A barrister has raised £60,000 in 24 hours to bring a case for victimisation against her chambers and LGBT group Stonewall, despite her crowdfunding page being suspended.

Allison Bailey has accused Garden Court Chambers and Stonewall of indirectly discriminating against her by treating her as "bigoted" for holding gender critical beliefs, the core of which is that biological sex is immutable and people cannot change sex.

Bailey claims that Stonewall sought to "intimidate and silence" her by telling Garden Court Chambers that it needed to take action against her or risk damaging its relationship with the influential charity, which certifies the set as a 'Stonewall Diversity Champion'. Last November Garden Court Chambers investigated Bailey and upheld some of its findings, prompting her to propose her employment tribunal action.

Bailey, who is a lesbian, alleges that Stonewall targeted her because she helped found LGB Alliance, a gay rights group which has expressed misgivings about Stonewall's direction and power. 

Bailey wrote on her CrowdJustice case page that she was concerned with Stonewall's redefinition of homosexuality from 'same sex attraction’ to ‘same gender attraction’. She said Stonewall's stance, which means males can identify as lesbians, has led to lesbians being encouraged to have sex with transwomen and “excoriated for bigotry and transphobia" for being same sex attracted.

She also objected to Stonewall's campaign to amend the Equality Act 2010 to remove exceptions which prevent trans-identified males being admitted into female spaces, which she said would adversely impact upon women in sport, and make women and girls more uncomfortable and vulnerable to male violence in spaces such as changing rooms, prisons, refuges and hospitals. Stonewall made the change as part of its support for transgender people, but Bailey said that “if the new trans activism is not brought to heel, women will disappear as a political class”.


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Bailey and a few messages from people who probably didn’t donate.


Bailey raised £48,000 from thousands of donors in six hours on Saturday before CrowdJustice pulled down her case page at 2pm citing "serious complaints".

In an initial statement the platform said, "We messed up. We allowed Ms Bailey's CrowdJustice page to launch before its content in its entirety met the high standards that our community expects of us".

It subsequently re-opened the page after deleting most of the content, including Bailey's picture, references to her being black or a lesbian, her specific issues with Stonewall, her gender critical beliefs, and all messages from donors. Contrary to CrowdJustice's usual practice, it also prevented further donations once Bailey's first "stretch target" of £60,000 was reached. 

In a follow-up statement, CrowdJustice said Bailey had used "unnecessarily inflammatory and offensive" language, and that because she refused to amend her page, it would not allow her to collect more money as "we could not accurately represent to backers what any further funds would be used for".

"I felt sick. I had been shut down, stopped from speaking", said Bailey in a detailed statement. "But I will not stop speaking, and I will not be erased".

A Stonewall spokesperson said, "We work with a diverse range of organisations through our Diversity Champions programme to give advice on tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic discrimination and how they can be more inclusive of LGBT people. While we aren’t able to comment on individual cases, we know it’s vital businesses take active steps in creating equality for all lesbian, gay, bi and trans people".

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Comments

Matt F 09 July 20 07:26

All, the comment about being respected was in relation to a comment that I didn't know what I was talking about.  

Given that my full name and details are not here, I thought it would help explain that I don't need to read up any more on this, but thank you kindly for the patronising suggestion that I go and educate myself.

The basic issue here is that LGB warriors still see trans men as men and trans women as women. 

And, I don't.   We are never going to agree on this.

However, the law requires you not to discriminate against someone on the grounds of either gender or gender reassignment.  So, good luck with your crusade and I hope you all get done for hate speech.

All the lawyers on this page making trite comments about people in heels etc should be ashamed of themselves.

 

 

 

ShootyMcShootyface 09 July 20 13:52

P&M: Is this the first time that comments on a new story have attained a Tun?

Anonymous 09 July 20 17:56

No, the issue here is that you're not even making an attempt to listen. Your entrenched prejudice is extremely evident from your most recent post. You'd best do some unconscious bias training.

Anonymous 09 July 20 18:49

LGB warriors? No. We're not warriors. We just don't like the idea of men dressed as women occupying women's spaces. 

EqualityAct2010 10 July 20 06:04

Matt F, 'Gender' is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. I know it's a long and often complex piece of legislation b,ut the protected characteristics are right at the beginning in sections 4-12. I am slightly surprised that someone as involved in LGBT matters as you, commenting on a legal gossip site, would make such a legal error. 

 

The protected characteristic I presume you meant instead of 'gender' is 'sex'. (see Section 11)

 

Gender reassignment is also a PC, but 'gender' isn't. 

 

If it helps, the Equality Act also helpfully defines the term 'woman'. Section 212 'a female of any age'.

AnonymousTERF 10 July 20 11:04

What EqualityAct2010 said. 

MattF - you are either trolling or the worst kind of misogynist.  You will never get the majority of the UK adult population to agree that transwomen are women and transmen are men, so best give up your crusade now.

Have a look at this! 10 July 20 12:06

Come on lads, you all know that many trans women don't have penises and pass as women. Or if you don't, now you do.

The general problem here, as RoF said in their article, is that "gender-critical" feminists don't believe that there is any way that someone who was assigned male at birth (there is no mention of trans men, who would be assigned female at birth) could ever be recognised as a woman. So that means that according to gender-critical people, there is no such thing as a trans woman, only men who have opted for painful and expensive surgeries, hormone replacement therapies and a life which is statistically more likely to involve violence and discrimination than if they chose to live as a man. I don't know any men who would choose that! It's not just a man randomly saying he is a woman and making everyone agree with him, as some people seem to think. 

Also, in the UK children cannot have irreversible surgeries before they are old enough to consent, only measures like puberty blockers which are both reversible and have been used with children safely for many years e.g. for children who start menstruating at a very young age. There are no five year olds having their genitals cut off for gender reassignment reasons here! A common misconception.

I don't think anyone should have sex with someone they don't want to, and having preferences is normal. Although randomly saying you don't fancy a whole group of people is a bit reductive, as there are many trans women who pass completely as women. I'm a woman attracted to women, trans women included. It feels like publicly saying you don't fancy women of a particular hair colour, race or size. A bit unnecessary and presumptious. Trans women aren't the sexually aggressive predators some newspapers make them out to be! Just regular people, with a lot of variation. 

I've attached a link to a youtuber (stay with me people) who does a point by point address of many of the arguments in this thread. Fair warning, there is a lot of internet culture references, but I think it's one of the smartest long-form addresses of the gender-critical/trans divide. Worth a watch especially to anyone who is uninformed/undecided on the issue. Might need a cup of tea, it's about 30 mins long https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pTPuoGjQsI

Lucy 10 July 20 12:39

“Come on lads, you all know that many trans women don't have penises and pass as women”. Utter rubbish! The vast majority keep their male genitals intact. 

“The general problem here, as RoF said in their article, is that "gender-critical" feminists don't believe that there is any way that someone who was assigned male at birth (there is no mention of trans men, who would be assigned female at birth) could ever be recognised as a woman”. Complete misreading of the GC position. We don’t believe male people are women. There is no mention of transmen because we do not worry about them in our single sex spaces or taking female positions or playing in female sport. 

“according to gender-critical people, there is no such thing as a trans woman, only men who have opted for painful and expensive surgeries, hormone replacement therapies”. False. You are misrepresenting our position. We of course believe there are of transwomen. Don’t try to tar us in this barmy way with ‘erasing their identify’ or ‘denying their existence’. And most of them have not opted for surgery. The ones who have, old school transsexuals, we have a huge deal of sympathy for.

“only measures like puberty blockers which are both reversible and have been used with children safely for many years e.g. for children who start menstruating at a very young age”. This is also false. You are lying. The NHS has literally this month updated its advice to state that the long term effects of puberty blockers are unknown. They were previously used to tackle precocious puberty - there are no studies of their use as puberty blockers in the way you describe.
 

”It feels like publicly saying you don't fancy women of a particular hair colour, race or size. A bit unnecessary and presumptious.“ It is being said publicly because a lot of lesbians as being told it all the time - at school, on the internet etc. It needs to be said that same sex attraction is not transphobic or wrong in any way. 

“Trans women aren't the sexually aggressive predators some newspapers make them out to be!“ Again you are misrepresenting the concern in a really horrible way. We are not saying transwomen are bad. We are saying that, firstly, they are no less dangerous than any other sample of men, and also, that there is now no way to tell the good males who are trans from the bad ones saying they are trans to take advantage of the access to women’s spaces it allows. 

Anonymous 10 July 20 17:05

"Also, in the UK children cannot have irreversible surgeries before they are old enough to consent, only measures like puberty blockers which are both reversible and have been used with children safely for many years e.g. for children who start menstruating at a very young age. There are no five year olds having their genitals cut off for gender reassignment reasons here! A common misconception."

This is simply not true. Direct from the NHS guidance:

"Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.

Although the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.

It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations."

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/

The World is not with you trans phobes 10 July 20 17:51

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/07/09/trans-self-identify-liz-truss-gender-recognition-act-yougov-polling-women-dawn-butler/?fbclid=IwAR33Muf4G9stff2AV0TrG-33AJZHf4Gx1nL9WNfAmQp4r0LX6NasvsXt7tQ

Thevotebutton 22 July 20 06:43

Please do not pay attention to the vote button. All of mine were automatically assigned the thumbs down on comments I agreed with. There is too many to make them all right. I'm thinking I'm nit the only one this is happening to. 

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