Maya Forstater Profile picture
Sex Matters. Stand up for single sex services https://t.co/Y1x50j1cVc This is not a culture war
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May 16 11 tweets 3 min read
Just taking a look back at what Amnesty International said very confidently to the Gender Recognition Act reform consultation in 2018 (they were advocating for removing all safeguards and controls from getting a GRC)

Giving out more GRCs will not affect anyone else they said. Image It would have no effect on the operation of the single and separate sex exceptions in the Equality Act. Image
May 16 13 tweets 6 min read
There has been much sound and fury about the Supreme Court judgment and claims that it is very *difficult* to tell who should use which toilets.

Remember: this has always been the law. Back in 2003 a group of transexual men sued a pub after it asked them not to use the ladies.

They were backed by the Equal Opportunities Commission.

They lost.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/n…Image
May 11 7 tweets 3 min read
This, by one of the Darlington nurses is heartbreaking (CW: CSA)

Women should not have to tell these stories to get the basic dignity that is their right under workplace health and safety law.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… This is what we mean when we say sex matters. It is what the Supreme Court meant when they said you have to be clear about what the different groups are.

It's not a legal nicety. It's not complex. It's not difficult.

It's just basic respect for women's humanity, with common sense.Image
May 7 10 tweets 3 min read
Minister @RhonddaBryant says “We are opposing the amendment and are not intending to introduce similar legislation.”

Let’s look at the knots he ties himself in

He says “data accuracy is important. That is equally true for any data used in a digital verification service.”

OK so your new law will enable people to prove their sex accurately then? 🤔 Bryant says “the government is already developing data standards on the monitoring of diversity information, including sex, via the Data Standards Authority.”

This is distraction.

Monitoring diversity information (which is about populations) is not the only reason why you want sex data.
Some times people want to make sure their sex is accurately recorded:

- For their own healthcare
- For social care
- For a job where sex matters
- For sport
- For safeguarding
- For use of single sex services
May 4 31 tweets 8 min read
A 🧵about signs.

What do I mean by this sign excludes all men?

I mean the sign itself is discriminatory. Image It says women only, which means no men.
It is lawful because the situation meets one or more of the “gateway conditions” for a lawful single sex service in the EqA, and it is a proportionate means to a legitimate aim.
May 1 21 tweets 4 min read
Here we are at @LSELaw for a legal panel discussion on the FWS case. Video will be available later. Image Naomi Cunningham says the ruling changes very little .. and it changes everything. Image
Apr 28 5 tweets 2 min read
Wow...

So the lineage of that policy that Sussex University has just been fined £0.5m for goes back via Advance HE and the Equality Challenge Unit to the SWP! 🤯 The Sussex policy comes almost word for word from the ECU policy which is based on the Association of Colleges Policy 2005 Image
Apr 18 6 tweets 2 min read
I have seen quite a lot of this question going around.

Its called the "transman gotcha" and it is addressed in the Supreme Court judgment. Image It goes like this: If you exclude "trans women" from women's spaces then you must include burly, bearded "trans men" Image
Apr 15 8 tweets 3 min read
There will be much talk of the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act over the next few days.
These are the exceptions that allow service providers to offer services that are only open to one sex or the other (found at Schedule 3 Part 7 of the Act). (1/7) Image Without these provisions service providers would be committing sex discrimination by excluding men or women.
Service providers don’t need to “use these exceptions” to exclude people, they just provide the service in the normal way. If they were to get sued they (or a lawyer) can point to the exceptions to show the service is lawful. (2/7)
Apr 7 5 tweets 2 min read
Stonewall publishes a story about asexual "conversion therapy" to support its campaign for a new criminal law.

It is distinctly odd. Image Elizabeth gets married then tells her husband she isn't sexually attracted to him and doesn't want to have sex with him (or anyone else).

What was she doing getting married? 🤷‍♀️ Image
Apr 4 13 tweets 4 min read
The CEO of @AdvanceHE has written to university vice chancellors acknowledging that "certain policy statements" cited in the @officestudents decision on @SussexUni "originated in part from" their template. Image The parts in yellow came word-for-word from the Equality Challenge Unit/ Advance HE template....

i.e. almost all of it. Image
Mar 26 9 tweets 4 min read
The ONS have new guidance out on their gender identity data from the census....

They say that you can take it from them with "high confidence" that around 1 in 200 people have a "gender identity different from their sex at birth" 🤨 Image But low confidence as to whether these are "trans men" "trans women" "non binary people" or others.

So what is it they are confident about? Image
Mar 23 16 tweets 8 min read
So who is "Mr X" the trans identifying man held in high security male prison after multiple convictions for luring boys into sex acts while pretending to be a teenage girl on social media? Could it be Nigel "Emma" Davies who posed as a teenager online and shared indecent images?

No. Davies wanted to engage with young girls. Davies was convicted but not jailed.

transcrimeuk.com/2024/05/16/emm…Image
Mar 14 24 tweets 9 min read
The core of the Melanie Hill v Metropolitan Police case is a Trans Day of Visibility event which took place on 31st March 2023, a week after British women's rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen was violently attacked in New Zealand while trying to speak.
spiked-online.com/2023/03/28/i-t… In the run-up to the event, she was demonised in the Australian and New Zealand media, who portrayed her as a neo-Nazi. Attempts were made to have her visa revoked and to shut down her Let Women Speak tour.
Mar 13 21 tweets 8 min read
What did the Met Police not want you to see in Melanie Newman's witness statement?

Out of 114 paragraphs they wanted to exclude 37 paragraphs, almost a third of her statement. Image They said that the paras were of insufficient relevance.

They spent half a day arguing this (after a whole day trying to get one of their witnesses anonymised) .

The tribunal said no.
Mar 13 7 tweets 3 min read
From Trans & Non-binary forum meeting in Dec 2022.

Met police told it should protect GenderGP & Mermaids from burn out.

Suggestion of promise by Community Engagement Officer that "anti-trans groups" will be investigated.

In June the following year they put me under investigation.Image More in the same meeting about supporting Mermaids following the "binder incident" Image
Mar 9 12 tweets 4 min read
International Women's Day 2025 thread.

In Darlington this man thought that the public sector equality duty requires censoring of gender critical speech to "foster good relations". 🙄 In Derby @WRNDerbyshire were told they weren't welcome on the women's march
Feb 26 11 tweets 4 min read
Some thoughts on reading the judgment turning down Ryan Castellucci's bid for non binary recognition Image
Image
Judges have the habit of suspending their judgement in these cases and writing down ridiculous things.

Cut his hair to pass as a man? 🙄🤪

Men with long hair are men. Image
Feb 16 5 tweets 2 min read
A lot of newspapers are showing photos of Dr Upton and Nurse Peggie side by side.

It is worth remembering that Upton is 6ft tall and Peggie is 5 ft 6. This is what that looks like to scale. Image Not like this... Image
Feb 16 14 tweets 5 min read
“Nevermind the quality, feel the width” !? 🥴

This @thetimes splash
about Sandy Peggie’s sex discrimination case is wrong in so many ways.

Starting with the photo - why do they make Sandie appear to tower over ft Dr Upton? Image “gender sits at the heart of a dispute that has pushed an ET in Scotland into the front line of the global culture wars.”

Women’s right to be protected against sexual harassment at work, and to be provided with adequate sanitary facilities is not a “culture war”.Image
Feb 16 6 tweets 2 min read
Prof Whittle appears to be arguing individuals shouldn't be able to held liable for sexual harassment if their inappropriate behaviour was sanctioned by their employer.

* This is not what the Equality Act says. Prof Whittle's bad takes - calling a man a man can be a crime Image