Trans Friend

  At first sight trade deals don’t seem to have much to do with trans issues. And they don’t. But the reaction to their announcement in certain quarters seems to me to have a bearing.  It helps to explain why trans deniers are so passionately illogical.  Every time someone of a liberal disposition decries, say, a black person being killed by a policeman while being arrested, or notices that extreme weather events are occurring more frequently and glaciers are melting and that this just might be due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the reaction from the Tories and Reform or the MAGA crowd in America is hysterical. You’re a lunatic left wing Marxist radical, or, worse, you’re “woke”.   And so the recent trade deals, which are palpably to the benefit of the UK as a whole, is a “betrayal of Brexit”.  These reactions aren’t logical, they haven’t been thought through. They’re a knee jerk reaction to anything that isn’t what George Orwell would have called “rightth...

  According to The Guardian there’s a certain amount of turmoil both in Westminster and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.   They report that a number of MP’s are concerned that the interim guidance of the EHRC doesn’t correctly represent the true meaning of the High Court Judgement and that they have little confidence in either the EHRC’s ability to produce its final guidance any time soon, or in Falkner herself. One said “she’s not neutral”.  Meanwhile, according to The Guardian, there is disquiet within the EHRC itself over Falkner, the interim ruling and the process by which it was drafted. Insiders say it was largely produced by Falkner herself, and many senior officials were unaware of its contents until after it was released.  According to The Guardian one staffer asked Faulkner in an internal meeting why the only additional legal counsel she had taken on the interim guidance was from a barrister who had previously acted for the women’s groups which had...

I read today that another significant voice has joined the chorus. Lady Hale, the former chair of the Supreme Court, has said that the ruling of the Supreme Court as regards the Equalities Act has been widely misinterpreted. She, like Lord Sumption, points out that the ruling does not mean that there is an obligation to exclude trans people from any single gender space, merely that it isn’t unlawful to do so. She was speaking at a literary festival which had provided unisex facilities in defiance of the interim guidance by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.  Interestingly she, like some others, expressed scepticism about the very concept of “biological sex”.  Unfortunately no matter how learned Lady Hale and Lord Sumption are they have no formal role. But I think it’s safe to say that, unless parliament changes the law, the EHRC can be safely ignored. 

  I had an interesting discussion the other day with someone in transition, which led me to question the very term “transition”. The term implies that there are broadly two states, male and female, and although some people choose to move part of the way along the line joining the two - non binary people - it nevertheless implies that the gender state is a one dimensional space. But is that correct? Much of what delineates gender as opposed to sex, is a social construct. Men wear trousers because that’s what men do, not because they are genetically programmed to do so. Some gender markers are physical, some are tied to the psyche (for want of a better word).  I remember reading an account of an interview with Jan Morris, an early transitioner, who said that she (her choice of pronoun) didn’t really feel as if she was a woman in the full sense of the word, but that she was closer to that state than the she had been before the transition. Jan Morris was just Jan Morris, not ...

  I was saddened but not surprised when I read that the UK has plummeted down the European rankings for LGBT+ rights*. We now rank 22nd in Europe. The fall of six places compared with last year is largely due to the laughably named Equality and Human Rights Commission and its interim guidance on gender recognition.   Only ten years ago we were at the top of the league.   A spokesperson for the EHRC said “Our response to the Supreme Court’s judgement has been, and will continue to be, firmly grounded in the law.” I understand the spokesperson said this with a straight face.  *The rankings are produced by ILGA Europe, an LGBT+ advocacy group

  I’m delighted to report that the     Equality and Human Rights Commission has been threatened with legal action after saying in its interim guidance that trans women must use men’s toilets, according to The Independent.   The guidance states that trans women “should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities” in workplaces or public-facing services such as shops and hospitals.  But lawyers acting on behalf of leading UK trans rights group TransLucent have now sent a letter to the watchdog warning that the guidance “incorrectly states the legal position” of the court ruling.  The letter also criticises the body for failing to consult with trans people before publishing its interim guidance, ahead of an ongoing consultation on the issue. Alas it’s still possible that the EHRC goes ahead with its guidance, and that the government follows the path of least resistance and rubber stamps it into law.  What the government  should  do is redraft...