Bridget Phillipson blocking EHRC guidance - thread 2

[lcakethereforeIam]

Thread 1

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5462015-brigitte-phillipson-blocking-ehrc-guidance

Hope I've spelled her name correctly this time.

I'd have said, I stopped reading your reply at 'cis-gender women'. And I'm obviously a terrible old bigot, but I don't think boys should be allowed to go to school in dresses. Especially primary schools! And no, girls wearing trousers or jeans is not an equivalent thing.

This guidance will have a significant impact on many people, and when published, should be given time in Parliament for full scrutiny and debate among MPs.

Surely the guidance is simply lawful (one would assume that it is) or not lawful. In either case why would parliament need to debate? - they are not responsible for interpreting the law, what would their input be?

I did a depressing count up of school staff who’ve put hidden cameras in school toilets in the U.K. today. A headteacher, a deputy head, primary school teachers, secondary school teachers, a caretaker. It is in double figures and will have affected hundreds of children and staff. There’s a factor common with the staff who did this. Guess what it is?

Doctors are another profession in which several have had an urge to put hidden cameras in toilets too. Guess which common attribute they share with the teaching staff that did this?

From 1984 (I may have changed a word or two).

Newspeak: The Party is implementing a new language, Genderspeak, designed to limit the range of thought, making "heretical" thoughts impossible because the words to express them will no longer exist.
Doublethink: Party members are required to engage in "doublethink," the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously—for example, believing that men can be women, whilst secretly knowing that biological sex is immutable.

You're not wrong about limiting the range of thought. Decoupling "woman" from our biology makes it really difficult to see medical misogyny. From my "Saved Posts" https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4439896-If-women-cannot-be-defined-biologically-what-happens-to-sex-based-oppression?reply=113881759

Furthermore, such an objection is an instance of regulation assuming that people with the physiology to become pregnant are irresponsible users of healthcare.

The medical misogyny that authors have noticed that women face is much clearer when I reword that to:

Furthermore, such an objection is an instance of regulation assuming that women are irresponsible users of healthcare.

Oh yeah, the same people who are more likely than men to die if they get a heart attack, because doctors are looking for male symptoms. And face maternity discrimination at work. A lot more obvious when you just say "women".

It’s ’Inclusive’ toilets that get me.

Where the need for complete privacy, in a public place, overrides health and safety.

Inclusive toilets are least bad for healthy males. Even they can get caught out if they don’t realise they have a condition like a bad heart.

Kisser Falkner...

https://x.com/i/status/2029567631326368198

She’s awesome 💪

Archive: https://archive.ph/hjDTz

Yes, brilliant to get that on the letters page. Some refreshing straight-talking.

Oooh, sticks hand in the air like Hermione Granger! Were they all male, XY chromosomes?

Presumably also your count only includes those who have been caught. The real number, including those not caught, will be higher.

Correct.

Phillipson is an embarrassment. More interested in her career than women's rights

A MNetter recently mentioned how in nurseries you could end 90% of sexual crime against children by removing 10% of the workforce. Guess what that 10% all had in common?

Sigh. It's grim, isn't it?

This. How long does it really take to analyse 11 pages? No matter how carefully, even syllable by syllable?

And that tosh she mentioned in that awful Sunday morning interview about having to get it approved by Scotland and Wales.

She doesn't like it. She wants a way around it. It's very inconvenient to her on multiple levels. And the women and children of this country mean absolutely nothing in the same way that public interest and care and basic ethics/responsibility seem to mean nothing to Labour as a government. They might identify as being Labour for the colours and feelz but I can see damn all in terms of actual connection to what Labour was and stood for in the past.

Mary-Ann Stephenson..

https://x.com/i/status/2029945096817496087

Freudian slip by Michael Foran!
(spotted by Venice Allan)

https://x.com/i/status/2029956529886044191

I thought he was suggesting that the video was a weak or ineffective intervention - impotent.

Stevenson doesn’t say anything of any substance about the law beyond the generic fact that the law must be followed, read their fact sheet and legal advice sought if in doubt. Nothing in this intervention (short film) clarifies anything.

Those who are convinced that they are correct in their position will assume she is speaking to those who have actually got it wrong, not them.

This was a good listen. Amongst other things, Akua Reindorf discusses the failure of BP to lay the code of practice behind parliament and what her motivations might be:

Thank you! Very interesting.

It does. It clarifies the fact that the GLP intervention was rejected completely. It also is clear that the EHRC does not make law, it simply helps to implement the law, and that relevent bodies now also need to implement the law.

Yes, I thought it was pretty clear, not sure what I’m missing.

I think the effectiveness of the film is dependent on viewers knowing the detail and without providing context (e.g single sex provision must be based on biological sex) it’s only going to speak to those who are already all over the detail.

This made up equivalence seeks to explain my thinking:

Last September the Supreme Court made an important ruling about the rights of Catholics. The EHRC produced interim guidance about how to uphold this law. The GLP challenged the guidance but their claims were rejected and the interim guidance was ruled to be legal. You must follow the SC ruling and seek legal advice if uncertain. Go to our website for more information.

The above would be a lot more useful if it included some headlines about the rights the SC ruled on (e.g. not being forced to work on Ash Wednesday). Without this, the reader needs to know what issues were contested and subsequently rejected.

Yes, that’s a fair point @Brainworm

Ex-Labour bod Tom Harris (who does a daily tweet to mark how many days of Phillipson's inaction we have had since the Supreme Court judgement) posted an interesting article that I thought would be of interest here:

https://tomharris2.substack.com/p/no-bridget-its-not-remotely-complex

"And here we are, with a government that claimsnthe question of separate men and women’s facilities is “complex”.

It’s really not. When Phillipson says “it’s complex”, what she really means is that there are too many Labour activists, trade union leaders and various party stakeholders who have drunk the gender ideological KoolAid and she dare not cross them. So instead she’s waiting, Micawber-like, for something to turn up, a deux ex machina that will relieve her, somehow, of the responsibilities of her current office....

The difference between this and previous Labour governments lies not in the scale of the task before them (though no one would want to be placed in the shoes of Attlee’s ministers, having to rebuild a nation after six years of war); it lies in the ambition and personal courage of ministers. Bevan took on the powerful medical establishment. Blair took on the employers and the devolution naysayers (mea culpa). They knew, or believed they knew, what was right and they were prepared to fight for it. They were even prepared to make enemies along the way. That’s politics. That’s what happens. That’s what it does.

We should at least be grateful that today’s cohort of ministers are facing less existential challenges than those that faced previous generations. If they can’t quite come to terms with the question, “What is a woman?”, we can hardly expect them to have succeeded in developing Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent or creating Nato."