UK Supreme Court backs biological definition of ‘woman’
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I want to turn our attention to a story that's getting pretty much rolling news coverage in the UK, certainly on Sky News throughout most of the day, and it's the UK Supreme Court. Eamon mentioned it in the news headlines there, ruling...

that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act in the UK refer to a biological woman and biological sex. Here is the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Lord Hodge, giving the ruling. The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

But we counsel against reading this judgment as a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another. It is not. The correct interpretation of the EA as referring to biological sex does not cause disadvantage to trans people whether or not they possess a gender recognition certificate.

Trans people have the rights which attach to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. So that was Lord Hodge regarding the ruling. Leisha de Bruyn is with me, who's a barrister and CEO and founder of The Countess. Leisha, did you welcome this ruling today?

Yes, I would view it as a seismic victory for women's rights campaigners like myself and my colleagues in the Countess and campaigners across Ireland and indeed anyone part of the kind of global grassroots resistance to trans ideology. It gives a lot of clarity in respect of single sex spaces, whether

With regard to that comment there and the judgment that it's not one group against the other, I mean, I would concur with that. But at the same time, when it comes to rights, it is a pie. And therefore, if we have been defining trans rights as the right thing,

of males to use female only spaces, then obviously there was a conflict of rights. And really that was the basis of all my work. It's been my life's work for the last six years. It's the reason I set up the contest was because men who had acquired a gender recognition certificate were then sent to female prison in Ireland. And we've seen, you know, the impact of the GRA across Ireland. Now, you

you know, arguably this is obviously not binding in Irish law because it's our neighbouring jurisdiction. But it is the case that if were someone to take a similar test case here in this jurisdiction, that authority would be cited. It is a superior court jurisdiction.

decision. It's a decision of the Supreme Court. And obviously they looked at all of the case law in order to come to this conclusion. Yeah, so I was trying to read and listening to some of the analysis of this throughout the day. And with regard to what Lord Hodge was getting to there, some of the analysis I read, their interpretation was that, listen, we're not denying

that trans people have rights as trans people, but that is how their rights derive from the fact that they are trans, not from the fact that they are a woman, because they are not under the terms of the Equality Act. That's their interpretation. Is that really what that is? That's precisely it. So gender reassignment is already a protected characteristic. So if someone is undergoing gender reassignment or intends to, they're already protected, but they're protected as someone who is trans internally.

So really what we're looking at here is we're getting a really beautiful clarity with regards to the interaction between the effect of the gender recognition certificate and that is namely women.

You know, the wording of the Gender Recognition Certificate is exactly the same in this jurisdiction as it is in the UK. So this looked at Section 9 of the GRA. In Ireland, we talk about Section 18, which is the effect of the GRC. But the wording is the same, which means in both cases, it says that it changes your sex. It changes your gender for all purposes without exception. And so what this ruling did very clearly is it said that

And that essentially there are exceptions because in respect of how it interacts with the quality legislation, that in fact it does not change your sex. You remain your biological sex and that the gender ground, which is the ground upon which you're allowed to discriminate, is

in terms of single sex spaces, etc., that refers to biological sex. So what we're talking about here is whether or not the sex class of female includes some males who identify as female. And this judgment is saying, no, it does not. It only contains biological females. Karen Sue grooves with us as well on the line, who is a psychotherapist and sociology lecturer in TUS Limerick and is co-chair of

Mammies for Trans Rights. Karen, what was your reaction to the judgment today? Thanks so much for having me on. It's great to be talking about this this morning. Listen, we obviously were very disappointed about this. There's no question about it. But and, you know, we're going to take a long time to kind of process this and what it means. I really don't think it gives clarity. If anything, I think it makes sense.

everything less clear. But I suppose there's a great number of things that I wanted to talk about today. But one of the things that has emerged since this morning is the absolute outpouring of support that we have got. We have got hundreds upon hundreds of people contacting us all day. And, you know,

They are parents of trans people, but mostly they're just adults in the world watching what is happening at the moment to trans people and the devastating demonization of this very, very small community. Now, we know, of course, the ruling will be used as ammunition and that it will embolden people. However, you know, I think a couple of things are very important. We are not England.

And we have spent a lot of time over the last several hundred years showing that we don't want to be England and that we are a separate state. Our laws and our understanding of the human rights legislation comes from Europe and

We're very clear about that. And I would like to talk about numbers because I think that a lot of people don't really understand how small the trans community is. So all of this, as you said, Kieran, rolling coverage on the media, every country has about half of 1%, so that's 0.5% identify as trans.

In the UK, in the last 21 years, only 8,500 people have applied for a gender recognition certificate. And in Ireland, in the last 10 years, only 900. We are talking about vanishingly small numbers. And so really what we're talking about here is the demonization of a very small, very, very vulnerable group for political gain.

Do you take any comfort from the comments by Lord Hodge, the deputy president of the Supreme Court in the UK, and the interpretation of them? That he was saying, listen, you know, I'm not denying the rights of trans people and they absolutely do have rights, but those rights derive from the fact that they are trans, not from the fact that they are a woman, for example, if they were born as a man. Yeah.

I don't. And I'll tell you why. Because, again, when we are engaging in this kind of narrative, the narrative itself is extraordinarily damaging because it emboldens people who are already poised to violence. Now, if we look at the global situation with regard to the trans community, we are seeing transgender people experience vastly more.

more discrimination and violence than cisgender people, even within the LGBT community. And the LGBT community are talking about having a 25 year high of violence against them as a whole community. So we're in very dangerous territory. And I can tell you that as parents, we are very frightened. Every one of us are very frightened.

And one of the things that we think comes across when you see Supreme Courts talking about, you know, it seems quite abstract. And we are obviously these this is not abstract to us. These are our babies and our children and our teenagers. And they we hold their hand and we worry about them and we try to make them wear coats on wet days. And so it's.

you know, we want them to be able to be safe in the world. We want them to be able to use bathrooms. We want them to be able to safely do that. But I suppose I really, you know, I think you talk about, you know, the anti-discriminatory law. What I find amazing is when we're talking about the space of trans rights, you very often hear people say, well, it's about safety for women and girls.

Now, in the UK, currently, two to four million women a year are victims of violence by men. Two to four million. 2.3 million perpetrators.

are doing these violences and they are men and they are getting younger. A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. So when we're talking about 0.5% of the population being trans, even if you were somehow able to get rid of the entire trans community,

The numbers of violent incidences are simply not associated with the trans community. So this is not about keeping girls and women safe. Let me go back to Leisha. Leisha, what do you say to that charge that all of this and a lot of the rhetoric around it today, that it emboldens kind of a level of toxicity? That's not the language now that Karen uses, but it's my interpretation of it directed at trans people.

I completely refute that claim. I heard something there about violence and I

I totally refute the statistics with regard to trans people being, you know, victimised. All the statistics show that males who identify as trans are actually the safest demographic. But Karen is right with regard to male violence against women and girls. That is one of the reasons that we have single sex spaces to keep women and girls safe. We also have the...

for the privacy and dignity of women and girls. Our own legislation in Ireland expressly provides for scenarios whereby the presence of someone of another gender would cause embarrassment or infringement of privacy. So it's very clear what we are trying to do and what the intention of legislators were in this country.

And for me, when we talk about empathy for young people who identify as trans, my question is, what about the teenage girls across Ireland who are forced to change in changing rooms in front of teenage boys in schools in Ireland because of the lack of clarity in this jurisdiction and because of the confusion about where...

the law stands. Is that happening much? I am constantly told that. As a gender-critical women's rights campaigner, people come to me all the time, and because I'm embarrassed, they're asking me for advice. I can tell you that it is constantly happening in schools across Ireland. We know for a fact that a man was allowed into a woman's only female homeless shelter in Rathmines, where he beat up a woman. We know that men who are violent and predatory have been housed in the women's wing in Limerick,

where one of them, on his own admission, at his own trial, admitted to threatening to rape and torture not only a fellow inmate, but also a prison guard. We know for a fact that the LGFA has changed their policy to allow any male over 12 to play, to tackle, to be on a pitch with female players.

What we need in Ireland is a similar level of clarity. We have long called for the GOA to be amended. Whilst it is an ontological assault on women as a sex class, the fact that the law says that it's possible for a man to become a woman, that's obviously not the case. Sex is immutable. Sex is binary.

However, it's very clear that we need to amend the GRA. Our politicians need to grasp the nettle on this. There has been a profound level of confusion and female rights have been eroded. This law was brought in to assist the 1%. As Karen says, it's a tiny percentage of people in the population who identify as trans. However...

it catastrophically eroded the rights of the 51%. I started with Leisha, Karen, so I'll finish with you. And I just want to put a more general question or a point to you. Do you get the sense that...

You're fighting against a rising tide, as it were. You know, I know that Lisha mentioned the LGFA, but a lot of the international sports bodies have moved from maybe a more progressive ideology or policy on this front to one that is...

more exclusionary of trans people or more protective to women. Whatever language you want to use to describe it, you know, that they have kind of separated trans identified people from the women's category. And I guess, you know, Donald Trump is the tip of the spear in this regard, maybe in policies in the United States. But this Supreme Court ruling today, a sense that things are changing. And I mean, they might be changing in Lisa's mind for the better, in your mind for the worse. What do you think?

Well, I think there's no question that this is part of what is happening globally. I mean, it's very, very clear that it's happening in America. It's now obviously happening and has been happening in the UK for some time now. But I think what's really important is we need to see it in the context of the wider world.

of rights being pulled back. So yes, of course, trans people are being identified and their rights are being infringed. But we also have a massive rollback of rights, of women's reproductive rights, divorce. We're seeing in America very clearly marriage equality is being pulled back, no-fault divorce, access to contraceptives.

This is part of what is happening globally with the rise of the far right and the increasing conservatism that we are seeing almost everywhere. However, and I do want to finish on this, I have great faith in the people of Ireland because we only very recently have brought ourselves out from under the yoke of

conservatism. And we fought very, very hard in 2015 for marriage equality and very, very hard in 2018 for bodily autonomy. And it is really, really important that we remember. And I think the adults who are here right now in Ireland do remember what it was like and are very clear that we are not going to go back. And that is evidenced by the hundreds of people that have reached out to us today. And to them, I'm so, so grateful.

Karen Sugru, who's co-chair of Mammies for Trans, Leisha DeBruin, barrister, CEO and founder of The Countess. Thank you both very much. The Hard Shoulder with Ciarán Cotahey. With the MG Hybrid and Electric range. Weekdays from 4 on Newstalk. Back pain and stiffness in mornings rough. Pain made it tough to sleep until I started Cosintix. Cosintix.

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