Will the Supreme Court protect Women's Rights?

The courts have answered. It is time to forge a new chapter with dignity and respect.

Mollygo, thanks for the detailed update.

The supreme court’s ruling isn’t complicated or difficult to understand. The radio/tv coverage seems determined to present it alongside trans activists who try to distort and present it as both wrong and badly presented

ViceVersa
So I repeat, please explain to me what is the difference between someone exposing his very obviously male genitalia on a public street, and someone doing the same in a single sex, women's changing room, only that person claims they have the right to do so because they are trans?

Interesting question, but I fear it will remain unanswered.

PoliticsNerd

ViceVersa

I do treat people with respect, and I assure you that I am far from ignorant on the law. I am certainly not making untruthful generalisations or trying to score points. I could cite numerous examples to back up what I have said - that information is widely available to anyone who cares to do their research.

So why are you querying the law as different in each case with "then that's somehow ok?" without pointing out, as you now tell us you know, that the law is exactly the same in both cases?

Is the way you suggested the person you attack might look treating all people with respect?

There have been some very good and thoughtful posts trying to deal with this very difficult issue but there have also been many that are not.

It is not a deflection and I am not attacking anyone, I can assure you. I know a few trans people and I have friends with trans children and I treat them all with the same respect I would show to anyone else.
However, it is a fact that there have been cases where very vocal and dare I say, militant transwomen have demanded access to single sex women's changing rooms, to the very real distress of women using those facilities. The case involving Nurse Sandie Peggie is just one example of that. ~
So I repeat, please explain to me what is the difference between someone exposing his very obviously male genitalia on a public street, and someone doing the same in a single sex, women's changing room, only that person claims they have the right to do so because they are trans?

The Supreme Court has ruled yet still we go round in ever-decreasing circles 🤔

For anyone who’s interested. It’s a long read, but important.
Yesterday’s update from Maya Forstater:

“What an amazing day yesterday was: 16th April 2025, the day women in the UK got their rights back.

I was sitting in the front row of the Supreme Court with Helen Joyce, Fiona McAnena, Anya Palmer, Naomi Cunningham and Michael Foran. I could see Marion Calder and Susan Smith from For Women Scotland, as well as Kate Harris, Kate Barker, Joanna Cherry and several others from the three organisations that together intervened on behalf of lesbians. The court was packed and hushed, and we knew that many more were watching at a watch party organised by For Women Scotland in Edinburgh, and around the country and indeed the world.

None of the parties or interveners knew in advance what the judgment would be. Sometimes barristers get advance copies of a judgment, or a press summary, but not this time. We had thought through our strategy for a wide range of outcomes, using a 1-to-10 framework to think about how bad or good the judgment might be. We had precooked two statements: one for a win and one for a loss. We didn’t dare hope the result would be better than 8 on our scale – roughly, an FWS win, but with comments designed to deflect criticism from those opposed to sex-based rights.

When Lord Hodge announced that the meaning of sex is biological, there was a well-behaved collective exhale in the Supreme Court (before he started speaking, we had been warned not to make any noise) – and, as we discovered when we watched the footage later – a rousing cheer in Edinburgh. Then it was time for tears of joy – and an avalanche of tweets.

This judgment was the culmination of so much hard work by For Women Scotland and their legal team; by Sex Matters and our legal team; and by the lesbian interveners and their legal team. That, in turn, built upon the hard work done by everyone who has fought to articulate and express why women’s rights depend on having a clear, reality-based definition of sex in law.

This victory wouldn’t have happened without the thousands of supporters who contributed not just by donating for legal fees but by building and supporting organisations that can hold their own in a hostile environment, and most of all by speaking up themselves whenever they safely can.

Within Sex Matters we have been wrangling and testing the ideas that went into our submission since 2023, trying to find a way to remove the spanner of the Gender Recognition Act from the workings of the Equality Act in order that it could function properly again. Our submission by Ben Cooper KC and David Welsh argued that “sex” and related expressions in the Equality Act should be given a consistent meaning that makes sense in the context of the whole, taking account of the act’s purpose and all relevant provisions.

Lord Hodge called our submission “cogent” – which coming from the highest court in the land is high praise indeed. At paragraph 35 of the judgment, it says that the judges were “particularly grateful to Ben Cooper KC for his written and oral submissions on behalf of Sex Matters, which gave focus and structure to the argument that ‘sex’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ should be given a biological meaning, and who was able effectively to address the questions posed by members of the court in the hour he had to make his submissions”.

That “focus and structure” is clear throughout the judgment, which proceeds methodically and comprehensively through the Equality Act and tests whether it makes sense to interpret “man” and “woman” as mixed categories including biological males and females, or instead to interpret the two words in their ordinary meaning as the two sexes. The Scottish Government had argued that the words had variable meaning throughout the Act, but the Supreme Court dismissed that possibility. That “focus and structure” is clear throughout the judgment, which proceeds methodically and comprehensively through the Equality Act and tests whether it makes sense to interpret “man” and “woman” as mixed categories including biological males and females, or instead to interpret the two words in their ordinary meaning as the two sexes. The Scottish Government had argued that the words had variable meaning throughout the Act, but the Supreme Court dismissed that possibility.

The Supreme Court also referred to the judgment in my case by Sir Akhlaq Choudhury, who found that gender-critical beliefs were “worthy of respect in a democratic society” in my case. He ruled that “the GRA does not compel a person to believe something that they do not”, saying only that a GRC must not be disregarded in circumstances where it was legally relevant. The Supreme Court endorsed the Forstater judgment and called it comprehensive and impressive.

The Supreme Court is only five minutes’ walk from my old workplace at the Centre for Global Development, where I lost my job for wanting to talk about protections for women in the law. It has taken us five years to get from a situation where a woman could lose her job for saying that the definition of sex in law should be reality-based to hearing the Supreme Court agree with that position.

Courage calls to courage. And freedom of speech makes us all cleverer, as well as harder to frighten and control. That first protection for free speech about sex-based rights started a process whereby each person who spoke up made it easier for the next person to do so, and each thing we said further refined our message and thinking. Step by step, we became braver and harder to ignore. And now scrappy upstart organisations and grassroots groups of dissident women and men have brought most media outlets and many politicians – as well as the judges of the Supreme Court – to the point where they see the issue our way.

Every person who has spoken up for reality and faced ridiculous accusations of being a bigot, fascist or Nazi was vindicated by the Supreme Court ruling. Those were the angry cries of teenagers, it turned out, encouraged and amplified by adults who should have known better – and some who were willing to exploit their distress.
But organisational inertia is powerful. Our next task is to make sure that this judgment is understood and implemented by the national and devolved governments and all their departments; by local authorities, police forces and NHS trusts; by regulators, trades unions, charities, sports governing bodies, universities and schools; and by industry bodies and every employer.

After Easter we will be writing letters to key individuals and organisations, and helping you to take action. Already we have seen that the judgment is having an impact: today British Transport Police started to walk back its policy on searching, which we have argued is unlawful and sought to challenge in court.

The Supreme Court warned us not to be “triumphalist”. And we are not. The judgment came after years in which time was wasted and careers were derailed in the fight to retain rights that women had back in 1975, when the Sex Discrimination Act came into force. We will always mourn the institutions that have been degraded, and the young lives that have been blighted by this pernicious ideology. Yesterday was a good day, but we won’t forget the harm that was done.”

Luminance

I was refering to earlier comments I now need to scroll back to read. Also my username was just sitting there on my face cream. I didn't choose it based on any other factor. I became rather frustrated at finding one that wasn't taken and that one simply worked.

🌞

I was refering to earlier comments I now need to scroll back to read. Also my username was just sitting there on my face cream. I didn't choose it based on any other factor. I became rather frustrated at finding one that wasn't taken and that one simply worked.

Just maybe not for others to hear.

I suppose ‘my truth’ is validation enough to whoever speaks it.

Who said they were "somehow making it up" Luminance* ? They probably really believe that they can change their sex and actually become a woman, and that is why they are so upset if anyone doesn't agree with that. If you are working in a medical setting you are aware of that possibility.

If earlier days, people who really believed that they were Queen Elizabeth the First, or Genghis Kahn, were incarcerated in mental institutions for it and mocked.

It is a hate crime now to mock people for wanting to live as women, but it is NOT a crime to believe and say that you do not, yourself, believe that they have actually changed their sex, only their gender - their concept of the sex they want to live as.

Oh dear, more uncalled for comments. Does that have to be resorted to just because someone states they work in a medical field? Of course doctors are of different opinions and levels of education depending on their field. Some of them get things terribly wrong, Andrew Wakefield as an example, by letting their opinions get the better of them. However many doctors are very open minded to the scientific reasons for gender dysphoria and treat their patients with respect, as do I. I would rather quickly be out of a job were I to tell a patient they were actually a man and were somehow making up everything they have been going through since they were a small child. I count myself a patient person but some of these comments show an astounding lack of empathy.

It's important to acknowledge that no rights have been stripped from transpeople, their protections are the same as everybody else including the protections afforded to any sex based rights in accordance with their biological sex. It really shouldn't be necessary to keep describing sex as biological, sex has always been a biological category. All that has happened is it won't be so easy to totally ignore and abuse the sex based rights of women. Institutions will now have to observe the actual law not Stonewall law which too many fell prey to.

This is true women have had to fight for an existing law to be clarified, that is what has happened.

They've got the same protection now as they ever had. Anti-discrimination measures protecting transgender people have existed in the UK since 1999, and were strengthened in the 2000s to include anti-harassment wording. Gender reassignment was included as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010.
It's important to note that transgender people are still protected by the Equality Act. The protected characteristic of gender reassignment is not affected by this ruling, and Lord Hodge stressed there are other protections against direct and indirect discrimination and harassment

Nothing has changed.

I am not sure what you mean. How can their culture be framed within the law. I don't think there is a singular culture?

Iam64

Politics Nerd - not quite as simple as you suggest.
Lia Thomas, the American transgender swimmer has male genitalia. S/he uses the female changing rooms when competing. The female competitors complained they were uncomfortable with Thomas being naked (ie exposing himself) . Additionally, the young women complained he looked at their naked bodies in a way that made them uncomfortable.

Thank you Iam.

However, this is really just a deflection as Viceversa was not referring to this situation but a hypothetical one, which appeared to be in the UK. She described a "gym changing room" with "mothers or grandmothers", "daughters or granddaughters". So it is simply a case of applying an existing law.

What I would very much like to see now is that there is protection for the trans community, and their needs and culture are met framed within the law.

We don’t want to go backwards.

Precisely grumppa

Nor, I imagine, would she want them undressed in front of her.

ViceVersa

I do treat people with respect, and I assure you that I am far from ignorant on the law. I am certainly not making untruthful generalisations or trying to score points. I could cite numerous examples to back up what I have said - that information is widely available to anyone who cares to do their research.

So why are you querying the law as different in each case with "then that's somehow ok?" without pointing out, as you now tell us you know, that the law is exactly the same in both cases?

Is the way you suggested the person you attack might look treating all people with respect?

There have been some very good and thoughtful posts trying to deal with this very difficult issue but there have also been many that are not.

I saw a really good post on MN last night that summed up the issue of privacy. The poster said that she knew that her brother, father in law and brother in law were perfectly kind, gentle and safe men to be alone with. But she wouldn't want to take her clothes off or be in a vulnerable state of undress in front of them.

There are some excellent, articulate and intelligent posts on this thread; special thanks to Terribull Galaxyand Dickens. And thanks to Syracute for making me laugh; it's been a long time since I saw a post that so spectacularly demonstrated how some people have completely misunderstood the events of the last 20 years and had to end up in the Supreme Court to be resolved!

Well said Lathyrus3.

I wish somebody super clever could explain the difference to me between a transwoman's penis being on view in a women's changing room and my husband's penis being on view in the same women's changing room. He'd only be getting changed just the same, he'd have no criminal intent.

Lathyrus3

I’m very happy for trans people to have their own designated spaces, toilets, changing rooms, prisons, hospital accommodation, whatever. I’m happy for them to have their own designated categories in sport, literature, the arts, to have a designated quota in situations where quotas are applied.

I absolutely believe they should be able to live their lives free of threat and discrimination.

In short I’m happy for them to have equality and respect.

Now why are they not happy for me, as a woman, to have those things?

I

My thoughts exactly and you put it very well.