Hadley Freeman talks to For Women Scotland:
Politicians are “thwarting” the Supreme Court ruling on women’s rights and are putting women at risk, according to the feminist group For Women Scotland (FWS).
Ruling in favour of the campaigners, who brought the court case, the judges said in April that the term “sex” in the Equality Act refers to biological sex, when it comes to the provision of single sex spaces. This means the term “women” refers to — hold onto your hats — women, and women-only spaces are lawfully provided for women. The term does not mean, as the Scottish government insisted, and spent at least £374,000 arguing, a man who identifies as a woman, known as a trans woman.
Because why would it? In other news, the term “horse” does not mean a human child on all fours whinnying.
Susan Smith, 53, a former financial adviser and one of FWS’s three founding members, says: “Both the Scottish government and the UK government claim they accept the Supreme Court ruling, but they have done nothing to implement it. Rather, they have gone out of their way to thwart it. Bridget Phillipson [the secretary for women and equalities] in particular is trying to fudge the law by sitting on the Equality and Human Rights Commission [EHRC] guidance, and it is having a serious impact on women.”
Yes ok ok you won, pat yourselves on the back, good for you, but we’re still not going to tell men to stop barging into women’s spaces.
After the ruling, the EHRC drafted a code of practice advising businesses and public bodies how to maintain single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and prisons, in order to comply with the ruling, and urged the government to bring it to parliament “at speed”.
More than three months later, however, Phillipson is still refusing to sign it, saying she is concerned the guidance is “trans exclusive” — and if she means that it excludes males from women’s-only spaces, she is correct, because that is what flows from the court’s ruling.
It’s what the whole thing is about, really. Women pretending to be men may be annoying, but they’re not threats to men in the multiple ways that men pretending to be women are. Men who pretend to be women are helping themselves to everything women have been fighting for since forever, and that is a problem.
FWS will be starting 2026 back in court because — shockingly, if not surprisingly — the Scottish government still has not settled FWS’s legal expenses, for which it is liable. These expenses are estimated to exceed £417,000.
“That’s currently being covered by our regular small donations from supporters. And of course our far- right millions,” says Calder dryly, referring to the lies spread by trans activist groups that FWS is funded by far-right Americans. In fact, the group is funded by small direct-debit donations from individual supporters, most of which are less than £40. It relies entirely on volunteers and cannot afford an office, relying instead on a PO Box and Zoom calls.
“I wish I could get some of those far-right millions to fix the hole in my ceiling,” says Smith. “Well, it lets in the fresh air, I suppose.”
The Scottish government says it has not paid the costs because “there is an established process to be undertaken to agree the final costs for a legal case and these will be calculated and published in due course”.
Oh in due course, I see. Good to know. When is that exactly? How is the course not due already? Not to say overdue?
Freedom of information requests have shown Scottish politicians exchanging emails with activists from the Equality Network on how to draft bills that respect — in one example — “gender expression, through the medium of clothing”.
“It’s like politicians have outsourced their brains to the third sector so they don’t have to do their thinking, and it all becomes a circle jerk,” says Calder.
Men’s gender expression through clothing is vitally important; women’s basic rights are not. Sucks to be us, eh?