Starmer’s next move regarding Trump’s ‘demand’ that the UK rescind hate speech laws will define where the UK will go for the next hundred years
Isn’t this purely just a legal definition?
If the legal definition of a woman was “anyone who identifies as a woman” then you are opening up a can of worms for people to abuse the system. A criminal could say they identify as a woman and have their legal representative say “the supreme Court says that anyone who identifies as a woman is legally a woman so my client should go to a woman’s prison”
I think we need to take a mature look at the whole trans thing and accept that we should refer to people as their desired gender but also accept that there are situations where having a female or male biology will make them different and we need to make exceptions for this.
People seem to be either on the side of “let’s do everything to appease trans people” or “fuck the trans people” but I think we need to take a step back and look at the middle ground where we can accept trans people but also have a realistic approach where we accept that there are genetic differences that need to be taken into account
There are things which are segregated within society that make every sense to be segregated, sport, crisis care, shelters, etc.
all this does is clarify the contradiction that identification laws created with access laws.
This whole thing is just a culture war pushed by (mostly) the SNP
The Equality act does need reform as it was designed for a world with 2 genders but the ruling mostly just addresses healthcare and sports – as they said the protections against discrimination still apply for trans people. The whole case has been blown up by both sides to push their talking points while the experts saying we should wait to see how it’s implemented are shouted down and/or ignored
Rather than hate, as in the US, I understand that the driving force behind the change is due to this case and similar https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64796926. There’s a wider conversation to be had.
WRT the title of OP’s post: no. We should be veering as far away as humanly [operative word] as possible from that shit show of a country.
Are all of you daft?
Judges don’t make law. Judges interpret and enforce it. Parliament makes law.
We’re not doing the same as the US, we’ve just clarified the law in the only way that makes sense. It’s not going to be possible to give all trans people everything they want whilst also affording women this necessary protections that the gender equality act gives. A balance must be struck.
I think JK Rowling’s smug photo after the ruling certainly didn’t help.
It bothers me how people seem to think courts were born yesterday, and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between someone who’s been out as trans for two years and someone who suddenly says they identify as a woman out of the blue immediately after being suspected of a crime.
I want to be in a country that protects sex based rights for women.
The only way it’s like America is when we reduce complex issues like this to stupid fucking memes.
Common sense prevails
Er ..they’re not the same. UK trans people continue to have the full protection of the law.
The UK has a non political court so they’re saying; this is what the existing law says. Not; this is how the law should be.
It is for parliment to change the law.
I hope they at least do some changes. Maybe something like “organisations should make reasonable adjustments to allow trans people to live as their chosen gender”. And then “reasonable adjustments” could be situation specific but things like making sure there are always individual changing rooms “for everyone”
Let us not forget that the purpose of the law is to protect people. All people, in spite of the whims of tyrants and cults like of the melting wax despot across the sea. A legal definition can also demonstrate the scope needed for new laws that are better suited to support and protect trans women (and trans men) instead of simply relying on legal infrastructure built for another set of circumstances. What will set us apart from America is if we use this as an opportunity to step up and support rights and freedoms instead of just suppress them – and that exists in a large scope after the law too.
And this was something echoed by the SC and in interviews in that it is not a victory for people who aim to use this ruling in support of persecution.
What this does demonstrate is the need to support people within the scope of the law, and that there is a need for gender-neutral facilities to avoid indirect discrimination. But it is also true that communal spaces can exist with the opportunity to support trans women as women and enable that way of life.
So that is what I want to see. We now have clarification of the law as it is written, but also an opportunity to continue to support people to live the life that they choose. So support trans people and recognise that they have the right to exist and to expression, and that while some gender specific spaces can exclude them, you don’t have to.
No, not all of this is a given, and it is a ruling that does negatively impact freedom of expression and suppresses that vindication that you are as you choose to live. This is the importance of what comes next.
The court is just clarifying an existing law, if politicians want to change all equality law so it applies purely based on self identification instead of biology they can.
A victory for basic common sense? Hell yea I want to go that way!
It’s saying “you’re not the same but equal” like a rose and a bluebell. Not the same but equal.
I think it’s a sensible ruling. The law needs to protect women. What the next step needs to be though is putting something in place to specifically protect trans people
It’s not a straightforward issue. Whichever way the judgement fell, some people would be extremely displeased, but a balanced position has been found so far as is practicable.
In the US, they’re just fascist dictatorship at this stage.
I would urge people to actually read the ruling and try to think about this like adults.
A core part of the ruling is that there are certain sex-based rights that exist in the Equality Act which are nonsensical if interpreted on any other grounds than biological sex. Read the maternity provisions. Someone born a woman must retain this protection (as they can still potentially get pregnant, regardless of how they identify) and someone born a man cannot opt in to a protection that is clearly not applicable. In this section of the act, maternity protections are explicitly said as belonging to women, therefore women MUST include both women and trans men, and not trans women.
There was no other place for the court to go. Even those making submissions against this reading agreed that the act would otherwise be incoherent.
The sex-based protections in the Equality Act sit alongside gender reassignment protections. Both apply equally. A trans man (ie biologically a woman) retains the right to not be discriminated against for maternity reasons, but also to not be discriminated against for being trans. These rights can only be restrained to the point where it is a proportional means to achieving a legitimate aim.
How that will work in practice will then rely on policy and regulations. However, the key point of the ruling is that certain rights are inherently sex based (as they have always been).
If a woman is undergoing a strip search and says she wants to be searched by a woman only, I seriously question the motives of anyone who suggests this should not be respected. If a hospital has mixed sex, male and female wards, it is right that the vulnerable women placed on female only wards are on female only wards. There was a recent interview with a nurse on a mental health ward who described the issues of bio males self identifying (legitimately, as trans people) onto female only wards with vulnerable teenage girls, having mental health episodes where they were running around naked. There are the obvious prison cases and the spots cases which all but the most extreme people cannot dispute.
It is then up to organisations and government departments to put in place clear guidance on how trans people can be accommodated comfortably without sacrificing the sex-based rights of women. They have an active duty to do both. However it is simply not ok to sacrifice the comfort and safety of 50% of the population because of some weird ideology.
You’re going to get backlash because 1. You’re flogging the dismembered corpse of this meme page, and 2. What you’ve posted is a deliberate misinterpretation of what the judges actually said. I’d urge you to go and read it.
Don’t conflate sex & gender.
I think people just need to wind their knecks in and stop looking for reasons to be offended/insulted or whatever other form of mis-justice they’re clinging to regardling this topic…
It shouldnt never have gone on this long to start with, I’m bloody sick of it….
The Supreme Court was asked to interpret the wording of a statute. It has done so. It was not political.
It is open to parliament to change this if it wishes.
It was required to provide clarity on the legal definition of what a woman is. That’s all.
The headlines of this seems bad, but when you read the judges full explanations it’s fully reasonable and they even state that trans people are still protected.
One is restricting rights, the other is defining words for legal clarity. You may disagree with both, but they are not the same in the slightest.
We have been since Trump first won the presidency. Brexit was just following the Trump blueprint as is the constant barrage of propaganda regarding migrants and welfare, and the rise of Reform. The right and the sudden concern for Christianity by Brits who mostly discarded it, is all along that same line too, and will lead us down the same road as the US. Gradually rolling back LGBT rights, then women and minorities. We’re regressing toward white male supremacy.
Nope, they are not the same. Have you read the ruling? Do you understand it? Many do not, but that doesn’t stop them pushing misinformation for upvotes and likes.
It’s because we haven’t lost our minds that we are not going down the same route as the US. Gender ideology was and is bonkers – and poisoned the well of liberalism, and continues to do so in the States. Thank God Labour came to their senses. I hope the Democrats do too.
It’s about clarity in the UK, not about anything else but the letter of the law. It will continue to evolve.
It’s a different story in the US.
If you think “they are the same picture” then I think you are low IQ.
The only pathway this post suggests we are on is the one that leads to being as ignorant and politically illiterate as the Americans. Please read what the Supreme Court actually ruled before you try to farm karma with such sensationalist drivel.
Edit: I would also say it is pretty disrespectful to the trans community in America to try to compare these two examples as equal. Please educate yourself.
They are not remotely the same thing. Try reading.
Been saying this for months now. Having your opinion has gotten me banned from two UK subs. But as you’ll see in the comments, Brit Reddit has mostly accepted being in the Bigot place
Absolutely no one is bothered or threatened by trans men, for obvious anatomical reasons. Plus you said yourself, many just look like men and go unnoticed. I’ve never once seen a trans woman that looks remotely like a woman.
I do wonder how many biologists they asked before coming to the biological conclusion.
Not the same picture.
American elected law makers and independent British courts are very different things.
This frustrates me so much. The word women has always had different connotations to the word female. If you asked every women in the uk, however we define this word, what being a women means to them you would receive incredibly varied and contradictory answers. Very few would mention chromosomes.
And really, if we follow the common definition of sex as made up of chromosomes, secondary sex characteristics, hormones etc. Then quite simply most trans men and women meet neither the definition of male nor female.
This means we need to either
1. Define sex purely as chromosomal in which case this (a) does not match how we do sex assignment to babies which is based on genitals (b) relies on information about a person which is primarily am inference; I am a male, but I have never had my chromosomes tested. Simply, I don’t know what my chromosomes are.
2. Consider whether the definition of sex being used in this context has any use
3. Continue with a definition of female which likely excludes a large number of cis and trans women
The big benefit of self id is that it allows for a simple fact that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are vagye terms without easy definitions
The so-called ‘supreme court’ is already an Americanism. It’s only existed since 2009, and is full of political appointees. I’m all for constitutional reform, but not when it’s going to be full of yes-men – expect a fully-democratised House of Lords to end up the same way.
Primary legislation can only be created by Parliament.
There has been no legislation passed relating to transgender people since 2010.
For all the people saying it’s just a legal interpretation, you’re ignoring the very obvious pattern of the government stripping away trans rights. This isn’t the be all end all, but it is a massive setback that has been devastating to the moral of the trans community.
Just having your rights be in a precarious legal spot is frightening on it’s own, this will embolden the people trying to take them away.
I just don’t want to engage in culture wars anymore. It’s so pointless, divisive and time consuming.
The scariest part is those who have already transitioned will now have to be strip searched by a person of their birth gender.
The reason that law came into place was because of the abuses brought forward by suspects that the officer searching them had gone beyond their duty during the searches. Now that’s been entirely nullified, opening the door for police abuse once again, all because some old guys got upset that they got “tricked” into being attracted to someone.
49 comments
Starmer’s next move regarding Trump’s ‘demand’ that the UK rescind hate speech laws will define where the UK will go for the next hundred years
Isn’t this purely just a legal definition?
If the legal definition of a woman was “anyone who identifies as a woman” then you are opening up a can of worms for people to abuse the system. A criminal could say they identify as a woman and have their legal representative say “the supreme Court says that anyone who identifies as a woman is legally a woman so my client should go to a woman’s prison”
I think we need to take a mature look at the whole trans thing and accept that we should refer to people as their desired gender but also accept that there are situations where having a female or male biology will make them different and we need to make exceptions for this.
People seem to be either on the side of “let’s do everything to appease trans people” or “fuck the trans people” but I think we need to take a step back and look at the middle ground where we can accept trans people but also have a realistic approach where we accept that there are genetic differences that need to be taken into account
There are things which are segregated within society that make every sense to be segregated, sport, crisis care, shelters, etc.
all this does is clarify the contradiction that identification laws created with access laws.
This whole thing is just a culture war pushed by (mostly) the SNP
The Equality act does need reform as it was designed for a world with 2 genders but the ruling mostly just addresses healthcare and sports – as they said the protections against discrimination still apply for trans people. The whole case has been blown up by both sides to push their talking points while the experts saying we should wait to see how it’s implemented are shouted down and/or ignored
Rather than hate, as in the US, I understand that the driving force behind the change is due to this case and similar https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64796926. There’s a wider conversation to be had.
WRT the title of OP’s post: no. We should be veering as far away as humanly [operative word] as possible from that shit show of a country.
Are all of you daft?
Judges don’t make law. Judges interpret and enforce it. Parliament makes law.
We’re not doing the same as the US, we’ve just clarified the law in the only way that makes sense. It’s not going to be possible to give all trans people everything they want whilst also affording women this necessary protections that the gender equality act gives. A balance must be struck.
I think JK Rowling’s smug photo after the ruling certainly didn’t help.
It bothers me how people seem to think courts were born yesterday, and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between someone who’s been out as trans for two years and someone who suddenly says they identify as a woman out of the blue immediately after being suspected of a crime.
I want to be in a country that protects sex based rights for women.
Yes.
It stops people like [this](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-64796926) being put in a women’s prison. Again.
The only way it’s like America is when we reduce complex issues like this to stupid fucking memes.
Common sense prevails
Er ..they’re not the same. UK trans people continue to have the full protection of the law.
The UK has a non political court so they’re saying; this is what the existing law says. Not; this is how the law should be.
It is for parliment to change the law.
I hope they at least do some changes. Maybe something like “organisations should make reasonable adjustments to allow trans people to live as their chosen gender”. And then “reasonable adjustments” could be situation specific but things like making sure there are always individual changing rooms “for everyone”
Let us not forget that the purpose of the law is to protect people. All people, in spite of the whims of tyrants and cults like of the melting wax despot across the sea. A legal definition can also demonstrate the scope needed for new laws that are better suited to support and protect trans women (and trans men) instead of simply relying on legal infrastructure built for another set of circumstances. What will set us apart from America is if we use this as an opportunity to step up and support rights and freedoms instead of just suppress them – and that exists in a large scope after the law too.
And this was something echoed by the SC and in interviews in that it is not a victory for people who aim to use this ruling in support of persecution.
What this does demonstrate is the need to support people within the scope of the law, and that there is a need for gender-neutral facilities to avoid indirect discrimination. But it is also true that communal spaces can exist with the opportunity to support trans women as women and enable that way of life.
So that is what I want to see. We now have clarification of the law as it is written, but also an opportunity to continue to support people to live the life that they choose. So support trans people and recognise that they have the right to exist and to expression, and that while some gender specific spaces can exclude them, you don’t have to.
No, not all of this is a given, and it is a ruling that does negatively impact freedom of expression and suppresses that vindication that you are as you choose to live. This is the importance of what comes next.
The court is just clarifying an existing law, if politicians want to change all equality law so it applies purely based on self identification instead of biology they can.
A victory for basic common sense? Hell yea I want to go that way!
It’s saying “you’re not the same but equal” like a rose and a bluebell. Not the same but equal.
I think it’s a sensible ruling. The law needs to protect women. What the next step needs to be though is putting something in place to specifically protect trans people
It’s not a straightforward issue. Whichever way the judgement fell, some people would be extremely displeased, but a balanced position has been found so far as is practicable.
In the US, they’re just fascist dictatorship at this stage.
I would urge people to actually read the ruling and try to think about this like adults.
A core part of the ruling is that there are certain sex-based rights that exist in the Equality Act which are nonsensical if interpreted on any other grounds than biological sex. Read the maternity provisions. Someone born a woman must retain this protection (as they can still potentially get pregnant, regardless of how they identify) and someone born a man cannot opt in to a protection that is clearly not applicable. In this section of the act, maternity protections are explicitly said as belonging to women, therefore women MUST include both women and trans men, and not trans women.
There was no other place for the court to go. Even those making submissions against this reading agreed that the act would otherwise be incoherent.
The sex-based protections in the Equality Act sit alongside gender reassignment protections. Both apply equally. A trans man (ie biologically a woman) retains the right to not be discriminated against for maternity reasons, but also to not be discriminated against for being trans. These rights can only be restrained to the point where it is a proportional means to achieving a legitimate aim.
How that will work in practice will then rely on policy and regulations. However, the key point of the ruling is that certain rights are inherently sex based (as they have always been).
If a woman is undergoing a strip search and says she wants to be searched by a woman only, I seriously question the motives of anyone who suggests this should not be respected. If a hospital has mixed sex, male and female wards, it is right that the vulnerable women placed on female only wards are on female only wards. There was a recent interview with a nurse on a mental health ward who described the issues of bio males self identifying (legitimately, as trans people) onto female only wards with vulnerable teenage girls, having mental health episodes where they were running around naked. There are the obvious prison cases and the spots cases which all but the most extreme people cannot dispute.
It is then up to organisations and government departments to put in place clear guidance on how trans people can be accommodated comfortably without sacrificing the sex-based rights of women. They have an active duty to do both. However it is simply not ok to sacrifice the comfort and safety of 50% of the population because of some weird ideology.
You’re going to get backlash because 1. You’re flogging the dismembered corpse of this meme page, and 2. What you’ve posted is a deliberate misinterpretation of what the judges actually said. I’d urge you to go and read it.
Don’t conflate sex & gender.
I think people just need to wind their knecks in and stop looking for reasons to be offended/insulted or whatever other form of mis-justice they’re clinging to regardling this topic…
It shouldnt never have gone on this long to start with, I’m bloody sick of it….
The Supreme Court was asked to interpret the wording of a statute. It has done so. It was not political.
It is open to parliament to change this if it wishes.
It was required to provide clarity on the legal definition of what a woman is. That’s all.
The headlines of this seems bad, but when you read the judges full explanations it’s fully reasonable and they even state that trans people are still protected.
One is restricting rights, the other is defining words for legal clarity. You may disagree with both, but they are not the same in the slightest.
We have been since Trump first won the presidency. Brexit was just following the Trump blueprint as is the constant barrage of propaganda regarding migrants and welfare, and the rise of Reform. The right and the sudden concern for Christianity by Brits who mostly discarded it, is all along that same line too, and will lead us down the same road as the US. Gradually rolling back LGBT rights, then women and minorities. We’re regressing toward white male supremacy.
Nope, they are not the same. Have you read the ruling? Do you understand it? Many do not, but that doesn’t stop them pushing misinformation for upvotes and likes.
It’s because we haven’t lost our minds that we are not going down the same route as the US. Gender ideology was and is bonkers – and poisoned the well of liberalism, and continues to do so in the States. Thank God Labour came to their senses. I hope the Democrats do too.
It’s about clarity in the UK, not about anything else but the letter of the law. It will continue to evolve.
It’s a different story in the US.
If you think “they are the same picture” then I think you are low IQ.
The only pathway this post suggests we are on is the one that leads to being as ignorant and politically illiterate as the Americans. Please read what the Supreme Court actually ruled before you try to farm karma with such sensationalist drivel.
Edit: I would also say it is pretty disrespectful to the trans community in America to try to compare these two examples as equal. Please educate yourself.
They are not remotely the same thing. Try reading.
Been saying this for months now. Having your opinion has gotten me banned from two UK subs. But as you’ll see in the comments, Brit Reddit has mostly accepted being in the Bigot place
Absolutely no one is bothered or threatened by trans men, for obvious anatomical reasons. Plus you said yourself, many just look like men and go unnoticed. I’ve never once seen a trans woman that looks remotely like a woman.
I do wonder how many biologists they asked before coming to the biological conclusion.
Not the same picture.
American elected law makers and independent British courts are very different things.
This frustrates me so much. The word women has always had different connotations to the word female. If you asked every women in the uk, however we define this word, what being a women means to them you would receive incredibly varied and contradictory answers. Very few would mention chromosomes.
And really, if we follow the common definition of sex as made up of chromosomes, secondary sex characteristics, hormones etc. Then quite simply most trans men and women meet neither the definition of male nor female.
This means we need to either
1. Define sex purely as chromosomal in which case this (a) does not match how we do sex assignment to babies which is based on genitals (b) relies on information about a person which is primarily am inference; I am a male, but I have never had my chromosomes tested. Simply, I don’t know what my chromosomes are.
2. Consider whether the definition of sex being used in this context has any use
3. Continue with a definition of female which likely excludes a large number of cis and trans women
The big benefit of self id is that it allows for a simple fact that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are vagye terms without easy definitions
The so-called ‘supreme court’ is already an Americanism. It’s only existed since 2009, and is full of political appointees. I’m all for constitutional reform, but not when it’s going to be full of yes-men – expect a fully-democratised House of Lords to end up the same way.
Primary legislation can only be created by Parliament.
There has been no legislation passed relating to transgender people since 2010.
For all the people saying it’s just a legal interpretation, you’re ignoring the very obvious pattern of the government stripping away trans rights. This isn’t the be all end all, but it is a massive setback that has been devastating to the moral of the trans community.
Just having your rights be in a precarious legal spot is frightening on it’s own, this will embolden the people trying to take them away.
I just don’t want to engage in culture wars anymore. It’s so pointless, divisive and time consuming.
The scariest part is those who have already transitioned will now have to be strip searched by a person of their birth gender.
The reason that law came into place was because of the abuses brought forward by suspects that the officer searching them had gone beyond their duty during the searches. Now that’s been entirely nullified, opening the door for police abuse once again, all because some old guys got upset that they got “tricked” into being attracted to someone.
Comments are closed.