Champagne corks were popping on Wednesday evening as women’s rights campaigners celebrated the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that a woman is… a woman.
Members of For Women Scotland were jubilant as they left court, having pursued a long legal battle for the terms “woman” and “sex” in existing equality legislation to refer to biological sex, not self-defined gender identity. They later said they were struggling to keep up with “all the lovely messages”—and, naturally, the odd hate message.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who has been at the forefront of the campaign for women’s rights, said there were many “winners” in the ruling, including women and girls, freedom of speech, and “those at risk of discrimination for a belief in the material reality of sex.” She added in jest:
Spare a thought today for the UK employers, government departments, health boards, academic institutions and sporting bodies who’ve been breaking equality law to appease activist groups. So many HR manuals to pulp. So many out-of-court settlements to pay.
Many have picked up on the absurdity of the fact that a panel of senior judges was required to tell the nation something which—as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins put it—has been known since the Precambrian era. Broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer noted that any country in need of such a reminder is in “serious trouble.”
But a glance at contrary commentary highlights the need for the ruling. The Guardian painted this as a victory not for women but for “critics of trans rights.” The increasingly discredited Stonewall lobby group also described the court’s decision as “incredibly worrying for the trans community.”
Both these, and many others, ignore the Supreme Court judge’s insistence that those who identify as transgender still hold protections under the Equality Act, “not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in their acquired gender.”
The Labour government has responded positively to the ruling, which it says brings “clarity” to the issue it has spent so long scratching its head over.
