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.

Finally they decided they couldn't

whatdotheyknow.com/request/line_m…

Judgment in the case of Peter Wilkins v @dstlmod finally published.

It is quite a read.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/687e55f1… DSTL run the MOD research centre at Porton Down.

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It included the old Stonewall definition of transphobia (which has now been withdrawn).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 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.

judiciary.uk/judgments/good… Any information possibly identifying the claimants has been withheld from the public domain.

Stonewall has had another rebrand.

Gone is the shortlived EHRC teal and Pepto-Bismol pink theme and in comes a "going back to our roots" and grown up purple...

The old flag is flying prominently

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"

In the case of Peter Wilkins v @dstlmod there is a bit about a "threatening FOI" Wilkins had requested disclosure of DSTL's strategy on gender identity and gender expression.

The request was refused because it was anonymous.

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. It would have no effect on the operation of the single and separate sex exceptions in the Equality Act.

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…

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.

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

A 🧵about signs.

What do I mean by this sign excludes all men?

I mean the sign itself is discriminatory. 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.

Here we are at @LSELaw for a legal panel discussion on the FWS case. Video will be available later. Naomi Cunningham says the ruling changes very little .. and it changes everything.

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! 🤯

https://twitter.com/leakylike/status/1916846436764754111

The Sussex policy comes almost word for word from the ECU policy which is based on the Association of Colleges Policy 2005

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. It goes like this: If you exclude "trans women" from women's spaces then you must include burly, bearded "trans men"

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) 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)

Stonewall publishes a story about asexual "conversion therapy" to support its campaign for a new criminal law.

It is distinctly odd. 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? 🤷‍♀️

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. The parts in yellow came word-for-word from the Equality Challenge Unit/ Advance HE template....

i.e. almost all of it.

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" 🤨

https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1904838080323805265

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?

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?

https://twitter.com/CConcern/status/1903744254624563694

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…

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.

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. 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.