A year ago — on December 18 2019 — I learnt that I had lost at my employment tribunal.

I can’t remember much about that day. I know I had conversations with my legal team about the next steps in appealing, and I know I read the awful judgment over and over: “unworthy of respect in a democratic society”. I know I posted an update. I know I cried.

The next day my world tipped again when JK Rowling tweeted #IStandWithMaya.

My case became an international story. Suddenly I was not just being called names on twitter in the UK, but on the pages of newspapers from the US to Australia, by celebrities, and across Youtube channels. There were journalists on my doorstep. …

As JK Rowling famously remarked there used to be a word for female people.

From CNN, to Proctor and Gamble to the Labour Party, to charities including the stillbirth charity Sands, and Friends of the Earth the rush to erase the word women when talking about female people has only accelerated since she said this.

Its not inclusive you see.

Index on censorship is intervening in my case, and I am grateful for that, but I am also worried about the turn of their recent statement on the issue.

Index on Censorship is one of the few established organisations that has stood up for freedom of speech around sex and gender.

It gave evidence in the case of Harry Miller v Humberside Police and has condemned the abuse faced by JK Rowling, first in June on Twitter:

And recently it reiterated condemnation of the abuse of JK Rowing in a blogpost by CEO Ruth Smeeth “We need to end the abuse around discussions of feminism and trans rights”. …

Rosie Duffield liked a tweet by Piers Morgan…And then went on to tweet in her defence that female people have a name.

For this she was mass reported, and publicly condemned by the ‘bad cops’ of Labour Campaign for Trans Rights , while the ‘good cops’ of Labour LGBT+ worked privately to extract an apology. The bullying ended in Duffield taking a twitter break and issuing one of those awful hostage-note apologies.

As the CEO of the Equality and Human Rights Commission you said in a corporate tweet yesterday said that the best way forward in the debate over trans rights and women’s rights is for “both sides to improve the level of discourse”.

You said “We need clear conversations and proper debate about what the law and policy actually mean in practice, and what would be the practical effect of any changes — dialogue must be constructive, tolerant and based on the facts.”

Your tweet got a lot of response, mainly from women pointing out the contributions to constructive, tolerant, fact based discourse that have been largely ignored by the equality establishment. EHRC’s own transgender reading list makes clear they only listen to one side of this debate; with a full third of all papers authored or co-authored by just three authors: Sally Hines, Stephen Whittle or James…

International development organisations are in the habit of saying “gender” when they mean “sex”. They use it as a polite euphemism, and to reflect that it is social norms, not biology itself, that holds women back. As UN Women says:

Gender: refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men.

But this leaves organisations vulnerable to a bait-and-switch move where recognition of sex is erased altogether in favour of the idea that everyone has a gender identity and this is what makes them a man or woman (or both or neither). Organisations that adopt this ideological stance find themselves committing to throwing away the language, laws, concepts and data that allow a clear focus on the reality of women’s lives, the vulnerability of women and girls to sexual assault, and the sex of the perpetrators. …

Barrister Sarah Phillimore has blogged about an email she received from a supporter of Action Aid UK who wrote to the organisation to ask about the problem of conflating “gender” and “sex.

“Women and girls are being discriminated against and abused on the basis of their sex. Words are important and it needs to be crystal clear who is being subject to the violence so we can help those most in need”.

Action Aid UK‘s reply included the utterly gobsmacking statement

’ActionAid UK understands there is no such thing as a ‘biologically female/male body’

A reminder:

• 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation. …

Liz Truss, the Minister for Women and Equalities has set out three key principles for any reform of the gender recognition regime:

1. The protection of single-sex spaces.

2. Making sure transgender adults are free to live their lives as they wish without fear of persecution, whilst maintaining the proper checks and balances in the system.

3. Making sure under 18s are protected from decisions that they could make, that are irreversible in the future

The government says it intends to publish its response to the Gender Recognition Act consultation before the beginning of the summer recess on 21 July 2020. …