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Ever since Stonewall, formerly known as a gay rights organisation, decided to focus on trans rights at the expense of all others, anyone articulating a reasonable objection to this change of direction has been subject to abuse, threats, and even loss of livelihood. The charity’s activists have effectively forced big corporations, public bodies and independent employers to write policies on diversity and inclusion which put trans ideology above all else.
But the barrister and lesbian Allison Bailey may have put a stop to this. Yesterday’s ruling in her case Bailey v Stonewall and Garden Court Chambers found that she had been victimised and discriminated against by her employer for expressing gender critical beliefs. Such was the oppressiveness of Garden Court’s actions against her, she was awarded aggravated damages: £22,000. These are only granted where a discriminator’s actions are particularly unnecessary, high-handed or oppressive.
Bailey also sued Stonewall for inducing, instructing or causing some of GCC’s actions — she had accused the charity of “trans-extremism” — but she didn’t win that aspect of the case. As a result, Stonewall and its supporters, including Owen Jones and Pink News, are celebrating. In their blinkered view, she has lost. However, this is to disregard the consequences of interrogating the extreme ideology and methods perpetuated by Stonewall. Bailey’s tribunal has tracked the ideological trajectory of what was once the foremost activist for gay rights, and put the absurdity of its activism under the spotlight.
Back in 2018, Bailey complained to her chambers when they signed up to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions Programme (DCP), which gives training and guidance on how to be “inclusive employers”. At the height of its power, more than 950 organisations were signed up to what Bailey and many others have called the “protection racket“. But she, along with many other lesbians and gay men, objected to the charity’s stance on trans issues, which included its uncritical promotion of self-ID. Such was Bailey’s disenchantment, she helped set up the LGB alliance which advocated for the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. This, in turn, was labelled a “hate group” by trans activists.
There can be no doubt that Stonewall, in its aggressive and uncompromising support for extreme transgender ideology and a refusal to discuss or debate alternative viewpoints, helped fuelled the fire already raging against Bailey for her gender critical views and support for the LGB Alliance. In 2019, Kirrin Medcalf, Stonewall’s Head of Trans Inclusion, emailed the heads of GCC accusing Bailey of “making and retweeting multiple transphobic statements online”. Examples included “liking and writing posts referring to trans women as men”, and “writing tweets calling for trans people to lose their current legal rights”. The latter was because Bailey was protesting the fact that male-bodied sex offenders were being placed in women’s prisons.
According to Medcalf, “her actions… threatened the positive relationship that Stonewall and GCC have built with the trans community”. He accused Bailey of making trans people feel “unsafe” if they were to even catch a glimpse of her while visiting GCC. Medcalf stated: “For Garden Court Chambers to continue associating with a barrister who is actively campaigning for a reduction in trans rights and equality, while also specifically targeting members of our staff with transphobic views on a public platform, puts us in a difficult position with yourselves: the safety of our staff and community will always be Stonewall’s first priority. I trust that you will do what is right and stand in solidarity with trans people.”
Forthwith, any Stonewall-associated institution or other employer that heeds Stonewall’s advice with regard to disciplining or firing an employee who expresses disagreement with Stonewall’s trans directives or policies, is on notice.
Such employer is now at risk of defending a hideously expensive employment claim if it turns out the disciplined or dismissed employee’s opinions were legally protected.
Meanwhile, Stonewall in this case was not held to account, but skipped merrily away, leaving the employer, Garden Court Chambers, holding the bag. Although claimant Allison Bailey achieved no monetary satisfaction against Stonewall in this case, she has exposed Stonewall’s abhorrent behind-the-scenes practices to the light of day—a victory indeed.
Except the Court explicitly rejected the argument that GC’s report was in any way based on Stonewall’s advice.
The report, sure. The Stonewall diversity champion obsession is explicitly referred to throughout, however, and is stated to have motivated multiple respondents in their behaviour towards the claimant.
I’m going to have to read the judgment to find out why Stonewall’s incitement of the chambers’ course of conduct found to be tortious, wasn’t itself found to be tortious. With hindsight, perhaps a separate lawsuit against Stonewall brought under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997 might have got further. The limitation period is 6 years for harassment, so plenty of time for that Plan B.
Little by little some sanity is leaking back in. But people like Alison Bailey are having to fight tooth and nail for it.
Not Sanity, people like Miss Bailey are “fighting” only for their own validity.
The notion that our knowledge of sexual dimorphism is, in law, now a ‘gender critical belief’ is in itself bizarre.
Transgender expression must have legal boundaries, put in place to protect the known, proven, obvious sexual vulnerability of females to males. That is what is fundamentally at stake. That is what Alison fought for and should have won on all counts.
And thank you Julie Bindle for excellent article and account of the case and it’s result.
Sadly the positives of gender fluidity and difference which we all celebrate and enjoy are being ruined by the duplicity, and greed of Stonewall.
Stonewall ran out of road as a campaigning organisation when they got everything they wanted for same sex relationships. Looking around for something else to do, they locked on to the trans issue and pursued it with blinkered inhumane ferocity.
“This tribunal does not have to adjudicate on whether it is correct to say that the difference between men and women is about biology (sex) or social role (gender). The decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Forstater v CGD Europe Ltd (2022) ICR 525 makes that clear. Both the belief that women are defined by sex, and the belief that gender is a matter of self- identity, are protected as beliefs. Toleration of difference is an essential characteristic of an open, pluralist society.”
This is the basis upon which the Tribunal proceeded. As you say, it put the factual basis of basic sexual dimorphism on an equality with the rather fantastical idea that someone can change sex either by undergoing medical interventions to modify the body or more simply to declare you have changed sex as a belief that is “protected”. At present according to the tribunal about 5,000 have certificates establishing their change of sex under the present law. The law does not currently support self ID.
The judgement did nothing to dent that position but was the basis of it. It did nothing to dent Stonewall it merely affirmed the Forstater case that expressing what is quaintly called “gender critical beliefs” should not be the basis for harassment by an “employer” or in this case Chambers – who don’t, of course, employ the barristers that are members.
It does nothing to roll back Stonewall or the ideology they promote. Because Juli Bindel is not a lawyer she overstates the significance of the case.
The ideologues in this case were shown clearly to be gender-critical and transgender-denying. As has been pretty much entirely in recent legal judgements and public polling, the people of the UK are rapidly coming to see transgender as normal and entirely harmless. The likes of Ms Bindel, her allies and the trans-hating commenters here are gradually coming to be seen like 1970s homophobes claiming that all gays are dangerous to children.
People may criticise whatever they like with no permission needed from anyone. And women’s worry about men wanting to be women & crashing women’s privacy whilst still keeping their male tackle attached is perfectly legitimate. So it’s not about ‘hate’ – an over-used word deployed these days in order to claim victimhood – it’s about about women demanding that their rights be upheld. Trans rights do not trump women’s rights.
… and the vulnerability of males to females, I suggest …
Stop Gender Fraud!
https://johnallmanuk.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/gra/
Hi John, I’d suggest your WordPress article describes the vulnerability of males to males…
Unfortunately. I don’t think that this will be the end of Stonewall’s actions; all they took away from this was that they won the case against them because Ms Bailey lost the point about their being trans-extremists. I suppose there may be some hope that GCC and other employers will think twice about treating employees so badly, but even on this I have my doubts, because for some (unknown) reason they are scared of Stonewall.
I was interested in the comment:
if the relationship with Stonewall were to become fractious it would be difficult for chambers to take on potentially lucrative trans rights cases
I would have thought that, down the road, there would be potentially lucrative de-transitioning cases to be had.
Indeed there probably will be lucrative de-transitioning cases to be had. somehow however, I doubt if the Garden Court Chambers, referred to be another commenter as being exposed as a snake pit of maladministration, management chaos and vitriolic feuds and moreover seemingly staffed by trans activists will be taking on such cases.
There is a good (more balanced?) article in todays Times about this case.
What I found interesting was how the chambers was exposed as a snake pit of maladministration, management chaos and vitriolic feuds.
It seems to be a chambers staffed by grievance lawyers fitting all the various victim categories (bar poverty of course).
The left always eats itself?
There were a lot of embarrassing admissions in the judgment, my favourite was the chambers’ entire computer system collapsing for weeks. This whole thing was a mere sideshow when that was going on.
All this trans, LGBTQ alphabet soup fights are quite reminiscent of French and Russian revolutions (and Life of Brian movie).
Not involving guillotine or bullets so far…
It is interesting and revealing to see that trans-haters are also contemptuous of the Left.
So the fact that a woman is a woman by virtue of her biology is only justified because it is a ‘belief’ ‘protected’ under law… WTF
6 weeks trial and some compensation for two tweets, pure madness.
Completely agree that this claim was madness. Costs no doubt into 7 figures for all the parties and a pittance of damages for the sake of chambers’ crime of… asking the claimant to delete two tweets (and then taking no action when she did not in fact do this). Truly a matter in which the lawyers are the only winners. I think crowdfunders have a lot to answer for – where there is a large warchest funded by others, there is no incentive for a claimant to take a realistic approach.
The legal precedent set was well worth the money, not to mention the shot across the bow of any organisation that buys into the Stonewall protection racket
What legal precedent do you think was set? It had already been established that the belief that trans women are not women is a protected belief for the purposes of the Equality Act. This judgment applied that precedent, it did not establish any new law (and I expect that if the parties had considered that there was any breaking of new legal ground they would have applied to have it go straight up to the High Court, given that ET judgments are of low value in terms of precedence). Also, there was no criticism at all of GCC for signing up to the Stonewall scheme, and Stonewall were found not to have controlled or directed GCC’s actions, so I don’t see that there was any shot across the bow.
The case confirmed Forstater. That is where it sets precedent, subject to any appeal. If the activists (i.e. Michelle) in the chambers hadn’t linked the Stonewall scheme membership to the issue, none of this would have happened, the case would never have been brought and GCC wouldn’t have been brought into disrepute. Stonewall provided the petrol and the barristers torched themselves with it. Other firms are likely to take notice.
I seem to recall the US making rather a fuss about one small black girl going to school.
Sometimes the principle is what matters and the fact that it takes place in the public eye, but if you think it is of no important then relax. There’s nothing to worry about. Those of us who contributed to the costs are content
very well put. For all the background noise, chatter, exclamations of disbelief and the tittle tattle of the upper Tooting tea tables over two tiny tweets, there was an important principle at large. Unless, of course, one follows Tommy Cooper’s approach ‘Its not the principle, its the money’.
Indeed. The protection of transgender people from being discriminated against, misgendered and otherwise having to suffer in daily lives from anti-trans ideologues is important in law and has been shown to be such.
Believing you are a woman is ideology. Being a woman is biology. The notion of ‘anti-trans ideology’ is a nonsense.
I’m not sure why my response to this comment was deleted (EDIT: my previous comment is now back, someone must have flagged it but it has been reinstated). But yes, a claim where legal costs (for all three sides together) must exceed a million, for the sake of a £22k judgment for ‘injury to feelings’, is the definition of madness, particularly where the £22k will be dwarfed by the claimant’s own irrecoverable costs (over six figures no doubt) and the (again, six figure) costs orders she that Stonewall and (possibly, on the basis that it succeeded on the fact-heavy parts of the claim) GC will obtain against her. And particularly where – at the end of the day – the part of the complaint that was upheld was about *being asked to delete two tweets*, *which she did not in fact delete*. It all just seems completely and grossly disproportionate.
I really feel that crowdfunded lawyers do get the proverbial dollar signs in their eyes when they see a popular campaign like this one. AB’s factual case on loss of earnings seems to have been completely hopeless as does the agency-based case against Stonewall. The fact that there is no suggestion that the loss against Stonewall will be appealed (even though there are purely legal findings on this issue which are in principle suitable for appeal) suggests AB’s team is aware that they never had a strong case against Stonewall, even though it was the suing of Stonewall which they relied on to crowdsource funds. Even if you passionately agree with AB’s politics, that doesn’t make it a good idea to bring a weak case to court, particularly when this eats up weeks of court time and hundreds of thousands of pounds of costs.
Sorry to talk the wind out of your sails, but the very recent news that the Tavistock Center is to be closed down and the likelihood that Susie Green’s ‘Mermaids’ organization will be subjected to some very rigorous scrutiny suggests there will be increasing pushback against the insane beliefs that trans rights activists have been pushing over the last few years.
In addition, I think we’ll very soon be seeing even more organizations and corporations that originally jumped onto the bandwagon and stupidly allowed Stonewall to infiltrate them and sell them their ‘Diversity Champions’ program to opt out of the scheme.
You miss my point. I have no issue with political campaigning on either side of the trans debate. What I have an issue with is crowdfunding being used to bring weak legal cases to court for political reasons.
For one thing, I think it is fundamentally wrong for the law to be used as a political tool in this way. If you have a claim, fair enough, but don’t seek to use that claim to punish someone for their politics.
For another thing trying to do politics through legal cases like this generally just doesn’t work – the courts are not stupid and even if the people funding a claim hope that they are going to get some kind of judgment denouncing (for example) “the insane beliefs of trans rights activists”, this never happens, and the courts limit themselves to the narrow legal issues that bear upon the actual claim that is being brought.
The Tribunal was at pains in this judgment to make clear it was not giving a view on who was right between Stonewall and AB, the point it was making was that a plurality of views on this issue are protected. In other words, this case would have been decided the same if AB had claimed she was discriminated against at work for having PRO-trans views. It was not in any way an endorsement of either pro- or anti-trans ideology.
It is a pity that your realistic observations based on an understanding of the functioning of Tribunals that other commentators lack seem to have attracted numerous negative votes rather than appreciation for bringing forward matters others might not be aware of.
Of course it is good that the Tribunal found in favour of Alison on the limited areas that they did but it certainly provided no preceded that had not already been established. The claims against Stonewall wholly failed and will be immensely expensive. I don’t know if adequate security for costs was provided but if not Alison may need to be on the fundraising trail again depending on the outcome of the costs hearing.
Since when is it a political statement to claim that a man is a man and a woman is a woman and no amount of wishful thinking can change that?
The FINA decision on female swimmers is another recent straw in the wind.
When will the costs decision be handed down?
And what is Stonewall’s end game? What does it aspire to achieve – to create the same mental health issues as the officers of Stonewall suffer from in a generation of young children? because denying basic factual biology is definitely a mental health issue on a par with the notion that the earth is flat.
There is a broad but vital point here which, I do not feel, is fully appreciated – that a set of barristers at law, individually and collectively, allows an outside agency to influence the way barristers must work ie the ‘cab rank’ rule and the duty to fearlessly act in the interests of the/a client. It is clear from this case that Stonewall is very close to GCC and, indeed, issued a vielled threat to GCC if the chambers did not implement Stonewall’s views. How else can the Kirrin Metcalf comment be read? This is a matter for the Bar Council who no doubt are concerned as to the proper independence of barristers.
good point
I find the trans and self ID situation very confusing. Although I try to understand from all sides, it’s hard to empathise with those who are so far out of my psychological perspective. However, there are some clear rights that should be handed to them and these all seem to be upheld in the human rights act. I applaud those who are pushing to give people more freedom of choice over how they identify, but giving training to people who have transitioned from a male to a female on how to convince gay females that it would be a lesbian encounter seems a step too far. It seems like it would manipulate those who are as confused as I am about what is right and wrong about whether we are being discriminatory or whether we are just exercising our freedom of choice over our sexual preferences.
I shall keep reading books and articles about it, but I fear that I will never catch up!
The stupid thing is that there are equal rights of self-expression and protection from discrimination in law already. What is happening now is simply a denial of the scientific truth and the bullying and terrorisation of anyone that disagrees with their dangerous agenda.
I’m a classical English/British Liberal. People have a right to live how they want to live. However, when those that chose to impose, by intimation, their way of living on others and violate the rights of others to enforce their view of the world… A line is crossed. And Stonewall and the Trans Activist Lobby have stepped WELL over the line. And that is THE Bottom Line. It’s that simple.
There’s a very real and important sense in which your “freedom of choice over your sexual preferences” cannot be discriminatory against others. To question your freedom of choice is to discriminate against yourself, at your very core!
That, of course, is different to choosing to exercise that freedom of choice, especially where it might cause harm to others, which of course includes doing so against their will. Anyone, of whatever biological sex or gender who seeks to do that is inherently predatory and should be subject to the full force of the law.
It therefore follows that anyone seeking to proselytise to lesbians on behalf of trans women should be subject to legal proceedings to stop them from doing so. Why this isn’t happening, i don’t know.
“it’s hard to empathise with those who are so far out of my psychological perspective” is at least honest, and is perhaps at the heart of why some people such as Ms Bindel hate transgender people. It is partly understandable but is far too akin to the hatred and refusal to empathise directed at gay people in the UK of the past and in many countries such as Russia or Ghana. The important thing is to be willing to learn.
Well that is of course true. And it is incumbent upon trans ideologues to learn about women’s feelings too. Surely you would agree with that?
Bailey was horrified by being called horrible names by the horrible-name people? Welcome to the world created by the horrible-name people.
Yep – the playbook wasn’t written by Stonewall.
Good article, thanks.
I’m going to have to pour myself a very large whisky after reading this. On reflection, I think a Russian missile attack on London is long overdue and I would welcome it.
I keep thinking the same thing – a war would refocus folks on things that really matter #decadence.
Our society is become so greedy, grasping, lascivious, corrupt, perverted and narcissistic that its destruction is inevitable, nay desirable. “Come friendly bombs…”
Our society is no more or less of any of those things than it’s always been, unless human nature has changed significantly during recorded history. What we now have, of course, is much more media to spotlight those traits. But don’t be fooled into thinking things are “getting worse” – they’re not.
I would like to agree with you, but I do not.
Humans are pretty much the same – it’s just the ‘stuff’ that’s changed. I mean if only the suffragettes had known a century ago that in order gain the vote all they had to do was self ID as men! Who knew?
A fascinating judgment that is well worth reading in full, albeit it’s a beefy 130 pages or so. The most interesting part I believe was just how obvious the case has made it that the trans nonsense is being pushed by a tiny handful of activists. Even in a major lefty human rights set like GCC barely a handful out of dozens of barristers gave a monkey’s about the whole dispute. Only two barristers criticised the claimant openly. The clerks, most of whom were witnesses, spent their time discussing the footie and seemed to see all of this the same way your average ‘normie’would – two groups of elite liberals fighting while 98% of people sit quietly in bemusement on the sidelines. This is a major blow for organisations that pin their colours to the EDI bandwagon.
I call them – DIE – for that is surely what will happen – when the next thing comes along – maybe DIET (Diversity Inclusion Equity To be arranged)
It’s very frustrating when journalists report on a legal case without even bothering to read the judgment. AB wasn’t awarded £22k of aggravated damages against GC – she was awarded £22k of damages of which £2k were aggravated damages. As well as losing against Stonewall, she also didn’t ‘win’ her whole claim against GC – she lost on 3 of the 5 detriments she tried to establish (and these constituted the majority of her factual case), and won on 2. She also lost on the issues that she was discriminated against on the basis of gender and sexual orientation, though she won on the basis that she was discriminated against on the basis of her protected philosophical belief that trans women are not women. She claimed £90k of damages and got £22k. It was by no means a stonker of a victory. This is sure to be reflected in the costs arguments.
It is also really hard to read this judgment as in any sense a victory against Stonewall – not least because Stonewall won. The judgment makes it perfectly clear chambers was entitled to adopt Stonewall’s philosophy and distance itself from AB’s views. If GC had only gone so far as to say that AB’s views were her own and not chambers’ there would have been no issue. The discrimination was in (1) announcing that AB was being investigated for her tweets (having an investigation in response to the complaint was not in itself discriminatory) and (2) the conclusion that 2 of her tweets breached BSB standards. The second of these conclusions to me seems eminently open to appeal though the first one seems more reasonable.
Yes, the author is a journalist and campaigner (not necessarily in that order) and not a lawyer so she will misunderstand much of the detail.
For those interested here is a link to the actual judgement:
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Bailey-judgment.pdf
It is a fascinating read if anyone has the time and throws a light on all sorts or corners. The chambers seem to have signed up to Stonewall in the hope of getting a flood of cases which never materialised. The whole thing seems to have become a very expensive circus.
The document bundle for the tribunal swelled to over 6,675 pages with further supplements, additions, subtractions and redactions argued over. Over 250 observers were given various limited access to the documentation, Twitter comment seemed to swell and decisions were made as to how to deal with a witness who required someone to assist him with the documents together with his mother and support dog. The costs must certainly be staggering for a fairly technical victory on part of the claim against the Chambers.
I was struck by how little the claimant’s earnings were from her practice most years given the deduction of 20% chambers’ costs from the earnings quoted. She would have been better off driving an underground train.
These comment arise having only read part of the beginning of the judgement. I am, of course happy that the tribunal found in favour of Miss Bailey on the points they did but sadly it is, as you say, scarcely an unalloyed victory.
Thnk you for the time an effort made to write your comments. To me, your comments highlight the absurdity of this type of law. It also raises the question of much of the legal resources of this country are being diverted from serious crime such as murder, rape, terrorism, fraud, assault, burglary etc. There are are so many judges, barristers, law courts, solicitors, etc, so how does one deploy them?
Could we have an article on the history of Stonewall please. Its origins are where? What is its founding ideology?Who financed it? What causes has it embraced?…
https://unherd.com/thepost/stephen-nolans-stonewall-documentary-is-unmissable/
Isn’t it just amazing that a gay rights organisation has morphed into a gay conversion organisation.
If I believed in conspiracy theories I’d suggest religious conversion fanatics, men desperate to have sex with lesbians and paedophiles have infiltrated Stonewall, Mermaids, Tavistock, and various government depts to promote trans rights in order to ‘have their way’ with women and children.
We should get Tom Watson and James O’Brien to investigate it!
I think you hit the nail on the head, all the twisted perverts having a field day with even more perverts supporting them and denouncing decent, straight people.
I’m afraid this article achieves far less than the author claims. Read the comments to the end and you’ll see why. Stonewall is (unfortunately) not at all crushed.
Yes indeed. Reality is now trumped by ‘law’ and is only justified (if at all) by legal protections relating to subjective ‘belief’. Another consequence of decades of legal activism. Alison is thus hoist by her own petard.
Do we know who foots the bill?
Stonewall and Blackrock should merge. The Brown Shirt squads of trans terror and ESG civilizational suicide should have common headquarters.
I’d like you to give one documented example of ‘trans terror’. The tenor of comments here such as yours mentioning ‘civilizational suicide’ show the far-right nature of most anti-trans ideology.
Ed….I wish I understood half of this! Doh!
I am not clear, did she get her costs plus the 22k, or just the latter?
it certainly was a pittance compared to the costs. Which is why she had to be crowdfunded. Else no one would dare challenge a law firm and massive charity. And we will do it again till justice prevails.
She just got the £22k, costs will be decided at a later date. Most likely GC will have to pay a portion of her costs (on the basis she partly succeeded against GC), but she will pay Stonewalls’ costs, as they won against her.
Yes, one of the things many people don’t appreciate is that even where you are awarded costs in your favour (unless it is on an indemnity basis, which is very rare) you still don’t recover all your costs. A large proportion gets struck off as irrecoverable so in a case like this all the parties will have to pay significant sums whether they won or lost. Alison ( or her backers) will have to pay a large chunk of Stonewall’s costs but not the whole amount. For everyone the costs are likely to dwarf the £22,000 awarded against the Chambers.
The employment tribunal is generally a no costs jurisdiction I believe. Unless, that is, a party has behaved unreasonably / vexatiously or a claim has no prospects of success. I would therefore expect the parties to bear their own costs of this matter.
I would suggest that the main lesson from this case and the Forstater case will be that organisations will become more circumspect in dealing with complaints, often coordinated, over controversial issues where protection of reputation is an important internal consideration. In both cases the management of the organisations were faced with a maelstrom of complaints and feared that it would intensify, while trying to do the day job of developing the organisation. The difficulty being intensified because valued staff are also part of the community who feel affected, whatever the actual reasons. The management want it to go away so they can get on with the day job and also want to protect the reputations damage of the organisation. It’s difficult because they find themselves in a situation not really of their own making. Now that these organisations realise that they cannot just place protection of their reputation over due process and fairness, there might just be a restraint on giving in to a maelstrom of complaints because it is an easy option since that has consequences as well now, both reputational and financial.
”Stonewall had gone so far down the rabbit hole, it was defending the idea that lesbians rejecting the p***s are bigots. ”
Maybe the Guardian could post this as a headline…thought not.
I really hope the pendulum having seemingly peaked is now starting to return to a place where regressive politics are no longer framed as ‘progressive’ and the political idealogues so keen on destroying society as we know it, are shown to be what they really are; unhinged and extremely bad for society.
I believe Stonewall, having won the necessary battles surrounding same sex relationships, and running short of campaign material, jumped at the opportunity to push the Trans lobby, who in many ways were a natural campaigning bedfellow. Unfortunately, having beenhijacked by Trans extremists, they have quite rightly lost credibility and have become a magnet for the identity politics idealogues and diversity vultures looking for a payday.
They have been described as a protection racket and I agree, very much like Al Sharpton and the BLM activists who get paid to endorse organisations in theU.S, who if not paid, threaten to brand the company racist. It’s a shakedown.
I do worry that they still have a high level of support within the liberal judiciary. Nevertheless, in some regards, this is a good day for those of us sick and tired of the way in which Stonewall have bullied and coerced institutions in promoting their racist and bigoted agenda under the guise of diversity and inclusion. It is anything but.
Allison Bailey is a brave woman to have taken this on in what is such a hostile and vicious climate, and I applaud and respect her bravery and intellect in doing so. Thank you.
I think all of us should refuse to use the prefix ‘cis’ when referring to heterosexual men and women. If you are trans then add it if you must but the rest of us don’t need any other prefix or pronoun.
What is happening to our people? I read the article with a sense of despair. Cats in a sack came to mind as I read of Gays, Lesbians and Transsexuals desperately fighting one another to protect their validity.
Get this through your thick heads, you have no validity not one iota….you are all a danger to family life and our kids future wellbeing. You think that harsh? Well I look back almost eighty years and what do I see? Poverty, starvation, war, cruelty, and I see how we overcame these privations. I look forward and I see the same privations staring back at a population unable to tie their own shoelaces, never mind struggle for existence.
Well said
Thank you Joyce being old has its advantages in capacity to observe and reason.
I’m with you Alex and understand where you are coming from.
Here’s something else I read which you may like or may already have done so: https://unherd.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4a3053b52a708e8ba60bf45e9&id=44d95c4425&e=96f37d5ef1
Thanks Peter, I will study your link, all the best to you.
Oh, the irony of watching ostracised TERF / feminists screaming ‘blue bloody murder’ at the new trans madness. Sorry ladies, but it was you who started all this madness in the 70s regards gender neutral language, enforced non meritorious equality legislation and the wholesale reorganisation of society, law, education and the workplace to favour your gender. You can’t complain when the dog you trained turns and bites you!!
Transgenderism is a men’s rights movement so stop blaming feminists for it. Janice Raymond, a lesbian feminist professor at the U of Mass., wrote the book, The Transsexual Empire, in 1979, warning of the dangers of trans. And lesbians and feminists have been threatened, abused, de-platformed, and canceled for years as they have spoken out against ‘transgender identity’ ideology. And LGB folks have nothing in common w/ the T that was force-teamed onto the LGB. LGB is a sex-based sexual orientation based on material reality, trans is based on an incoherent ‘gender identity’ ideology that came out of academia and most LGBs reject it. Trans is misogynist and homophobic and threatens the rights of all women and LGB folks. And Stonewall, b/c of Bailey’s lawsuit, has been exposed as the duplicitous transgender ‘protection racket’ that they are.
“LGB folks have nothing in common with the T which was force-teamed? on to the LGB”
Oh yes they have, but even on this fine site, I am not allowed to inform you of the numerous things they have in common.
Oh, I can assure it is NOT a ‘men’s’ movement. Not in the traditional sense of what constitutes ‘men’ anyways. As per my previous assertion; this is the natural extrapolation of the ridiculous assertion of equanimity of feminist’s ideology which negates any difference in sex/gender.
Given the outright war on the Male sex in media, culture, and femi-centric educators; is it no wonder that some confused young men/boys see an ‘out’ by merely declaring their gender as female. Its a win -win. If you do not conform to a traditional male model, perhaps even bullied then: Declare your ‘alt’ gender and the girlish virtue signalers will roll in behind you offering both friendship and at the same time protection from those ‘nasty boys’ as the aforementioned still want to be liked by the girls! Of course those same girls will abandon you if the ‘cool boy’ shows an interest. Its called adolescence and should not be medicalised or may cause irreparable harm to both young boys and girls.
Most kids learn that everyone has a bully and that the resilience of character formed by this serves them well in later life!
YOU, Created the platform you cant complain when others jump up beside you and join in! Vilify men as ‘toxic’, remove them from society and family / education then you reap as you sow. Don’t come ‘crying to us with your pathetic wish to join the right because one part of the madness you created turned against you…
I am very happy with the return on my investment (supporting the crowdfunder). The Judgment was correct & as I predicted. Stonewall is a lobby group misrepresenting the Law. Which appears to be legal but was not widely known before this case. Now it is.
Eh?
Equality for women, ethnicity and the disabled simply required you to attend work meetings with normal people that didn’t look exactly like you.
Men are now expecting you to sit in meetings with them dressed up in stripper heels, wigs and falsies in service to their fetishes.
There is no connection.
You and your feminazis created this identarian madness, live with it!
Well done Bailey .. whilst I find aspects of this case hard to follow, Stonewall, in my opinion should have stuck with sexuality and not gender issues .. very different things.
As many commenters have cogently showed, this judgement was almost entirely a victory for Stonewall, which had the moral and legal high ground. Ms Bindel’s hate-mongering against transgender people and her vicious campaign against an organisation which dares to stand for such people is exposed as wrong-headed and without legal basis.