Man's Hour - Call Me Loretta

Update 595. #BeMorePorcupine.

I am just jumping in early here ( and pausing the Film Series) because BBC’s Woman’s Hour has finally interviewed a Terf ( in this case Helen Joyce of Sex Matters) about the Supreme Court judgment in the For Women Scotland case. I am not suggesting this is an occasion for celebration but rather an occasion for amazement that it has taken them so long to do this. They will be following up with interviews with Amnesty International ( who intervened to oppose For Women Scotland), Baroness Falkner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the LGB Alliance.

Of course, before they got to Helen, they had to start off with….a man. Last Monday they interviewed larping male barrister, Robin Moira White! I explained in the last update that I thought that there is a snowball in hell’s chance of the Supreme Court judgment getting to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). White is convinced that it will definitely get there. OK, I just Googled him. He definitely is a barrister - amazing!! He also said clearly that he would defy the ruling. What is his chambers, Old Square Chambers, going to do about one of their number calling on people to defy the law? What are the Bar Council going to do? The interviewer, Nuala McGovern did at least ask him about previously calling Sex Matters ‘evil’ and a ‘hate group’. This was immediately after Mr White saying he found it offensive to be called ‘he’ and coming out with some bonkers story about being in the queue at the supermarket check out. I know, I know…but he definitely is a barrister it appears. Anyway he stood by what he had called Sex Matters.

So today, Ms McGovern ( who identifies as an interviewer) was a whole lot more enthusiastic about eternally pushing back against Helen Joyce in her interview. I thought Helen did a good job in the circumstances. Helen said that a man insisting on using women’s facilities after this ruling would amount to sexual harassment. Hear, hear.

Below are the two interviews - let us know what you think.

Robin Moira White ( he/him)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECl_pba-n2U

Helen Joyce ( a woman)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Pgha1DJaw

In the meantime, unfortunately, further challenges will be required against those organisations who are failing to comply with or are openly defying the Supreme Court judgment. Here’s the first challenge for you - the National Education Union.

Jo Bartosch in Unherd ( The NEU has abandoned women — and the law 13 May) reports:

When a union that claims to “stand up for the future of education” campaigns to overturn the UK’s highest court, it stops being a professional body and starts becoming a parody of itself. And yet this is exactly what the National Education Union (NEU) has done.

Over the weekend, the NEU — the UK’s largest teaching union — voted to defy a Supreme Court ruling which clarified that it is lawful to exclude men, no matter how they identify, from women’s spaces. The decision was not put to the union’s half a million members, but to the 52 people on its National Executive Committee. The motion, which with wearisome predictability was entitled “Trans Rights Are Human Rights”, attacked the ruling and derided the EHRC’s interim guidance as “incoherent [and] unclear”.

Daniel Kebede, the NEU’s General Secretary, bemoaned that “a toxic climate has been created in recent years in which trans people, a small community, are treated as if they are a risk or threat to others.” He chose not to pass comment on the environment fostered within his union under his leadership: not a whisper for the teachers hounded out of classrooms, or dragged through tribunals, for the crime of asking basic questions about gender ideology.

And there have been many such cases. Take the recent example of an anonymous Nottinghamshire teacher who raised a safeguarding concern about an eight-year-old girl who was being affirmed in a cross-sex identity at school. She was accused of gross misconduct and sacked, and is now suing her employer.

Kebede’s position not only lets teachers down — it also runs counter to public opinion, with widespread support for the Supreme Court ruling across the political spectrum. Polls show 88% of Reform voters, 83% of Conservatives, 41% of Liberal Democrats, and 42% of Labour voters backing the decision.

Clearly, this stance is driving out women. Sue, a primary school teacher with more than 30 years’ experience, left the NEU in protest. “By ignoring the Supreme Court judgement,” she said, “the NEU is telling female staff to disregard their own need for privacy, safety, and dignity in order to let men into single-sex spaces such as women’s staff toilets.” Another secondary teacher also walked, expressing dismay that her “classroom was becoming tangled in ideology”.

Additionally, the NEU has pledged to distribute “myth-busting” literature, train schools in “trans-inclusive” toilet policies, and offer legal support to any male teacher who is told he can’t enter women’s bathrooms. They’re free to try — but it’s likely to end in yet another taxpayer-funded legal circus.

Meanwhile, in the real world — far from the NEU’s executive — classrooms are crumbling, behaviour is spiralling out of control, and burnout is baked into the job description. Teachers have spent years begging for clear, practical guidance on how to legally navigate the rising number of trans-identified students and staff. Now, the NEU’s overwhelmingly female membership has been let down by the very body charged with advocating for their rights at work.

The NEU isn’t standing up for the future of education — it’s preening in the mirror, nodding smugly while waging war on its own members. It’s time someone reminded union executives that teachers don’t need lectures from those to whom they pay their subs. They need safe workplaces and a union that puts safeguarding above student activist slogans.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-neu-has-abandoned-women-and-the-law/

Endpieces will be resumed in the next full update.

#BeMorePorcupine

#LeaveKidsAlone

#AdultHumanFemale

#LetWomenSpeak

#BeMoreSubversive

#KeepOnKeepingOn

#HoldTheLine

#KeepOnTerfing

#NeverSurrender

#NeverForget

#TruthWillTriumph

The next update will hopefully be on either Thursday or Friday, Terven.

If you like this update, please send to a friend. Until next time, Terven. This isn’t over yet! Please subscribe for free or paid or buy me a coffee, like and comment.