Crabs, Crimes, and Craziness

Responses to the ruling of April 16th by the UK Supreme Court

It’s been over two weeks since the UK Supreme Court ruled that the words “sex” and “woman” in the UK Equality Act 2010 have their commonly understood, biological meanings. That was the only coherent way to interpret these terms, the Court explained. The ruling has sparked an uprising among the genderati and “allies”: disbelief and denial, civil disobedience, plans for appeals and emigration, plenty of abuse – and some off-the-wall craziness.

So many people had been taught an incorrect version of the law – “Stonewall Law” we call it, after the organization that has sunk its teeth into all the UK’s institutions – that they can’t compute what they’ve heard. Nor have the professionally outraged actually read the sober, compassionate ruling. We will see Stonewall’s wacky reactions to the ruling at the end of this overview. The court’s affirmation of the primacy of biological sex has major consequences for women’s hospital wards and prisons, support services for rape victims, sports etc. But in the media, the fury revolves largely around bathrooms – toilets, in British parlance – the one facility that depends on trust, on the social contract.

First up, those who have said they simply won’t keep to the law: this includes numerous men who self-identify as “women” – and who have been encouraged for years to act as if the UK had gender self-ID – and who say bluntly they will go where they want. They display profound contempt for women’s boundaries. Anyway, they think they know better than the Supreme Court: for example, Joanne Lockwood tells us on Instagram, with all the self-assurance of a man whose career (pre-transition) went from the Royal Air Force to an IT business: “The UK Supreme Court got it wrong.” Robin Moira White, who has a special talent for misinterpreting the law, stated on TV that denying him the use of women’s facilities would be unlawful discrimination.

Parts of the corporate sector are also defiant. The pub company Wetherspoons said in a statement: “any transgender person is entitled to use whichever toilet where they feel most comfortable, whether that be male, female, or access toilets”. No, Wetherspoons. Single-sex means single-sex. You can brazen it out for a bit – until you hear that your liability insurance doesn’t cover defying the law.

Then there is the body responsible for three bathing ponds in Hampstead Heath: the Kenwood Ladies' Pond, Highgate Men's Pond, and Hampstead Mixed Pond. Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the City of London Corporation – with its misogynistic councillor Edward Lord – is still allowing trans-identified men to swim in the Ladies Pond – in addition to the other two ponds, of course. The policy is “under review”. Meanwhile, we hear that the men’s pond will now be single sex. Funny, that

.A meeting of the British Medical Association – one of the many trade unions that is saturated in Genderspeak – lost its collective mind:

“This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term 'woman' with respect to the Equality Act as being based on 'biological sex', which they refer to as a person who was at birth of the female sex', as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical. We recognize as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people.”

The scary thing is that these people who call biological sex a “rigid binary [with] no basis in science or medicine” have medical degrees. After reading this statement, I wondered publicly if we need nationwide cult deprogramming. Someone replied gloomily: “we need it worldwide.”

A startling announcement from the organization Disability Rights UK stated that it is “deeply saddened by the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that trans women are not ‘biological women.’” It opposes the right of disabled women to request a female care worker to provide intimate care. (After some nonsense about “an onslaught of rights erosion,” the charity notes en passant that “around half of trans people are also disabled.” Half? Is this about osteoporosis or other disabilities induced by puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, or surgical complications?)

Museums provided entertaining responses. The Vagina Museum announced crossly that it is “trans inclusive.” Well of course it is. Then we heard from an unlikely source: the Crab Museum. That’s right – nothing obscure or obscene, it’s a museum about those little creatures that scuttle sideways along the sand. So the Crab Museum decided it needed to react to the Supreme Court ruling because … because why not? It called the ruling “an abuse of science” and said:

“Today the Supreme Court voted [sic] to exclude a group of persecuted people from equality legislation. Their ruling centred on the word ‘biology,’ with the judge [sic] stating that biological sex is ‘assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation.’ Speaking in a professional capacity as museum [sic] of biology; this is not how biology works.”

Of course, the ruling did not in fact remove anyone’s rights. It simply clarified the law. Trans-identifying people are shielded from discrimination by the protected characteristic “gender reassignment.” Which they should be! Crabs, however…

The Prime Minister, the terminally weak Keir Starmer, took six days to say with his trademark robotic delivery that he welcomed the ruling because it provided clarity. Too little, too late. In the interim, troublemakers had whipped up unrest – leading to mass demonstrations – based on the lie that the Supreme Court has rolled “trans rights” back. Starmer could have defused much of this if he had made a statesmanlike appearance on TV on the day of the ruling. But that would have required leadership and moral courage.

Many MPs (Westminster) and MSPs (Holyrood) seem unable to cope with the truth. Someone leaked messages from a WhatsApp group in which MPs including the ministers Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant appeared to be plotting to undermine the ruling. After the leak – and a clear statement from the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson – they piped down.

The demented Maggie Chapman from the demented Scottish Green party is a special case.

Chapman became so over-excited at a rally for “trans rights” that she condemned what she called "bigotry, prejudice and hatred coming from the Supreme Court." Given her position, as Deputy Convenor of the Equalities Committee, this disrespect for the law was unacceptable behaviour. After a stern rebuke from the dean of the faculty of advocates and calls for her expulsion, the committee held a meeting to decide her fate. Those calling for her to be removed spoke eloquently and Chapman was urged to apologise. She did not. Then the committee voted. The SNP members were evidently so desperate to get the necessary numbers to hold on to the miscreant that they got one SNP member to Zoom in at 4 a.m. from the Cayman Islands and – wait for it – allowed Chapman herself to vote on whether she should be removed from the committee. The result was 4 to 3 in favour of her staying on. What a farce!

The ruling has finally led bodies overseeing sports such as soccer and cricket to adopt sensible policies, announcing that women’s sports are for biological women only. Some people are incensed about this. Responding to the Football Association’s statement that men (“trans women”) will no longer be allowed to play women’s soccer, the sports reporter George Simms posted in fury:

“Fuck this beyond belief.. The FA had an opportunity to provide sanctuary and instead we get this – a cruel blanket overreaction that will only end up hurting women, just to hurt trans people more.”

Simms is too far gone to see that none of that makes any sense. He praises the male soccer player Fae Fulconis, who says: “I will keep playing until they drag me off the pitch.”

One of the most unhinged examples has predictably come from the trans-obsessed barrister Jolyon Maugham – whose mission in recent years seems to be to raise as much money and lose as many cases as possible.

Maugham once had profound respect for the Supreme Court. In 2019 he tweeted, outraged at challenges to a Supreme Court ruling: “And, as a legal matter, if the Supreme Court says it is the law it is the law. Saying ‘this is the law’ is what it is the Supreme Court’s job to do.”

His respect for the law has gotten lost in the mists of time. For the past five years, he has directed venomous attacks at every opponent of genderist doctrine, prompting many of us to wonder why no one in his circle is staging an intervention to help him. His rage at the ruling has tipped him over the edge. He is urging male “allies” to invade women’s toilets en masse. (That will teach those uppity women to request clarity on the law!). He suggests he has no choice: “this clusterfuck was made by an appalling Supreme Court decision and a dishonest and bigoted Labour Government.” He is referring to a court that interpreted the law and a government that agreed to implement it.

Other extreme reactions come from people so incapable of digesting the fact that women and lesbians – and gay men too! – have sex-based rights that their hyperbole has gone into overdrive. The ever-apoplectic India Willoughby posted a photo of racially segregated bathrooms. This is a frequent meme: that separate facilities for men and women are akin to racial segregation in the Jim Crow era. Michael Cashman has stated that some of his friends are now living “in fear of their safety” and considering “seeking asylum in other countries.”

Some are pretending that a challenge could be lodged at the European Court of Human Rights. This is snake oil, calculated to cause hesitation, uncertainty, and chaos – replicating the strategy of disinformation and upside-down language pursued over the past ten years.

Basically we are hearing a collective howl from everyone who had been misled and who is shocked to see the curtain drawn back to reveal a group of activists whose strategy of disinformation worked for so long. Yes, we return to Stonewall, who immediately apologised for having misrepresented the law to hundreds of institutions for the past decade. Just kidding!

Stonewall is unrepentant. Its reactions to the ruling read like notes from a parallel universe. Has everyone gone home and left a lone intern writing comms for all the staff?

First off, the chair of Stonewall, Catherine Dickson, writing on LinkedIn: She urged lesbians to step up, be magnanimous, and take care of trans people. Her message – in “Lesbian Visibility Week” – was that lesbians have a duty to be self-sacrificing and accept men who claim to be lesbians into our ranks. “Every person should possess the autonomy to define themselves, without fear of judgment or discrimination. For all women – including trans women – this right to self-determination is not negotiable.” As if we had not just won a victory that negated those words. As if the ruling – establishing that for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, “trans women” are men – had simply not happened. Despicable.

How about the CEO of Stonewall, Simon Blake – was his reaction any better?

Not a bit of it. He refused to accept that the ruling establishes the law – that it has been the law since 2010, when the Equality Act was passed. First he wrote a rambling thing about the need for compassion and humanity. Although the Supreme Court case focused on the rights under the Equality Act of women, and of lesbians, Blake wrote: “at the heart of this judgment are, practically speaking, roughly 15,500 individuals with a Gender Recognition Certificate.” Really, Simon? Are those the only people affected? We thought it was about women cruelly incarcerated with male sex offenders, female athletes forced to compete in unfair and sometimes unsafe competitions against men, lesbians not being allowed to meet without men, female rape victims finding themselves sharing a refuge with men, and so on. You don’t see any of them, do you, Simon? His long statement did not contain a single mention of the lesbians who intervened. It’s hard to believe that Stonewall was once “the gay, lesbian, and bisexual charity.”

But things were soon to get even worse. After the Football Association fell into line with the ruling and announced women’s soccer would be for female players only, Stonewall issued a statement saying: “It’s important to remember that the ruling is not law as of yet and organisations should wait to see how statutory guidance is changed before making policy changes.” This is just nonsense. The ruling establishes the law --- right now, and retroactively. Women’s soccer is for women.

LGB Alliance has been cataloguing all the legal cases in which Stonewall’s false information about the law has played a role. Because the misrepresentation of the law has severely undermined the rights and interests of LGB people. Our friends at SexMatters decided Stonewall’s most recent misleading remarks called for action. They wrote an open letter to Stonewall, asking them to immediately take down this false statement – or they would report it to the Charity Commission. This warning was picked up by two daily newspapers – the Telegraph and the Times. Asked to comment on the letter from SexMatters, Stonewall – incredibly – repeated: “We are highlighting that organisations don’t need to take any action yet, or change their policies, because no new statutory guidance has been issued.”

We know Stonewall is strapped for cash and having to fire people. If they had employed anyone who understands the law, it’s a real shame they let them/zir go.

When people have been denying reality for many years, confronting them with the truth is not easy. Hold on, everyone: this is going to be a rough ride!

In the next episode in this saga, I’ll dissect the excruciatingly bad episode on the Supreme Court ruling of the podcast “Pod Save the UK” – because someone has to do it!