Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Clapping like seals

    Kathleen Stock at UnHerd on How women won the gender wars:

    For much of the past 10 years, transactivist organisations have been directing an immersive theatrical performance across the UK, with participation virtually mandatory. Women have been forced into supporting actress roles, propping up the leading lady fantasies of especially demanding and sometimes dangerous men. And the progressive establishment has mostly nodded along, clapping like seals. But yesterday the Supreme Court brought the final curtain down, rejecting the arguments of Scottish government ministers that possession of a certificate can change someone’s sex. Eschewing the amateur dramatics to which we have all become accustomed, judges went with a famous line of Scots poetry instead: a man’s a man for a’ that.

    Thanks to the tenacity of grassroots organisation For Women Scotland in fighting several cases through the courts, judges at the highest level have now clarified that a man — with or without a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) — does not belong in any woman-only prison, hospital ward, dormitory, rape crisis service, or changing room. If trans-identified, he is rightly shielded from discrimination and harassment under the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” but not those of “female” or “lesbian”. This classification also means that, if he’s a medical professional, he is not allowed to provide intimate care to unwilling women on the spurious grounds that he, too, is female. As a police or prison officer, he may not carry out strip searches of his “fellow women” either. His presence in the upper echelons of a workplace does not count towards feminist empowerment there. His athletic personal bests can no longer break female records, nor his football and rugby tackles break female bones….

    A particularly pleasing vindication for her, I imagine, after the abuse she suffered at Sussex University for her support for the idea that, yes, sex matters. She was right, of course.

  • The reluctance by Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state

    That strange letter to the Times on Monday from a bunch of retired UK ambassadors to the Arab world about the need to recognise the state of Palestine (and Israel's supposed use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza) has prompted a response from a considerable number of Lords:

    Sir, A two-state solution has been desirable for decades. Proposals for partition into two states in the 1938 Peel report have been offered in several guises many times since then but they have always been thwarted, largely because of a reluctance by Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. The call (letter, Apr 14) for the UK to recognise Palestine would have to contend not only with that continuing reluctance: the lack of an obvious legitimate and functioning government that commands the support of its population and the murderous split between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority would make it hard to imagine how a Palestinian state could function.

    The failure to agree to where its borders might lie is a serious concern. While a recognisable state may be highly desirable there is too much that should be settled before that can be achieved practically. This says nothing of the often repeated intention of Hamas to destroy Israel.

    It's all very British – Lords responding to ex-ambassadors – but at least this bunch of upper-crusties know what they're talking about.

  • Sanity is restored

    A good editorial in the Times:

    After years of argument, ideological extremism and an outbreak of collective insanity across the public sector and in corporate boardrooms, the Supreme Court has finally proclaimed that a woman is an adult human female, and references to “sex” and “women” in the Equality Act refer to biological sex and biological women. The judgment, which the loudest and most unpleasant voices in this long-running campaign of misinformation against British feminists insisted would never come, was unanimous. All five justices agreed what millions of people know instinctively to be true: that biological sex, not the expression of a subjective gender identity, is the only meaningful qualification to womanhood.

    Such an elementary truth should never have been contested before the highest court. That it was — in a bitter dispute between the self-styled progressives of Scotland’s nationalist government and the women who dared to defy them — is testament to a political and cultural establishment that lost touch with reality. It was always absurd that the SNP, much of the Labour Party, prominent Conservatives and countless public bodies and universities insisted that men were able to simply speak themselves into female-only spaces, some of which women fought for years to establish….

    Hopefully, the ruling will bring an end to this bizarre culture war. Now is not the time for triumphalism or gloating but consensus around two truths: that trans people have the right to live their lives in dignity and that women’s rights are sacrosanct also. To that end ministers must now amend the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 which only perpetuates the misconception that a piece of paper can alter the facts of life. Public institutions and universities must now be held to account if they ignore the law. Women should never have had to fight this battle in defence of scientific truth. But at least it is now won. Sanity is restored.

    The battle's not over, of course. Trans ideologues, notably the men claiming to be women, have been and will continue to be notably aggressive in their demands. At bottom, after all, this has always been an angry men's movement fuelled by misogyny. They're not about to shut up just yet.

  • A man speaks

    It's lucky for women that they have men like Owen Jones to tell them what they really should have been doing.

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  • Making people pretend that a man is a woman

    In New Hampshire, debating NH SB268 – "Permitting classification of individuals based on biological sex under certain limited circumstances". 

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  • Streets of London

    London street photography from Matt Stuart – collected together in his new book from Bluecoat Press, All That Life Can Afford:

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    [Photos © Matt Stuart]

  • Sex is real

    And Janice Turner:

    The question that has made politicians sputter or, in the case of Nicola Sturgeon, implode their careers, is answered. Campaigners held their collective breath for legal caveats, but none came: the ruling was categorical and clear.

    The concept of woman does not include male persons who, with a bit of admin and £6, have acquired a gender recognition certificate (GRC). Or as a placard outside put it more bluntly: “Women are born, not some bloke with a form.”

    Moreover, self-ID — the notion that a person has a right to access changing rooms or sports based upon nebulous inner gender — is utterly finished. As is the dishonest, deliberate muddying of legal waters by LGBT groups who have insisted gender and sex can be used interchangeably. The law has upheld the gender-critical, or rather, common sense position: sex is real.

    Services and protections that generations of women battled to create — from rape trauma support groups to female sports — no longer have to worry about being sued by trans-identifying men. Lord Hodge gave a special mention to lesbians “who have historically suffered marginalisation” and whose right to gather for social or romantic reasons was under serious threat from those who believe lesbians can have penises….

    This judgment must be read by every member of the Labour government (who should be grateful they will not now be called upon to clarify the Equality Act, as many feared). It should be sent to civil servants, sports bodies, NHS trusts and to every HR department in the land. The capture of our national institutions by this misogynist ideology is not over, but the end is in sight, thanks to the bravery and determination of the women who wouldn’t wheesht.

  • Labour Women’s Declaration

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  • For Women Scotland victory

    Well there we go:

    "The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex."

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  • “She smells really bad”

    Rude, certainly, and not at all the sort of behaviour one expects from our charming and fragrant lady tennis players….but funny nonetheless:

    Harriet Dart asked an umpire to tell her French opponent to wear deodorant after claiming “she smells really bad” during a heavy defeat in Rouen.

    In comments picked up by court-side microphones, the Briton attacked Lois Boisson’s personal hygiene during an ill-tempered 6-0, 6-3 humbling for Dart. The unkind public comments leave her potentially at risk of action for unsporting behaviour from the WTA.

    Dart had addressed the umpire as she got to her feet shortly after Boisson walked past her during the second set of her first-round encounter in the Rouen Open. “Can you tell her to wear deodorant,” Dart asked. With the umpire seemingly confused, she then seemed to repeat the question, “Because the smell,” Dart said. “Can you tell her to wear deodorant? She smells really bad.”

    Bravely reviving that favourite old theme in British comedy about the French and their personal hygiene – the Monty Python Montgolfier brothers, for instance.