The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls has invited submissions about violence to mothers. We're disappointed to see she made no mention of lesbian mothers. Though it comes as no real surprise, since it echoes the failure of any international treaties to recognise lesbians. If lesbians are to have our needs met, the first necessity is for the national and international community and, indeed, women's rights organisations, to stop viewing us as the same as heterosexual women in all respects except our attraction to other women. Whilst we are affected by many things in the same way as heterosexual women, there are also particular ways in which we are impacted and discriminated against. Lesbian Persistence will keep calling this out, until we gain proper recognition.

The UN's Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI is planning a report on violence against lesbians. But he includes heterosexual men who claim to be women in his definition of "lesbian". This nonsensical adherence to transgender ideology means that, yet again, men are being centred and women sidelined. Lesbian Persistence and Lesbian Labour wrote a response which has been submitted by a UK coalition of lesbian organisations. Our response critiques the approach and explains how transgenderism actively harms lesbians, states why including men in the category of 'lesbian' cannot lead to lesbian-focused solutions, and asks the IE to change the basis of his proposed report. Read the submission here

Social Work England is carrying out an independent review of social work regulation. Much needed after the Rachel Meade debacle! Here's our submission . Interestingly, the Scottish equivalent has behaved a bit better on the question of gender-identity woo.

We have written to Jenny Gilruth, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, about the recently reissued guidance on supporting transgender pupils in schools and expressing our concerns about the impact on young lesbians. This purported to be new guidance, but the only significant change is about the need to provide single-sex toilets, and even that is muddled. The guidance has many flaws, not least that it is not compliant with either the law or the Cass review. It continues to promote the false notion that every child has a 'gender identity'. It still recommends the social transition of children at school, despite Cass's warning that this is a significant intervention. And says that can be done behind parents' backs. Worryingly it does not provide proper safeguarding measures. We are concerned that many of the pupils who are affected by gender confusion are young lesbians, and our letter focuses on that concern. We await the Cabinet Secretary's response.

Sally gave a talk at the Women's Declaration International conference on 26 July about the origins of the lesbian intervention and why it was so essential to the Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case at the Supreme Court. Watch here .

Someone can be simultaneously man and woman according to UK Gov Schrödinger’s cat was famously both dead and alive. Since 2004, we have had a situation where some people are recognised by the government as both male and female. Simultaneously. Schrödinger would have had a field day. Approximately 8,500 people in the UK possess a gender recognition certificate (GRC), issued in line with the Gender Recognition Act. This grants them a certificated sex which is the opposite to their biological sex. This allows a male with a GRC to do many things as a “woman” (and vice versa). But the Gender Recognition Act itself contains exceptions for certain purposes. A woman with a GRC is still to be treated as female when it comes to succession and hereditary peerages. (Of course! We can’t have women sex-changing their way into inheriting their younger brothers’ entitlement). Possession of a GRC does not change a male’s status as “father” of his children; does not prevent him from being identified as the perpetrator of a sex-specific crime such as rape; and does not make him a “woman” for gender-affected sports. So even within the terms of a GRC, the holder is treated as both sexes at once. A male is a “woman” when he gets married, but remains the father of his children. He is a “woman” when he is buried, but a man  if his deceased father has a hereditary peerage to hand down. Men with a GRC have also insisted they are “women” when it comes to matters of discrimination, and women’s rights to single-sex services. They have demanded entry to women’s hospital wards, rape crisis centres, changing rooms and hostel accommodation. And of course, toilets. On the back of those demands, men who do not hold a GRC but who claim any manner of “trans” identities have also demanded entry into women’s services and spaces. The recent Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case on the meaning of sex  in the Equality Act 2010 (EA) brings a welcome return of clarity, common sense and scientific reality to this state of affairs. The ruling unequivocally states that the words “man”, “woman” and “sex” in the EA refer to biological sex, in all circumstances, without exception. The judgment protects women’s and lesbians’ spaces and services from intrusion by males. Importantly, it also leaves intact all three of the protections for trans-identifying people, whether or not they possess a GRC. They are protected – and may not be discriminated against – on the basis of their biological sex, their sexual orientation, and their gender reassignment status. The rest of us mere mortals, who do not claim a different gender-identity, have only the first two protections. The clear legal definition in the FWS ruling is immensely important. Women are always, and only, biological women. And men are biological men, and no amount of magical thinking can make the opposite true. Or can it? Unfortunately, the FWS ruling is not the end of the story. It only considered how people who have acquired a GRC are affected by the Equality Act. But it does not address other legal situations where the falsification of someone’s sex might have an impact. One particular cause for concern relates to the searching of a detainee who claims to be “transgender”. Female police and prison officers have been forced to strip search men who claimed to be "women" on the grounds that this protects the prisoner’s dignity. This has not been restricted to men with a GRC, but require only that the detainee claims to be “trans”. No thought was given to the dignity of the hapless women officers, some of whom have been extremely distressed or traumatised. For some years, and despite the absence of any legislative authorisation, people have been allowed to falsify the sex marker on their driving licence, NHS record, bank account or passport, even if they do not have a GRC. Yes, you read that correctly – a man can be male as a matter of biology, certificate (or rather the lack of one) and law, yet nevertheless have a range of ID documents declaring him to be a “female”. Such instances of sex falsification create a massive safeguarding risk – how do you protect women from a male sex offender if all his documents now show him to be a woman named Isla? Even though the FWS ruling clarified that we have the right to lesbian- and women-only spaces and services, there will be instances where it is extremely difficult in practice to exclude men who present documents saying they are “female”. Sex-falsified documents also have implications for law enforcement. How do you identify a male fraudster if he has documents stating he is a woman? Sex falsification can also be life-threatening for the person concerned, if the doctors treating him don’t know her or his biological sex. Many symptoms and drug doses are different for men and for women. At least one baby has died because medics treating his mother for unexplained abdominal pains believed she was a man, so didn’t run any of the checks related to pregnancy until it was too late. There has never been any legal right to self-ID as a different sex in the UK. That was clarified in an earlier FWS case in 2022. And this year, the Supreme Court ruling shone a light on the ridiculous concept that it is possible to “change sex”, even on paper. Although it only considered the EA, its logic reinforces the case for an end to sex-falsification across the board. Yet there is not a single type of documentation that has not been corrupted by allowing anyone who wishes to obtain documents which falsely record their sex. The UK and Scottish governments must urgently take action to withdraw all such documents, and reissue the holders with ones that accurately record their sex. Until that is done, those falsified documents will provide cover for the many organisations who are refusing to implement the law, or only doing so reluctantly. 'We asked', they will no doubt cry, 'but Freddie had a driving licence showing he was a woman. How could we possibly have known otherwise?' And even organisations genuinely wanting to provide single-sex facilities will be faced with a situation where it is all but impossible to implement. Thus we will end up not only with Schrödinger's sex, but also with Schrödinger's rights - in a situation where we have an unequivocal right to single-sex and lesbian spaces and services . And at the same time we are denied them.

JK Rowling - still as Harry Potter's beloved mother - at the London premiere of the 6th part of the saga 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince', November 16, 2009 Photo Michael Melia / Alamy Stock Photo Polish journalist Krystyna Romanowska has published a long article in Polish magazine Warehouse, about JK Rowling's involvement in supporting women's rights. She spoke to quite a few UK lesbians, including Elaine and Sally from Lesbian Persistence. The article's in Polish, so here's also a google-translated pdf . (With apologies for Google's grammatical and stylistic errors!)

Police Scotland were consulting organisations on their new approach to collecting and recording data on sex and gender identity. (We tweeted a long thread about it here ). They've got the general idea that they are separate concepts and that sex has to be accurately reported. But they wanted feedback on the wording of their proposed questions. Which were to ask about 1. Sex. Right idea, but none of their proposals for the wording of the question are acceptable. 2. Gender identity. Probably good idea to ask about this for statistical purposes. It could be useful for us to be able to analyse how many suspects think they're some version of "trans". But it's difficult to find an appropriate wording. 3. Whether the person considers themselves to have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. We don't agree with asking this question at all - the PC of GR is an objective measure as set out in the Equality Act. Not a subjective notion of what someone thinks - and many people don't understand the EA definition anyway. Our full response is here

We wrote to Citizens Advice Scotland to support their stance on the provision of single sex facilities in line with the FWS ruling.

On Tuesday 13 May, the National published a comment piece by Dylan Hamilton whinging about the Scottish Parliament having provided suitable toilet facilities for her to use. We wrote to the editor, to correct the many pieces of misinformation her account contained. Our letter was published on 14 May, though well buried in the online version. Sir Your comment piece "I work at Holyrood - how toilets policy affects me" is full of misinformation. Dylan Hamilton claims that the Scottish Parliament is following "guidance they are not legally obligated to". This is simply wrong. The guidance, issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is simply a restatement of the law, as clarified by the Supreme Court. The court did not use the law "to interpret whatever they wanted from it". Instead, it analysed the Equality Act virtually line by line to establish what the law actually says.  Nor is it true to say that the mixed toilet facility is a "secret third thing" and that people who identify as trans will be outed by using it. This is not a "trans-only" toilet. but can be used by literally anybody. I dare say your correspondent's colleagues (amongst others) will be more than happy to use it as well.  Such third spaces have existed for years in many buildings, in Edinburgh and elsewhere. They are a compassionate solution which allows everyone their rights and does not insist that anyone is forced to use a facility which does not align with the way they feel about themself.   What this article - and much of the commentary in the media - demonstrates is that the trans-movement does not want a world in which everyone is provided for, but one in which their insistence that everyone play along with their claim that they are literally members of the opposite sex takes precedence.  I can, to an extent, understand the howls of outrage - the lie that people can change sex has been widely adopted for many years, mostly at the expense of women and lesbians. As a result, trans-identifying men and women have become so used to imposing their preferences on the world that it will take a period of adjustment to find their rights do not trump everyone else's.  Over the last ten years or so, women and lesbians have increasingly been denied the rights to our own spaces, free from males no matter how they identify. The judgment has confirmed that right always existed, even if it has been ignored. It also clearly reiterated the rights of people who identify as trans to be fully protected against discrimination. They have lost nothing, but their dominance. Regards Sally Wainwright Lesbian Persistence.

Clarity is not division. It’s the duty of elected parliamentarians, and especially of those in government, to uphold the rule of law, not to try to undermine the authority of the highest court in the land. MPs should be welcoming a ruling that makes crystal clear that lesbians, women and trans people all have our own, inalienable rights. Those rights are not in conflict, but are separately protected by the Equality Act. “What is divisive is the trans lobby stirring up fear and alarm, particularly amongst vulnerable gender-questioning young people, by misrepresenting the meaning of the ruling. It is inappropriate for MPs to support such statements. They should be providing reassurance where it is needed instead. Read More

Sally gave a talk to WDI on the court ruling and its implications for lesbians and other women. Watch it here .