The Stonewall Trustee, with the Activist Bingo, in the "Bathroom Battle"

[BridgetPhillipsonIsACowardlyJobsworth]

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/news/the-bathroom-is-an-old-battlefield

Nothing new here, but just doubling down on the Snot Fair, arguing that the "bathroom wars" against trans-identified people are an old tactic that was also used in the past to deny women jobs and prop up regimes such as the Jim Crow South and apartheid in South Africa:

"The bathroom is an old battlefield" - Steven Friel's article published in The Law Gazette and on Stonewall's website, 19 June 2026 [excerpts]

"I respect the arguments that my comparisons fail, that sex is not race or sexuality, and that women have a unique interest in privacy from male bodies in undressed spaces. I take this seriously. My answer is twofold.

First: the interest exists, but the categorical exclusion of an identified minority from public facilities is a sledgehammer for a problem the evidence does not support. Trans-inclusive policies have not been shown to make anyone unsafe; trans people are far more likely to be a victim of harassment and violence in single-sex spaces than a perpetrator.

Second, and more importantly, every generation believes that its exclusion is the genuinely justified one....

They were doing what each generation does: dressing a discomfort up as a principle, and then dressing the principle up as a binding code of division....

....However, the law clearly does not require what some of the loudest voices in this debate are now demanding: a generalised, performative campaign of expulsion."

Stonewall Trustee Steven Friel is a lawyer and CEO of Woodsford, a global collective redress business...(etc.)

Do you think he’s actually read the judgement?!

I wonder, but after thinking about it, the article reads as though it were written for an American audience (or possibly for a wider, international audience), and most of them definitely will not have read the judgement. So, I suppose he can spin it however he likes, how would they know?

Stonewall needs funding, it must be becoming harder to get corporate and government money in the UK now their lies about the UK equality law are becoming more evident so lying to Americans could be their latest fundraising strategy

' a generalised, performative campaign of expulsion'

..otherwise known as
'a continuation of what has long been the established arrangement and which the vast majority of people adhered to until very recently'.

Or as Lady Ross put it in the FWS/Prisons judgement
135 ..The imposition of a bright line rule may have adverse consequences for individuals but there is a strong line of authority which makes clear that, as explained by the European Court of Human Rights in Animal Defenders at paragraph 106: “a state can, consistently with the Convention, adopt general measures which apply to pre-defined situations regardless of the individual facts of each case even if this might result in individual hard cases”.

Hard cases. Sad times. It's the law.

Same old bullshit as ever.

" the categorical exclusion of an identified minority from public facilities"

Nope, trans people are not excluded from public facilities. So his whole reasoning falls down from this flawed premise.

“trans people are far more likely to be a victim of harassment and violence in single-sex spaces than a perpetrator.”

Just by being in the wrong single sex space, trans people are perpetrating harrassment and virtual violence.

I particularly liked the two bald-faced lies:

Trans-inclusive policies have not been shown to make anyone unsafe;
(only if you don't count women as "anyone")

trans people are far more likely to be a victim of harassment and violence in single-sex spaces than a perpetrator.
(which I believe has been proven time and again to just be a complete fabrication) - I'll see if I can find those stats

Regarding toilets:

He’s wrong.
And the EHRC are wrong in the way they have dealt with this. I would love to see the safety evidence for the solution they have come up with.

All I've found so far are prison stats. I'll look again tomorrow.

Bald-faced-lies'R'us, unfortunately - he's feeding his chosen audience what they want to hear, not facts.

While these words are not an incitement to violence in themselves, they feed in to the atmosphere of hypervigilance about trans oppression and marginalisation and expulsions and annihilation - which is then used to justify violence against TERFs.
Look at the post at 19.42 on this other thread for examples of this - TERFs are the instigators of violence and so any violence against them, including killing them, is justifiable self-defence.
Page 23 | Guardian: weaponised emotional blackmail from 14yo 'trans' athlete | Mumsnet

"I respect the arguments that my comparisons fail, that sex is not race or sexuality, and that women have a unique interest in privacy from male bodies in undressed spaces"

I think he's being transphobic by suggesting transwomen have male bodies. Bloody hell hasn't he ever heard of the female penis.

GenAI’ish.

I'm not sure he's conflating "male bodies" with trans-identified men. I think his point is absolutely that women shouldn't have men in their "bathrooms" but that doesn't mean "transwomen" need to be excluded wholesale. Because they're special and marginalised, and shouldn't be included in this "campaign of expulsion." If we knew and understood history. If we (women) cared enough.

ooh, do you think so? Do you suppose he's even read his own article?

Well, I don't think any activists who read this on Stonewall's website are going to be very happy that he's even mentioned that women might have a point! They might not get beyond that point of rage to even read the "transphobic" parts.

(Although, there are some signs that Stonewall's trying to distance themselves from some of the more radical bunch)

Yes, I read some of that! Scary stuff!

However lovely a trans identified man may be, even if the many, many incidents had never happened, even if there wasn't a heaving mass of social media posts by men for other men about wanking in women's cubicles with the door open, tampons up bums, waving swords and machetes 'your view if you dare question me in your space', baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire and blood stained t shirts proudly worn and a huge amount of sexually violent threats and ideations -

this all exists, sorry, like women's rights -

the fact stands that some women are excluded from women's spaces when trans identified men are present. They CANNOT use a mixed sex space. They are as human and as important as these men, they are tax payers, they cannot be given third spaces because this creates a 'women's single sex space' that those men would immediately want entry to or demand was not allowed to exist as too great a threat to their identity.

The only way to make sure no one is left without a facility is third spaces for those who do not wish to have to use the facilites provided for their sex.

I suppose it's some very small progress to actually see an activist start with acknowledging that women do exist in this equation and there are issues before then completely handwaving women and all actual issues and history away to push the same old same old bullshit. But no.

acknowledging that women do exist in this equation

yeah, I'm not even sure he was fully-conscious when (if) he wrote that, it's so incongruous with the rest of the article!

Sounds like he’s (or AI) has been reading up on ‘inclusive’ designs from Stryker and Sanders from America. They like to see their toilet designs as some sort of natural progression from the civil rights movement. They didn’t do any safety assessments on their designs which were in part based on transactivists preferences in trendy New York nightclubs.

Interestingly, Sanders says the two groups that don’t like his ‘inclusive’ toilet designs are gay people and women.

I don’t disagree about how it reads, but it starts by saying “This was originally published in Law Society Gazette”

All members of The Law Society (practising solicitors, trainee solicitors, even me when I was a student member) receive a copy each week so presumably are its principal audience. I suppose just receiving it doesn’t mean they bother to look at this article, though.

It does not seem this article actually reflect Stonewall's latest everyday practical action when a Trans activist breaches their boundaries. The correct thing to do is to call the Police on them apparently.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5544243-trans-activist-vs-stonewall-stonewall-objects-to-them-breaking-boundaries

The baby Preston couple were out on bail.
I guess no one else was going to trust them with a baby?

Very good point. I forgot that, so now I'm wondering about his "angle " although if he used AI, perhaps the tone and text just come from there. Anyway, doesn't really matter...

Um..perhaps wrong thread?? (or I'm missing the significance, which is entirely possible!)

Yes, gives off a slight "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing " vibe. (sorry, that's the only analogy I can think of right now 😬) I'm wondering if the new CEO has as much of a grip on the organization as he ought to.

(although an "is" is not an "ought", apparently)