If I cannot inspire love.... Part 1
Update 587. Frankenstein Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
The waves of news and analysis are still breaking on the shore beneath Dusty Towers on the sun drenched beach where the women are still dancing, so this is a two parter, Terven with all the Supreme Court stories in this first part.
I am indebted to Simon Baddeley who, in response to ripx4nutmeg’s latest piece on the Glinner Update which focuses on the unhinged responses of the trans rights activists, wrote:
Mary Shelley's great novel 'Frankenstein' (1818) describes how Dr Frankenstein's grotesque, arrogantly and cruelly misconstrued creation tells the doctor: ''If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear."
So I had to go back to the 1931 original with Boris Karloff as ‘The Monster’ and pull this forward in the latest Film Series. Colin Clive is Dr Frankenstein and Dwight Frye is Fritz, the doctor’s assistant.
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
For Women Scotland Judgment - More Aftermath
Excellent round up of events from Sex Matters in their latest newsletter (02 May) as well as a useful timeline of changes by sports’ governing bodies.
The fallout from the Supreme Court judgment is continuing thick and fast this week, and Sex Matters has been busy!
Some organisations recognise that they need to change their practices, and others resist. The EHRC put out a very clear interim update on the practical implications of the judgment.
On Tuesday, I joined For Women Scotland’s Susan Smith, the EHRC’s Akua Reindorf and Professor Alice Sullivan to brief a cross-party meeting of MPs and peers organised by Labour Women’s Declaration, Conservatives for Women and Liberal Voice for Women, chaired by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi.
This week, first the Scottish FA, then the Football Association, England Netball and the England and Wales Cricket Board all announced that they were reserving the women’s category for women. As Fiona McAnena said: “This is welcome but long overdue… Every other sporting body now needs to re-establish a genuine women’s category, and this shameful period in history will finally be brought to an end.”
In The Telegraph, Oliver Brown said that the FA should not regard the issue as complex. “What exactly is complex about banning males – forget the label ‘biological males’ in this instance, given the Supreme Court’s clarity that there is no other kind – from competing against females in a contact sport? The only reason it was ever presented as some fiendish dilemma is because the FA, in common with many supine governing bodies, was more interested in pandering to Stonewall lobbyists and militant trans activists than in defending the truth.”
He highlighted the campaigners who have weathered “unspeakable abuse from trans militants and condescending claptrap from centrist dads with no skin in the game” and said they are owed a grovelling apology by sport’s cowardly administrators. The spread in the paper features our own Fiona McAnena and Emma Hilton as well as Nic Willliams from Fair Play For Women and Olympians Mara Yamauchi and Sharron Davies.
The implications of the judgment are not just for sports and single-sex services. Together with Transgender Trend, LGB Alliance and Genspect we have written to the CEO of NHS England and the Secretary of State for Health.
After the Supreme Court judgment, the basis for the planned medical trial of puberty blockers should be reconsidered, and stopped on ethical grounds: no promise can be made that medical treatment will enable a person to use opposite-sex facilities. The use of these drugs on children too young to understand this is ethically untenable.
I also wrote to Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, after it refused to tell its members to act. It said that “the UK Government will need to confirm what the ruling of the UK Supreme Court on the updated interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 means for health and care providers and the use of their facilities”. This issue was raised in Parliament by Baroness Jenkin, who pointed to our letter.
On Thursday night Sex Matters’ chair of trustees, Naomi Cunningham, and our barrister in the Supreme Court, Ben Cooper KC, spoke on a legal panel at a sold-out event at the London School of Economics law school (there were no protests; there will be video).
I presented Ben Cooper with a framed quote from paragraph 35 of the judgment: “We are particularly grateful to Ben Cooper KC for his written and oral submissions on behalf of Sex Matters, Page 12 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.”
On the panel, Naomi said that the judgment both changes very little, and changes everything. It makes clear that self-ID was never the law, and that those 8,000 or so trans people with a GRC should be treated in the same way as those without: with ordinary respect and without discrimination, expected to obey normal rules like everyone else and without needing to pretend that they have changed sex.
EHRC commissioner Akua Reindorf said organisations must act now. The law is clear and there is no reason for employers or service providers to delay in ensuring that they comply with it.
Sarah Vine KC talked about how the judgment influences criminal law, in particular the notion that gender-identity “conversion therapy” could be criminalised and the need to be clear about sexual consent, which is clearly an area where sex matters, but where the CPS has become confused over sex and gender in relation to “sex by deception”.
Both Ben and Akua made clear that single-sex services must operate based on biological sex.
Stonewall is trying to cause confusion about the judgment, claiming that it is not the law and that duty-bearers should wait for more statutory guidance.
I have written to Simon Blake at Stonewall saying that Stonewall is acting irresponsibly and in direct contravention of its charitable objects. It should not be encouraging employers, service providers, sports governing bodies or individuals to ignore or flout the law. If it does not retract the statement we will be complaining to the Charity Commission.
In among all this action we also found time for a (long-planned) strategy weekend with the Sex Matters board, and an all-day staff meeting. We are focused on “winning the win” – making sure that the Supreme Court judgment is understood and fully implemented, and that it is used not only to protect everyone’s rights, but also to reclaim safeguarding, protect children from harm, challenge the abuses done in the name of gender medicine and sort out data accuracy.
The board and senior leadership team talk strategy
Sex Matters team lunch!
Oh, and the Data Bill is back in the House of Commons next week!
Sports timeline
Take a look at how sports associations have been changing their policies on male inclusion in women’s sport.
EDI Jester looks at giant pensions group Phoenix cutting ties with a trans group called Global Butterflies.
Mr Menno bravely went to a Socialist Workers Party talk against the judgment (and then went to the pub with them afterwards). Talk about taking one for the team!! 😂
Feminist Legal Clinic report on possibly the only sane person at the United Nations, Reem Alsalem welcoming the judgment:
Special Rapporteur welcomes landmark UK judgment on sex-based protections (03 May)
GENEVA – The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, welcomed the landmark judgment by the UK Supreme Court on 16 April 2025 in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers.
In its judgment, the Court determined that, for the purposes of the UK’s Equality Act 2010, ‘sex’ is binary, and must be understood as bearing its ordinary meaning as biological sex and that the terms ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are to be understood as referring to biological females and males respectively, Alsalem said.
The Court also ruled that the Scottish Government is acting unlawfully by treating men who identify as women and who hold a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) as women for the purposes of a law aimed at improving the inclusion of women on public boards, the expert noted.
“The judgment does not change the law but brings much-needed clarity, it also represents the triumph of reason and science in policy making and a return to basic truth and common sense,” Alsalem said.
“Most importantly, it vindicates thousands of defenders of women’s human rights, including lesbians, and their allies who have been vilified and attacked for asserting the biological reality of sex, the material definitions of ‘woman” and ‘female’, and the centrality of all these issues to their human rights and lived experience,” she said.
Alsalem called on all public and private institutions, including employers, healthcare providers, such as the National Health Service and other institutions, such as prisons, to uphold the ruling. She further urged regulators to provide necessary support and guidance to all segments of society to increase understanding of the implications of the ruling and the rights and responsibilities arising from it.
She expressed hope that other countries facing similar tensions between rights and/or claims based on sex and gender identity will reflect on the Court’s reasoning and draw useful parallels for their own legal and policy contexts.
Source: Special Rapporteur welcomes landmark UK judgment on sex-based protections | OHCHR
Barry Wall in his persona as Warrior Teacher takes from the unhinged reaction of the activists that this is clearly a cult. He traces the origins back to academia.
Our friend Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman fun with the ramblings of a meltdown transmaiden.
On how JK Rowling had a drink and a cigar "like Andrew Tate"
An opinion-piece writer goes full transmaiden-mad at terfs and JK Rowling.
May 02, 2025
Okay, buckle up for one of the most ludicrous, but weirdly entertaining, opinion pieces from NZ about mean feminists – i.e. terfs. We’ve produced a few of these kind of opinion pieces, but this is a real beauty. After reading it, you’ll know for sure that terfs will win this fight to take back women’s rights. Transmaidens, like writer, Kylie, have been trotting out the same dross for years, and it’s looking decidedly past its heyday. They have nothing else, though - dross was the only thing they ever had in their toolkit, and its lost its edge. True, it’s good for a laugh now, but that’s on borrowed time, too.
Then after reading it, go and have a drink and a cigar like JK Rowling - or should I say “like Andrew Tate”. In a stretch, which must have hurt, Kylie Nixon likens the picture of JK celebrating the UK Supreme Court ruling with a whiskey and cigar to Andrew Tate. I expect it’s the ugliest comparison Kylie can think of by which to punish JK, and by extension all the bad feminists who are in league with her, for being pleased that sex has now been clarified as being biological.
I won’t ruin too much of your reading pleasure, but look out for how Kylie bizarrely misunderstands the UK Supreme Court ruling as having defined womanhood in terms of biology. I’m pretty sure the UK Supreme Court ruling didn’t mention womanhood once, but what’s a bit of ‘literary license’ amongst friends. She uses her misinterpretation of the ruling to tell us that feminists railed for years against womanhood being defined by biology, and has ”never let a man define what being a woman means to me”. [ Dusty - Actually it was three men and two women doing the defining, Kylie 😃] But, also somehow seems to believe that we need to include men in ‘womanhood’ to show us how not to be defined. Defining women by their biology and calling us “people with uteruses” is okay, though, when we don’t want to upset those men in womanhood.
The full piece is here:
Milli Hill on her substack, What About Women also has fun with some of the hysterical reactions.
I love the Jolyon Maugham action man!
The Word is Woman #68
The boundaries are reinforced; the tantrums continue
May 02, 2025
Here at The Word is Woman it feels like something has shifted. For 67 issues of this newsletter, which began on August 24th 2023, I have painstakingly documented example after example of the erasure of women from language and life, and most weeks, I’ve found and been sent far too many examples to include.
Since the Supreme Court judgement much has changed. Sure, there are still a few examples knocking around out there, but most of them seem to be coming from outside the UK, here’s a few examples…
I did find this from UK based Abuela Doulas - on the very serious subject of maternity cuts, but containing this slide which is somewhat breathtaking…
But overall, in the UK in particular, organisations have been too busy vying for the next round of my newly launched Hodge Awards, kindly sponsored by Jolyon himself.
There are so many of the ‘We stand with the Menfolk’ posts doing the rounds that I could never include them all, but here’s a few peaches to give you a flavour…
How do you like your coffee?
If you drink too much of it at the Tyneside venue of Hive Coffee Company, you’ll be pleased to know that their toilet facilities are “not governed by the ideology of the far right”.
Dusty - I also really enjoyed the Sharron Davies quote:
The full piece is here:
https://millihill.substack.com/p/the-word-is-woman-68
Nutmeg on the Glinner Update is also having fun reporting on the backfiring of the Protect The Dolls campaign and other matters - spot Frankenstein in a skirt!
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/nutmegs-week-b98
Sarah Phillimore on her substack raises some outstanding problems following the judgment which I will be pondering on further and hope to respond on tomorrow to Sarah in the comments to her piece.
Endpieces
I am splitting the endpieces between the two parts.
From Tenaciously
#BeMorePorcupine
#EndGenderAffirmingCare
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#FightForFreeSpeech
#NoMenInWomensSport
#WitchesRUs
#NHSTheGameIsUp
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
I love Sharron Davies even more now after seeing her calling out the lack of concern for women and girls in sport in her recent interviews.
Great two parter, thanks Dusty