I think Mary-Ann Stephenson and those who agree with her should think more carefully about what a meaningful right to marry in your acquired sex might look like.

I keep meaning to add some detail to this thread and now seems as good a time as any. I realise I was a little cryptic.

As Jerry Cohen used to joke, next year will be about average. Worse than this year, but not as bad as the following one.

If I understand the maximalist interpretation of FWS correctly, it is that the ECtHR recognized Mrs Bellinger's right to be married, but that recognition of this right is consistent with a woman in Mrs Bellinger's position having to use a men's bathroom if she were married in a public venue.

Setting the main points aside, I just want to note that the best alternative to "self-id" was disparaged by the appellants (and the Supreme Court) in FWS as "certificated sex" and implied to be meaningless. Why would anyone bother with anything other than self-id now?

I really enjoyed this discussion (still trying to work out what percentage of it went over my head).

Are there still academics in the UK who take this guy seriously, or have they all started slowly backing away?

This is almost identical to Stock's argument against sex being a socially constructed category, by the way.

We noticed you from across the bar and really dig your vibe.

Why do I like watching England lose so much? It feels like something is wrong with me. Is it just a kind of racism?

It's really interesting to go back and read the Times's coverage of the Peggie case from the middle of the year. If you were trying to actually understand the legal dispute you'd have been very poorly served. archive.md/2025.07.13-0...

The dead have risen and they're releasing 500-page Victorian novels just in time for Christmas.

We are a living through an essentialist reaction to the openness of social categories. You can see it in the disability discourse in particular, as well as in so much contemporary discourse about race and sex.

a friend reminded me of the existence of Conor Court publishing and after twenty minutes on the website I discovered it: the perfect Christmas gift for young and old, friend or foe

I think freedom of association is the most glaring weakness in the current gender critical legal position in the UK, and probably the issue that will force a legal change.

What to do about university governance

I thought I'd share a full draft of a paper I've been working on on FWS and "biological sex". papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I've read bits of the Peggie judgment, and I don't think it's a masterpiece of judicial writing. But the only possible error of law I've spotted so far was in the claimaint's favour (on the harassment point).

New: Queensland Police unlawfully gave victims’ addresses to domestic and family violence offenders in seven cases, despite being aware of the risks for years, a report has found.

I'm convinced that the social media ban is part of a plan to force young people onto laptops and the dark web so they will be good at computers again.

A lot of people have treated FWS as if every passage of the judgment was part of the statute itself. As far as I can tell, that's not how precedent works in statutory interpretation cases. If you want legislative clarity you need new legislation.

I continue to think there are/were two broadly defensible interpretationsof the EA 2010: (1) A trans person's rights in their acquired sex depend on possessing a GRC (2) A trans person's rights in their acquired sex depend on section 7 of the EA. FWS made interpretation (1) impossible.

Full article link here. They mostly come across as pretty reasonable but I think the mask slips in this passage. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

macquarie uni has an internationally renowned group of classics and acheological scholars, a group that is now being squeezed by higher admin for resources as part of cutting arts courses and presumably prioritising other areas in which the uni has less comparative advantage. great.

just learned about this colin mcginn blog post

It’s time for my annual thread of Australian poetry books you should buy ppl for Xmas. No one buys poetry partly cos it’s intimidating. It rarely makes xmas book guides. But poetry is an ethical gift that: supports underfunded writers; wins brownie points with gift receiver; improves the human soul

It won't happen, of course, but the liberal judges on the SC should probably just resign and announce that they support judicial reform.

I feel like we need to think about taking more steps to guarantee the independence and institutional competence of these sort of quasi-medical inquiries/reviews. www.bbc.com/news/article...

We're getting hung up on the philosophical "what is a woman" "low quality evidence" discussions when the actual question is "can transgender people participate in economic, social, and cultural life. can they transition socially and medically without becoming second-class citizens"

I think my many followers are sick of me repeating myself so I'm just going to retweet this whenever something ghoulish happens to trans people in the UK: consider saying something. It's important and easy.

I've seen a lot of people say similar things do this over the past few months and it really annoys me. The following can both be true at the same time: (1) The Equality Act needs to be amended post FWS and (2) the interpretation of the Act reflected in the draft code of practice is wrong in law.

Reminded today of this very nice compliment from Tom Stoppard (his favorite book of 2020)

remember, folks,

"everyone that lives here, along the river [has] gotta live off water and … without water, you know, we got nothing." - Fred Bennett, Barkandji ranger www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

What gets me about both the reporting and the judge's language is that even supposing "gender ideology" is some sort of religious belief, you would be more respectful of someone's religious belief than this. "..born Robert Prevost but now identifying as 'Pope Leo'".

I'm going to repeat my request that any of my current or former colleagues in the UK think about being more outspoken about this.

Can anyone recommend any good autobiographies or edited collections featuring trans+ life writing?

despite everyone sort of knowing fed soc was affirmative action for asshole beliefs, there was still a lot of prestige attached to it. there was negative prestige attached to, say, critical legal studies.

This is fucking insane www.lemonde.fr/en/internati...

I still can't quite believe they're going for this. They got a court to endorse the idea that the drafters of the GRA 2004 didn't understand their own drafting, and brought the idea of "biological sex" back from the dead. And they're using it to police toilets.

I am still very confused by the argument that EHRC make against trans-inclusive services under Schedule 3 of the Act, but I've deleted my initial post because I don't want to mislead people. Jess makes a great contribution in reply.

"Israeli soldiers . described a free-for-all in Gaza and a breakdown in norms and legal constraints, with civilians killed at the whim of individual officers" “If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” [says] Daniel, the commander of an [IDF] tank unit"

This is horrifying: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Mark Bennett and Joe Tomlinson: Life Events and Administrative Justice ukconstitutionallaw.org/2025/11/17/m...

I'm very grateful to Ashley for this detailed summary of the hearing in GLP v EHRC. Largely for my own edification, I'm going to try to summarise the basic issues raised in plain English. I'm going to try to be as neutral as possible.🧵

34 years ago today Bikini Kill – Kathleen Hanna and Kathi Wilcox – performed at St. Stephen’s in Washington, D.C., on November 16, 1991. Photos: Brad Sigal #punk #punks #punkrock #womenofpunk #bikinikill #kathleenhanna #kathiwilcox #history #punkrockhistory #otd

the motorcycle guy larry summers' situationship was two-timing him with in 2017:

There is already a reply up on LinkedIn to Melanie Field saying that the Equality Act does confer protection on groups. But that's not her point, as I understand it. Her point is that the discrimination protections (and their exceptions) operate from the perspective of an individual claimant.

This article is the UK's current cultural moment in microcosm. I was mostly nodding along until I ran into the most jaw-droppingly transphobic passages I have read in a long time.

These are some quite heartbreaking stories and, as Holly Greenberry-Pullen comments in the piece, really illustrates the perverse absurdity of deeming trans teens to young to even get blockers but being fine with intersex kids getting horrifically drastic full-on bodily surgery as *toddlers*.