Barbara Read

Where was the “support” for the women whose rights have been trampled over for the last decade? For women like @RosieDuffield1 - effectively bullied out of the Labour Party for defending women’s sex-based rights and spaces. For the nurses from @DarlingtonUnion and Sandie Peggie - forced to share changing facilities with a man, then treated as though they were the problem. For nurse Jennifer Melle - suspended for referring to a man as a man - while doing a job that literally involves dealing with human bodies. For women like @MForstater and @Docstockk whose careers were derailed simply for stating biological reality. And for countless other women who have been bullied, harassed, ostracised or professionally punished. For saying something that most people understand perfectly well to be true. Now suddenly MPs are being offered counselling because guidance has reminded institutions that women’s spaces are, in fact, for women. The inversion of victimhood in all this has been extraordinary. Link to @GuidoFawkes post below 👇

@BeatsSurrender @TrevorPTweets @EHRC It is about protection - the protection of women and our right to spaces and services designed for us. It is indeed workable. Stay out!

@TrevorPTweets @EHRC A lot of words to say I’m cool with people policing whose going where to take a piss It’s unworkable & in febrile climate will only cause more 😡& 😢 A fully bearded trans man now must use a woman’s toilet If this is about protection Ridiculous way to go about it

My thoughts on the @EHRC guidance laid yesterday; this is not about non-existent "rights". It is about the safety of women - mothers, sisters, wives, daughters. We men need to hear their voices. Virginia Woolf : "Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes". My intro on @TimesRadio yesterday: Where I live there are two different routes to and from the tube station. One, let’s call it Acacia Avenue, is quiet and residential. The other, London Road, is a busy major route with lots of traffic. At all times of the day, I automatically head for Acacia Road. It’s just much nicer. The women in my family, on the other hand, will never willingly make that walk after dark. They live with an anxiety that most men find it hard to imagine, and frankly, rarely think about unprompted. Last year 739,000 women were sexually assaulted in Britain. Virtually all such assaults - nine out of ten - are perpetrated by men. One in four women have been attacked at some time in their lives. Acacia Avenue is exactly the sort of place in which most women fear that they become vulnerable, and they are right. As the author Virginia Woolf once wrote " Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes". I think this is the right context in which to understand the furore over the guidance being laid today by the government, over the meaning of the words man and woman when it comes to providing services and facilities in workplaces. Many men think this is about a rather arcane dispute about who gets to use what loo. For their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, it isn’t. In a previous life, as Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I had a hand in writing this country’s equality laws, in particular the 2010 Equality Act. It never occurred to any of us that there could be any confusion or dispute over the meaning of the words man and woman. But it has taken a decade of campaigning, a Supreme Court judgement and now hundreds of pages of guidance to settle the issue. This is not about so called trans rights, which are completely unaffected by this guidance, since no-one has ever had the right to walk into a changing room reserved for teenage girls. What it does mean is that women and girls are guaranteed the protection they deserve, and that their safety, which we spent half a decade drafting law to ensure, is protected. But the whole business illuminates some serious issues in our politics. First that many of our institutions, in spite of the fact that they always knew what the right thing to do was, decided to ignore the fears of their women customers and employees, under pressure from noisy pressure groups. Instead, the people who were supposed to be the grown ups behaved as though the law said what campaigners wanted it to say, rather than what it actually said. They settled for what they hoped would be a quiet life. In a democracy, there’s little point in Parliament deciding anything if the law is then made an ass by activists intimidating bosses in companies, schools, universities and the media into doing something different. Second, at the heart of the campaign to undermine the Equality Act is an idea that we specifically rejected in 2010, so called self-identification. That is to say, that it should be up to the individual to decide whether they have what’s called a protected characteristic - are you male or female, are you black or white. The problem is that self-ID would destroy the operation of any law against discrimination. Look, it would almost certainly have been to my advantage as a young man to self-identify as a handsome, white public schoolboy. None of those things is true of me. And at various points I am pretty sure it’s been to my disadvantage. It is certainly statistically likely to have been to my disadvantage. But according to the logic of those who say that self-ID should be the rule and that anyone should be able to decide for themselves whether they are male or female, black or white or Asian, were I to complain about racial discrimination, it would be difficult for anyone prove that I’d been discriminated against because of my race since anybody to whom I’d lost out could just tell the courts that they too were black. I know that sounds like Alice in Wonderland but you can google the case where a chap, both of whose parents are white, insisted he should get money from the Arts Council because he so identified with the black struggle that he considered himself black, and everyone should accept his point of view. In the United States and Brazil exactly such outlandish claims have been made and people rewarded to the disadvantage of people actually born into minority families. I have even been told about firms who, when reporting their gender pay gaps have put men who just happen to like wearing dresses at weekends - nothing wrong with that, let me be clear - into the female column and told their women employees that they really haven’t got anything to moan about because statistically they are paid equally, and they should get back in their box. So today’s guidance isn’t just another tiresome chapter in culture wars. It is , I hope, a halt to the efforts to undermine one of the most important pieces of legislation on the statute book, by people who, for their own reasons, would prefer us to be living in the 1950s world of Mad Men.

@salltweets It really is that simple. 👍

People who call themselves “transgender” have a biological sex just like everyone else and can follow the exact same rules as everyone else.

التقطت العدسات في غزة واحداً من أكثر المشاهد مأساويةً في هذا العصر. أبٌ جريح يحمل على كتفيه طفله الذي قطّعت إسرائيل أطرافه بلا رحمة.

@JeanHatchet @bphillipsonMP I agree 💯. I say "no".

Some of us will say “no”. We do not compromise on single sex spaces @bphillipsonMP #HoldTheLine

@NadiaWhittomeMP You have this totally wrong. "Trans" are the well-funded minority who have had outsized influence in the media and in politics and have weaponised the courts for their own ends. They've made women's lives miserable. I'm so glad this may now change Not a minute too soon.

While it appears that the government has successfully pushed back on some particularly harmful elements in the previous draft, the new Code of Practice will still lead to the exclusion of trans people from services and facilities that they have used without issue for a very long time. This will do nothing to improve women’s lives and the many struggles we face, but it will put trans people (and anyone perceived as trans) at increased risk of discrimination, harassment and violence. The Code unfortunately still represents the culmination of years of anti-trans campaigning from a small, well-funded minority who have had outsized influence in the media and in politics, and have weaponised the courts for their own ends. The legal situation for trans people is now deeply incoherent and means that it is untenable for them to be able live their lives with dignity. This is completely out of line with the values of equality that a Labour government is meant to champion. Instead of making this Code statutory, the government should be legislating to clarify and protect trans people’s rights, privacy and inclusion.

⚡️BREAKING: The New York Times obtained autopsy reports for 14 of the 15 people killed in the March 23 Israeli attack on an ambulance and fire truck in Gaza. The reports show that most victims—paramedics and rescue workers—were killed by gunshots to the head, chest, or back. Four were shot directly in the head [executed]. Others had shrapnel wounds. Despite wearing medical uniforms and traveling in marked vehicles with sirens, they were shot multiple times at close range. Israel initially lied about the crime committed then later took responsibility once the lies were exposed. The 15 victims included 14 rescue workers and a UN employee. Israeli soldiers buried the bodies in a mass grave and crushed and buried the ambulances, fire truck, and UN vehicle.

Naturally I'm gratified this assault on prisoners is such a PR catastrophe that the Tel Aviv cabinet is at each other's throats. But Ben Gvir's been doing this to prisoners for as long as he's been in office. It's just that they were Palestinians, not Europeans, so nobody cared.

إذا بن غفير ما بمثل إسرائيل… وفق ساعار. وسموتريتش ما بمثلها… وفق لبيد. ونتنياهو ما بمثلها… وفق المعارضة، لأنه “مختطف الدولة”. والمستوطنين وشبيبة التلال ما بمثلوا إسرائيل… وفق نتنياهو. والحريديم ما بمثلوا “الإسرائيلي” لأنهم لا يتجندون. وجنود الجيش لا يمثلون “قيم إسرائيل” كلما ظهرت فضيحة جديدة في كنيسة في جنوب لبنان. والمعارضة ما بتمثلها… وفق الحكومة. والقضاء ما بمثلها… وفق اليمين. والمتظاهرين في تل أبيب ما بمثلوا إسرائيل… وفق الائتلاف. والمجتمع الدولي يتعامل مع “أفعال حكومة إسرائيل” كأنها شيء منفصل عن إسرائيل نفسها وما بتمثلها. طيب… مييين לעזאזל بمثل هالسايبة هاي؟!

Ustedes me secuestraron en altamar. En la cárcel me separaron del grupo, me metieron a un contenedor, me esposaron, botaron al piso y me golpearon por más de tres horas hasta causarme una conmoción cerebral. Esos son sus valores, estas fotos sólo son propaganda

These are international civilians, innocent of any crime, who have been illegally abducted in international waters by Israel. That’s what we’re looking at here.

@DuncanBannatyne @AndyBurnhamGM Thank you.

Last week I decided to throw my support behind @AndyBurnhamGM for leadership of the Labour Party and on to PM. But I cannot do that now that I find out he says Transwomen. IE men. Should be allowed to use the ladies toilets. I can never support anyone that does this. Biological Women must have single sex spaces.

HOLY SHIT BRO 🚨 Israeli minister Ben-Gvir parades kidnapped flotilla activists like captured animals in his sick propaganda circus. No regard for international law.

Dublin Henry Street Arnotts How many alleged shoplifters, who are white, have been killed by security in Dublin?

Hughie Stirling, 68 was kidnapped last night by Israel in international waters and he is being illegally held hostage. The Media is barely reporting it, I hope you will get the message out, and get him home from these evil terrorists.

can't wait for them to explain how death is an acceptable punishment for shoplifting.

@UKBlackcurrent Is that the police just standing there watching them put knees on the back of this guys neck?

@UKBlackcurrent this is not trying to arrest someone this is trying to kill someone and they did

@UKBlackcurrent @hct2906 A black person, merely suspected of shoplifting, was killed by security guards in the course of “arresting” the black suspect.

Murdering a man for shoplifting