Completely disagree on this. Grooming gangs a particular phenomenon not looked at by Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse. Louise Casey was clear on need for specific inquiry including to look at why men from some cultural backgrounds over-represented in the data. People in authority don’t need another excuse to avoid the issues including why people looked the other way for so long.

https://x.com/soniasodha/status/1981987959537549709

For too long “there are other types of child sexual exploitation” (yes, there are and they’re truly awful) has been used to obscure proper investigation of grooming gangs including hard look at what role cultural factors and racism played. The police still aren’t even collecting the data we need on this. Not good enough for victims.

Reading through the @EHRC draft changes to its statutory code that it is consulting on from today. Some helpful examples including for those who think pre pubescent boys pose a comparable risk to women’s privacy safety and dignity as grown men who identify as female (!!!)


Some more here

Wow. This Guardian editorial on the Supreme Court ruling gets so much wrong, including factually, and smears a public servant who’s only doing her job. 🧵

1. Lord Sumption is completely wrong that the Supreme Court’s statement of the law doesn’t mandate service providers to exclude trans women from female-only services. If you’re operating female-only services now they must not admit men who identify as female. Or they can be mixed sex.

The reaction to women celebrating the @ForWomenScot legal victory only serves as a reminder that while the law is the law our culture remains dead-set against women who say no

My final column for the Observer. (Read on for what's next...)
You can read the full column here.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Hate how much we’re now talking about Elon Musk and the far right rather than how to prevent child sexual abuse and rape. It’s so very much easier to talk about the first than the second. There really are still unanswered questions about the extent of the sexual abuse of children by groups of men that victims of recent years deserve answers to. The independent inquiry on child sexual abuse was explicit it could not answer that.

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.

https://twitter.com/jim_dickinson/status/1830153595091661245

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.

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.

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.

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." 🔥

https://twitter.com/magnusllewellin/status/1792318186781642872

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.…

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.

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. 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…

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.