1 day Ago By By The Newsroom
Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Belfast News Letter, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Several years ago the radical gay and trans campaigning organisation had great influence in how public bodies in the UK dealt with such matters. Then in 2021, a podcast by the BBC (produced and co-presented by the political editor of this newspaper, David Thompson) revealed the extent of Stonewall’s influence in various important public organisations such as the civil service, police forces and the BBC itself.
Advertisement Advertisement The broadcast was downloaded by around a million listeners and led to a major reduction in the use of Stonewall. Their input had often not been transparent and included the perpetuation of highly controversial ideas, such as that gender is a construct. Four years later, the UK Supreme Court this week ruled that for the purposes of key equality legislation, a woman means a biological woman.
It does not mean a man who considers himself to be a woman. This is common sense judgment should hardly have been needed yet it was necessary because gender policy in a range of areas had moved so quickly with regard to sex had meant that men were competing in women’s sport, and winning (due to their superior strength), and also getting into women’s prisons. Indeed in some cases rapists were given such a placing.
Advertisement Advertisement Yet while, even prior to this crucial ruling, there had been a move a way from such an extremist pro trans approach in much of public life in Great Britain, with for example Stonewall dropped as advisors to government and other bodies, in Northern Ireland the topic has not even been properly debated. Stormont’s Executive Office Committee first heard concerns from women’s groups about single sex spaces in recent months. These concerns were dismissed by Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance MLAs.
Stonewall are still advising the Northern Ireland Civil Service. It is not clear if the Supreme Court ruling will fully apply here because of the Irish Sea border. Common sense is yet to return to NI.
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