1. The privacy rights of transgender people 2. The need of service providers for clarity in order to treat everyone well 3. Respect for the privacy & freedoms of others (particularly women & girls)
1) @GEOgovuk & @EHRC should urgently review national guidance. They should clarify that the Equality Act does not give individuals the right to use services provided for the privacy or needs of members of the opposite sex
2) Public bodies should be instructed to withdraw misleading guidance.
All state funded bodies should review existing policies on single sex service services to ensure they are compliant with their duties under the Equality Act.
Guidance, policies or training suggesting that expecting bodily privacy from the opposite sex is ‘bigotry,’ or encouraging people who identify as trans to believe they are entitled to share spaces which are designated for the privacy of the opposite sex — should not be promoted.
3) Amend the GRA 2004 to exclude any effect of s.9 (which changes a person’s sex “for all purposes”) and the Equality Act 2010,
For the purposes of the 2010 Act, “sex” should mean biological sex.
4) Simplify the system for trans people to obtain birth certificate privacy.
Replace medicalised GRCs with a super simple administrative system to enable anyone to obtain a copy of their short-form birth certificate with the ‘sex’ field left blank.
Peter Wilkins case exposes another public body (this one part of @DefenceHQ) that lost sight of the Equality Act and of civil service principles of impartiality and objectivity.
One colleague accused him of making a "threatening" FOI request when he tried to draw attention to @dstlmod 's Line Manager’s Guide.
The FOI was turned down but I tried again.
At first DSTL said they couldn't find the document.
I said "have another look, its on your intranet" and they located it.
Then they thought long and hard about whether they could withhold it on security grounds.
Lynn O'Donnell had writen a document entitled Line Managers Guide to supporting LGBT+ Identifying staff.
It included the old Stonewall definition of transphobia (which has now been withdrawn).
The action starts not long after the Forstater EAT judgment.
Prof Sophie Scott is awarded the Faraday Prize and O'Donnell goes onto DSTL's "distillery" chat forum to say 'tis a pity she's a TERF....and linked GC views to rise in violence against LGBT people
The High Court has granted an anonymity order in relation to three individual "trans and intersex" claimants in the Good Law Project's case against EHRC for its interim update.
The nomination of Mary-Ann Stephenson as new chair of the EHRC brought the witch hunters out.
Stephenson has a PhD in equality law. She is Director of the Women’s Budget Group, and has been director of the Fawcett Society, chair of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition and a board member of Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre.
A bunch of charity CEOs (some of whom are part of "Equally Ours" with her) wrote a letter saying darkly she "previously supported views seen at odds with inclusivity for all"
There was a petition accusing her of making "anti-trans statements" and "association with groups advocating for the curtailment of trans people's human rights"