Phillipson criticised over women’s rights stance in sex and gender debate

[impossibletoday]

Phillipson accused of putting career ahead of women’s rights in trans war

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/bb0dee47182826e1

I'm not a subscriber but I could read the comments after following the link in the OP.

It sounds like some sort of narc rage meltdown. Completely unprofessional. “Yet again” - clearly a TRA who disapproves of her.

Don’t forget it’s the Civil Service which advises ministers and provides ‘lines’ to take. The Civil Service is very deeply captured by trans activists and will not be giving up on that stance anytime soon. Hence all guidance published will have trans rights at its heart before any consideration of any other group. Even children.

2272 comments at the mo

Just for completeness there's a Telegraph View on the subject

https://archive.ph/CxNrY

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2026/04/12/the-pm-is-an-absurd-position-over-the-trans-ruling/

We have been so lucky to have had a few extraordinary women in the right place (thank you Baroness Faulkner), with money, a platform and a backbone (cheers JKR) or brave, pissed off and prepared to do something about it (FWS, Sandie Peggie, Linzi Smith and many others 🍻*). Although as i was typing 'many' it actually brought to mind the Battle of Britain and the few. I don't believe we're out of the woods yet but we're currently in a better position than many other countries.

*not forgetting MN and an unfortunate pair of pink leggings.

Yes, indeed they were, and unfortunately many women seemed to be naive enough to vote for Labour. I’m glad to say I think for myself & didn’t.

Pondering about whether they'll dare to try to rewrite the law to allow men into spaces where girls and women undress.

The press will have a field day. There's no good way for politicians to defend this. The steady stream of criminal cases plus the cases that women keep winning. The evidence about the harm done to children and of course the enjoyment that the media will take in challenging transactivist politicians. Alongside the presence of media savvy, legally informed groups able to martial intelligent informed comment within hours and a track record of exposing extreme tranactivism in institutions resulting in them backing down.

Maybe I'm being naive but, despite Phillipson's self interested behaviour I just can't see them daring to do it?

Hmm: "Baroness Falkner – who drew up the equality law changes"....

Nope, she didn't draw up any law changes.

Maybe I'm being naive but, despite Phillipson's self interested behaviour I just can't see them daring to do it?

May be not naïve just perhaps optimistic, I on the other had am pessimistic and I think there's a real possibility that they will try to change the meaning of the gender reassignment characteristic to include GI. With the majority they have, it won't matter who objects or has a field day, it will go through and everyone else be damned.

None us noticed that the visuals had been hijacked by that cheeky woman until we saw the photos 🤬

The only person who had those placards was the woman in the centre, dressed in black with grey hair. Photo attached.

She waited until everyone was getting lined up for the press photographer then she slid the placards along to the women either side of her.

They didn't look at them because it never occurred to them that they would be "off topic".

Someone caught it all happening on video:
https://x.com/charles_hart/status/2043347190135828537

She gathered up the placards and left straight away after the press photos, didn't come down to the pub with us afterwards.

Even women who took photos of the line-up didn't notice what was on the placards until it was pointed out.

The press photographer didn't notice what was on the placards at the time either. I contacted him but he had already sent the photos out for publication and it was too late to do anything about it. He said if he had noticed what was on the placards he would have asked to do a photo without them because he was there for the Acts Grassroots protest - not an anti-vax protest!

It is infuriating that that cheeky woman got away with hijacking the protest but it is a lesson for us all: if someone hands you a placard or a banner, check what it says. It is not safe to assume that women who are "standing with us" are there for the right reasons - like that woman they could be there to use us in the sneakiest way possible.

I am absolutely livid that she got away with doing this!

I suppose we can only be thankful that the placards did not say, "Decapitate TERFs" or "Protect Trans Kids" with pictures of guns or knives dripping blood!

She did well. It looks like a covid protest that a terf sneaked into!

Wow, thank you for the info @POWNewcastleEastWallsend - what a fecking cheeky mare! I hope someone knows who she is. Was she also the one wearing a hoody that said something about anti digital ID, or was that someone else?

I think Labour are trying to change the law to more 'gendered' spaces and single sex where absolutely necessary, like refuges. And changing toilets to gendered is more difficult than they anticipated.

It could be they are unnecessarily concerned about the 'passing TW' and the 'women who are always mistaken for men'. Something like truthful sex markers on id could solve that dilemma.

Labour didn’t put the GRA on the Queen’s Speech in 2003 so I doubt they’ll put anything like this on the King’s speech. Remember- it all has to be done by stealth because most people are against this… In 2003 they got the GRA put forward by the Lords the day after the Queens Speech - so we should be watching what’s coming through the Lords rather than the Commons?

She is a disgrace

I didn't know this.

They may also be waiting for the outcome of another court case? Even one that doesn't exist yet.

If only we lived in a world where a politician got promoted for doing their fucking job properly. Bridget Phillipson is an absolute ‘hole in the air’ as George Orwell put it, so she is right at home in the cowardly, venal shitshow that is the Labour Party.

All they'd have to do is define sex in the Act as meaning birth sex or acquired gender, so trans people would get two bites at the cherry, and Schedule 3 para 28 would kick in again to cover the refuges situation ( plus the Darlington case has established that mixed birth sex can be illegal sex discrimination but only depending on the facts of the case). We'd be back to square one.

They haven't done it yet though. I wonder if they could get it through. 40% of labour voters could be in favour, according to the Sex Matters survey, and I expect the plp to be more captured than that. They might need to fix other legislation as well, like the WR1992. That would be more conspicuous to the public.

I tend to think they won't. Granted the case against depends on the assumptions that Labour has a self-preservation instinct and a mature view of the law, quantities in which Labour under Starmer has shown itself to be deficient. But the case is roughly as follows - it's not sufficient to define sex in the act as "meaning birth sex or acquired gender" as there is law in which biological sex is clearly meant and can't be reconciled with acquired sex, including within the EA 2010 itself - the SC FWS judgement points this out explicitly and clearly. The original EA (and subsequent interpretation) tried to punt on this, leaving it ambiguous enough that judgement could be exercised on a case by case bases. But as the SC noted, that's not tenable - the supreme court was presented with apparent contradictions in the law and said the only way of resolving those contradictions was insisting biological sex meant sex in all cases.

Competent law demands that in the face of that judgement - that if Labour changes the definition of sex to mean both biological sex and acquired gender, that they then must explicitly harmonise that with the cases where treating sex as acquired gender is nonsensical. That harmonisation is a gigantic and politically fraught task. Failure to do the real work of harmonisation and simply changing a few words in the EA risks the SC rendering the exact same decision, noting the difficult position Parliament put them in by not passing reasonable law, because inherent contractions must still be resolved somehow, i.e. it's not sufficient for a legislature to say there is no contradiction by fiat.