Focus

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

You’d think journalists could do better than this. A lot better.

NUJ statement on revised EHRC Equality Act Code of Practice

The NUJ has responded to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) revised Code of Practice for businesses and service providers on how to comply with the Equality Act 2010.

The updated code comes after significant public and legal debate following the UK Supreme Court ruling in April last year that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ under the Equality Act 2010 refer strictly to biological sex assigned at birth.

Because wtf else would it refer to? Strictly or sloppily? If the word “woman” doesn’t refer strictly to women then we’ll just need a new word that does. The category itself is not one that we can simply throw out as otiose and harmful, now is it. Without the category there are no people. There are some words we could do without if we had to. The word “trans” might be a good place to start – or we could clean out all the synonyms. But there are other words that are just not dispensable, and there’s a strong argument that “women” is the very first item on that list. Without women, no people, no words, no lists – just grasses waving in the breeze.

The word is important, therefore its meaning is important, therefore changing its meaning at the behest of damn fools like the one at the National Union of Journalists is a bad and misogynist thing to do.

Comments

5 responses to “Focus”

  1. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    Sex is not “assigned” either, it’s observed and recorded.

  2. maddog1129 Avatar
    maddog1129

    therefore changing its meaning at the behest of damn fools like the one at the National Union of Journalists

    OB,

    I’m under the impression that you meant to say more than this? Or am i reading it wrong?

  3. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    …the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ under the Equality Act 2010 refer strictly to biological sex assigned at birth.

    I was wondering more about this. Why is the “assigned at birth” part needed at all? Doesn’t biological sex say enough? Is it some kind of concession to gender ideology, and why would we need it? Why does the gender crowd need it? A person’s sex is determined by biological processes, long before birth. Why the timeline? A person’s sex, once established in the womb, is a constant throughout their life. I think this is the reason for puberty blockers — because if you prevent secondary sex characteristics from emerging early enough, then those secondary characteristics are somewhat pliable. I find it grotesque to sentence a child who can’t possibly know what it is to become a fully mature adult human to a life that’s had it’s potential greatly narrowed. How do these youngsters know? It seems to be an either/or stereotypical social construct they seek (the modern definition of gender (the M or F phenotype)), but how can they realize the cost at such a young age. The adults who promote this underage ‘transing’ shroud their wickedness in a veil of caring, but it seems to me a level of exploitation that, in human terms is unconscionable.

    I never had to face the issue of having a child who wanted to change sex (lucky me), but if I had, I hope I would have approached it with more patience and responsibility than to run headlong into medicines and procedures to validate the child’s perceptions (which at a young age should not be considered permanent).

  4. Bjarte Foshaug Avatar
    Bjarte Foshaug

    Why does the gender crowd need it?

    Because it makes sex a matter of arbitrary human judgments (on the part of the doctor/nurse/midwife etc. doing the “assigning”) that can be contested rather than an objective fact about the “assignee”. If there are any objective, non-arbitrary criteria for determining a person’s sex, then we can talk about people who meet the criteria as a group in its own right, regardless of how they self-identify. Once you take the primacy of self-id out of gender ideology, whatever’s left is rather like a doughnut after you remove everything except the hole: Pretty much indistinguishable from nothing.

  5. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    maddog – oops! No, you were right.

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