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Over the past 9 months, often together with @RAuchmuty, I have published various pieces about law, sex and gender. We have a particular focus on how to uphold sex-based rights whilst also protecting the fundamental rights of all individuals including vulnerable minorities.
This thread contains some of those pieces. I am posting these because I stand for all individuals to have their fundamental rights protected & promoted in law & in practice, including specific protections owing to their membership of vulnerable groups, as you can see/read here:
First, we published an article in the Oxford Human Rights Blog http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/womens-rights-and-the-proposed-changes-to-the-gender-recognition-act/ on the implications of allowing self-identification of gender without protecting existing sex-based human rights, and why we need to stand up for existing rights of female persons.
We then wrote for @FeministCurrent https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/09/14/never-mind-reforming-gender-recognition-act-theres-no-need-gender-recognition-certificates/ … about why the Gender Recognition Act exists in the UK, & what reforms to that Act might do re impacting female rights to sex-segregated spaces. This was a piece for an international audience interested in UK law.
In @ConversationUK https://theconversation.com/what-would-changes-to-the-gender-recognition-act-mean-two-legal-views-103204 we contributed a piece about law, sex and gender – one that was published alongside a piece from a different perspective
@guardian the did something similar with six different legal views on the consultations regarding reforming the Gender Recognition Act https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/19/gender-recognition-act-reforms-six-legal-views-transgender-debate (including one from the awesome @Julian_Norman1 )
@BBCWomansHour featured programmes on this topic, including asking two law professors to speak to this issue. Unfortunately one law professor – not me -- refused to have a debate, so we were recorded separately for the programme which can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00019m5
I have also spoken at @Womans_Place_UK (video here: and text of talk on their website) about the need to uphold the fundamental rights of all people and specific rights of vulnerable groups
And I gave invited oral evidence to the Scottish Parliament https://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/culture-tourism-europe-and-external-affairs-committee-december-6-2018 on the back of written evidence we submitted regarding the proposed changes to the Census https://www.parliament.scot/S5_European/Inquiries/CTEEA_CensusBill_FreedmanProfRosa_AuchmutyDrRosemary_CTEEA_S5_18_CB_11.pdf
In 2019 I gave this talk at the @ForwomenScot inaugural event https://forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Rosa-Freedman-FWS.pdf at which every speaker emphasised the importance of upholding human rights for all.
If or when we publish more pieces I will add them here. I am fed up of us being misrepresented when what we care about, argue for, and insist upon, is for the law to be upheld and for human rights of all to be protected without overriding specific rights of vulnerable groups.
And here is the video from @ForwomenScot Scotland event in January 2019: in which I try to cover many of the relevant international, comparative and national law issues
Here is the video from the @uniofedinburgh event on women's sex-based rights at which I spoke on a panel with @bindelj Dr Louise Moody @SarahPedersen2 @ClaireShrugged and @LucyHunterB
And this is the text of the longer version of the talk that I planned to give at that event. It gives a background on international human rights law, women's rights, and why we need specific protections for different vulnerable groups https://forwomen.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Rosa-Freedman-Edinburgh-Uni-speech.pdf
