A Week in the War on Women: Monday 6th November - Sunday 12th November GOOD NEWS SUPPLEMENT
Another jam-packed edition stuffed full of good news from the gender beat. Enjoy!
Women Won’t Wheesht
The best news of the week has to be the humiliating climbdown of the SNP government over its definition of the word ‘woman’ in gender quota legislation.
The Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act was passed in 2018. It re-defined the word ‘woman’ to include all trans-identified males based solely on self-declaration and regardless of whether or not they have a GRC.
Thanks to the enduring tenacity and hard work of For Women Scotland, the Scottish Government has been forced to amend said definition after it was deemed unlawful. Last year the Court of Session ruled that the parliament has no authority to have ‘expanded the definition of women’.
Now the Scottish Government has put the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Amendment) Bill before parliament. It will remove entirely the offending section of the Act which tries to mangle the definition of the word ‘woman’.
Huge congratulation and heartfelt gratitude to all at FWS for this momentous victory.
CPS Sees The Light
Still on a legal theme, The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has disbanded an advisory panel on hate crimes.
The new director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, concluded that the panel of community representatives has lost ‘public confidence’ and consequently has ‘now been dissolved’.
Sex Matters At No 10
The Sex Matters team, joined by some legendary women’s rights campaigners, delivered their ‘Defend Us’ letter to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street.
The letter, signed by almost 15,000 people, asks Rishi Sunak to take urgent action to over the escalating harm caused to women by transgender activism.
Furthermore, how cool is this photograph?
Pin Back Your Lugholes
Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock are starting a podcast as part of The Lesbian Project.
For more information and to subscribe, please see this link.
The Bleedin’ Obvious
James Esses, writer and co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists, announced the launch of the Declaration for Biological Reality this week.
A group of concerned citizens from a wide range of backgrounds and professions have come together to produce a declaration on the harms of gender identity ideology. Writing in The Telegraph, James explains:
“That is why we have created the Declaration for Biological Reality. To demonstrate the significant concerns regarding gender identity ideology. To give members of the public a chance to have their voices heard. To explicitly acknowledge that, whether it is child safeguarding, women’s rights, LGB rights or freedom of speech, we all have skin in this game.”
You can read and sign the declaration here.
Glinner Of Hope
Don’t miss Our Graham on Times Radio this week.
He was also interviewed in The Telegraph.
And he appeared on RTÉ’s This Week programme.
There was a great review of Tough Crowd in The Spectator.
“Tough Crowd may well appeal to two completely different audiences – those who know Linehan for his television and those who know him for his politics. And while both might start first on the sections with which they are more familiar, if they want to understand the man then they need to read it all. That is no hardship. Linehan is an accomplished scriptwriter and he tells a cracking story.”
And yet another great review in The Spectator Australia.
Dates For The Diary
The London Universities’ Council for Academic Freedom will be launched at a special event on Monday 20th November.
“The London Universities' Council for Academic Freedom is an academic-led and non-partisan organisation which is committed to supporting academic freedom.
We aim to facilitate and encourage collaboration between academics within London universities with the goal of developing, sharing and supporting good practice, and providing mutual aid and solidarity, to support academic freedom within our institutions and beyond”.
For more information about the organisation, please see this link.
In Scotland, Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom have arranged another screening of documentary, Adult Human Female on Wednesday 22nd November.
For further details and ticket information, please see this link.
See UCU In Court
More news of the film-makers behind Adult Human Female; they are bringing a legal action against the UCU over its failure to protect academic freedom.
Academics, Deirdre O’Neill and Mike Wayne, the film’s directors, are taking action against the UCU after its vilification of their film as ‘transphobic’, calling for the cancellation of screenings and encouraging protests against it.
“It is an odd thing, as committed trade unionists, to find yourself taking your own union to a tribunal - but that is what we are doing. As members of the Universities and College Union (UCU), we are taking our union to tribunal under The Equality Act 2010, Part 5, Section 57 which declares that ‘trade organisations’ (including trade unions) ‘must not discriminate against a member’ by subjecting them to any form of ‘detriment’ or harass its members.”
Róisín Back At The Beeb
Róisín Murphy appeared on BBC Television this week, performing two songs from her current album, Hit Parade, on Later With Jools Holland.
After apparently removing her from BBC playlists and websites, its heartening that Auntie appears to have seen sense and is platforming Róisín’s music again.
Women On Cue
One of the world’s top ranking female pool stars has refused to compete against trans-identified males.
Alexandra Cunha is ranked fifth in the world of women pool players. She has refused to play anyone who is not ‘biologically female’ after the sport’s governing body, the World Eightball Pool Federation (WEPF), altered its rules to allow trans-identified males to play in women’s tournaments.
According to The Daily Mail, she is just one of dozens of professional female players rebelling against the inclusion of ‘self-identified women’ on the female tour.
Cunha commented, “We live in a free world and I will stand up for what I believe is fair, I will not play against any players that wasn't born a woman”.
Kudos and all power to you, Alexandra.
Fantastic. Recently finished reading Graham's outstanding book, which I see is still riding high in the Amazon charts. This update is the icing on the cake.
This is great thanks JL. We all do love the happy posts! Isn’t it crazy that all these institutions are being called out for discrimination after all these years! what the f were they all thinking!? just looking very serious and nodding at some stonewall rep as they vomited the latest echo chamber conceived bullshit. There’s a program on radio 4 called anti social and the other day it was on wearing political symbols. There were two blokes debating, one held sort of classic liberal beliefs and one more full of well basically shit. And bless him the one with a fairly generous helping of shit seemed to go back to the argument that sometimes you can do what you want because he said we don’t live in a functional democracy. Which may be true, but its a poor argument for breaking the law i think. A bit off subject. I think i’m trying to say that a lot of these people think that that have some sort of moral authority to fight for what they believe in that transcends the need to be lawful. Which i don’t. I would rebel under some circumstances or at least i hope i would be brave enough too.