Una-Jane Winfield is the victim of censorship by Hammersmith Council's Councillors and Officers
(1) Labour ward councillors do not listen to their residents' concerns about "hot potato" subjects. In the last 6 years I have repeatedly asked some by e-mail and some in person why they ignore the direct clash between the Protected Characteristic of sex (Equality Act 2010) and the made-up and linguistically confusing "gender". I get no reply or a look of total incomprehension, and they refuse to consider it further. Conservative Councillors do understand that sex is simple, binary and cannot ever change. They understand why "gender" is confusing. They have been quite supportive. Thank you Cllr Jose Afonso and Victoria Brocklebank-Fowler.
(2) The Supreme Court ruled in April 2025 that sex means Biological Sex. It does not mean "certificated sex" or "gender reassignment". GR is the subject of the "Gender" "Recognition" Act 2004 — please note the inverted commas. In the GRA there is no definition of "gender", there is no such thing as "gender".
(3) The 2025 Supreme Court ruling has consequences: the Council must, as a matter of law, reinstate single-sex Women and Men's toilets and changing rooms in all Council-controlled public buildings, such as the Town Hall, and also the Lyric Theatre, Council-run gyms and swimming pools, all maintained school buildings etc. The Council must do much, much more than this: every time the word "gender" is used in a Council document, policy, contract, EDI monitoring form, application form, etc etc "gender" must be changed back to the legally correct word: Sex (at birth). The old historical usage was and still is correct. It will always be clear and correct. The word sex frames the discussion in the text properly.
The word "gender" was wrongly borrowed from the USA in the 1940s. Americans are prudish about the same word which Victorians used freely: sex is the human reproductive category and there are two and only two immutable sexes.
(4) In order to reinstate clarity, the Council (and all public and private businesses) must urgently clean up all textual references by removing the word "gender" and replace with sex. As George Orwell would approve of this precision of language.
Una-Jane Winfield ● 31d0 Comments