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/…
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

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/reduxxmag/status/1605999770022973440

The former CEO: James Rennie

theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/29…

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.

https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1605847398265155586

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.

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.

https://twitter.com/labourrichard/status/1605888929802194945

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.

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/…

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.

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/…

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…

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.

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…

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 🙌

“There are elements of controversy as there always are” Liz Truss tells BBC Norfolk. Not sure plunging of pound and BoE intervening to save pension funds counts as “elements of controversy”. “There will always be people oppose a particular measure.” Quite some mental gymnastics to portray almost-universal condemnation in this way there.

It's strange to see so many liberals who've kept silent about the police warning people off taking part in legitimate debate about sex & gender identity and women losing jobs for wrongthink now expressing concerns re free expression in relation to monarchy (which I share) The test of a commitment to free expression is not whether you defend it at zero cost in relation to people you agree with, but whether you defend it when it costs you something and in relation to people you may disagree with but whose democratic rights you nevertheless respect.

John Nicholson MP - who is making strong claims about treatment of children with gender dysphoria - admits he hasn't read the interim Cass review, only the summary. Two out of two Mermaid witnesses have now admitted to not reading it properly in Mermaids v LGB Alliance. I cannot stress how damning this is. People who claim to have the best interests of children at heart can't even be bothered to properly engage with the evidence produced by an independent review.

Recommend following the Mermaids v LGB Alliance case via Tribunal Tweets reporting. The barrister Akua Reindorf is exposing the tensions between those who believe being gay is a matter of same-*sex* attraction, and those who believe it is same-gender identity attraction

https://twitter.com/tribunaltweets/status/1569269578366066688

I’ve written about this tension here

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Still flabbergasted there are those of the male sex who think this is an acceptable - let alone effective - way to campaign for access to female-only services and spaces

vice.com/en/article/jgp… See also, branding placards threatening the sexual assault of women who disagree with them