The Good News Supplement: Monday 12th February - Sunday 18th February
Yet another bumper edition of the GNS. So many good news stories on the gender beat this week that I struggled to cram them all in. Enjoy!
Women Won’t Wheesht In Court
Best news of the week! Redoubtable feminist campaigners, For Women Scotland (FWS), have been granted permission to appeal their most recent judicial review decision at the UK Supreme Court.
FWS have previously brought two separate judicial reviews over the definition of the word ‘woman’ in the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 and its accompanying Statutory Guidance. They won the first case but lost the second with the court deciding that a trans-identified male who holds a GRC falls within the definition of ‘woman’ for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.
They consequently sought leave to appeal and their application was lodged with the Inner House on 28th November 2023. Very unusually, Scottish Ministers accepted that FWS’s eight proposed grounds of appeal give rise to an arguable point of law of general public importance regarding “The need for certainty as to the definition of the term ‘woman’” and ought to be heard by the UK Supreme Court.
The fight continues! If you’d like to contribute to the FWS crowd-funder to help finance this appeal, please see this link. (You’ll be in very good company if you do!)
Huge congratulations, solidarity and very best wishes to FWS. Best of luck, sisters!
More Tea, Rector?
Yet more good news from Scotland; Simon Fanshawe, a vocal critic of gender identity ideology, has been appointed Rector of Edinburgh University.
Former comedian, writer, campaigner and Stonewall co-founder, Simon Fanshawe, will be Edinburgh University’s next rector following an uncontested election. He will assume the office on 4th March. Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom welcomed the appointment as ‘terrific’. It certainly is! Huge congratulations, Simon.
Physician, Heal Thyself
The Royal College of GPs has had to reverse its decision to shut down a gender-critical medical conference.
The Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG) is an organisation made up of doctors and psychiatrists who campaign for science-based dialogue on gender issues. In March, it is hosting an event at the conference space belonging to the Royal College of GPs (RCGP). The event, called First Do No Harm, aims to explore “Current controversies in the care of children and young people with gender-related distress”. When inundated by protest from trans activists, the RCGP cancelled the event.
However, the wonderful Baroness Hayter, a Labour peer, intervened and wrote to the RCGP warning it that gender-critical views are protected under the Equality Act 2010. The RCGP subsequently changed its mind and has “Decided to honour the booking”.
Relegate & Celebrate
A charity pushing gender identity ideology into and onto schools has shut down.
Controversial educational charity, Educate & Celebrate, had been peddling gender woo to children and young people for years, teaching them that human beings can change sex and that sexuality is a choice, and encouraging schools to erase sex-specific spaces, sports and even language. As detailed by TransgenderTrend, the “Conflation of sex and gender and misreading of the Equality Act pervades all of Educate & Celebrate’s activities and publications”.
This week The Daily Mail revealed that the organisation has ‘mysteriously’ closed down with its latest accounts showing a deficit of over £30,000. Educate & Celebrate formally asked to close itself down on 3rd January and will be removed as a registered charity from the Government website within three months. Good.
Long Arm Of The Law
A police and crime commissioner has criticised his own force over its pandering to the ‘gender identity’ of a suspected sex offender.
Last week we reported that Thames Valley Police referred to a trans-identified male suspected of child sexual assault with female pronouns and described him as a woman.
The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Thames Valley, Matthew Barber, has criticised the force, stating that the suspect is male and the police should ‘deal in facts’. He said, “In cases of serious sexual offending when public protection is at stake the vast majority of people will rightly expect the criminal justice system to deal in facts and nothing more”.
A Room Of One’s Own
A strictly female-only lesbian venue will be opening in London later this year.
The brilliant Jenny Watson has made good on her promise to open a women-only lesbian venue. A private members club, L Community, will be opening in London later in the year to cater specifically and only to lesbians (the actual kind). The bar will continue to host Jenny’s popular lesbian speed-dating sessions, as well as open mic shows, live music and a book club.
Talking about the attempt by trans-identified males to crash her previous lesbian events, Jenny told The Telegraph, “I thought I’m not going to put up with this. I’m going to fix it. We should have a right to our own space – hence the idea to set up the bar. It will be for biological females only”.
Brava, Jenny. And the very best of luck!
A (Small) Room Of One’s Own
A UK tribunal has awarded a female employee £15k after her employer failed to provide her with adequate single sex toilet facilities in the workplace.
A woman took legal action against her employer, ISS Facility Services (a global company which employs approximately 10,000 people in the UK), after it failed to provide her with a female-only toilet. She alleged that she had been treated less favourably than male employees who had their own single-sex toilets and brought a claim for direct discrimination.
This week an employment tribunal upheld that claim. It has been made clear that “Tribunals will not accept that adequate facilities are provided where you may have to interact with someone of the opposite sex”.
Right On Cue
The English Blackball Pool Federation (EBPF) is to defend its policy safeguarding the women’s game and fight the legal action brought by a trans-identified male player.
In December, the EBPF replaced its Ladies’ and Men’s Tours with a Female Tour and an Open Tour, with only ‘biological women’ eligible to compete in the former. As a consequence, trans-identified male player, Harriet Haynes, instigated legal action against the EBPF, claiming the new rules are discriminatory on the grounds of gender reassignment.
The EBPF has decided to fight this case and defend its policy. This week it issued a statement stating, “We say that the rules are necessary to secure fair competition and a justified means of promoting female participation in the game… We stand by our decision and we intend to defend the claim.”
Bravo and the best of luck to the steel-spines at the EBPF!
The Empress’ Strike’s Back
Lovers of JK Rowling’s brilliant detective duo, Strike and Robin, won’t have long to wait for the next TV instalment.
Cormoran Strike is one of the most popular detectives in contemporary crime fiction and JK Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith) is one of the genre’s most celebrated authors. She was shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger in 2015 and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2016. Troubled Blood won the 2021 British Book Award’s Book of the Year: Crime and Fiction.
All seven of the Strike and Robin novels have topped the national and international bestseller lists and the series has sold in total more than 20 million copies worldwide. Furthermore, the Strike TV adaptations are among the UK's most watched dramas, with the most recent instalment – Troubled Blood – averaging 8.4 million viewers across its run in 2022.
They see her Rowlin’, they hatin’ (that she can’t be cancelled).
Glinner Of Hope
Don’t miss Our Graham speaking to Andrew Bolt on Sky News Australia this week.
Graham will be touring Australia and New Zealand next month with the Free Speech Union. For information, tour dates and to buy tickets etc, see the Free Speech Union Australia and Free Speech New Union Zealand websites.
And don’t forget that Graham’s memoir, Tough Crowd, is still available from Amazon, The Express shop, Lightning Eye, Waterstones, Blackwells and all other discerning outlets. (There are also audio versions available on Audible and Spotify too.)
As always 🌹
( occasionally it’s not shite being Scottish when we have brave souls sticking up for what’s right /the truth )
I’ve deleted a lot of what I wanted to say , maybes I’m growing up !!
Thanks as ever, JL, and...
WOW!! That women's toilets case is totally major!!! I am going to study it in detail. Surely this could be applied to schools where there are enormous problems with so called 'gender neutral' toilets. I was talking to a woman today who is battling away with her local schools about this ( and other issues). Increasing numbers of people are taking their children out of school because of all this madness!!
Great stuff, For Women Scotland. I have donated - though not quite as much as JKR🤣 Trouble is that the judgment will almost certainly come when we have (in all probability) a Labour Government so we had better pray they win!!
I named Educate and Celebrate , Indoctrinate and Disintegrate. Glad they are gone. And all the money has disappeared. Funny that!! But No Outsiders are still rolling.
A lesbian only venue! Gosh - though where have we got to when we think this is amazing!! Any old lags remember the Fallen Angel in Islington?
Thanks again and really excited by the Abbas case!!!! Definitely the headline for my next update.
Dusty