Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Sonia Sodha Profile picture
Sonia Sodha
@soniasodha
Observer columnist & chief leader writer, Radio 4 Analysis presenter & @ThisMorning news reviews. Highly commended @EditorsUK Commentator of the Year 2023
Sep 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Why I don’t think this is a strong argument against the HE (freedom of speech) provisions🧵

1. Production of knowledge is the core purpose of universities. Academic freedom/academic free speech fundamental to that. At the mo there’s no effective means to enforce existing rights. 2. Academic freedom/free speech key to quality in the HE sector. You can’t have latter without former!
3. There is already a well-established & better understood regime for enforcing disability and other PC rights under the EqAct. Of course aspects onerous & imperfect. See this.
Jun 28 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Another case of a nurse suing a Scottish NHS Trust for failing to provide single-sex changing facilities. The facts will be established by the employment tribunal, but this issue raises serious qu for NHS & for Labour on its position on the Equality Act.

thetimes.com/uk/scotland/ar… I know I sound like a broken record but it simply isn't sustainable for the Labour party position on this to be "but the Equality Act's clear!" - when what is happening in the courts & in the real world, not to mention statements from @EHRC, show very clearly that it isn't.
Jun 24 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Thread on why Labour’s existing position on gender and sex (“the Equality Act is clear on protections for single-sex spaces” - it isn’t - and “we’re going to make it easier for men to qualify for protections normally reserved for women”) waters down those protections for women. The Equality Act contains exceptions that allow for provision of single-sex spaces, services and sports. But it doesn’t define sex. The Gender Recognition Act allows males to be treated as tho they were female for most legal purposes.
May 19 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
V important legal victory for Roz Adams against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. Emp tribunal found ERCC discriminated against her on basis of her gender critical belief & constructively dismissed her. ET on investigation against her: "reminiscent of the works of Franz Kafka." 🔥 The CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis centre is Mridul Wadhwa, a male who identifies as female. In 2021, Wadhwa said female rape survivors who do not want to see a male counsellor who identifies as female should "reframe their trauma."

heraldscotland.com/news/19509343.…
May 1 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Just catching up with today's judgment from the president of the family division of the High Court in relation to a case involving private hormone provider Gender GP. There's so much that's shocking in these few paras.

bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/…
Image 1. That the court found it so hard to engage a UK endocrinologist they had to go to Australia - telling in itself.
2. Prescription of testosterone to a 15 year old girl diagnosed with autism & anorexia with no physical exam and "extremely poor quality" psychological assessment
Dec 20, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Why has the government’s school guidance for gender-questioning children engendered such different reactions? A thread. There are two views of sex and gender when it comes to children. 1. When a child questions their gender it’s the sign of a fixed trans identity, and disclosure is akin to coming out as gay/lesbian/bisexual.
Sep 6, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
As I feared, when I first read this awful story about a 10-year-old Sara Sharif who'd been living with her father and his partner found dead with evidence of multiple extensive injuries. Family courts had given custody of Sara and her brother to their father from their mother. Image Full BBC story that now has this detail. It follows BBC investigation earlier this week the detailed how children have been ordered to live with fathers who are *convicted child rapists* by the family courts.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-667269…
Dec 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Would this convicted male sex offender - who doesn’t have gender dysphoria but legally identifies as female and has since been arrested after allegations of exposure in a female changing room - have been granted a GRC in Scotland? V probably I think.

lamag.com/citythinkblog/… Unless he self-reported to police he was applying for GRC for risk assessment. And to those wrongly saying to discuss these cases is to conflate trans people with sex offenders: no, it an appropriate discussion of risks of allowing anyone male to self-declare as legally female.
Dec 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This reports something Starmer said for Pride last summer. Labour’s last manifesto too vague on women’s rights: they should commit to clarifying sex means biological sex in Equality Act alongside gender self-ID ie keeping gender ID & sex separate in law.
telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/… That would be a good way to balance women’s sex-based rights to single-sex spaces and female-only intimate care with easier route to legal recognition of trans people’s gender identity. Trans people protected under gender reassignment in Eq Act; everyone female under PC of sex.
Dec 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Much of debate about impacts of Scottish GRR Bill on the practical implementation of the Equality Act is (understandably) focusing on single-sex spaces. But there are important effects on women’s pay discrimination claims & female-only intimate care for disabled women too. The GRR Bill passed by Scottish Parl will make it harder for disabled women to access female-only care. This puts their privacy, dignity & safety at risk. This should be getting more attention. I’d like to know what @HelenaKennedyQC thinks about this too.

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/09/19/sec…
Dec 23, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Disappointing to hear both minister and interviewer get the impact of Scottish GRR bill on single-sex spaces wrong, listening back to @BBCRadio4 PM just now. It’s complex but journalists are going to need to get across the law fast. I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record but it’s wrong to say someone changing their legal sex with a GRC has no impact on single-sex spaces. It changes the threshold at which it is lawful to exclude someone biologically male & trans from a female-only space.
Dec 22, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
These are v serious new allegations from two young men about safeguarding fails & child sexual abuse in a Scottish charity a decade ago, some involving a former CEO who’s a convicted paedophile. Hope they are properly investigated. The former CEO: James Rennie

theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/29…
Dec 22, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Scottish gender self-ID reforms pass. I found it quite depressing listening in the last few days to the levels of poor understanding about the existing law and its role in resolving rights conflicts demonstrated by many of those elected to make the law. I suspect the Scottish government knew that by introducing reforms with significant implications for single-sex spaces and female-only intimate care it would be prompting a showdown with UK government over the 2010 Equality Act. Let’s see what happens next.
Dec 22, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Not a credible position on impact of GRR bill on the operation of Equality Act. An honest position is accepting it carries risks for women’s rights, but arguing that it’s worth it. To deny this conflict of rights is beneath any legislator that’s informed themselves about the law. There is a conflict of rights here. It’s legitimate to think the balance isn’t right & make case it should be shifted towards the legal right to self-identify as a different sex, with impacts that has (tho I disagree). It’s dishonest for legislators to deny the conflict exists.
Dec 22, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Scottish parliament v likely to pass gender self-ID today. Here’s Observer’s take on the respectful compromise that was ignored: legal self-ID of someone’s gender identity but not for purposes of Equality Act, keeping it a separate legal concept to sex 🧵

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… This would give trans people who want it a form of legal recognition of their gender identity, but without changing their sex for the purposes of the Eq Act, thus protecting women’s rights. Here’s me on why Sturgeon wrong to ignore those risks.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Oct 21, 2022 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
NHS England published draft specifications for specialist services for children with gender dysphoria, following Cass interim review yesterday. V positive development & a move away from unevidenced affirmative model pushed by Mermaids. Thread follows:

engage.england.nhs.uk/specialised-co… -An emphasis on multidisciplinary care & integrated approach to assessing co-presentations like autism and ADHD, depression, anxiety.
-An emphasis that primary intervention for children referred to this service is psychological not medical.
Oct 20, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don’t care what’s going on in politics, it’s an insult to hear from Crispin Blunt, who defended a former colleague whose a convicted child sex offender, on the morning the final report of the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse is published. Get him off my radio. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Oct 6, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
A charity's first responsibility is to the people it exists to serve. That is especially true of charities that support children and young people. Any comms they put out including when under scrutiny should be formulated with children's welfare in mind. In recent days, I've become increasingly concerned by response of Mermaids to journalistic scrutiny of its safeguarding practices. Last week, it claimed to be the victim of a "cynical, targeted attack".

mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/an-update…
Oct 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In relation to that David Davis column on how a social insurance model is the only way to save the NHS, here’s something I wrote last year about why the arguments for big-bang structural reform really don’t add up.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… There are two fallacies these arguments buy into. (1) Biggest problem facing NHS is its structure. But Kings Fund analysts I spoke to for this piece told me the costs of structural reform HUGE, no evidence for benefits of migrating from one structure to another.
Oct 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This raises further concerns in respect of children’s charity Mermaids.

Trustee of the transgender charity Mermaids quits after speech to paedophile aid group | News | The Times thetimes.co.uk/article/truste… The full abstract of the paper the former Mermaids trustee presented at the symposium is here.

reduxx.info/trustee-of-tra…
Oct 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Ooh just seen there’s a series 2 of Industry- the bbc drama that’s so bad it’s good. Saturday night sorted! 😁 Aaaand it’s in UHD 🙌