On Tuesday 26 November and Wednesday 27 November, five mostly male* Supreme Court justices will hear arguments from various lawyers over the definition of “woman” in law. You can read the specific citation here.
This court case is the culmination of a long legal battle waged in Scotland, but watched very closely by people all over the UK, and indeed the world.
The appellants in the case, For Women Scotland (FWS), have made their submissions to the court public. Interventions by Sex Matters and Scottish Lesbians (and others) are linked to from the same FWS page along with a very helpful timeline.
The legal academic, Michael Foran, has written a huge amount of explanatory material on the forthcoming case. Here is one of his shorter and more recent substack posts on the matter. Foran thinks FWS are in with a good shout of winning.
What is a woman, Stan?
A Federal court in Australia has recently ruled that the definition of a woman can include a biological man, if that man declares himself to be a woman. Roxy Tickle, who was born male, alleged discrimination when he was kicked out of the woman-only Giggle app. In Tickle vs Giggle, Justice Robert Bromwich found sex, as defined in Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act is “changeable and not necessarily binary”. Tickle won the case.
The ruling drew criticism from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, who said it: “demonstrates the concrete consequences that result when gender identity is allowed to supplant sex and override women’s rights to female-only services and spaces.”
Giggle’s founder, Sall Grover, is currently crowdfunding an appeal.
I’ll be at the Supreme Court on Tuesday and Wednesday to hear the arguments. Judgment will be reserved, which means it won’t be handed down immediately. We may have to wait until the new year to find out what a woman is. In the UK, at least.
* As in, three are male and two are female. Come on.
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