Stella Creasy

[Arran2024]

Stella Creasy has been posting on X about using archaic process to overturned the EHRC guidelines and publicly arguing with the likes of Akua Reindorf KC. She is being given a pretty hard time but not backing down. Why does she want this so badly?!

https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/2062174750235845041?s=20

Yes, maybe one day it will come home to roost.

Or maybe her pregnancies should have nothing to do with her being a woman. She is not 'a woman', just a human being with different body parts to a male person. A person with a uterus should not be treated differently to a person with testicles.

Her views on women and our bodies are so liberal, she is actually out of place in a party like Labour, which constantly legislates on restrictions in all sorts of areas of life. Her beliefs are actually much more free market - your body, do whatever you like with it. At the weekend she was supporting Bonnie Blue and her golden shower idea for example. https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/2061181748986134839?s=20 (even Owen Jones was uneasy with that one).

I have no problem with people having opinions but we should recognise where she sits on the spectrum of body autonomy versus regulation. This will be why she supports trans rights so strongly - she genuinely thinks you should be able to do whatever you like. Also she seems incapable of understanding that other people also have valid opinions.

I actually think she thinks that it is she that should be able to do what ever she likes. She is all about her self, without any wider reflection on the position, feelings and situations of other female people. As I suggest, she resents the implications of her own female body and biology. She resents the idea that women may have differnt concerns to men, as that would cramp her style and suggest she is not free to be and do whatever she likes.

She comes at every issue through the lens of personal autonomy.

Sorry if this has been posted already - she's been Community Noted 😆

https://x.com/stellacreasy/status/2062174750235845041?s=20

Really interesting.

Freedom to do:
Meet with other lesbians
Go to public places and be able to use a public toilet

Freedom from:
Men joining your lesbian group
Men in women's public toilets

Two sides of the same coin, but the framing is all important.

As you say, needing freedom from suggests a vulnerability or weakness, and there is a certain type of 1980's-inspired feminist who believes that feminism is all about being 'just like the men, just as strong', instead of recognising that feminism can mean considering and making provision for all the ways in which women are not like men and never will be.

Well that's all very interesting about procedures at the Mother Birthing Parent of Parliaments, but she specifically talks about introducing new laws/changing existing laws etc.
Surely this is not about introducing a new law or changing an old one?
So while this is interesting, I'm not sure it's relevant.
But I may be wrong, IANABP - I am not a British parliamentarian.

A person with a uterus should not be treated differently to a person with testicles.

That is a luxury belief.
A pregnant woman should stand at a factory assembly line for 8 hours just like a man?

Being a woman is not just having different body parts. It is having an entirely different body, in dozens of ways - real biological ways.
Add to that the social and cultural factors at play, and being a woman in today's world is absolutely NOT being just like a man but with a uterus and lady-bits.

Honestly I don't think it's that deep.

She assumes on a subconscious level that most trans people are nice people who feel more comfortable conforming to the opposite sex stereotypes. And to be fair, I'm sure she's not wrong.

She also sees that trans people get bullied and real nasty abuse. Not just having to hear statements they don't agree with like Trans Woman Are Men or Some Trans Women are Autogynaephiliacs, but the sort of abuse some people deal out to anyone they think is different or breaking social rules. Actual violence, dirty name-calling, sexual aggression and worse.

She doesn't therefore see why we can't make an exception and pretend these nice people actually are the opposite sex.

She doesn't see the need to care that trans women aren't really women, because the pretending sits on top to make it all ok.

The only reason she can see someone would say no is that they don't like anything new or different, and therefore are basically the same as the nasty name-callers but hiding it better, so better to ignore them than dignity their hate by dealing with them.

And genuinely I think that's as far as it goes. "It's just a few people so why on earth is this such a big deal?"

I'm sure if you asked her whether men and women are just born with different types of mind she'd say of course not, that is horribly sexist. Even though that is exactly what she is saying every time she says TWAW.

She's just not thinking that deeply. Not thinking what agreeing TWAW is really saying about what women are. And not thinking through what changing sex based rights to personality-based rights means for women at all.

I'm trying to give her some credit for intelligence; she does have a Phd and a degree from Cambridge after all. I just think she is too self absorbed to reflect on the situation of women other than those like herself, and she is all about 'Self' and 'Autonomy'.

Personally, I think everything we say and do is a reflection of ourselves and the lives we have led.

Yes, i know, but i suspect that sentiment is what drives Stella Creasy.

I totally agree!

The book "Invisible Women" explains how being female gets you overlooked in the world, how everything is designed around men. It isn't just about pregnancy. My David Lloyd gym had a refurbished recently and the mirrors are placed at the wrong height for most women. This kind of thing doesn't go away just because you refuse to accept that women's biology matters. All you end up doing is ignoring the impact, giving out the message that you don't really care, or you find it so trivial, oryou didn't need it anyway. It doesn't fix the problem.

I agree with all of this, but the thing that concerns me is that she doesn't seem to understand that this rather muddled thinking can't be translated into legislation.

There is no protection against discrimination if a PC is not defined in law. There can be no policies to prevent indirect discrimination if a PC cannot be defined in research and data collection. You cannot take a discrimination case to court if you can't refer to a comparator. This all applies to the concept of 'trans' as well as sex.

Although perhaps it's just as concerning that she has been an MP for 16 years and is still unclear on the difference between legislation and guidance.

She's just not thinking that deeply.

You could stop there ^ Many many people with Phds think deeply about their niche dissertation subject and never think deeply on any other topic. At all.

I tend to agree except that this is not an issue only coming up for the first time. Not only must she have stumbled across the actual reasoning of 'Terfs' by now but, given who she is, it must actually have been plainly explained to her more than once.

At which point it is either true-meaning-of-the-word stupidity at play (does not have the intellectual ability to grasp the points) or motivated reasoning whereby she prevents her from allowing her brain to examine the lines of logic for fear of where it will lead her.

I think the latter is very common.

If you are afraid of the consequences of expressing an heretical opinion but also don't like to think of yourself as a the type of person who will say things you know aren't right just to fit in/be successful/be safe, you simply stop your thought process before it can even consciously recognise the logical flaws in orthodoxy that would lead you to an heretical view. And you do that thought-stopping as sub-consciously as possible so that you're not even fully conscious of doing that.

George Orwell wrote very clearly about it and I thought I understood what he meant when I was younger, but it has taken this issue for me to see the theory in full technicolour practice.

If I were a betting woman, I'd say that's what's going on here. Her apparent inability to hold her hands up to an error about even a minor technicality suggests to me that the motivation of preserving her own self-image (while doing the safe, orthodox thing) will be pretty strong.

Well, she doesn't realise it is muddled thinking. She thinks it's all perfectly obvious, and it'll be really easy to put it all down into suitable laws.

Because it's all high level principles for her, she's able to avoid seeing the problems.

That is exactly the well intentioned muddle that falls apart when you try and codify it in law, and what the SC realised they had to unpick to have a workable reading of the EA, because the well intentioned "don't ask, be kind" muddle fell apart when tested with hard questions.

Because all the good intentions in the world don't make the fact of humans having two sexes, and therefore the social and physical consequences of being one sex or the other don't go away either.

I was trying to put together a post saying more or less the same things, but failed dismally to express my thoughts clearly, and deleted the mangled attempt.

You nailed it, clearly and eloquently, TheHereticalOne

Yes 100%.

And the subconscious/conscious border mechanism that allows her to maintain her self image as reasonable and independent while not risking disagreement with the norms of her social power base is to write off anyone who disagrees into the "nasty bigot" pot so she can skim over what they actually say.

Then even arguements that seem reasonable and undeniable can be dismissed as just a dog whistle hiding the real agenda and therefore not necessary to deal with.

OP, please do not call the various procedures of the UK parliament archaic processes. Magna Carta is archaic, so is the Act of Settlement, the Bill of Rights, various education Acts etc. Early Day Motions (and Prayers) are how the system goes about some business.
That said, it appears Creasy does not know the difference between an Act of Parliament and the Code of Practice that explains how the Act works. Really worrying. Also annoyed by these MPs (both sexes) who think that trans rights have been removed when those 'rights' never existed. And when they work that out they want to introduce these currently non-existent 'rights' (privileges, in reality) rather than work to support and help women (the biological sort) who make up 51% of the electorate and who have genuine fears of violation and harm from men who purposefully break the social boundaries that protect women.

Akua discusses it here, in her inaugrual piece on her new legal Substack:

On X yesterday, Stella Creasy MP indicated that her concern about the Code was the use of a negative procedure to bring it into force. This is a process by which a draft statutory instrument lies on the books in parliament for a period of time, and if neither House votes it down in that period it passes automatically into law. A statutory instrument is secondary legislation (as opposed to an Act of Parliament, which is primary legislation).

Creasy’s position appears to be that she considers the use of this negative procedure to be an example of the “creep” of statutory instruments being used to bypass parliamentary scrutiny. It follows, presumably, that the Early Day Motion tabled on 1 June 2026 and signed by Creasy and others is somehow motivated by a concern that the Code will not be sufficiently scrutinised by parliament before it is passed.

Certainly, it is undeniable that secondary legislation is often used by governments to quietly usher in controversial or unpopular laws that really ought to be in primary legislation and therefore subject to much more rigorous scrutiny. The misuse of statutory instruments is a matter for reasonable concern.
However, as Creasy was informed by numerous commentators yesterday, the Code is not a statutory instrument. It is not legislation of any kind. In parliamentary procedure terms, it is an “Act paper”. The procedure which is used to bring it into force mirrors the negative procedure for statutory instruments, but it is not the same process. It derives from section 14 of the Equality Act 2006, the legislation which established the Equality and Human Rights Commission and sets out its powers and duties. It is the procedure which has been used – uncontroversially – to bring into force all the Codes of Practice issued by the EHRC since its formation. There is simply nothing underhand about its use.

The fact that the Code is not legislation is crucial. It is statutory guidance. It explains particular aspects of the law for the benefit of stakeholders who might not be able to access legal advice. It makes no new rules and should reflect only what is in legislation and what has been decided in binding judgments of appellate courts. A court or tribunal hearing a case in which the Code is relevant must take it into account, but is not obliged to follow it. Because the Code is no more than a snapshot of the effect of legislation and decided cases at the time it was written, it is inevitable that parts of it will soon become out of date. Where that is the case, a court or tribunal must follow the law, not the Code. Similarly, a court or tribunal can ignore the Code if it is simply wrong in law. Thus the Code is neither authoritative nor definitive.

EARLY WARNING - by Akua Reindorf KC - Within The Law

Apparently Zach Polanski is considering standing for Parliament at the next election. He is considering four London constituencies, and one of them is Walthamstow ie Stella Creasy. No wonder she is worried!

Oh good grief! That Bonnie Blue stuff is HORRENDOUS! Dragging her poor baby into her depravity is so wrong.

No surprise that SC supports her but it makes me feel sick. What sort of person thinks that is ok? Stella appears to have lost all sense of normal standards and behaviour.

Why would anyone (let alone a female MP) object to the provision of some female single sex spaces/services as the law permits?
Does Stella Creasy want to do away with female single sex spaces?
Because if thats her aim ,she is going to have to do more than obstruct guidelines that reflect the law ,she is going to have to change the law....

Thank you for sharing that @BigElderflower

I’m left wondering if all these objectors like SC were quite so keen on ‘Parliamentary scrutiny’ when the previous EHRC guidance was adopted and actually misled everyone about the law.