“It never occurred to us for one second that anybody would think of sex as anything other than biologically determined”

[IwantToRetire]

As chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Phillips helped to shape the Equality Act 2010,which included protections from discrimination for people undergoing gender reassignment. He says he failed to anticipate the strength of the trans movement in subsequent years. “It never occurred to us for one second that anybody would think of sex as anything other than biologically determined,” he says. “It was an oversight on our part that you would get the rise of a movement based in fantasy. We never imagined that there would be people peddling the fantasy that you can just make up what sex you are. And it never occurred to me that people who make decisions on these things would be engulfed by this fantasy.

“The problem is that the grown-ups in the room have turned into cowards, and they are all running away from the fantasists. When I was a student, one of the things we fought for was that women could operate independently of men. Now, according to this new fantasy world, the one thing women cannot do is decide when they want to be separate from men. It’s not just outrageous, it’s insane.”

Just a couple of paragraphs in quite a long interview about many other issues: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/08/02/trevor-phillips-london-liberals-hated-britain/

Also https://archive.is/WF0sD

It's notable that there was so much silence at the beginning.

Wasn't there a point when David TC Davies was the only MP prepared to openly support women who just wanted to talk about their rights? .

That was 2018 (two years after the Tories first proposed self ID) and from memory it seemed like a major breakthrough.

news.sky.com/story/tory-lgbt-group-brands-mp-david-tc-davies-transphobe-11226481

From memory, Starmer didn't so much lie as stick to his interpretation of the GRA. However, it was an example of the lawyerly approach that scuppered his premiership.

Just think about it for a moment. Those who had not been "queered", ie people like Phillips of course just assumed sex meant biology. But what is most significant is that rather then writing the SSE to say that yes of course sex was biology, they actually turned it round so that is most instances a GRC would make legal sex the same as actual sex. And only in rare "proportionate" occasions would sex be allowed to be just biological sex.

I don't think that's true. The Equality Act doesn't have anything to say about GRCs. As PingPong says, the troublesome piece of legislation is the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which says that a gender recognition certificate legally renders someone the opposite sex "for all purposes".

When the Equality Act was drafted, someone involved in the drafting should have spotted that the single-sex exceptions could potentially therefore include people with a gender recognition certificate. Apparently they didn't, or if they did, they decided not to mention it.

The other failing of the Equality Act is the absurdly vague definition of the protected characteristic of "gender reassignment" as "a person proposing to undergo, undergoing, or having undergone a process (or part of a process) to reassign their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex."

This is a completely ridiculous definition. It is almost impossible to pin down what it means. So I do hold people like Phillips responsible for allowing something that woolly to go through.

the troublesome piece of legislation is the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which says that a gender recognition certificate legally renders someone the opposite sex "for all purposes".

Which doesn't even make sense in the context of the Gender Recognition Act, given the many examples it contains confirming that this isn't true.

Philips has also spoken up about working class v middle class and how ethnic minorities in the media are massively over represented by private school educated people, and how the problem is even worse for white working men and this has led to fundamental blind spots within the media and a distortion of representation.

The very thing that has been at least partly responsible for the rise of problems with the culture war - because of an exclusion of views and a lack of adequate debate.

Indeed - and obviously the whole act is built upon an absurd premise, namely that people can legally identify as something they're not. Who'd have thought that creating legislation premised entirely on a falsehood would get us into so much trouble years later, eh?

This. So tired of people who turned up on FWR yesterday screaming about people who’ve been pushing back on GI for longer than they’ve even heard of it.

Many people have said that it would have been helpful if Christine Goodwin had been present when the ECHR made their ruling that presupposed that the only thing that revealed Goodwin's sex was an NI number.

In retrospect it wasn't even 'kind' to suggest to so many people that sex is irrelevant.

In debates around the GRA, it was stressed at only a few thousand (6k, from memory) people would want/need a GRC.

When that number was achieved, the government started talking about how the process was cumbersome and stopped lots of people applying for the certificate.

Even after the price was reduced, and the number of applicants increased to about 1,000 a year. Not a tiny number, but not the national emergency the government suggested.

We really dont know how many people are protected by GR, how many people actively use it, and how the differ from people who seek a GRC.

The only difference i can see is GRC holders need a diagnosis and name change, and those with the PC of GR dont.

The PC of GR has made a GRC irrelevant, and neither can include a man in women's SSE because neither changes a mans sex for practical purposes.

If there are politicians who wanted to change sex to identity, they decided on a crazy route to get there and were delusional about their abilities to make it happen. We can pretend we dont know what sex is.

The GRA has never changed someones sex for all purposes without qualification.

It has always been that it changes a persons sex for all purposes (s9(1)) except when other legislation or the GRA says it doesn't (s9(3))

9General

(1)Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).

(2)Subsection (1) does not affect things done, or events occurring, before the certificate is issued; but it does operate for the interpretation of enactments passed, and instruments and other documents made, before the certificate is issued (as well as those passed or made afterwards).

(3)Subsection (1) is subject to provision made by this Act or any other enactment or any subordinate legislation.

I actually didn't know who chaired the EHRC at the time of the Equality Act 2010.

Trevor Phillips was chair of the EHRC from 2007-2012

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_and_Human_Rights_Commission#Leadership

He started speaking out about it in 2018 when the changes to the GRA were proposed.

I think that he still believed along with the EHRC & nearly everybody else that a GRC turned a man into a woman who was then permitted to enter female single sex spaces like toilets & bathrooms. It was self-id that he was against.

It never occurred to us for one second that anybody would think of sex as anything other than biologically determined

Was it not a bit of a fucking clue in 2011 when Press For Change, Gires and a:gender demanded changes to the draft EA statutory code of practice so it screwed women out of our rights until FWS?

'If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate.

'any exception to the prohibition of discrimination must be applied as restrictively as possible and the denial of a service to a transsexual person should only occur in exceptional circumstances. A service provider can have a policy on provision of the service to transsexual users but should apply this policy on a case-by-case basis in order to determine whether the exclusion of a transsexual person is proportionate in the individual circumstances.'

Screenshots from the 2011 draft code of practice post-consultation report:

Put the following links in web dot archive dot org for archive pages with downloadable links:
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/equality-act-codes-practice-post-consultation-report

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/equality-bill-codes-of-practice-consultation/

Your avoiding the main point I made. Irrespective of niggling about the GRA / GRC interaction the point is against all logic, and the statement made by Phillips is the SSE were written is such a way that implied only in a number of minority instances, and where deemed proportionate, would biological women only services be legal.

ie AGAINST THE POINT OF SEX BEING THE PROTECTED CHARACTERISTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was written that "for all purposes" those with a GRC would be their "legal" sex.

How is it that on a thread for feminists, nobody recognises this complete and utter snub to the reality of sex ie women as being deemed second class.

Logically, and if those who twisted it to be the opposite, for all purposes (which of course the Supreme Court has now confirmed ) biological sex defines what a woman is.

It is the basic insult of them inverting the norm of sex, to prioritise legal sex that is the ultimate example of how, which is not the case with any other protected characteristic, the female sex were not to be given the same basic rights as other protected characteristics.

Who care how well or how opportunistic that Stonewall could make a fortunate training groups to misuse the SSE.

Women as a sex class were made to be less important that legal women.

To spell it out again.

Logically in all instances of talking about something being women only as it had been in the past it should have continued to mean based on sex.

And then some secondary case where on a few occasion someone with the legal sex of female could be part of a group.

The making of single sex as a minority right is the insult.

That is the problem. Those who wrote this thought pandering to TW needs was more important that the needs of biological females.

Of course this does just not point the finger at whoever actually wrote this insult to women, but all those who discussed clauses in the EA and apparently not one person thought this is a bit strange. A section about protecting the protected characteristic of sex is putting trans rights first.

But then of course even by then the rights of TW were already being promoted by TRAs as being more important.

So whilst it is good that Phillips is speaking up now, why was he so sloppy at the time. And how come the EHRC issue the wrong interpretation of the interaction of a GRC with the protected characteristic of sex.

Given that the Supreme Court has confirmed they were wrong to do it, and admitted their ruling took away a "right" from those with a GRC, why is anyone trying to defend it.

Damn it Sir Trevor I ❤️ you

I think the GRA is a red herring in this discussion. Section 9(1) says 'for all purposes' but section 9(3) says except for all the purposes listed in the exceptions of this Act or in any other legislation, current or future, where we say so. The supreme court has ruled that a legal change of sex never applied for the purposes of the EA.

The PC of gender reassignment is in any case much, much wider than the GRA.

I also don't think the problem is in the EA itself, although the wide definition of GR, its reference to changing sex, and the EA's lack of absolute clarity that the PC of sex means actual sex is not helpful.

The biggest problem was always with the 2011 statutory code. Below is a screenshot of what the original 2011 draft code for services said before the consultation. It's very straightforward. You can access an archived copy by putting the following link into web dot archive dot org:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/equality-bill/equality-bill-codes-of-practice-consultation/

Then the TRA got involved and the final code said transsexuals should be treated as the gender they present and could only be excluded in exceptional circumstances on a case by case basis.

This happened when Trevor Phillips was in charge of EHRC. He oversaw this and let it happen.

And still people fawn over him.