davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

The EHRC exists to protect people with any of the 5 protected characteristics: religion, race, disability, gay or trans. Yet today EHRC published guidance making "I just don't like that kind of person" a valid reason to exclude trans people from services.

Trans people can be excluded from single-sex services if ‘justifiable’, says EHRC

Over and above EHRC being taken over by TERFs (which has been suspected by a while), there seems to be a major problem with the report; someone who's trans can't safely use opposite sex facilities, especially changing rooms, yet the reporting doesn't seem to suggest the report acknowledges that or requires it to be addressed.(Of course the Guardian's reporting on trans issue has been problematical for a while, but I don't expect any of the other dailies to be any better).

Also problematical with the EHRC report is it seems to explicitly place (fringe) religious dogma and anti-trans bigotry as more important than trans safety. That's hugely worrying for the future integrity of the Equality Act 2010 as it creates a precedent for undermining all the other protected characteristics,

If EHRC defines religion as a valid reason for excluding trans people from services, how long before someone tries to use it to justify excluding people with the other protected characteristics? I've literally had Christians tell me my disability is the mark of Satan....

Sadly EHRC has been on a solid downhill trajectory ever since it was created, with successive heads happily downgrading the protections of protected characteristic groups other than those they personally favour. And it looks like the Tory-appointed Baroness Falkner is up for finishing the job.

It's incredibly worrying that EHRC is allowing people who don't have a protected characteristic to exclude trans people from services simply because it might offend their dignity or whatever. "We don't what their sort around here" is the very reason we have EA2010, and the EHRC. By opening up an "I just don't like them" justification for not meeting EA2010's provisions for trans people, EHRC opens up a huge, steaming sinkhole under those protections for the other protected groups. And I honestly wonder if that isn't working as designed

davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
Zen Cho tweeted some sobering thoughts on what happened to Mark Oshiro at ConQuesT.

I think they're very well observed.



davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
Should interest one or two people here: NHS Treats Transgender People as Second Class Citizens

ETA another (rather more positive) Trans-focussed story in the Guardian today:

Church of England to consider transgender naming ceremony



davidgillon: Text: I really don't think you should put your hand inside the manticore, you don't know where it's been. (Don't put your hand inside the manticore)
I clearly missed out on the first round of the Scott Aaronson debate - an MIT professor who argued in an online discussion of the position of women in STEM that as a shy, nerdy guy he was not privileged, and that feminism made him feel like a monster... mention of rape/compounding the idiocy ... ) - but a friend just pointed me at a good analysis of what Aaronson was trying to say, and how he went so wrong, that may interest people here: The plight of the bitter nerd: Why so many awkward, shy guys end up hating feminism

Laurie Penny (who has already written about this general issue when she pointed out the need for male nerds to make the uncomfortable recognition that their position in society isn't as their fondly imagined parallel to the Star Wars Rebel Alliance, but that they're actually an arm of the Empire) also has a good analysis of this in her article On Nerd Entitlement, in fact she pretty much nails the argument with her sub-title: 'White male nerds need to recognise that other people had traumatic upbringings, too - and that's different from structural oppression'. She examines where Aaronson is coming from (white male nerd who had an appalling time at school), compares it to her own lived experience (white female nerd who had an appalling time at school), and then rips him to shreds for trying to claim male nerds aren't part of the structural problem, particularly for women in STEM, by showing that yes, in fact we clearly are. And I love the fact that she goes on to tear apart his bewailing the fact that boys/men like him would do better if marriages were still being arranged by elders within the shtetl as happened for earlier generations of men in his family, by pointing out that his ancestral 'better' was only achieved by the ancestral subjugation of earlier generations of women in her family and others, within the demands of seeing the young men had the best chances, enabled at the cost of the hopes, and even ultimately lives, of young women like her.

It's this kind of *headdesk* -worthy idiocy from male nerds that makes me so glad I became disabled, as that transition/revelation/Damascene conversion gave me a much better appreciation of how, even as the proverbial shy, nerdy guy, my life had been privileged until that point (and still is) by the fact I'm also a straight white, middle-class male. ... further mention of rape ... )

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davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
David Gillon

September 2025

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