The @thetimes highlights the tweaks made by Bridget Phillipson, which by the media reaction seem to have done nothing to reduce the rage the Code has induced in gender identity activists.
‘Councils, NHS trusts and businesses had used the absence of the guidance to delay updating their policies, despite warnings they were breaching the law’
This in particular is shocking. The tactics (including in the media) were to create a fog of confusion around the Supreme Court ruling, and Baroness Falkner had repeatedly tried to cut through it, explaining that the law is clear. This unministerial accusation is the response.
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It’s a parting shot to degrade Baroness Falkner’s credibility in what will undoubtedly be a period of continued legal and media sniping. Here is the (very due) response.
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Further key points
This is highly relevant and not a question we’ve seen asked today
We applaud the effort to try to explain this, and appreciate that it’s a tough write, but it does need more clarity, while the sex and gender wording reveals that the BBC at its highest levels (this will have had major oversight) is still reluctant to let go of the belief that women come in both the male and female varieties.
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For @BBCnireland to see this as an important and newsworthy impact of ‘Dillon’, and devote considerable work to it, is terrific. It also has the right tags 👍
However - it could give a clearer background for non-lawyers/experts on the relationship between Northern Ireland, the Equality Act 2010, the Supreme Court and the Equality Commission:-
it omits that the ECNI announced the day after FWS 2025 that when similar cases arise in Northern Ireland, the Supreme Court judgement is likely to be followed:-
it omits that a challenge on the meaning of the word ‘woman’ in Northern Ireland would end up at the same Supreme Court in London that ruled in favour of FWS, although the EA 2010 doesn’t apply in NI.
These would all be helpful additions.
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Will leave it to the lawyers to dissect the analysis, and will be grateful for it too. BBC NI has previously got it very wrong on FWS, specifically in a State of Us podcast on May 9 last year, but has lifted its game since then, and this is a serious and complex effort.
What’s most muddled are the ‘sex and gender’ language choices.
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In contrast this from @seaningle on ‘a monumental shift’ - is thorough on detail background.
‘Notably, one thing stood out most of all in an IOC survey of 1,100 athletes, many of them female Olympians or former Olympians: the majority of the women were in favour of change’
If a medic who understands that sex is real, and impossible to change, has been removed from the MHRA’s oversight of this trial, that is a bigger scandal by far.
Side note: Channel 4 News, where Newman presents, showed zero interest in a specialist briefing at the House of Lords on the Pathways research. They neither responded nor attended.
The editor of Channel 4 News, Louisa Compton, was not always this uninterested. From 2015 on onwards she commissioned and edited Victoria Derbyshire’s ‘Transgender Children’ films and content, which were followed by leaps in referrals to gender identity clinics.
‘Stephenson is viewed as more open to listening than her predecessor Kishwer Falkner…who oversaw interim advice from the EHRC which prompted alarm that it could effectively exclude trans people from the public realm’
‘An EHRC spokesperson said the watchdog was “convinced that our updated services code of practice is both legally accurate and as clear as it is possible to be”, and that it was waiting to hear from Phillipson’s office about whether or not it had been approved’
‘As soon as we were out of surgery..I couldn’t urinate, I need a catheter..I found extra drainage holes opening up and couldn’t walk for more than half an hour’
Sex-based campaigners have tried for years to get the facts about ‘gender surgery’ in legacy media, with fact checks and personal experiences
Now identity activists are trying to get ahead of the game by publishing them - but blaming those who’ve been trying to raise the alarm
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The scandal, and the real story here, is the exploitation by unscrupulous medics of probably mostly gay people, who are told they can change sex if they undergo life-threatening, irreversible procedures which will destroy their fertility, sexual function and general health.
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Finally the BBC covers this, but with an example of total capture
One of the worst ever pieces of coverage out of the Washington bureau, and that includes its ludicrous outrage over Zooey Zephyr.
It’s a disgrace and hopefully will have to be a turning point.
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It can’t bring itself to say male at all, not one time. It describes boys as female, and we’re never told this is about girls sharing a sports field and locker room with boys. The key question about the definition of sex is deliberately omitted.
/ bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
This is a case about sex-based rights and the definition of sex under the law. The failure of Lindsay Hecox’s lawyers to answer this question is crucial.