Judgement
Early in Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece The Devils, a meeting of “incredibly vain” and well-lubricated “new men” is recalled:
“They talked about the abolition of the censorship and spelling reform…of the abolition of the army and the navy, of the agrarian reform and of the political pamphlets, of the abolition of inheritance, the family, children and the priesthood, of the rights of women…”
This passage came to my mind when I heard that our (misnamed) UK Supreme Court had ruled, in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, that for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act the term “woman” is to be restricted to biological females. Those not biologically female yet carrying a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) declaring them to be female will not be regarded in law as coming under the definition of “woman” with regard to the Equality Act.
That judgement is, of course, most welcome. Yet if read in full it reinforces the impression that this is merely a victory of one faction of “new men” or “new women” over another and even more extreme faction.
We learn in the judgement at paragraphs 206 and 207, in a discussion of section 12 of the Equality Act and the “protected characteristic” of sexual orientation, that:
“a person with same sex orientation as a lesbian must be a female who is sexually oriented towards (or attracted to) females, and lesbians as a group are females who share the characteristic of being sexually oriented to females. This is coherent and understandable on a biological understanding of sex.”
Allowing those with a GRC declaring them female to count as “women” would confuse the whole issue of “sexual orientation.” In the words of the judgement:
“The concept of sexual orientation towards members of a particular sex in section 12 is rendered meaningless. It would also affect the composition of the groups who share the same sexual orientation (because a trans woman with a GRC and a sexual orientation towards women would fall to be treated as a lesbian)…”
This would apparently have the dire result that,
“as well as the inevitable loss of autonomy and dignity for lesbians… it would also have practical implications for lesbians across several areas of their lives.”
Continue reading at the Catholic Herald