Baroness faced backlash from left-wing MPs after publicly backing female-only ... trends now
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Britain's equalities watchdog has come under fire from activists and Left-wing MPs since it made a series of interventions in the fraught area of trans rights.
Just over a year ago, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published a set of guidelines on single-sex spaces that said transgender women can be excluded from female bathrooms or refuges to protect privacy or prevent trauma.
There was a backlash from some campaign groups and it even led to a bizarre protest outside the EHRC’s London office last September in which radical trans activists left behind 60 bottles of urine. But a bigger row broke out last month, when the EHRC published a letter written by its chairman Baroness Falkner to equalities minister Kemi Badenoch.
Although it merely proposed further legal exploration of a possible technical amendment to the Equality Act 2010, which currently uses the words sex and gender interchangeably, its meaning and consequences were explosive. What Lady Falkner was supporting was a far-reaching change to anti-discrimination law that would mean sex is defined on the basis of biology rather than gender identity.
It would mean anyone who was born male could not be considered female for the purposes of accessing female-only spaces such as toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards or prisons.
Under fire: Equality and Human Rights Commission chairman Baroness Falkner
Even transgender women who had in recent years legally changed sex by obtaining a gender recognition certificate could in certain circumstances be forced to use male facilities.
Lady Falkner said the proposed change would
