Brigitte Phillipson blocking EHRC guidance

[lcakethereforeIam]

I'm not sure if there's anything new here though

Phillipson blocks trans guidance after landmark Supreme Court ruling https://share.google/P91PBE5Cy4ROwsdA1

It's a very stark article in the Telegraph.

I wouldn't bank on it. I suspect it's just 'words'.

I mean I donate to the Trussel trust , not for trusses

We've really got to a sorry pass, where when I rigorously read every word in Phillipson's interview, I either think she's lying thru her teeth, or every word/sentence/phrase/paragraph has to be parsed for absolute accuracy.
Like, when she says "women-only". Is she lying? What does she mean by women? Does she mean the type that we understand or those women in the 1% when her boss in 2023/4 said "99% of women don't have a penis"?
You just know there's a big whiteboard up, a dartboard, a big bingo game equipment has been hired, and Phillipson, likely her transmaid underlings, a lot of Jolyon M activist legal types are weighing in, and the whole of the Labour/unions movement, where every other senior mover and shaker has something to say because they have or know a trans child or poor victimized trans colleague.
Because if I'm to take her words at face value, GC reality may only get the very sharp end of women's spaces catered for reasonably ie refuges.
Otherwise, the previous thoughts on male exceptions ie mums taking their toddler sons into the ladies, may be the type of edge case she uses to obfuscate the SC ruling and associated already existing ECHR advice ready to go.
Would I put any money on Phillipson Starmer doing the right thing across the board?
Not on the basis of her words here.

The minister for women and equalities insisted that spaces such as refuges for victims of domestic violence must only be accessible to biological women.

Perhaps we will be offered truly single-sex RCCs, DV units and so on, but the price of that will be allowing the men into toilets and changing rooms

If that is what the Labour government want, then it is wishful thinking because there is still a conflict of rights when it comes to changing rooms etc. What will happen if Maria Kelly and Sandie Peggie win their appeals? Does the government think that the Darlington nurses should shut up and put up with their situation? The government can try and circumvent the ruling all they want, but then women will keep having to go to court.

You've pretty much made my point in the post previous to yours.
Only the sharpest of sharp end high risk spaces will comply...refuges, prisons.
The rest, what you might call spaces one sees in public all the time...toilets, changing rooms, wards etc...will somehow be exempted from the ruling, or purely left to the organisation sorting it.
Cue...complaints to the front desk at gyms and swimming pools, to cashiers in clothes shops, to the ladies setting out the cakes and flowers at WI meets, to pub/bar organisers at lesbian dating etc.
If the govt allows exemptions and organisations to make their own rules, then these complaints will fall on deaf ears...Wetherspoons staff overworked and underpaid are not going to traipse up to the ladies to eject a man.

Yes, I cross-posted with you.

I can see a situation where they publish something that is not in line with FWS and Equality Act and then leave it to women to pursue through the courts, while hoping that finances and the process being the punishment causes opposition to peter out.

Amnesty have been so disappointing over this, when their whole raison d'etre is free speech in the face of despotic governments.

I think a lot of politicians consider national politics to be a bit of a parochial backwater and instead enjoy dreams of striding across the world stage.

This has become a noticeable trend in some smaller European countries. If you're the Prime Minister of Estonia or the Taoiseach of Ireland or the Finance Minister of Croatia, actually governing your country is not the peak of your ambitions, but a useful CV entry on the way to a cushy sinecure at the EU or the UN or NATO or the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. This has not improved governance in these countries.

And not only the smaller countries. If Ursula von der Leyen, the most useless German defence minister since 1945, can become boss of the European Union, why shouldn't Bridget Phillipson dream big dreams?

I'll want to listen to the whole Phillipson interview, but from the Tele quotes she sounds like she's trying, not to find a way to comply with the law, but to reason from first principles which "safe" spaces women require which will cut enough ice with Labour to allow them to make TIMs sad.

So we might get a concession of single-sex refuges, with considerable ill grace, but she's still on-the-one-hand-on-the-othering about pretty much everything else.

I suspect she's got her eye on whether the WI manages to square being formally single-sex with being sneakily mixed-sex.

I'm convinced that was Nicola Sturgeon's plan all along. Championing Perverts Trans Rights would oil her way to a plum job on the World Stage. And earn her millions, and slavering grateful plaudits, from wealthy men who enjoy bullying their way into women's spaces.

How did that work out for her in the end? I can't quite remember.

😂😂
Every comment under that article( that I've read) points out that it's transactivists doing the punching and women the victims.

The days of the fragrant simpering men who just want to be in changing rooms while women and girls undress are over.

Single sex spaces were designed without having these imagined exceptions having to be watertight.

I think this really illustrates just how far the trans narrative has now become to be seen a the norm.

That a supreme court judgement is being (basically) opposed by the current UK Government. And the Government is questioning the right of the EHRC to provide guidelines reflecting the Supreme Court judgement, even though that is what the EHRC exists to do.

And why? Because TRAs are saying TW should be allowed to be where ever they want be.

I agree with what you say.

Re The ruling already made accommodation for toddler boys.

Please could you link where it does? I thought this but couldn’t find it.

The article posted by @Helleofabore at 16.11 has been updated with a new headline

https://archive.ph/9ptZV

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/01/01/labour-lost-focus-on-why-single-sex-spaces-matter/

New headline

Trans people must not be used as political punchbag, says Phillipson

Although the link hasn't changed.

Labour have always talked about safe spaces rather than single sex.

I think it is, in part, because of their own lifestyles and the people and organisations who lobby them.

How many MPs are using council run swimming pools, or primark changing rooms or toilets in nightclubs? They arent using single sex spaces where men with or without gender think they can get away with pushing boundaries. The spaces they use will be better designed and staffed and feel safe. A man behind a substantial door in a private fitness club wont have the same opportunities to expose himself or look at women as a man in behind a flimsy curtain.

The lobbyist will either be well off too, or part of groups dealing with extreme cases. No one is lobbying them about curtain in single sex changing rooms. So by concentrating on 'safe spaces' MPs think they are nailing it - the most vulnerable women are protected, and everyone else is protect in well designed 'gendered' or mixed sex spaces.

Did it arise from the EHRC Code of Practice consultation?

13.4.2 However, individual circumstances may, exceptionally, require a different approach to that set out in a policy. The law in this area is complex, and it is not certain that it is permissible to make exceptions to allow people of the opposite sex to use a separate or single-sex service. It is likely, however, that this will be permissible if doing so adds a necessary flexibility without undermining the aim of the service and / or contributes towards achieving the aim.

Example
13.4.3 A council swimming pool has separate men’s and women’s changing rooms. One of the aims of having separate-sex changing rooms is to safeguard women’s ability to access the facilities and use them safely. A woman is allowed to take her male child under the age of ten into the women’s changing room. This does not undermine the aim, because it is unlikely that young boys pose a threat to women’s safety. It also contributes towards achieving the aim, because fewer women would be able to use the swimming pool if they could not bring their children with them.

www.equalityhumanrights.com/equality/equality-act-2010/codes-practice/code-practice-consultation-2025-changes-chapter-13

Is 13.4.2 the section on which efforts to get men into women's services are being focused?

It's been said before but everyone needs to keep challenging the government and other politicians about why they're attempting to decriminalise indecent exposure and voyeurism. No matter how it's dressed up - that's what those trying to wedge men into spaces where girls and women undress are doing. Decriminalise sex crimes that are known to be gateway crimes to other sex crimes.

Time to stop being "polite" and expose the reality of what's happeining.

I suppose its no bad thing for people to have a think about why single-sex spaces are so desirable that the Act makes a special exception for them, and other legislation mandates them in some environments. The reasons are obviously biological in origin.

But Phillipson seems to be limbering up to parse these reasons so that men can be excluded from these spaces but not those, on some kind of sliding scale.

And that is not what FWS says. The whole point of the ruling is that the Act only makes sense if you apply a binary test:

The reasons are good - no men allowed.

The reasons are bad - all men allowed.

None of this requires us, or their Lordships, or Phillipson to parse what the reasons actually are.

(Of course we do need to keep going on about the reasons, because at this rate every space that legally can be, will be made mixed-sex, in a colossal act of anti-women spite by the politicial class.)

Totally agree with you, but how does that explain Angela Rayner? A woman from genuine poverty who's gone on to fully subscribe to lanyard class luxury beliefs?

So by concentrating on 'safe spaces' MPs think they are nailing it - the most vulnerable women are protected, and everyone else is protect in well designed 'gendered' or mixed sex spaces.

@Pingponghavoc Except in reality they are actually the least safe and least healthy.

Ask them if they really were at their most vulnerable (being attacked or having a medical emergency like a cardiac arrest or losing consciousness after being spiked), what type of toilet design would be best to be in? A fully enclosed design?

They can actually get out of this mess by correctly sticking to health and safety measures and saying that safe toilets and changing room spaces for vulnerable people are single sex (with door gaps) in a single sex environment.

Possibly to show she is moving in the ‘correct’ Guardian-reading, left-wing, liberal middle class group of politics. Like a lot of people.

My explanation for Rayner is just that she's a Unison rep.

I don't think it's just well to do women who TWAW the issue.

Many women who have been a victim of trauma or know someone themselves are.

You maybe get some more naive unthinking sorts in the better off classes "noone will wear a dress to assault someone in the women's loos, they will just walk right in" etc.

Quite a lot of British TERFs like myself are in the closet unfortunately but we still vote!

Bridget Phillipson's comments that are quoted in the Telegraph are here from about 40 minutes in:

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bridget-phillipson-on-the-two-child-cap-reform-and/id1706536336?i=1000743240729

I don't really know what she is saying. She seems to be saying that refuges, sports and prisons needs to be single sex. Then some waffle about not targeting people just for being trans. And she can tell herself that she is taking a common sense approach, but that doesn't mean she can just interpret the SCJ in a way that's suits her.