Judge McCloud seeks re-hearing of the Supreme Court FWS appeal

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/18/transgender-judge-supreme-court-case-biological-sex

'The UK’s first transgender judge has launched a case against the UK in the European court of human rights challenging the process that led to the supreme court’s ruling on biological sex.
The retired judge Victoria McCloud, who is now a litigation strategist at W-Legal, is seeking a rehearing of the case, arguing that the supreme court undermined her article 6 rights to a fair trial when it refused to hear representation from her and did not hear evidence from any other trans individuals or groups.'

The Amnesty representative was, I believe, non-binary?

I’m confused. Was Whittle campaigning for same sex marriage whist claiming sex was not as important as gender or before?

You were the one who used the word "prominent".

I said they're not that prominent, which might explain why their alleged calls for gay people to have the same rights trans people already had weren't widely publicised, and why their names are less well known than those of today's trans activists who are mainly famous for calling for women's rights to be destroyed.

Wasn't Stephen Whittle's principal campaigning after getting married in 2004 about being recognised as his children's father?

Wasn't that Freddie something? Unless there are 2 women claiming to be men shamefully using their children to try to achieve their niche political demands?

Stephen Whittle's case was a bit different because his female partner gave birth to the children, who were conceived via donor insemination. I think that once he had become legally recognised as a man he adopted them.

For what it's worth, although I don't think a trans man should be recorded on a child's birth certificate as the father if he is actually the birth mother, I don't really have a problem with it if his partner is the birth mother and is properly recorded as such on the birth certificate. It's not really any different to a biological man being recorded as a child's father when the child was conceived using donor sperm.

Freddie McConnell, who gave birth to two children after gaining a GRC, lost their case to be recoded as Father on their birth certificate.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/McConnell-and-YY-judgment-Final.pdf

How anyone can take Judge McCloud seriously is beyond me. He is a deluded man who thinks he is a biological woman. His partner is Psychiatrist Annie McCloud who is also a deluded man who thinks he is a biological woman. What crazy planet are they living on?

Yes, but the difference between these two cases is that Freddie was not allowed to be recorded as the children's father due to actually being their mother, whereas Stephen was not the children's mother.

I do think there is a difference between not accurately recording a child's mother's identity on their birth certificate, and not accurately recording their father's identity, and I'm trying to work through the logic in my head.

I think it's because a child's birth mother is the woman who gave birth, so her identity is known. Even if the woman used donor eggs, she has carried and given birth to that baby, so the birth certificate is recording the event of her giving birth to that child. This is one of the problems with surrogacy in countries where the commissioning parents are named as the mother and father on the birth certificate, because the birth certificate is based on a lie. It is recording an event that did not take place (the commissioning mother giving birth to a child) and not recording the event that actually took place (the surrogate mother giving birth to a child). Even children who are adopted at birth have a birth certificate with the name of their birth mother on it, which is an important part of their history and identity.

It's not the same with fathers, because so many children have a birth certificate without the name of their father on it, or with the name of a man who is not their father on it. In the UK any child born to unmarried parents whose father does not attend the registration appointment will have a birth certificate without their father's name on it. Some children may have the name of a man who is not their father on their birth certificate because their mother had sex with another man. Children conceived using donor sperm will have the name of the man who intends to raise them on their birth certificate, and not the name of the sperm donor. Whether all this is as it should be is a matter for debate. But it is what it is. And so in that context I don't think a donor conceived child having a trans man listed as their father on their birth certificate is a problem, provided that the trans man is not actually their mother, and provided that the woman who actually gave birth to them is listed as their mother.

Interesting, I didn’t know his partner was also MTF.

I had a Google but couldn’t spot any evidence so it couldn’t have been a prominent campaign... Stonewall on the other hand did actively campaign for marriage equality. Wierd how Google doesn’t offer up lots of links to show this big trans community campaign for that issue..

I can’t imagine how these GRC holding trans campaigners back in the day would have been viewing their own same-sex (biologically) marriages, as such.? Surely they felt they’d now ‘changed sex’ as they’d been legally promised, via their long awaited GRC? They were then having a straight wedding, so nothing to see here. That was the social framing that had allowed them to marry at all.

Being individually now (legally, anyway), of the opposite sex. standard straight marriage was now open to them just like any other heterosexual couple. Putting a bright line legally between them, and the (derogatory school meaning of queer) lesbians and gay men who wanted to marry their same sex partners.

That was the whole point of the GRA, to solve a marriage problem that the ECHR had picked up on and had asked the UK gov to do something about. The gov chose not to bring in same sex marriage because they didn’t want to upset most church leaders and many of the church goers. The country was still very homophobic. Conforming people instead to an appearance of heteronormativity was literally how GRA got through. Which seems wild by today’s standards( but this is recent history, so homophobic is our history in the UK.

So from 2004, after the GRA came in, it seems pretty counterintuitive that transgender campaigners would have been calling for LGB people, (who didn’t necessarily seek heteronormativity despite the heavy, overt and legally sanctioned homophobia of the time), to get the same access to same sex marriage that GRC holders had been given.

Meanwhile the governments of the day were busy saying pretty much that the point of creating the GRA was so that a marriage including a transexual person was straight marriage. Thereby keeping the church leaders happy by telling them officially that the government was not at all introducing same sex marriage in the UK. Lots of consequent gov handwaving away of concerns by saying how few people would probably transition via a GRC anyway (… a red flag for a bad law if the lawmaker sells it on how few people will use it…)

I’d be interested to see any links to show how the campaigners for marriage equality for transsexuals were also making their arguments for same sex marriage.

The evidence of campaigning on marriage equality from these campaigners, is specifically for their own trans community’s interests. in the early days of GRCs there was a much greater proportion of older and midlife, often married, men transitioning, than there is proportionally now..

They didn’t want to have to pay for a divorce, and maybe a divorce felt a bit too public, or drew too much attention to the fact of transition, or maybe they had religious views against divorce, or their spouse didn’t want divorce, anyway many they didn’t want to have to get divorced in order to get their GRC. (Side note: I saw online during googling this that it’s still in the Lib Dem’s manifesto of 2024 that they want to remove the spousal veto .). It’s set out on Wikipedia, that the trans community campaigning was for that issue, one that only affected themselves:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Recognition_Act_2004

‘Concerns regarding marriages and civil partnerships

Concerns about the act were raised by supporters of transgender rights, particularly regarding marriages and civil partnerships.[20][21] Due to marriage then being restricted in UK law to opposite-sex couples and the then lack of availability of civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, the act required people who are married to divorce or annul their marriage in order for them to be issued with a Gender Recognition Certificate.
This requirement was abolished in December 2014, nine months after the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 permitted same-sex marriages.[22] In England, Scotland, and Wales, such an application from a married person requires written consent from the spouse – the so-called spousal veto.

Applicants in Scotland benefit from a workaround, where it is possible for applicants in Scotland to apply to the sheriff court to have their interim GRC replaced with a full GRC, bypassing the "spousal veto". Some parliamentarians, such as Evan Harris, viewed the original requirement as inhumane and destructive of the family.[23] MP Hugh Bayley said in the Commons debate "I can think of no other circumstance in which the state tells a couple who are married and who wish to remain married that they must get divorced".[24][25]

Despite this opposition, the government chose to retain this requirement of the Bill. Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, David Lammy, speaking for the Government, said "it is the Government's firm view that we cannot allow a small category of same-sex marriages".[26] It was suggested in the debates that the number of transgender people who have undertaken gender reassignment and who are currently living in a marriage was no more than 200.[27]

Although the Civil Partnership Act 2004allows the creation of civil partnerships between same sex couples, before 2013, a married couple that included a transgender partner could not simply re-register their new status. They had to have their marriage dissolved, gain legal recognition of the new gender and then register for a civil partnership. This is like any divorce with the associated paperwork and costs. Once the annulment was declared final and the GRC issued, the couple could then make arrangements with the local registrar to have the civil partnership ceremony. The marriage was ended and a completely new arrangement brought into being which did not in all circumstances (such as wills) necessarily follow on seamlessly. This is also true for civil partnerships that
included a transgender partner: the existing civil partnership needed to be dissolved and the couple could then enter into a marriage afterward. For a couple in a marriage or civil partnership where both partners are transgender, they could have their gender recognition applications considered at the same time; however, they were required to dissolve their existing marriage/civil partnership and then re-register their marriage/civil partnership with their new genders.
Tamara Wilding of the Beaumont Societypressure group said that it was "not fair that people in this situation should have to annul their marriage and then enter a civil partnership. The law needs tidying up. It would be easy to put an amendment in the civil partnership law to allow people who have gone through gender-reassignment, and want that to be recognised, to have the status of their relationship continued."[28] The emotional stress caused is immeasurable as in the case of a Scottish couple’.[29]

I can corroborate. I was a decision maker in the central public sector in the mid-2000s and I worked closely with Christine Burns and also had contact with Stephen Whittle. It was part of a long running project on sexual orientation and gender identity, and I also worked with people across other central public sector organisations and saw them do the same.

The trans campaigners and organisations did indeed tend to focus on issues affecting trans people, but this was because the groups and meetings they were in also had representatives from Stonewall and other gay rights organisations, who were gay rights and not gay-and-trans at that point, and so the trans groups tended understandably to leave the campaigning on gay rights mostly to them. But there was definitely a feeling of it being all one cause with different strands.

Further, at this period not all that many people were actually calling for same sex marriage. There was a general feeling that civil partnerships offered what people needed legally and otherwise, and as I recall it most of the debates we had were about how to ensure that civil or other same sex partners were treated the same legally and socially as opposite sex couples. You might recall that Stonewall didn’t ask for gay marriage at the time and only changed its view very late (early 2010s, IIRC). You might recall that in the US Obama changed his mind around the same time. The liberal bien pensant thought at the time was that gay marriage was a very radical ask and the main thing was to ensure legal parity which had been done through civil partnerships and through removing the remaining bits of legislation that discriminated directly against gay people (section 28, serving in the military, age of consent).

That’s all a long way of saying I was there, I knew some of the main trans campaigners of the time including Burns and Whittle, and no they were not campaigning for gay marriage but neither was Stonewall or most other people, and it’s not because they had some nefarious agenda or even were being neglectful. At the time, trans and gay issues were still considered separate (though were beginning to come together) and each concentrated on their own issue while being friendly and supportive of the other. And, just about everyone was concentrating on legal parity for gay people but it wasn’t yet acknowledged that this would mean marriage.

Name changed for this post as a bit outing, but I am a long standing poster and am also GC and these days would oppose just about everything Burns and Whittle stand for. I’m just putting this on the historical record as I was there.

I just looked it up. Stonewall started campaigning for marriage equality in October 2010 after a meeting when it decided to change its policy. Before that Ben Summerskill had said the organisation “expressed no view” on whether same sex marriage should be legal. I don’t think it’s quite fair to criticise Press for Change (Burns’s organisation) for not being more radical than Stonewall at the time.

Was Whittle campaigning for same sex marriage whist claiming sex was not as important as gender or before?

Good one!

Unless I've misunderstood, I think these posts are a response to a claim earlier in the thread from a transactivist stating that;
"This point might make sense if it weren't for the voices of prominent trans campaigners like Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle advocating for marriage equality, and the inclusion of organisations like Outrage and the Scottish Trans Alliance in the Coalition for Marriage Equality".

The self absorbed narcissism of transactivists trying to change society to serve their own niche interests over the needs and rights of all other groups in society is well documented.

Back to the knitting.

Homosexual activity was illegal in the UK for decades and remains so in many many other countries.
Fashion choices have only become illegal in some extreme countries.
'Cross dressing' means different things in every decade and country.

The needs and wishes of lesbians and gays
and those who want to appear as other than the sex they were born
actually have little or no cross over

once you cease the 'forced teaming'
the rights of women and men can be properly protected

by allowing androgynist and non conforming appearance by both sexes
along with acceptance of homosexual and heterosexual preference

The whole "trans" stuff is about enforcing male power
against a backdrop of women wanting rights

rant over

Britain felt like a safer place to be trans in the nineties, says UK’s first transgender judge

In the 90s?

When you couldn't change your legal sex?

Those 90s?

Honestly, I wish I hadn't read that because it was infuriating. Like this for example:

But speaking about the impact of the ruling, McCloud said she is worried about how it has affected lesbian women, or other cis women who do not conform to feminine norms because of the new emphasis on subjective appearance.

“I’ve had lots of stories about people who are not trans being abused for being trans. It’s really common, and indeed, not just lesbian women, just anyone who’s maybe a tall woman or whatever.
“It’s leading, I think, to more abuse of non-trans people than it is to trans people, because most trans people actually are quite invisible – we go to quite a great length to be invisible, whereas people who are non-trans don’t see the need to do that. They’ve got a perfect right to be what they want.”

When are journalists going to start calling out this nonsense - that lesbians up and down the country are being dragged out of single sex spaces? VM couldn't give a shit about lesbians. What about the lesbian intervenors in the case? And then there is the lie that trans people weren't heard or represented in the case. What were the Scottish Government and Amnesty doing then?

And then this corker:

“I do understand the fact that in theory, you could get a man who says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks in and attacks someone, but they can walk in any anyway. Those aren’t transsexual people. They aren’t trans people, and it's important to separate the two”, she says.

“In my case, for example, to get a gender recognition certificate, I have a medical diagnosis. I have medical expert reports. A court had to consider my case and evidence – so it’s very tightly regulated.”

This seems like it would have been a good opportunity to ask VM what he thinks about self ID, which doesn't require a medical diagnosis, surgery or taking hormones. Does VM have any insight into how the push for Self ID has perhaps changed the landscape? Does VM think that people like Alex Drummond should be in women's single sex spaces?

I really hope the ECHR refuse to hear the case because I cannot bear the thought of years of this self-serving, self-absorbed man being given a platform.

“I’ve had lots of stories about people who are not trans being abused for being trans. It’s really common, and indeed, not just lesbian women, just anyone who’s maybe a tall woman or whatever.
“It’s leading, I think, to more abuse of non-trans people than it is to trans people, because most trans people actually are quite invisible – we go to quite a great length to be invisible, whereas people who are non-trans don’t see the need to do that. They’ve got a perfect right to be what they want.”

Imagine being delusional enough to think anyone will buy the idea that you pass as a woman better than actual women do.

I’ve had lots of stories about people who are not trans being abused for being trans. It’s really common, and indeed, not just lesbian women, just anyone who’s maybe a tall woman or whatever.

If true, this is discrimination against women for being gender non conforming, not confusion about their sex.

If people were genuinely unable to tell the sex of tall or gender non-conforming women, these women would gain the privilege of gender conforming men.

Yet history demonstrates that gaining male privilege is not that easy.

Trans identified men are now desperate to force team lesbians, or non spinny skirt "cute" women, to their cause.

"Oh won't somebody think about the poor lesbians, or women who don't look like lovely trans identified men?" 🙄

ETA for better explanation

Those aren’t transsexual people. They aren’t trans people, and it's important to separate the two”,

I can't tell if VM is saying transsexual and trans people are different from each other here, or whether VM is admitting that every time VM says "trans", he means "transsexual" and not "transgender". VM seems to only be talking about people that wish to be the opposite sex, not trans people in general.

It's a odd fixation, and as discussed earlier seems at odds with the self-id crowd whose identity is based on sex and gender identity being entirely separate.

I'm constantly surprised that these men clearly don't realise how they come across.

'Delusional' is right. I'm not sure they truly believe it, it's just the latest nonsense argument, but to even make it is embarrassing.

The full paragraph reads:
"I do understand the fact that in theory, you could get a man who says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks in and attacks someone, but they can walk in any anyway. Those aren’t transsexual people. They aren’t trans people, and it's important to separate the two”

The two groups he's separating are men who say they are women and attack someone and transsexual/trans people.

It's a transcription of an interview. I think he said "transsexual people" then immediately corrected himself to "trans people".

It is interesting, though, that his first choice was "transsexual". He is a lawyer, and "transsexual persons" is the phrase used in the Equality Act. I suppose there is that.

Or whether he considers himself a transsexual rather than transgender or trans person, in the privacy of his own head.

Its puzzled me that this person is saying that they needed a court to be involved in their GRC. You don’t get a GRC via a court process.

The panel process is well known to be very relaxed. Wasn’t there a thread on here a few years ago where someone found instructions to GRC panels, basically saying don’t refuse to give the GRC unless the person hasn’t completed the form fully? I hope I remembered that correctly, I might not have, but it definitely seems like a very straightforward process. All done on paper and no personal appearances required.

IANAL so not sure how a court process would fit in there. Obviously a lawyer wouldn’t ever confuse an administrative panel with no judge, with an actual court. Perhaps something very unusual happened in this case.