I’ve just spent a few minutes trying to figure out what the Equality and Human Rights Commission is, with not much success. I can’t tell what its relationship to the government is. They don’t explain it very clearly.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is Great Britain’s national equality body and has been awarded an ‘A’ status as a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) by the United Nations.

What’s a national body? What’s a body in this context?

As a statutory non-departmental public body established by the Equality Act 2006, the Commission operates independently. We aim to be an expert and authoritative organisation that is a centre of excellence for evidence, analysis and equality and human rights law. We also aspire to be an essential point of contact for policy makers, public bodies and business.

I guess that explains it some, but it’s still not clear whether it just says things or has enforcement power.

We use our unique powers to challenge discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and protect human rights. We work with other organisations and individuals to achieve our aims, but are ready to take tough action against those who abuse the rights of others.

What kind of tough action though? Are we talking cops, jail, court, prison?

In closely related news – how are we defining women when we talk about improving gender balance?

The Scottish government is facing a judicial review over plans to include transgender women in legislation aimed at improving gender balance on public boards.

See this is where we start screaming and throwing things. Let men wear skirts and lipstick, fine, knock yourselves out, but you cannot improve gender balance by putting more men in lipstick on public boards. You can’t improve gender balance in any other way than including more women. More women, not more men in skirts.

Aidan O’Neill KC, for the campaign group For Women Scotland, said the court of session’s ruling would have significant implications for the protection of single-sex spaces across the UK, as well as proposals to simplify how transgender people can alter their birth certificate currently being debated by the Scottish parliament.

O’Neill was speaking before Lady Haldane on the first day of the judicial review of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act, which was passed in 2018.

It has been the subject of a long-running court action by the campaign group, which resulted in a ruling on appeal earlier this year that the legislation should not have included transgender women in its definition of “woman” as this “conflated” two distinct groups that are protected in law.

It should not have included transgender women because they are men, and it’s women who need more representation, not men who claim to feel like women.

For Women Scotland is now challenging revised guidance from the Scottish government that the definition of “woman” should include transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

It really really really should not.

This shit is so insulting and I’m so sick of it. It underlines for us every day that women are the one set of people it’s ok to shove aside and replace this way.

O’Neill argued that the Equality Act, when read as a whole, demanded that specific statutory definition of the word “sex” as meaning biological sex.

…

Scotland’s gender recognition reform bill will introduce a system of self-declaration for obtaining a GRC, removing the need for a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria, reducing the time someone must have been permanently living in their gender before they can apply from two years to three months, and dropping the age at which people can apply from 18 to 16.

For Women Scotland has held a number of rallies at the Scottish parliament protesting against the reforms, the most recent one supported by the author JK Rowling, who tweeted a photograph of herself wearing a T-shirt reading “Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women’s rights”. The bill passed its first stage in Holyrood last month but the vote resulted in the SNP’s biggest backbench revolt in 15 years in power.

Men aren’t women. Next question?