On the 16th of April, the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favour of TERF group For Women Scotland, against the Scottish Government, defining “Woman” by biological sex under the Equality Act (2010). As a matter of British law, a “Woman” is now an “Adult Human Female.” Cue celebrations by the majority of the population for whom this was blindingly obvious.
The judgment states:
As a matter of ordinary language, the provisions relating to sex discrimination can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex. […]
The new statutory guidance states that, under the ASP 2018, the definition of a “woman” is the same as that in the EA [Equality Act] 2010. Section 212 of the EA 2010 defines “woman” as “a female of any age.” The new statutory guidance also states that a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate (“GRC”) recognising their gender as female is considered a woman for the purposes of the ASP 2018. […]
The Supreme Court unanimously allows the appeal. It holds that the terms “man”, “woman” and “sex” in the EA 2010 refer to biological sex. Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler give a joint judgment, with which the other Justices agree. […]
There is no indication that the EA 2010 modified the meaning of “man” and “woman” or “sex” from the meaning in the SDA [Sex Discrimination Act] 1975.
However, the Supreme Court also said that,
It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010. It has a more limited role which does not involve making policy.
The Blairite governing body is attempting to walk a very thin tightrope to appease delusional trans activists, who insist they can defy biology and change sex by self-identification, by delineating between “biological sex” and “certificated sex”. This is despite “certificated sex” relying on a Gender Recognition Certificate, per the Gender Recognition Act (2004), and predicated on decades of insistence that gender and sex are separate.
The philosophy of “human rights” necessitates that a total state act as a judicial arbiter between the groups which it awards privileged status for having “protected characteristics”. With the belief that human beings start as Blank Slates, any inequality between groups based, categorised according to identity markers, can be inferred as proof that they have suffered discrimination or oppression. The state steps in to rectify this injustice by discriminating against the group performing better, levelling all in a zero-sum game to the presumed starting place of equality.
But what happens when two groups with “protected characteristics” compete for rights and resources? Well, the state reaches a temporary settlement by ruling that the law, as read by ostensibly neutral bodies like the judiciary, dictates reality. As the Hobbesian maxim goes: autoritas, non veritas, facit legem — authority, not truth, makes law.
This is how the state can continue to deny that sex is defined by the boundaries of biology to appease transgender ideologues, while simultaneously affirming the “Adult Human Female” definition of a woman in last week’s Supreme Court ruling.
This appeal to the authority of law is what allows cynical politicians like Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Lisa Nandy, and Wes Streeting to pivot from marching in Pride parades, adorned with the neotonous pastel colours of the transgender flag, and insisting that sterilisation is the best course of action for gender-distressed adolescents, to saying the Supreme Court has settled the issue of what a woman is.
As Kemi Badenoch retorted to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, during her Ministerial Statement on the ruling:
“In 2021 the Prime Minister said it was “not right” to say that only women have a cervix. In 2022 he said it was the law that “trans women are women”. In 2023 he said, “99% of women don’t have a penis”. I know what a woman is, and I always have. The people of this country know what a woman is. We did not need the Supreme Court to tell us that, but this Government did: a Labour Government so desperate to jump on a bandwagon that they abandoned common sense, along with the Scottish National party—which put rapists in women’s prisons—and, of course, the Liberal Democrats.”
But as funny as it is to watch politicians backpedal and rewrite their records in real time, the fact that the Equality Act had to be appealed to for this issue to be settled only serves to entrench this egalitarian philosophy of “human rights”. Anytime a trans activist transgresses against a single-sex space, the Equality Act will be cited as the statute to prove their actions are unlawful.
But the Equality Act is one of the central beams in the architecture of Blair’s managerial Woke revolution.
The Public Sector Equality Duty under Section 149 of the Equality Act states that:
(1) A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—
(a)eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;
(b)advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;
(c)foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. […]
(5)Having due regard to the need to foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it involves having due regard, in particular, to the need to—
(a)tackle prejudice, and
(b)promote understanding.
(6)Compliance with the duties in this section may involve treating some persons more favourably than others; but that is not to be taken as permitting conduct that would otherwise be prohibited by or under this Act.
(7)The relevant protected characteristics are—
age;
disability;
gender reassignment;
pregnancy and maternity;
race;
religion or belief;
sex;
sexual orientation.
It makes discrimination against the indigenous host majority (white Britons), men, heterosexuals, and Christians not only lawful, but mandatory in the offices of state — including the police, civil service, and security agencies.
This statute has been cited recently by West Yorkshire Police as justification to “temporarily” block applications from white British candidates in “an attempt to boost diversity”. West Yorkshire Police spend more than £1 million in public funds on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion staff each year.
Likewise, in an email on the 19th of January, 2021, Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Andrew Harwin wrote,
“I noted that the boards have recently been predominantly white male heavy. If we don’t have enough BAME and female to board then we need to make the decision to pause boarding and seek more BAME and female from the RAF. I don’t really need to see loads of useless white male pilots, let’s get as focused as possible, I am more than happy to reduce boarding if needed to have a balanced BAME/female/male board.”
I have yet to encounter a more brazen summation of the anti-white animus at the heart of all “positive action” and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The collective race communist mania the Anglosphere underwent after the death of George Floyd and ensuing Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 has reached the point where fighter pilots are selected for their genitals and skin pigment, rather than their ability to perform extraordinary feats under the intense pressure of aerial combat.
But this institutional cultural change was a result of downward pressure to comply with the law, as passed by Parliament under Blair, Brown, and the Cameronite Conservatives who remade themselves in his image; and then, subsequently, enforced by an ideologically-captured judiciary, and the Supreme Court.
We need to get rid of the Equality Act. But the feminists involved in the For Women Scotland case and the broader TERF movement have no appetite for that. Instead, they only wish to rewind the revolution to the stage before transgender ideology took hold, as the ineluctable consequence of abolishing embodied sex differences, because then their “rights” and resources are only ever in competition with men — against whom the law already discriminates as an “oppressor” group.
Reminder: the For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers case was brought following Hollyrood passing the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act (2018), which mandated “an objective that 50% of a public board’s non-executive members should be women.”
Social Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said:
“Gender equality is at the heart of our vision for a fairer Scotland and making sure women’s voices are heard across society is an important part of that.
“The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act continues to set the objective for 50% of non-executive public board members to be women, helping ensure greater equality at the highest levels of public life.
“The Bill passed today will amend the Act in line with the Court of Session ruling to ensure the statute book is accurate. This amendment does not change the purpose or objectives of the Act, and the Scottish Government remains committed to improving gender equality and representation of women across all areas of society.”
The feminists did not oppose this affirmative action against men, for women as a collective in competition. They only opposed the absurd proposition that said men could identify as women by declaring themselves a woman, thereby qualifying for affirmative action.
Self-identification was, of course, the issue that brought down Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister of Scotland. After voting in December 2022 to pass the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, the Scottish Parliament sought to enact a law allowing anyone to change their legally registered gender without requiring a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Feminists famously protested the bill, with one lifting her skirt to flash a fake vagina in Parliament. The UK Parliament under the former Conservative government then invoked Section 35 of the Scotland Act (1998) for the first time, blocking it from receiving Royal Assent. Sturgeon then resigned two months later, on the 28th of March, 2023, after refusing to say during the controversy that serial rapist Adam Graham, housed in a women’s prison under the alias “Isla Bryson” was not a woman. “She regards herself as a woman. I regard the individual as a rapist,” said Sturgeon, using female pronouns for Graham before inventing a third gender for him: “rapist”.
A farce, of course, and one which warranted her resignation. But Sturgeon should have been criticised for her communist insistence on gender parity across public boards and discrimination against men in the first place.
Inevitably, the feminists will come into conflict with the social conservatives, seeking a restoration of English liberties and Parliamentary sovereignty, and the libertarians, pursuing a small-state meritocratic society, with whom they have formed a temporary alliance against the absurdity of transgender ideology.
These unresolved contradictions have been latent, and will be relitigated now that the revolution has been rewound to the point where they were most prominent, prior to trans activism.
In an interview I conducted with Helen Joyce in 2023, I asked her whether or not the TERFs and conservative centre can hold. She explained that transgenderism was an aberration of feminism, with no continuity; and actually that the likes of John Money, the pedophile doctor who popularised the phrase “gender identity”, has more in common with social conservatives who propose rigid gender roles, because pantomiming those is what trans activists believe qualifies them as being women. he also argued that the autogynaphelia motivating many male trans activists is misogynistic, and the antithesis to feminism.
I countered by stating that social conservatives have a stronger philosophy of bodily integrity (Imago Dei) and the ambiguous complimentary of the sexes than atheist, materialist liberals do, who believe sex differences are largely cosmetic where social and economic relations are concerned, and that women should be accommodated to compete on parity with men in the market like so many cogs. Likewise, I said that the scientific progress which feminists cite as the enabling condition to provide women with more economic opportunities is the cause of their liquidation as a category: with the hormones, surgeries, and reproductive technologies that give transgender ideology even flimsy legitimacy were brought about by the Sexual Revolution.
In seeking to eradicate differences between men and women in the name of equality, feminism inadvertedly gave rise to trans. Without recognising the mistake of feminism — denying and seeking to do away with sex differences — the rewindning of the revolution to before transgenderism will only ever be temporary. (With artificial wombs being the technological sledgehammer to women as a sex category waiting on the horizon.)
These feminists are also unwilling to cede back the sex-segregated spaces in which men formed good habits in other men, through social bonding and mentorship, while demanding (and quite rightly so) sex-segregated spaces to keep women safe.
One memetic and new example is how, after
said we should “Let Men Be” to tinker in their sheds, women in Loughborough, Leicestershire have demanded entry to the male-only Men in Sheds project, and caused the male attendees to retreat to “a quiet room with a model railway display in it, just for men.”Andrew McNerney, 70, admitted there was initially some resistance to becoming a mixed group.
He said: "There was apprehension, but in all honesty, it's turned out well.
"We [the men] escape now and again [to the quiet room] and have a chat and weigh things up."
But he added: "It's a lovely atmosphere, and it's been good."
Some feminists, like Sall Grover, have said it is both fair and necessary to give men back their male-only spaces. But if many feminists won’t even let men have a shed, it’s unlikely they’ll be willing to repeal the Equality Act and forfeit their affirmative action privilges.
This is a shame, because the fight is not over, as far as puberty blockers are concerned.
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