The word is WOMAN, and women matter.
We no longer have to take the hit to protect men's feelings.
Every Friday I usually write a section of this substack called The Word is Woman, where I document examples of the erasure of women from language - yet another phenomenon women are told is ‘not happening’ and ‘a culture war’. Yet another area where women are told to ‘be kind’ - because objecting to being called a bleeder or a cervix owner, rather than demonstrating just how much they value and respect themselves and other women, instead shows how little they care about oppressed minorities.
Today, though, I want to take this space to write more about the Supreme Court judgement, the inevitable backlash, and what this, too, says about how we value women. I’m seeing organisations, individuals, and social media bun fighters, frame the decision of the court as some kind of attack on trans people, and a removal of people’s rights. This is not the case.
The judgement did not make any new law. It simply clarified existing law, and the meaning of certain words in existing law: woman, man, sex. In particular: woman.
People like me have long talked about a ‘clash of rights’ between women and trans women and been told ‘there isn’t one’.
What this ruling has done is place this clash of rights in the public spotlight.
For Women Scotland took this fight all the way to the highest court in the land because they, and those who supported them, could clearly see the clash of rights, and wanted to have it challenged and clarified.
They wanted to know if a claim to be a woman, or even ‘female’ - in particular if this was supported by a Gender Recognition Certificate - meant that a male person could access spaces and services that were ‘female only’.
They wanted the court to clarify if the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010, meant ‘biological sex’, or simply the sex that a person ‘declared themselves’ to be.
The court said sex means biological sex.
And that, in terms of the Equality Act, woman means biological woman.
So now this clash of rights has finally been exposed and addressed. The Supreme Court made it very clear that trans people are protected from discrimination by the characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ in the EA. And that (biological) women are protected by the characteristic of (biological) sex. They were clear that sex is real, and it’s binary.
And people are losing their shit.
There have been multiple posts on social media about how damaging this judgement is to trans people, from deranged outliers like Margate’s Crab Museum, to respected organisations who should know better, like Amnesty International, and I’m sure there will be more.
But what I find curious about many of them, is that they clearly demonstrate the difficulty some are having with a judgement that prioritises women’s needs and feeling over those of males.
Which, let’s face it, is what this entire gender movement has been about from day one.