Row over British court ruling on trans women
In a landmark judgement, the UK's Supreme Court has ruled that when it comes to gender equality, the biological sex and not the social gender is decisive. The decision affects issues such as whether trans women are categorised as women in gender quotas and to what extent they have access to women's refuges and changing rooms.
Dangerous discrimination
The judgement paves the way for discrimination and persecution, The Independent laments:
“First, the purported 'threat' to women’s rights posed by the existence of trans women does not exist. And second, the definition of 'biological sex' is infinitely more complicated and harder to pin down than a simple matter of X or Y chromosomes. ... [The supreme court judges] accepted a narrative of bigotry and prejudice that bears a sickening resemblance to that used as the justification for the segregation and persecution of Black people and Jews: this group is inferior, but it is also dangerous, and its very presence is a threat to a healthy society.”
A triumph for women's rights
Common sense has prevailed, Daily Telegraph columnist Suzanne Moore comments jubilantly:
“To put it bluntly, trans women - men who identify as women, however they have modified themselves - are not biological women and can therefore not enter spaces reserved for us. This common-sense view has for too long been deemed bigoted and has meant women losing the right to single-sex spaces (in sports, in prisons, in refuges) which have been increasingly contested by trans activists. Sex means biology - did we need a court to tell us this? That it has taken a sober Supreme Court judgment to do so is kind of incredible.”