YOU!

The thing I found worrying was at the start:

”and do not represent the position of the University of Strathclyde or Strathclyde Law School”.

When ARE businesses, universities and other establishments going to get behind women and THE LAW??

It’s like they’re too scared to say, yes, she’s right, we’ll enforce women’s rights to single use spaces. It’s like they’re still pandering to the trans community, hedging their bets, dithering, hovering on the fence.

And why would that be? Because they know the virulence of the backlash they will get. We’ve all seen what JKR has had to put up with. Nobody wants that on their doorstep so they keep appeasing…

Just when is this horror going to go away? Forever?

I find it baffling. How on Earth is an "expert" academic so careless with words? I'd be absolutely embarrassed to have gotten this so badly wrong so publicly.

He's also muddled up Sex Matters with FWS, by the looks of it.

I'm tempted to identify as a legal academic. I could do a better job than this sorry effort.

(I wasn't going to mention the double spacing in his article, either, but looks like I just did)