Update from Maya
Some of the speakers with Baroness Sarah Ludford (in red jacket)
On Tuesday 21st April I took a stack of Sex Matters One year later booklets to the Houses of Parliament for a meeting of peers and MPs at which women who have been harmed by the failure to protect women-only spaces told their stories. Among them were several women featured in the booklet, including Darlington nurse Bethany Hutchison, gym user Miranda Newsom and mental-health volunteer “D”.
Their stories highlighted the harms done to women when organisations fail to follow the Equality Act and instead follow gender ideology. These are ordinary women trying to do ordinary things where their dignity, privacy and autonomy should be upheld: use the office toilets; get changed for work or at the gym; run a women’s mental-health peer support group. They reveal NHS bodies, local authorities and charities wilfully ignoring the law and subjecting women to punishment for speaking up for their rights. There were tears on the panel and tears in the audience.
By now all MPs will have received the booklet in their pigeonholes. If you haven’t written to your MP about this, now is a good time. Ask them to urge the Minister for Women and Equalities to lay the EHRC guidance before Parliament in May, as she has promised, and to act decisively to ensure that the law as clarified by the Supreme Court is enforced.
Write to your MP: why are we waiting?
Something that would help ensure that organisations understand and follow the law would be a simple, clear way for people to prove their sex when registering for or accessing services. For many years public bodies have allowed people to change their sex on documents such as passports and driving licences, making these worse than useless for this purpose.
Now the government is planning a new form of digital ID that people will be able to have on their phones. Its proposed “solution” to the problem of unreliable sex data is to leave sex off altogether.
This is a mistake. It will leave individuals and service providers floundering and mired in conflict, instead of being able to simply and clearly verify a fact about people that is often needed.
We know there are a range of different views on digital ID itself, and Sex Matters has no institutional position. But whatever your views you can argue that if it goes ahead sex should be included.
A government consultation about it is open until Tuesday 5th May. It is really important that people use this opportunity to tell the government not to leave sex out of digital ID.
READ:
Our update on why digital ID should include sex
(and our briefing on putting sex on digital ID, if you have time)
LISTEN TO:
Our podcast on the topic
(in which Helen Joyce calls me a nerd, the absolute cheek of her)
TAKE ACTION:
Use our guidance to respond to the consultation
(it won’t take more than 10 minutes)
Maya Forstater
Putting sex on digital ID
In this week’s episode, Maya and Helen discuss the new national digital ID (BritCard), which the government has committed to creating by the end of this parliament. But the government does not plan to include sex on the BritCard, saying that this “is not necessary for the intended purpose of the digital ID”.
Maya and Helen explore why failing to include sex as a voluntary field on the BritCard is a cop-out that will leave individuals and service providers floundering and mired in conflict, instead of being able to simply and clearly verify a fact about people which is often needed.
Sex matters in local elections
Too many local authorities have told us that they are “waiting for guidance” on single-services when in fact the law is clear. If there are elections in your area on Thursday 7th May, we have some questions you can ask candidates to find out if your local authority understands and respects the law.
Update: the City of London seeks to delay again
As the deadline approached for the City of London Corporation to file its defence for allowing trans-identifying men into the women’s pond and showers on Hampstead Heath, it made a last-ditch attempt to evade this by asking for another delay.
In the news
Janet Murray for The Telegraph reported that a Girlguiding group has closed and reopened as a Scout group over the charity’s move to align with the law on single-sex services, with other leaders suggesting that more may follow or affiliate with local Pride groups. Maya said that Girlguiding is learning the hard way that there is no easy path back from pretending that men and boys can be female, and that Pride youth groups are hardly a natural fit for the Girlguiding movement.
Sian Maher for The Scottish Sun reported that the trans-identifying male doctor Dr Beth Upton has been registered by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency as female and is working in two New South Wales hospitals. Helen said that male doctors should never practise as female and medical organisations should never record doctors as the sex they are not, and that doing so sets the scene for patients’ rights to be breached. The news was also reported by Rachel Baxendale for The Australian.
Helen wrote for The Critic on how the fallout from the puberty-blocker trial shows what happens when politicians outsource policy choices that require a backbone. She said that when institutions such as medical regulators fail to do their job, Parliament is supposed to fix the rules that govern them, but many politicians have lost faith in their moral intuition or lost touch with it entirely.
Maya appeared on GB News with Olivia Utley and Cameron Walker to discuss the one-year anniversary of the For Women Scotland Supreme Court ruling. Maya said that there is no excuse for anyone to be ignoring the law.
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