1. You’re asking for legislative action in response to a non-legislative Code. Assuming it’s the Equality Act you want to change, does it follow that you accept that the Code accurately reflects the Act as it is?
2. If you accept the Code is legally accurate, why do you say it’s “not fit for purpose”? What would you have had the @EHRC do other than produce an accurate Code? Should they have made it up?
@EHRC 3. What do mean by this bit? The Code follows the Equality Act and the judgment of the Supreme Court. Are you accusing the Supreme Court of improper motivations or credulity?
@EHRC 4. You refer to inconsistencies with the GRA and the risk of litigation. Do you believe the Supreme Court judgment to be inconsistent with the GRA? How do you envisage a claim being brought to a lower court to that effect, bearing in mind the principle of binding precedent?
@EHRC 5. You say the Code (I think you mean the Supreme Court judgment) is inconsistent with the ECHR. In what way(s)? Do you think the SC failed to consider human rights? Which ECHR authority supports whatever it is you’re asking for?
@EHRC 6. What are the legislative changes you want to see?
7. Have you considered how the Equality Act could be amended whilst preserving women’s and LGB people’s rights? Because you mention neither in your letter.
@EHRC 8. The Code suggests that additional mixed-sex facilities should be provided wherever practicable. Here you say trans people will be “forced” into them. Do you think it inappropriate for trans people to make any compromises at all in order to respect the needs of others?
@EHRC 9. Does it follow from this sentence that you’re suggesting legislative change only for trans people with GRCs? Are you aware that only around 9k GRCs have ever been granted (almost none have been refused), and the overwhelming majority of trans people have never applied for one?
@EHRC I have many other questions but for now I’d appreciate your considered response to these. This is important because other people have rights too, and deserve to know what political parties are campaigning for that could affect or even destroy them.
/end
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@Alonso_GD Could you explain what you mean by "anti-trans talking points" and then identify the ways in which they're unreasonable?
The core of gender critical belief (which I suspect is what you're referring to) is:
A. Sex is real and immutable. Everybody is either male or female.>
@Alonso_GD B. There are situations in which sex matters, either because men as a sex class overwhelmingly present a threat of sexual and other violence to women as a sex class, or because of considerations of dignity and privacy.>
@Alonso_GD C. In those situations, we use sex as an organising principle. So we have single-sex toilets, domestic violence shelters etc. Generally they're the situations where women are at a heightened risk of male violence. They allow women to take part in public life with some protection>
The Equality Act allows for separate or single-sex services, if certain conditions are met: Schedule 3 paras 26-27.
It also allows for the exclusion of people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (trans people) from a single-sex service: Sch 3 para 28. >
< Previously there was confusion about what the point was of para 28. The assumption was that it must be there to allow trans identifying men to be excluded from women’s services (and vice versa). It must follow, the thinking went, that trans identifying men weren’t part of the >
- the @EHRC is an independent arms-length body and is the Equality Act regulator
- the @EHRC Code is 342 pages of statutory guidance to the Act’s provisions on services, public functions & associations, across all protected characteristics & causes of action
@EHRC 2 @novaramedia thinks the @EHRC Code is "undemocratic"
What would a “democratic” process for the Code look like? A vote on whether statutory guidance should be legally accurate?
What would a manifesto pledge look like? “We will ask the Regulator to produce accurate guidance”?
1 Unison is a union. It's concerned with workers rights in workplaces. It's not concerned with the rights of service users in services, people who are affected by the exercise of public functions or members of associations.
3 There’s a widespread misunderstanding that the @EHRC Code of Practice applies to workplaces
It doesn’t. It only applies to services, public functions & associations
This isn’t because the government says so. It’s because the law is different for workplaces in important ways
Long 🧵
1 Reading Billy Bragg comparing the @EHRC Code with Thatcher & section 28 is baffling. In the 80s I was a left wing feminist teenager – demonstrating against s.28, implacably anti-Thatcher, visiting Greenham Common, the whole scene – & I came out as a lesbian in the 90s…
2 Section 28 wasn’t about the LGBTQ+ community. It was about same-sex attracted people. It was an attempt to prevent the normalisation of our private & family lives. At the time lesbians’ kids were being removed by the state & lesbians were routinely violently attacked by men...
3 The “joke” that lesbians hadn’t met the right dick yet was prevalent. Feminists were mocked as lentil-eating dungaree-wearing harpies. But then, in the new century, there was a seismic change in social & civic life for LGB people and the perception of feminism…
🧵 (reposted) on the only big change to the @EHRC Code of Practice made at the behest of @bphillipson: the new paras 12.74 and 12.75 on multi protected characteristic associations...
1 This is about *associations* only. It’s a legal interpretation allowing membership of an association to be restricted to those who have either one or the other of two (or more) protected characteristics…
2 The Equality Act on its face doesn’t allow this mix & match
It only allows an association to be restricted to people who all share one protected characteristic (eg “women only) or who *all* share more than one PC (eg “disabled women only”)…