EHRC on Woman’s Hour 21/5/25

[SabrinaThwaite]

Kishwer Falkner from the EHRC will be interviewed about the SC judgment today.

Bumping. Just done this. Have the guidance to hand while you complete it if possible as it asks about how you would change specific parts to make it clearer.

One point that she made clearly is that the draft CoP is complete & accurate with regard to guidance on the law but that they were looking for more practical examples that they perhaps hadn't thought of. Whatever feedback they get from the consultation isn't going to change their interpretation of the law or their advice on how to obey the law.

Yes, so I think it would be helpful if we gave them practical examples not given in the interim update.

The Houses of Parliament is a place of work, so the majority of their washroom and changing room provision should be governed by Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

So come on then - there are enough women who work there who aren't captured by the TRAs, so why don't they first start by making a formal complaint? Then pursue it further.

I was on the whole though, disappointed with her. However, it was one Woman's Hour and it will have reached a lot of people who hadn't realised what an issue it was.

I thought she could have been clearer. She didn't want to answer some specific questions, which I inderstand for the reasons people have said, but it does give the impression that she doesn't know the answer. I mean, is it legal for a group of 25+ lesbians to include men with the pc of gr who fancy women in their association if they want? Is it? From what I have understood the answer is no, because that will do away with the basis that everyone in the group shares a pc, and so they have no defence for discriminating against everyone else. I am for freedom of association so I actually think that's an illiberal outcome, but I think that's the law. Presumsbly baroness faulkner knows if I'm right but didn't want to say. I guess it is safer to say 'read the guidence' but basic principles could have been put across.
Nuala was asking in what circumstances the EA applies, and I think wanted her to explain employment, provision of goods and services, clubs & societies etc. But KF kept replying about pc's. Was nuala trying to get her to confurn that churches are bound by the EA? At times they were talling at cross purposes.
Between them thety managed to leave listeners with the feeling that the SC ruling could be 'overturned' by the ECtHR which is bollocks.

Anyway those are my criticisms. The dodgy line didn't help. But I think she did get lots if strong points across - it's the law now, you shouldn't wait. Everyone is expected to obey the rules, mostly based on trust. She also gave a really clear sense of the ehrc's role in all this.

Did any of you who listened to Woman's Hour hear the correction that Helen Joyce has asked them to make, on the grounds that what she said in her interview was repeatedly misrepresented in her interview with Amnesty?
Helen Joyce twitter thread

Yes, there was a ‘clarification’.

I mean, is it legal for a group of 25+ lesbians to include men with the pc of gr who fancy women in their association if they want? Is it?

I noticed that she ducked answering that.

Yes, but it was presented in a way that I found to be baffling without knowing the background of Helen Joyce's Twitter thread.

Yes, but it was presented in a way that I found to be baffling without knowing the background of Helen Joyce's Twitter thread.

Yes, I was baffled by the clarification.

What was the wording?

It was baffling enough to pass me by without a clear memory of what was said.

So, for the purposes of the programme, it was quite effective.

Baroness Falkner was careful not to step outside what is in the draft CoP that is out for comments.
The case of a large group of lesbians including men with the PC of GR while excluding other biological men needs to be explicitly spelled out as an example in the CoP. Personally I think that it's illegal as direct discrimination under EA2010 but it would need a man without the PC of GR to take this to court. If it was an example in the CoP there would be no defence.

The wording on Woman's Hour was that Helen Joyce:
has asked us to clarify that when we quoted her [in the Amnesty interview] as saying transwomen are men and that’s what the Supreme Court confirmed, she was referring to the Equality Act and not to wider society or any other legislation.

Somone on X asked:
Why has Helen Joyce said she didn't mean "Trans Women Are Men" in general? … OK I have seen Helen's tweet below. Has her request for clarification been deliberately phrased by
@BBCWomansHour
so as to suggest that Helen thinks TWAW outside of the Equality Act?

Helen’s reply:
Who bloody knows? I DIDN'T request a clarification, I requested an apology for being misrepresented by Anita and Sacha as having claimed that the Supreme Court judgment related to laws other than the Equality Act! They are so unethical.

Ahh yes, you've got to the source of my bafflement. As I heard the "clarification" it seemed to be saying that Helen Joyce considered that transwomen were men as far as the Equality Act was concerned and left the impression that she considered them to be women outside of that. That was so clearly untrue that I was thinking "What on earth was that?"

Helen wanted an apology, not a clarification, as she says both Anita and Sacha from Amnesty International misrepresented her on Friday and made her look like she didn’t understand the Supreme Court ruling (which only defines a woman and sex as biological in relation to the Equality Act - as Helen knows and understands).

In fact, she is probably one of the few people who have actually read the document back to back, so it is pretty galling that they made her out to have not understood the ruling! Sacha can’t have read it as he thinks it’s only 30 pages long.

Some will be confused by today’s clarification from Woman’s Hour and they may think it means that in some circumstances Helen thinks TWAW. Very, very dodgy ground for Woman’s Hour to be treading if their “clarification” misleads people about Helen’s personal views.

I’m afraid I was a little disappointed in the Baroness today, it was all a bit vague and woolly compared to the absolute clarity from Sex Matters and the LGB Alliance.

That’s pretty outrageous, I hope Helen continues to challenge their misinformation.

Oh no I missed it and it’s still not availability - but thank you for the thread!

available!

I’m listening to the interview now and remembering how frustrating it can be listening to Baroness Falkner. She’s very knowledgeable but can be very circuitous in answering questions. She speaks like the EHRC guidance i.e. lots of caveats.

Manderleyagain "I mean, is it legal for a group of 25+ lesbians to include men with the pc of gr who fancy women in their association if they want? Is it? From what I have understood the answer is no, because that will do away with the basis that everyone in the group shares a pc, and so they have no defence for discriminating against everyone else. I am for freedom of association so I actually think that's an illiberal outcome, but I think that's the law."

My understanding is this group could include men who claimed to be lesbians as long as they also made all other men welcome (so a mixed sex group). Whichever the answer she must know it, why didn't Baroness Falkner just answer the question? Maybe too afraid to get into the long weeds of identity with the possible result of insulting listeners of various persuasions. Rather, the near certainty of doing so.

Maybe too afraid to get into the long weeds of identity with the possible result of insulting listeners of various persuasions. Rather, the near certainty of doing so.

Yes I expect so. I also think I've been too harsh on Baroness Falkner. She's the head of a body which has powers given to it by parliament, and her statements will be taken as pfficial, not opinion. She isn't a campaigner or polemicsist, she's a public official with many different pressures on her from different angles and has to speak with care. If anyone wonders whether the thing they want to run is lawful they have to read the guidence.

Giving what would effectively be a legal opnion on the spot would be so prone to making a mistake that I'd say that answer in her interview was one I was fully on board with.

There's some deliberate misunderstanding going on. The law is complex meaning that you have to pick your way carefully through it to get to right answers, but that doesn't mean it's actually in such a muddle of unclarity that no one can be sure what's right and what's not.

I think it is easier to approach this by asking “does it say what it is on the tin?”.

If you want to welcome trans identifying men in your group of lesbians you can’t call it a “lesbian only group”. You have to title it so that Jo(anne) Public can decide whether or not they wish to self-exclude.

This. Baroness Falkner's not a lawyer: she is advised by lawyers such as Akua Reindorf. There's a risk that if she gets too definitive she will give the genderists a new toehold. So sticking to the legal line and leaving it to the actual lawyers to deal with, when required, makes sense.

Sadly she's not the best communicator and the sound quality of the interview was poor. Yet again, Woman's Hour, anyone without a good background knowledge who just happened to hear that interview would have found much of it opaque and ended up muddled and unsure about what had actually been said. This is not good journalism. Good journalism should clarify and inform. Robin Moira White and Amnesty blatantly misrepresented and deliberately misinterpreted the SC ruling and weren't forensically cross-examined and corrected by the interviewer. Helen Joyce and Kate Barker were held to much higher standards. This is not balanced and fair reporting.