The loss of freedom of speech, of sidelining women and biology

I hope the links will be blue this time.

forwomen.scot/10/05/2022/gender-recognition-reform-bill

fairplayforwomen.com/

Thank you for the reminder Elegran.

This affects England and Wales too, as explained by Fair Play for Women who urge people to contact their UK MPs about it.

fairplayforwomen.com/dont-let-sex-self-id-through-scottish-backdoor/

I have just been reading on the for women site about their successful appeal re the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018 (GRPBA)

The key points in the judgment included:
1) It is important to recognise one aspect of the 2010 Act which cannot be modified, namely the definition of “protected characteristic”, which for the purpose of any exceptions has the same meaning as in the Equality Act 2010.

2) Thus an exception which allows the Scottish Parliament to take steps relating to the inclusion of women, as having a protected characteristic of sex, is limited to allowing provision to be made in respect of a “female of any age”.

3) Provisions in favour of women, in this context, by definition exclude those who are biologically male.

4) By incorporating those transsexuals living as women into the definition of woman the 2018 Act conflates and confuses two separate and distinct protected characteristics.

5) “transgender women” is not a category for these purposes; it is not a protected characteristic and for the reasons given, the definition of “woman” adopted in the Act impinges on the nature of protected characteristics which is a reserved matter.

6) Changing the definitions of protected characteristic, even for the purpose of achieving the Gender Representation Objective, is not permitted and in this respect the 2018 Act is outwith legislative competence.
forwomen.scot/31/03/2022/justice-through-the-looking-glass/

Forwomen add "To return to Humpty Dumpty, the lobbyists and politicians in hock to gender ideology believe that any definition which is not nailed down is open to re-interpretation. In law, it never used to be necessary to define commonly understood words, now Humpty and friends are making hay with definitions and retrospectively applying them to legislation. An indication of where the Scottish Government might go next was provided by their QC, Ruth Crawford, who argued “the Equality Act did not say as my learned friend does in his note that female means biological female, it means female”. Having been forced to accept that “woman” means a “female of any age”, it seems that the Scottish Government may now try to re-define the latter instead. If they do, we will be ready."

Thankyou Elegran

I’m hoping it is just a phase

It will only be a phase if there is enough opposition, and if that opposition is successful.

Here is an interview with James Esses who was expelled, with no notice or discussion, from his Masters course in therapy because of his concerns about gender identity & therapy.
He is now taking legal action against his university.

It is 47 mins long & worth listening to all, or even just a part of it.

youtu.be/BjDSlpCuWuk

There is further info here :

www.crowdjustice.com/case/expelled-university-free-speech/

"I am a trainee therapist who was expelled from a university course over email for launching a public petition trying to safeguard therapy and counselling for vulnerable children with gender dysphoria."

Loss of freedom of speech all right.
Today a group of women in Manchester wanted to meet at the Pankhurst statue to discuss women's rights.
A group of men in masked balaclavas surrounded the statue to prevent the women from meeting there.
I don't know how to link but there is a thread on Mumsnet called Standing for Women Manchester that has all the links.
What cowardly bullies these people are.

How is this not headline news?

I know there are events on the world stage that take precedence, but even so - how can masked men be allowed to prevent women from attending a meeting and it not be more widely reported?

Can anyone defend this? Anyone?

The women weren't prevented from having their meeting. They just moved to a slightly different location .

See the meeting here :

youtu.be/0nl6u66vRss

(The artist who created the panels showing women who have experienced domestic violence is now moaning about the meeting taking place there.
I don't know what her point is.)

The protesters can be heard making a bit of a row in the background of that video.

Here a pic of some of them.

As above, looks like some TW supporters are identifying as Ninjas now....?

Still, it gave JKR a laugh...

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10818703/JK-Rowling-mocks-trans-protesters-scoring-hilarious-goal-dressing-ninjas.html

.

Were they ‘being kind’?

Doodledog

Were they ‘being kind’?

It didn't look very kind. I would imagine being surrounded by masked, shouty people could be very alarming. ?

Are these "wannabe women" really that nervous of biological women that they have to try and intimidate them??

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/girl-driven-out-of-school-for-questioning-trans-ideology-ls790krdh

Staff were initially supportive but, after complaints from other sixth formers, ended up apologising for not maintaining a “safe space” in the sixth form. how can one dissenting voice create an 'unsafe space' but mob rule and bullying is fine? When the adults run scared of the pupils, the tail really is wagging the dog.

There wasn't a "safe space" for the girl who disagreed with the rest.

Are these "wannabe women" really that nervous of biological women that they have to try and intimidate them??

I don't know about nervous, but TRAs hate women. That's what's been behind their politics all along. We got it 'too good' for their misogynist brains, even though for most of us 'too good' meant working full time, doing most of the childcare and home-making, but still earning 25% less, and (for young women at least) being expected to look good and conform to pornstar standards in bed. They are threatened by the fact that despite everything many women are still capable of competing with them, and even becoming their boss. That upsets their world view, so they want us back where we belong. Breeders, 'home makers', or maybe having a little job to pay for housekeeping so they can keep more of their wages for beer money.

If there is no such thing as a woman, there is no need for anti-discrimination policies so we'll start moving backwards at work, no need for safe spaces, so more of us will stay at home. We won't be able to point to meaningful research to show that we are getting a raw deal when it comes to pensions, housing etc, as transwomen will be grouped in with us in statistics, and even our traditional role as mothers will be open to people who can't give birth on account of being men. It's horrible, and frightening, and we (in general, not on this thread) are sleepwalking into Dystopia because many have been tricked into thinking that dissent is equivalent to discrimination against 'the most vulnerable group in society' which is errant nonsense.

Their campaigns are clearly orchestrated, as you see the same cliches, false equivalencies and spurious arguments trotted out whenever there is a 'debate' (which they tried but failed to disallow altogether):
Feminists are 'Nazis'. This from a bunch of bullies who dress as ninjas and block a feminist meeting, hanging a noose around the neck of a statue of a feminist icon.
We are 'out of date', and the New Improved 'intersectional' feminism (which buys into TRA politics) is the feminism of the future. Yeah, right - it's a 'feminism' that doesn't centre actual, real, biological women ?. It (and its supporters) puts the rights of men ahead of those of women, in the name of equality.
We are not 'being kind'. 'Being kind' is a concept that is used to silence women when we get above ourselves by voicing an opinion, and is linked for many people with the Caroline Fleck being hounded to death by nasty comments online. So the (false) equivalence is that if you speak out against being eradicated you are a troll or a bully.
We are being discriminatory by complaining when men muscle in (literally and figuratively) into women's sport. Tell that to the women who have spent years training to get to the top in their sport, only to lose out to someone who is physically stronger because of their male biology. Oh, and if we insist on getting uppity and complaining, we are also racist, as a black woman with a sex hormone imbalance would suffer if rules were brought in to govern the ratio of oestrogen to testosterone allowed for each class.
We don't stand to lose anything by giving our rights to men. Ok, so we lose the right to be called women, as only men can do that - we are cis women, or natal women, or breeders etc. We lose the right to feel safe in hospital, or to be safe from rape in prison - but you know, we can solve that by widening the legal definition of rape, so that's that one dealt with. We lose the right to choose who touches us intimately, but we just need to lighten up and stop being 'obsessed by penises'. What does it matter if the bloke with his hand inside us is 100% male and our religion or personal boundaries makes us deeply uncomfortable with that, so we'd asked for a woman? He's wearing a badge with a female pronoun, so that means he's a woman, obviously.

There's more, but it all appears on every platform where a TRA is sounding off.

You should be able to read the article here, without a paywall.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/girl-driven-out-of-school-for-questioning-trans-ideology-ls790krdh?shareToken=49389d8ca3e77bb988de1f89ee5c99c8&fbclid=IwAR2MoJD_-9SIrsMOuiziwAdayQDMDuABbTw2PeLHI0CsQB2h0n-OK4Lh5kU

That really is chilling, FN.

I wish the article had named the school and the 'member of the HoL', as they should be shown up for what they are. I wouldn't be sending my daughter to a school that wouldn't support her for something like that.

How can it possibly be right to say that transpeople are denied basic human rights? They absolutely aren't, and rightly so. Many of the TRA faction deny women human rights of dignity (eg in changing rooms), and of freedom of expression (eg the recent feminist meeting), however.

I feel that women are being used in this issue to paint liberal and left wing thinkers as the "baddies", which worries me.
Why is this being left to Piers Morgan and the Daily Mail to point out the masked bullies.

Surely no one, however much they believe that men can change into women, thinks that this sort of intimidation is a good thing.

Even the teacher supporting the girl is playing it down by saying that she was "a bit naive" to think that she could disagree with what was said.

It seems there was no attempt, from the school, to prevent the bullying.

It sounds as though there wasn't a teacher present at the talk by the "female member of the Hol, or there would have been confirmation of exactly what the girl had said. I would have thought that a member of staff would always attend a talk by someone from outside the school.

Adults are supposed to have judgment. How has the school itself fallen under the spell of mob hysteria?

This is yet more evidence of how toxic - and how powerful - Stonewall is. They have influence far beyond what is seen on the surface.

Good point Ilovecheese.

"liberal and left wing thinkers" , though, seem not to be doing much thinking beyond 'be kind'.

Here's a short trailer for a documentary by Matt Walsh. He is a far-right American with whom I don't think I have much in common but I do agree with his, previously uncontroversial, view on the existence of biological sex.

m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR1gX8t9hiKUNcL_NsYxOcRlCxhabwCEva98Rx8kXcVXABDcobS7dh8F3Rk&v=42ivIRd9N8E&feature=youtu.be

In "Material Girls" Kathleen Stock says "The Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme gives organisations access to PR-friendlybranding in exchange for their instigating - to put it frankly - certsin measures of social control. Current members of the scheme include blue-chip companies, political parties, local authorities, government departments such as the Department for Education, schools, most universities, newspapers and broadcasters, police and the armed forces, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Equality and Human Rights Commisiion, and many other major national bodies. Effectively, Stonewall seems to be aiming at the removal from member organisations of any public reference whatsoever to sex that might offend a trans person, by anyone. For instance, as already described, it explicitly advises: " You should allow anyone to access facilities, spaces, and groups which align with theirgender identity." More generally, though, there's a heavy emphasis on controlling language and behaviour even when it comes to issues that have nothing to do with space allocation.