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Monday Mini: The UK Supreme Court's Ruling on Women · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'come stuff I never
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  Speaker 1: told you production of by Her Radio and welcome to
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  Speaker 1: another edition of Monday Mini Today. As we record this,
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  Speaker 1: it is May seventh, twenty twenty five, and a quick
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  Speaker 1: content warning, we're just transphobic, transphobic things that are happening,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of transphobia. But I put in the date
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  Speaker 1: because it's it's moving. This is all pretty recent and
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  Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff that's happening around it. But
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  Speaker 1: today we are talking about the British Supreme Court's recent
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  Speaker 1: decision around the definition of women. So in April twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty five, the British Supreme Court decided that the legal
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  Speaker 1: definition of a woman was based on biology and someone
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  Speaker 1: born biologically as female. In the eighty eight page ruling,
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  Speaker 1: the court writes, the quote concept of sex is binary.
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  Speaker 1: A person is either a woman or a man. The
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  Speaker 1: Deputy President of the Supreme Court said, quote the unanimous
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  Speaker 1: decision of this Court is that the terms woman and
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  Speaker 1: sex refer to a biological woman in biological sex. Of note,
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  Speaker 1: transactivists and people were largely left out of this case,
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  Speaker 1: even though they had lawfully legally petitioned to be involved.
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  Speaker 1: So what does this mean. It means a lot of things.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of it is confusing. But government issued certificates,
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  Speaker 1: formally and officially recognized new genders do not guarantee to
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  Speaker 1: be protected by the twenty ten Equality Act, specifically the
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  Speaker 1: base protections. So I obviously we're not legal scholars, especially
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  Speaker 1: not for a country that we did not grow up in.
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  Speaker 1: But if you want to look it up, it's pretty
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  Speaker 1: complicated because there's this twenty ten Equality Act and then
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  Speaker 1: there are a couple of other acts that come into play.
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  Speaker 1: But according to this ruling that won't apply anymore. It
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  Speaker 1: applies to all sorts of situations in terms of like
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  Speaker 1: public facilities, changing rooms, hostels, communal accommodations, and all manner
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  Speaker 1: of public organizations. According to the BBC quote, since then,
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  Speaker 1: interim guidance says in places like hospital shops and restaurants,
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  Speaker 1: trans women, biological men should not be permitted to use
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  Speaker 1: the women's facilities. It also goes out of its way
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  Speaker 1: to say that only biological women can be pregnant and
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  Speaker 1: get any protections related to pregnancy. But as I said,
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  Speaker 1: it's really confusing just in terms of how it contradicts
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  Speaker 1: other ruling and almost its own ruling. At times, the
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  Speaker 1: court kept saying it provides clarity, like they were like,
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  Speaker 1: finally we've provided clarity, but it really really doesn't. And
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  Speaker 1: this does lead to a much larger conversation that's happening
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  Speaker 1: in the US and elsewhere. How quite do you determine
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  Speaker 1: someone's biological sex and the dangerous box this opens. This
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  Speaker 1: was thanks to, at least in part, a long running
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  Speaker 1: legal battle that originated in Scotland in twenty eighteen, which
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  Speaker 1: is also a little complicated, but briefly, in twenty eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: a law was passed in Scotland that required every Scottish
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  Speaker 1: public organization must have at least fifty percent women on
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  Speaker 1: their boards. At the time, this included trans women as
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  Speaker 1: long as they had this government issued certificate, the Gender
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  Speaker 1: Recognition Certificate or GRC, saying that they were women. But
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  Speaker 1: of course this whole thing infuriated Turfs, including the Group
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  Speaker 1: for Women Scotland. They immediately rallied to challenge the law.
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  Speaker 1: They claimed that they were worried about how including trans
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  Speaker 1: people would impact single sex services for women in the health,
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  Speaker 1: abuse in sports categories particularly. They sued Scotland to limit
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  Speaker 1: these services to only people who were born biologically female.
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  Speaker 1: They lost, but they didn't stop fighting, and the UK
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  Speaker 1: Supreme Court overruled the previous rulings in favor of groups
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  Speaker 1: like Poor Scotland Women, which unfortunately brings us too. She
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  Speaker 1: who must not be named, yep, JK. Rowing She is
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  Speaker 1: a part of four Women's Scotland. She helped bankroll the campaign.
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  Speaker 1: She posted an image on social media of her smoking
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  Speaker 1: a cigar and drinking captioned when the hard work pays off,
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  Speaker 1: celebrating this win. And very several feminist groups and even
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  Speaker 1: LGB organizations supported this ruling. And just by the way, JK.
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  Speaker 1: Rowling recently came for ACE people too. Uh she's an
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  Speaker 1: equal opportunity hater. Yeah, I mean she has jumped all
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  Speaker 1: the way off board right for all people. Like she's like,
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  Speaker 1: get all of y'all suck when she really sucks. She yes, yep, yep,
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  Speaker 1: it was pretty In the words of Pedro Pascal Hates
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  Speaker 1: that's what he said about the social post. But anyway,
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  Speaker 1: so that happened, and then here in the US we
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  Speaker 1: have a lot of similar things. Obviously, this is a
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  Speaker 1: Monday Mini, We're gonna have to come back and do
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  Speaker 1: a full episode. But right now we've got the U. S.
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  Speaker 1: Supreme Court up holding Trump's band on transgender people serving
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  Speaker 1: in the US military. But that it is. That is
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  Speaker 1: one of like many, many, many attacks on trans rights
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  Speaker 1: in the US. There are pushes for only recognizing two
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  Speaker 1: genders on official documents like passports and the one checked
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  Speaker 1: must be the one assigned at birth, and of course
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  Speaker 1: around sports, which I'm kind of confounded by. Honestly, I'm
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  Speaker 1: confounded by a lot of this, but the real focus
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  Speaker 1: on sports. But also this has led to legal issues too,
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  Speaker 1: just in the way certain documentation works and how somebody
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  Speaker 1: can legally be both a man and a woman even
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  Speaker 1: under these things. So there's no clarity. There's this clarity
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  Speaker 1: that they're saying it's not here, No, it doesn't exist,
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  Speaker 1: and you're making it worse. But yeah, all of this
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  Speaker 1: is clearly part of the continuing concerted efforts to attack
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  Speaker 1: trans rights. While some of the UK are clear that
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  Speaker 1: trans folks still have legal protections against discrimination and harassment,
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  Speaker 1: others worry that this is a slippery slope. That being said,
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  Speaker 1: Scottish Trans a charity group, urged supporters not to panic.
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  Speaker 1: So basically, it's like, not everything is gone. This is bad,
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  Speaker 1: but not everything is gone again. We're not from the UK.
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  Speaker 1: UK listeners, please let us know. There has already been
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  Speaker 1: fallout though. Some sports teams and organizations that had previously
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  Speaker 1: been accepting of trans people trans women are cutting trans women.
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  Speaker 1: Although I saw that some of it's getting pushed back
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  Speaker 1: pretty fiercely, so it might go backwards, I hope, but
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  Speaker 1: it's like we said, it's still going. Trans folks have
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  Speaker 1: all over I have spoken out about how this is
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  Speaker 1: another instance of just chipping away their rights and how
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  Speaker 1: they're sometimes scared about the door or just exist in public.
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  Speaker 1: Here's a quote from a Harvard Kennedy School article by
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  Speaker 1: Diego Garcia Blum and Timothy Patrick McCarthy. Quote Critically, the
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  Speaker 1: court's ruling relied extensively on arguments presented by trans exclusive
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  Speaker 1: gender critical activist while notably excluding any direct input from
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  Speaker 1: trans voics themselves. By positioning misogyny as inherently tied to
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  Speaker 1: biological sex rather than the broader societal oppression long recognized
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  Speaker 1: by feminist movements, the decision revives problematic biological essentialism. Historically,
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  Speaker 1: biological essentialism was also used to exclude CIS women, confining
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  Speaker 1: them to the domestic sphere and denying them access to
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  Speaker 1: education and occupations on the premise that their biology made
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  Speaker 1: them solely suitable for motherhood and therefore uncapable of carrying
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  Speaker 1: out other roles. Returning to biological essentialism then risk returning
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  Speaker 1: to periods where women enjoyed less, not more equality relative
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  Speaker 1: to men. Yeah, he so frustrating, But there are as
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  Speaker 1: always organizations people fighting to contest rulings like this in
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  Speaker 1: the UK and US all over, so all hope is
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  Speaker 1: not lost and we would love to hear from you listeners,
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  Speaker 1: if you're part of any of these organizations, if you
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  Speaker 1: know anybody or anything we should start out. If you
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  Speaker 1: have any resources that would be fantastic. You can email
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  Speaker 1: us at Hello at stuffwennevertold You dot com. You can
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  Speaker 1: find us on blue Sky at mopstuff podcast, or on
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  Speaker 1: Instagram and TikTok at stuff on Never Told You. We're
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  Speaker 1: also on YouTube. We have a te public story, a
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  Speaker 1: group of book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks,
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  Speaker 1: It's always serious. Super producer Christina or executive producer my
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  Speaker 1: udercontructor Joey. Thank you and thanks see you for listening.
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