Sarah Phillimore and Robin Moira White interviewed by Andrew Doyle

At the end of the day. It is fucking offensive isn’t it?

We now know how awful Jan Morris was. I can see how April Ashley, Wendy Carlos and any others would have really pissed off feminists at the time.

I think GG referred to the female impersonation as ‘ghastly’. Seems pretty visceral.

It was later than that when she told Paris Lees that men could be lesbians

Yes, I remember her being coerced. I think she just wanted all the bullying to stop and started saying things to appease the coercive controlling men. It was pitiful to witness.

That is pitiful indeed.

Many of us went through a 'be kind' stage. I can imagine JB thinking she was going insane, if she felt she was the only person seeing it. There was no MN for support. I wonder if there was a combination of bullying and love bombing?

I'll look up that other book, it'd be interesting to see the warnings from history.

I've finally found the time to watch Sarah on GB News🍾Does anyone know what was on the badge she was wearing?

I’ve been hunting for the video and I think it has been deleted. Here is a link to a Radfem Hub article which linked to it and you can see the confusion at the time reading the article and the comments https://radicalhubarchives.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/what-about-the-men-now-and-then/

There’s also a painful reminder that censorious bastards got Gender Trender taken down from Wordpress so you can’t follow the link.

Saying stuff you don’t believe due to bullying and coercion is understandable (or even just social pressure/niceties. I’ve never meant ‘Amen’ on the occasions I’ve said it)

This sort of coercion is what large swathes of the western world have been contending with privately, whereas JB was subjected to it publicly.

A Red Guard style struggle session sort of situation.

If you’ve read the IPSO thread from yesterday you will have seen that it’s my understanding that Paris Lees has been a key figure in training the print and screen media in protrans doublespeak. I expect Julie’s livelihood as a writer has genuinely been at risk at various points during the last decade and it’s hard to be an effective campaigner for vulnerable women if you are shunned by media bookers and newspaper editors.

JB has had to play a long game to even get in sight of the 🥅. Today she scored a blinding goal.

I’d really like it if JB would give Posie the benefit of the doubt, just enough to go out for dinner together or something similar, they can hash it all out without any of us (or the TRAs) spying on them, see where they end up at the end of the night.

I know Posie is effective enoughi going it alone and doesn’t need JB’s approval, but I can’t help but think they are missing out on what could be a beautiful friendship.

Yes, ClogLady, that sounds like it would be the best thing all around.

I’ve just waded through Robin’s blog. So glad I had a glass of wine in my hand to stop me falling asleep - can’t waste good wine by spilling it. I now know women can’t wear Docs, they have their nails done regularly and wear pink or lilac. I must not be a woman.
The surgeries sounded horrifically painful. I hope Robin is still pleased with the outcomes after going through so much pain.
Sleep beckons now so the threads linked will be tomorrows reading. Night all.

For our sisters, who were just walking home.

Oh Sarah! 😢So very sad and apt.

Oh, Sarah. I've teared up.

So have I, very moving.

I know Posie is effective enoughi going it alone and doesn’t need JB’s approval, but I can’t help but think they are missing out on what could be a beautiful friendship.

i was just thinking the other day that I admire them for very similar reasons! Difficult, bolshy women who call it like they see it, but with a healthy streak of pragmatism that prioritises getting shit done above everything else. And both extremely effective at fighting for women’s rights.

Maybe it’s not easy for two personalities like that to get on with each other?

@Spero

Please have my wholehearted thanks too.

With all of the awful threats to women that we've seen recently, it is quite obvious that there is a personal risk in your appearances and correct decision to accurately talk about the sex of these men.

Just a question , if I may, how do we overcome this issue of the idea of sex in the Equality Act having been redefined 'by stealth' to mean both biological and legal sex?

I know we have this petition for clear definitions but, it seems to me, that our language has become so muddled that segregation by 'sex' could include males with a GRC?

This question is for Sarah and for everyone else. It seems that there is still such a hurdle to climb to protect women from having men in our spaces.

It is going to be very difficult to restore 'sex' to its proper place and meaning and I think now cannot be achieved without new legislation. The Lady Haldane judgment confirmed what I had always thought - that the GRA changes your legal sex, unless the exceptions apply. Those exceptions have now been muddled and obfuscated over decades leaving everyone very confused about when they are allowed to insist on single biological sex spaces or providers.

I suggest repeal the GRA and modify the Equality Act to make 'gender identity' no more than a protected belief. I.e. you are protected against harassment and discrimination but 'gender identity' cannot be an organising category in the way that sex is.

We will have to have some way of providing recognition of a 'legal sex' unless we leave the Council of Europe and the ECHR - the Goodwin judgment of 2002 was a recognition that the UK had failed to protect the rights of transexuals to be able to hide their birth sex on official documents etc.

So I would suggest a procedure to obtain a 'Certificate Changing Legal Sex' (remove all mentions to gender, its hopelessly poisoned now) which would enable a person to change a driving licence and passport. Birth certificates must remain unchanged but we could issue 'short form' birth certificates which didn't mention sex at all if people were upset by that.

Keep the gender dysporia diagnosis and 2 year reflection period - junk 'living as a woman' as no one knows what that means. That should hopefully weed out at least some of the malicious and the sexual predators.

Make sure that the EA sets out very clearly when biological sex trumps legal sex.

I have no idea if these proposals would work or be accepted by many/any. We should have been having these conversations since 2018 at the least. Hopefully we will start now.

I definitely agree about repealing the GRA but haven't ever thought much beyond that. I have got lost in the maze of GRCs - what, if anything, they are actually needed for. Are the needed to get a passport in the new name? I'm unclear about all this.

For various reasons, I have trouble with my name. My birth certificate is no use to me as it's in a different name and I'm sure many married women here will now have a different surname from their birth name. They will, I imagine, have a marriage certificate in that case, which would support and prove the name change.

In the past, I have had to have documents notarised, apostilled (I think that's right) and another thing done to them (what was that called???), then sworn an oath to a Notary Public. It's made me wonder why trans people can't do something like that instead of creating this appalling system of falsifying a legal document.

How much faith am I supposed to have in an authority which falsifies legal documents?

DH has a deed poll document that enables him to get documents in his current name which is different to the name on his Birth Certificate (change of surname). Changing name is a fairly straightforward process that doesn't require a GRC - in fact it seems that you need to get your new name on documentation as part of the qualifying process for a GRC.

I've nothing to add to the conversation except to say that this thread has been a thing of beauty.

I feel like I've just watched a cage being opened.

Robin, thank you.

If you can do it, so can we. I'm deeply grateful. Go well.

Thank you for taking the time to answer, what an uphill battle this will be.

It makes me so angry that the Equality Act has been able to be interpreted in this way.

It is clear, at least to me, that those who drafted this legislation would not have intended Sex as a protected characteristic to include both biological sexes on the basis of a self identification process! It seems that those who identify as the opposite sex have 2 potential protected characteristics under the act, that of sex and that of gender reassignment (which we know is broadly interpreted.)

How can normal women help other than writing to our MPs?

Thank you again. The work you do is so important.

I did change my name by deed poll, @OttersMayHaveShiftedInTransit, so I have that document but it says nothing about my sex, of course. I'm just musing from a lay person's perspective on what system we could create that would satisfy whatever requirements there may be.

We often hear from the trans brigade about the importance of birth certificates but, as I say above, mine is useless now really, and many are in the same position. Once you've got your passport in whatever name, which should need proof of course, then you just renew it without needing the proof again. For trans there's the change of sex marker to factor in.

I just really, really object to the falsification of legal documents and there must surely be a workable way around it, so trans people can live their life as the rest of us can.

I just really, really object to the falsification of legal documents and there must surely be a workable way around it, so trans people can live their life as the rest of us can.

How about they just change their name, we could add an extra gender identity marker on documents for those who want one. Sex doesn't change.

Men need to accept that some men dress "as women" and might have breasts or no penis but should still be safe in men's areas.

Problem solved.

People's kinks or clothes and hair expression isn't really important in the greater scheme of things. So no need for any gender tick box on any documentation.

It's all nonsense.

Just wanted to pipe up with THANK YOU Spero!

I am not in the UK, but the news here usually follow International news about country-leaders in a spot of bother.
Would you believe it: on this case not a peep. Not a hint at Nic’s debacle.
Zilch, zero, nothing.

But some is filtering through, and the few people I have spoken to are very happy for this to blow up.

The Lady Haldane ruling is atrocious. How could she do that?

Also wanted to say thank you @spero

The Lady Haldane ruling is atrocious. How could she do that?

@turbonerd She's a judge and the legal wording needs to be tightened up til its bullet proof and leakproof. It was allowed to be ambguous. In a way it's a good thing her ruling happened when it did and that's why FWS brought the case - made it clear that a GRC does affect who's a woman under the Equalities Act although GRR supporters claim it doesn't so what are women making a fuss about? Must be nasty irrational transphobia. Now we know it does, which should be another reason for the UK govt to intervene though I'm not sure they all got the memo yet. The Haldane judgment is very recent and was in a Scottish court though it will affect the whole UK.

And now there's a petition to clarify the Equalities Act. Though the UK govt's recent response to the petition seems not to have got the message!

I wonder how one male feels knowing that they have verbally supported other males having access to vulnerable women.

It really is abhorrent when you strip all this fuckwittery bare and look at the facts.

The comparator should have always been male compared to males.

The fact now that it seems transitioned males are gatekeeping 'trans' status is a sure sign the definition was flawed and fucked up to begin with.

Sorry, to back track now from 'if you say you are trans you are trans' to 'not that person, they are not' is surely just pointing out the lie in the first place.

There is no going back.