They’ve been inundated all right

The Good Law Project on its latest project in lawfare:

Good Law Project has filed an application for judicial review against the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the equalities minister Bridget Phillipson.

We’ve teamed up with trans and intersex people to challenge the interim guidance rushed out by the EHRC in the wake of the transphobic judgment handed down by the Supreme Court in April.

But…it’s not “transphobic”. You can’t call it phobic to know the correct definition of a word, especially of a word as central to human life as “woman”. I wonder if it’s ever crossed Jolyon Maugham’s mind that without women he wouldn’t exist and neither would anyone else. Women matter, and it’s not phobic to tell the truth about what they are.

This guidance, adopted by Phillipson, requires people to use toilets based on their “biological sex”. But we argue it’s either wrong in law, or it breaches the UK’s obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998 – and the High Court should declare this breach.

Blegh. They can’t even write over there. Should be “We argue either it’s wrong in law, or it breaches” etc.

Anyway, if it’s wrong in law the law is broken. How can it possibly breach any human rights act? If there are no women there are no humans and no human rights.

We’ve been inundated with stories from the trans community about the impact this guidance has had on their lives. 

Many people have told us they’ve been instructed to use different changing rooms and toilets at work, sometimes resulting in stress that has left them unfit to continue working.

Guess what: women feel stress when men intrude on their changing rooms and toilets.

National associations have excluded them from sports – against the wishes of local people in those teams – and previously inclusive services and clubs have bowed to external pressure, making trans people feel ostracised from their communities.

Yet more sloppy manipulative incomplete babytalk. Trans people aren’t excluded from sports; men are excluded from women’s sports. (Except of course when they aren’t, which is much too often.)

In many of these cases, those excluding trans people have justified their decisions by pointing directly at the EHRC’s interim guidance.

Again – it’s not about “excluding trans people”.

This gets so boring. A wrong-headed cause fueled by relentlessly dishonest wording.

According to Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, there’s “a kind of visceral cruelty” to the EHRC’s statement. “We challenge that in legal terms,” Maugham said, “by pointing to the EHRC’s legal obligation to promote a world which is safe and kind for trans people.”

But no one else. Get out of here, “Jo”.

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