They are dismayed
Statement on Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010
We are leaders of centres, research groups and networks, of scholarship, teaching, learning, and expertise in gender, feminist, women’s and sexuality studies across the UK. We are dismayed by the recent Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010.
Oh I see, they’re expert leaders and leader experts. They know things. They have expertise. They know more than we peasants and nose-pickers do.
This judgment, which states that ‘sex’ for the purposes of the Act refers to the ‘sex of a person at birth’, was handed down after a refusal to hear any testimony from legal experts on gender reassignment or from trans, nonbinary, or intersex people.
That’s shocking. It’s as shocking as handing down a judgment on the rights of non-gremlins without inviting a single gremlin scholar to give testimony.
We do not believe it provides more legal clarity on the relationship between gender and sex. Instead, it adds more confusion and gives more potential for transphobic opportunism and harm in an already fraught area.
For what? What tf is “transphobic opportunism”? Are we gender skeptics hanging around hoping for an opportunity to push a trans laydee into a mud puddle? Or what?
If anybody in this mess is opportunistic it’s the men who pretend to be women. They get opportunities to barge into women’s groups, discussions, rights, organizations, centers – everything. Women are not getting any opportunities out of the arrangement.
We are also deeply concerned by responses to the judgment by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and organisations such as the British Transport Police. These responses have already used the judgment to declare the exclusion of trans people from facilities and services, and to align policies with ‘biological sex’.
Liars. That’s a brazen lie. Men who claim to be women are now being excluded from women’s facilities and services, because they are men. None of this is about “the exclusion of trans people”; it’s about not letting men force themselves on women.
This is their expertise? The boringly familiar “expertise” of saying “trans people” to disguise the fact that they’re talking about men intruding on women? Pffffffff. That’s not expertise, it’s just cheating and trickery.
We reject the framing in the media and in public discourse that puts women, and/or feminists, at odds with trans people. This is especially the case in relation to the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces. Womanhood is lived; it is not biologically given or legally bestowed.
Oh really! The expertise just gets better and better. Womanhood is not a matter of which sex you are, it’s about how you live. Grow your hair, put on lipstick, simper, point a toe, and you’re there.
There’s more. It doesn’t improve. It ends with a list of centers and institutes and similar.
Yes, you prefer the “framing” that says “NO CONFLICT” in the same breath as “NO DEBATE!” You prefer “feminists” who are willing to give away women’s rights and who defend the delusion that men can be lesbians. You prefer the framing that calls men women, and conceals “men” behind “trans people.”
So you’re ready to cancel all those GRCs then?
Ha! Good point.
Yes, that’s a jolly good point.
If womanhood is neither a biological nor legal state of being, how the hell is it possible for anyone to know that what they’re experiencing in their ‘lived experience’ is womanhood?
How is it possible, at this late stage, with clearer words difficult to come by, that we’re still fielding responses to the judgement like this, where we’re obviously still talking past each other? Surely by now they’d actually engage with the arguments that have been made?