Posts

Showing posts from April, 2025

The media

  You expect The Daily Mail, The Telegraph or The Daily Express to be horrendously reactionary. But I’m not sure why the Times newspaper is so anti trans. It is publishing opinion pieces suggesting that the implications of the recent High Court ruling are much more far reaching than they actually are. And they are presenting trans rights activists purely as crazed anarchists destroying property and threatening violence against their opponents. They have headlines like “unhinged trans activists show true colours”.   By the way, the same article suggested that trans activists are misinterpreting the judgement, when actually most trans deniers are doing exactly that by saying that the ruling means that trans men have to use the ladies and trans women have to use the gents. Let’s be crystal clear. It means no such thing.  And although many threats have been made by trans activists, they are just threats made in anger. I don’t believe any of such threats have been carried out....

The good news

The headlines after the High Court’s decision in Women Scotland Ltd vs The Scottish Ministers focussed on     the decision that in the Equality Act, the term “woman” means biological woman. Understandably this caused consternation amongst trans people and their supporters. This was made worse by widespread misreporting which suggested that the effect would be far more far reaching than is in fact the case. Now that there’s been time to analyse the ruling, there have been a few rays of light.  I have referred to the fact that the ruling does not mandate the exclusion of trans people from single sex spaces, it merely allows someone to do so. Further reading of the judgement makes it clear that it has to be done “as a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim” and it has to be done in the least discriminatory way possible. This implies that judgement has to be made on a case by case basis, so, for example, a blanket ban for ideological reasons would be illegal and disc...

I’m dying for a pee….

  As a cis man I sympathise with the women who have to queue to use the ladies’ while we men pop in and out in a moment, though we do have to spend ten minutes loitering outside the ladies waiting for our other halves to finish.  My wife guiltily admits that if there aren’t too many men about she’ll pop into the gents and use one of the cubicles. If I’m in restaurant with only one loo of each gender, if the gents’ is occupied I’ll use the ladies.     After all, at my age it might be a choice between that and wetting myself. Shocking I know, but there’s nothing illegal about it.   That’s right, if I, a cis man, pop into the ladies for a quick pee I am guilty of no offence. Apart from possibly embarrassing everyone, including me.   It follows that a trans woman is perfectly entitled to use the ladies’ too.  In fact I don’t believe there’s any law about the use of loos. I stand to be corrected, but I believe in privately owned public spaces like bars and ...

The law

Today I will hand over to Jonathan Sumption, a retired high court judge recognised as one of the leading legal brains of his generation.  “ Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, argues that the High Court ruling on the Equality Act, defining "woman" by biology, does not mandate the exclusion of transgender women from single-sex spaces. He clarifies that while the ruling allows for such exclusion, it doesn't obligate service providers to do so,   according to the BBC . He further emphasizes that the ruling aims to avoid taking sides in the ongoing debate about transgender rights,   says the Independent . Instead, Lord Sumption argued that while many have taken the ruling to mean that service providers are obliged to provide single-sex spaces based on biological sex, the ruling meant that excluding transgender people from single-sex spaces was allowed, and not a breach of the 2010 Equality Act.” So now you know! 

Safe spaces

  A lot of the heat in the gender debate is around women’s need, and indeed their claimed right, to safe spaces, and about how trans women would compromise their safety, or at least their feeling of safety.   Alas some women suffer domestic abuse at the hands of their partners and they need safe spaces. I don’t believe any trans sympathiser would argue with that.  Trans exclusionary feminists say that    trans women aren’t women. Whether or not you agree with that, excluding trans women from safe spaces only makes sense if you believe cis women and trans women behave differently, ie if you have a lurking fear that trans women represent a threat to cis women and that they might perpetrate sexual assault or worse.  I have searched the web and haven’t been able to find a single instance of a violent assault of a cis woman by a trans woman. And I think it safe to say that if such an incident occurred, the Daily Mail would splash it across its front page and dec...

The Science

  I studied Biology at university so I know a bit about this. Well, all right, it was 50 years ago and I concentrated on plants after the first year. But I studied genetics especially and I do remember a little bit even after all this time.   Most trans deniers are fond of saying that if you have a Y chromosome then you’re a man. It’s obvious.  But as usual it’s not that simple.   In the early days and weeks of an embryo’s existence it has the capability of becoming either male or female. After a while, if the embryo has a Y chromosome, it generates hormones called androgens which initiate the formation of the male    physical form. But if left alone, the embryo will be female. Female is the default gender if you like.  There are some individuals who have so called androgen insensitivity syndrome (“AIS”) which means the embryo doesn’t respond to the androgens and carries on merrily developing as a female.  At birth these children are invariably re...

It’s obvious, isn’t it?

  There isn’t much humour in the whole trans debate, but I sometimes allow myself the luxury of a smile when I hear that a trans woman isn’t a woman, because it’s obvious.   I suppose if you believe the only defining factor is the presence or absence of a Y chromosome you might want to believe that. But it’s hard to sustain that assertion as it relates to Miss Spain 2018, a beautiful trans woman named Angela Maria Ponce Camacho. It’s probably fair to say that the only masculine thing about her is one chromosome out of the full set of 46. Everything else is exquisitely feminine. Sometimes it’s so obvious a trans woman isn’t a woman that you need a DNA test to tell.  A simple internet search will reveal dozens of lovely and feminine women who were born male. For someone my age who was brought up when the    idea of transitioning was simply unheard of it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s undeniably the case.  The same is true the other way around. There...

What’s in a name?

“A  rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. That well known Shakespearean quote shows that the bard had perhaps more wisdom than some people today.   Trans excluders often say that a trans woman isn’t a woman. Well actually they mostly shout or scream it. (It’s mostly cis women who say it about trans women,    cis men don’t make much fuss about trans men. Exactly why is an issue for another post).  They say the stuff about how a trans woman’s body has developed differently because of the testosterone during adolescence, and because their life experience is different growing up, and so on.  Both of those things are true, but so what?  There are lots of variations in people’s experience. Take little people, who are born with a genetic variation called achondroplasia. A little woman will have a very different life experience growing up and her hormonal development will affect her body in profound ways. But does that make    her “not a woma...

The fall of a once great man

  I was very disappointed yesterday to read the comment piece in The Times by Trevor Phillips, that once great advocate of equality and human rights. It appears that Phillips now believes equality and human rights are all very well unless you’re trans.   Phillips cloaks his arguments in Latin quotes and allegories, but in essence his argument against trans rights, (and maybe even the right of trans people to question their birth gender, it isn’t clear), is “it’s what we all know to be true isn’t it?” Well no Mr Phillips.  He quotes his own involvement in advising the government on The Equality Act when it was being drafted. He says that if people believed trans women were women it wouldn’t have been necessary to provide for specific protections for trans people in the equality act. But hang on. It’s precisely because there are people like Phillips that don’t believe it’s possible to change your gender that the act had to make it clear that, yes, some people do.  Wors...

Judgement day

 I don’t suppose many trans deniers have read the full judgement or the law report. It is being widely interpreted (including, shamefully, by the media) as setting out an all encompassing legal principle that sex and gender in law refers to “biological sex”. It doesn’t. It points out that the way the Equalities Act (“EA”) refers to sex, particularly as it relates to discrimination regarding pregnancy cannot make sense unless sex means biological sex.  In other words, (a) the judgement applies to the EA and no other statute; (b) the Gender Recognition Act (“GRA”), remains in force. The GRA states that the possession of a gender recognition certificate makes the holder their assigned gender for all legal purposes unless specifically disapplied; (c) the EA offers protection to trans people elsewhere. It seems to me that sets up possible areas of conflict where treating a trans woman as a man creates discrimination of itself. I’m not a lawyer. I will leave it to lawyers to sort th...

In the beginning……

 The recent High Court judgement about the meaning of sex for the purposes of the Equalities act has released a flood of misinformation about the judgement itself and about gender reassignment in general. Unfortunately those who are more sympathetic to the trans community and some trans people themselves can damage their case by name calling, launching ad hominem attacks and even threatening actual violence. Their anger is understandable. I (a cis male) share the anger. But I think it’s time to make the case for better understanding and acceptance of the concept of gender reassignment in a more measured way.  Maybe I, as a retired small “l” liberal can’t do much, but this blog is my small attempt to help, not just the trans community but to help cis people to understand and be more accepting.  I’ll address the various aspects of the law that the judgement raises, the practical aspects of transitioning and being trans, the science, and maybe even a bit of philosophy. ...