Top UK court deals devastating blow to cross-dressing activists

Britain's Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that the legal definition of "woman" excludes male transvestites.

Conservatives and feminists such as J.K. Rowling celebrated the court's affirmation of reality. Meanwhile, gender ideologues and LGBT activists who recently suffered other monumental defeats in the isles — namely Britain's ban of puberty blockers and the landmark Cass Review's confirmation that so-called gender science is bunk — melted down, characterizing the ruling as potentially harmful.

The court was tasked with sorting out the "correct interpretation" of the 2010 Equality Act, specifically the terms "woman" and "sex." The act provides protection against discrimination on the basis of various immutable characteristics.

The case found its way to the U.K.'s highest court on account of a legal dispute between the feminist organization For Women Scotland and the leftist Scottish government.

The feminist organization For Women Scotland kicked things off in 2018 by challenging Scottish legislation that would include male transvestites in quotas for women. The Scottish government maintained that men who secured gender recognition certificates identifying them as female were women where the law was concerned, reported the BBC. The case snowballed from there.

"This examination of the language of the EA 2010, its context and purpose, demonstrate that the words 'sex,' 'woman' and 'man' in sections 11 and 212(1) mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man," the court noted in its 88-page ruling.

'Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex.'

"Interpreting 'sex' as certificated sex would cut across the definitions of 'man' and 'woman' and thus the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way. It would create heterogeneous groupings," stated the court. "As a matter of ordinary language, the provisions relating to sex discrimination, and especially those relating to pregnancy and maternity, and to protection from risks specifically affecting women, can only be interpreted as referring to biological sex.

Just in case there was any remaining doubt, the court clarified that a female posing as a man and carrying a GRC is a woman where the law is concerned and a male posing as a woman and carrying a GRC is a man.

The court evidently did not buy the suggestion that admitting that men are not women under the law would cause disadvantage to transvestites, noting they were still protected from discrimination under the Equality Act.

Judge Patrick Hodge, deputy president of the U.K. Supreme Court, stated that the ruling should not be read as "a triumph for one or more groups in our society at the expense of another."

Contrary to Hodge's suggestion, the ruling amounted to a major victory for those Britons keen on keeping opportunistic men out of women's spaces. After all, the court ruled that male transvestites with GRCs can be excluded from single-sex spaces such as women's bathrooms, changing rooms, and hostels.

"If sex means biological sex, then provided it is proportionate, the female-only nature of the service would ... permit the exclusion of all males including males living in the female gender regardless of GRC status," said the court. "Moreover, women living in the male gender could also be excluded under paragraph 28 without this amounting to gender reassignment discrimination."

"Absolutely jubilant here, tears!" For Women Scotland tweeted upon learning of the ruling.

Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch noted, "Saying 'trans women are women' was never true in fact and now isn't true in law, either."

Badenoch characterized the ruling as a "victory for all of the women who faced personal abuse or lost their jobs for stating the obvious. Women are women and men are men: you cannot change your biological sex."

J.K. Rowling noted, "It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they've protected the rights of women and girls across the UK."

The three women Rowling referred to are Trina Budge, Marion Calder, and Susan Smith, the directors of For Women Scotland.

The leftist Scottish government vowed to remain an inclusive country after its defeat Wednesday, reported the Telegraph.

A spokesman for the government said, "We want to reassure everyone that the Scottish government is fully committed to protecting everyone's rights, to ensure that Scotland remains an inclusive country."

"This judgment further reinforces that the Equality Act does not, and never has, allowed for the self-identification of sex under the Act," the Edinburgh-based policy analysis group Murray Blackburn MacKenzie noted in a statement.

"Nonetheless, policies based on self-identification remain in place across the U.K., in hospitals, police forces, schools, and prisons. The U.K. and devolved governments, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, need to take responsibility for their role in this, take urgent steps to clear up the confusion, and ensure the ruling has effect on the ground," added the policy group.

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