Untitled

What the Code actually does

The Code is the EHRC’s interpretation of the April 2025 Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers. That ruling redefined “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 to mean biological sex. The EHRC was always going to update the Code. The question was how. The answer arrived on 21 May, and the answer is: badly. The Code defines “woman” as “biological woman.” It defines “man” as “biological man.” For the purposes of the Equality Act, sex means sex at birth. End of. That definition then cascades. Single-sex spaces, the Code says, must be operated on the basis of biological sex. Trans people “should be offered” a third or gender-neutral space. Trans women can be excluded from women-only associations. Trans people are excluded from single-sex competitions for the gender they live in. If a women-only service chooses to admit trans women, it may legally cease to qualify as a single-sex service at all. That last bit goes unsaid in most of the coverage. Read it again. A women’s group that has been trans-inclusive for twenty years, run by women who voted democratically to be trans-inclusive, can now lose its legal protection as a single-sex service because of who its members chose to include. A small group of self-styled women’s rights campaigners can threaten a much larger women’s organisation with court action for being too welcoming. That is the policy. It is being sold as protection. It is, in practice, a way of bullying women out of running the kinds of services women have chosen to run. The Code does not stop at toilets and refuges. It limits access to healthcare. To housing. To social care. To gyms, pools, spas. And then, quietly, it rewrites what “lesbian” and “gay” mean in law. Paragraph 2.50 of the Code says, in plain text: “a trans man with a GRC is a woman and a trans woman with a GRC is a man, for the purposes of the Act.” Paragraph 2.92 then defines sexual orientation: “a person’s sexual orientation towards persons of the same sex (the person is a lesbian woman or a gay man).” And paragraph 2.96 closes the back door: “Gender reassignment is a separate protected characteristic and unrelated to sexual orientation.” Stitch those three together and the consequence is unavoidable. A trans woman in a relationship with a cis woman is legally, under this Code, a man in a relationship with a woman. Heterosexual. Not a lesbian couple. Not protected as one. I had to read that twice. It is in the document the government has just laid before Parliament. You can read it yourself on gov.uk.

Taken from: https://biminibabes.substack.com/p/write-the-letter-babes

I don't tend to write posts like this, but this is something that is going to harm me and so many others in the UK.

Please share this link around if you're not from the UK, and if you are - click on it. It'll give you the link to a petition and it will help you send a letter to your MP asking them to vote against this.

The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.

Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.

Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.

When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.

Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.

The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

Gender and culture and expression of both of those things are so individual and the problems that come with them are also incredibly individual. And people like fight over what problems are worse.

and then, for reasons usually at least slightly less arbitrary, fucks off again.

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.

But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.