Restore Safeguarding – End Sex Falsification – Repeal the GRA
22 June 2024
This event focused on how Safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults has been undermined by sex falsification in law, policy and social practice.
- Safeguarding depends on recognising the objective, material reality of male- and female- sexed bodies.
- Laws, policies and social practices that ignore sex, instead prioritising hypothetical “gender identities”, erode safeguarding and put children and vulnerable adults in harm’s way.
INTRODUCTION
Tracey Dempsey , WDI UK
We invited participants to think about how Safeguarding is undermined by Sex Falsification in their work or in their lives in general.
We are aiming for an explicit call to action on Repeal of the GRA as an outcome of the Event, harnessing the experiences and thoughts of participants.
THE REALITY OF GENDER IN CARE AND WHY WE NEED SAME SEX CARE
A Mother’s Perspective: Sam Rospigliosi, Caring About Dignity
A Carer’s Perspective: Florence Waller, Caring About Dignity
THE SIMPLE ACT OF NOT LYING
Emma Hardy, York
CREATING & PROTECTING SAFE FEMALE SINGLE-SEX SPACES WOMEN IN TRAUMA-BASED ADDICTION
Sue Robson. Tina’s Haven
PARTY OF WOMEN
Kelly Oliver Dougall, Party Of Women Candidate for Tynemouth
RESTORE SAFEGUARDING: REMOVE SEX FALSIFICATION
Tracy Dempsey & Maureen O’Hara – WDI UK
SMALL GROUPS DISCUSSION
Led by Today’s Speakers
PANEL: THE PATH TO REPEAL
Including Feedback from Small Groups
REPEAL THE GRA
It is 20 years since the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) came into force on 1st July 2004.
Many serious concerns about potential adverse impacts on individuals and society were raised in Parliament during passage of the Bill. That those concerns were fully justified has become increasingly apparent over the past 20 years.
In November 2020, WDI UK provided a Written Submission to the Women and Equalities Committee on Reform of the Gender Recognition Act, in which we argued that the GRA should be repealed:
WDI hold a firm position that the GRA legislation is detrimental to the rights of women, is homophobic, and is part of a widespread dismantling of crucial safeguarding, for which the Government has a statutory responsibility.
At the time of its enactment, it did not take into consideration the impact on women and children.
In fact, it has undermined the safeguarding of children and of women who are victims of crime, including sexual crime; lacking capacity; in hospital; in need of intimate care; in closed psychiatric wards; in prisons.
Removing the GRA from the statute books is a necessary step towards re- establishing safeguarding.
SPEAKER DETAILS
Tracy Dempsey
Tracy Dempsey is a coach and well-being researcher who discovered the institutional capture by gender identity ideology in 2019, as she was completing a music psychology master’s. She created a private network of women and men, in or from Northern Ireland, concerned about the many harms of this anti-safeguarding movement, organising FOIs, meetings with politicians and responses to consultations, as well as local media commentary on the assault on safeguarding and on whistleblower testimony.
She later became the WDI NI contact and brought delegates from north and south of the Irish border to the House of Lords as part of a WDI delegation. She is launching a cross- border campaign to repeal all sex falsification law, policy and practice, the Women’s and Children’s Coalition.
Kelly Oliver Dougall
Kelly Oliver Dougall is a local business woman, disillusioned with the options available to voters so decided to stand in the election herself. Kelly is passionate about people, justice and democracy. She believes that all of these things are under threat as never before from insidious ideologies that damage our culture, our values and our way of life.
In the case of radical transgender ideology, men are aggressively infiltrating women only spaces including rape crisis centres, women’s sports and prisons. Some of the men involved in these actions have histories of violent or sexual crimes against women.
This ideology is putting children at risk by encouraging mainly autistic children and young people, and those who would grow up to be gay, into believing they were born in the wrong body and going on to have dangerous, irreversible medical interventions.
Many of our public institutions including schools, police forces, universities and public services have been infiltrated by transgender activists who disseminate this anti-human and reality denying ideology. Many women are afraid to speak out about this issue for fear of persecution, up to and including threats of violence and death.
Kelly is standing as a Party of Women parliamentary candidate for Tynemouth, to change the conversation on this subject and to help restore free speech around this issue.
Emma Hardy
Emma Hardy is a mum of two daughters aged 11 and 13 who feels passionately that they, their friends and all girls should have access to single-sex toilets and changing rooms. She has campaigned and confronted her local council and NHS Trust about mixed-sex policies that harm women and children. She is also suing David Lloyd Leisure for misleading their customers: by advertising that their changing facilities are “family friendly” when they allow male club members who are “fully transitioned” (undefined) to use the female changing rooms.
https://democracythree.org/help-emma-sue-david-lloyd
Emma likes this quote from A. Solzhenitsyn’s 1972 Nobel Prize speech: ‘The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies’. 50 years later, she likes to think that being described as ‘a pain in the arse parent’ on Mumsnet is somewhere in the same ballpark.
Emma will update us on her campaign for single-sex provision in health clubs, recreational clubs, children clubs and sports clubs – and will explain why, legally, a man getting his nob out in public is not necessarily a sexual offence.
Maureen O’Hara
Maureen O’Hara is a feminist activist, lawyer, and legal academic. The focus of her activism and research is men’s violence against women and girls, particularly in the sex trade; and the harms caused to women and children by gender ideology. Maureen has been involved in the rape crisis and women’s refuge movements, and in a project providing exit support services to women in street prostitution.
Maureen is one of the authors of the Declaration on Women’s Sex Based Rights.
Sue Robson
Sue’s research report “In Love and Anger” was published in May 2024. This is a report of an action research-based study of the pioneering Tina’s Haven pilot project, delivered in East Durham during 2022 and 2023. Twenty-eight women in addiction recovery participated in the Tina’s Haven pilot project, the majority were birthmothers severed from their children.
Sue says in her report: “Female-only spaces are elemental to the Tina’s Haven project and it is a given that the Single Sex Exemption (SSE, paragraph 27 of Schedule 3 of the Equality Act) applies to the model on the basis that “the limited provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. A mixed approach would not be an effective way of addressing the lived and subjective experiences of birthmothers severed from their children by trauma-based addiction.”“Tina’s Haven – A catalyst for emancipatory practice for birthmothers severed from their children by trauma- based addiction”
Sam Rospigliosi
Sam is one of the founders of Caring about Dignity, a new website designed to collect the stories of:
– those who receive care in their own home or in residential homes; and
– their advocates and carers.
Caring about Dignity amplifies their voices and reveals widespread issues about dignity in care. Sam will deliver the speech that she gave recently in Parliament about the harmful impact of gender identity ideology on children and adults with severe disabilities.
https://www.caringaboutdignity.org
Sam is mum to a severely learning-disabled daughter. She worked in book publishing and then the third sector for twenty years. She left paid employment in 2012 when she returned to London from Edinburgh with her family. As well as focusing on care for her daughter, she campaigns for disability rights, in particular the rights of disabled girls and women to same-sex intimate care. She is in the early stages of setting up a supported living ‘forever’ home for severely learning-disabled young women. She has also been a volunteer befriender for most of the last 35 years.
Florence Waller
Florence, one of the founders of Caring about Dignity, is a private carer with over 12 years experience working in domiciliary care. Prior to establishing herself as a private carer she has worked for a home care agency as well as in care home settings. Through working first hand with vulnerable women, Florence has developed a deep understanding of the importance of dignity in care, and how maintaining dignity necessitates same sex care provisions.
https://www.caringaboutdignity.org
Florence is passionate about helping to inform women about their rights to same sex care and single sex spaces. She believes in the importance of language when advocating for women’s rights. Sex must be clearly defined in order for women to assert their rights to same sex care; care providers must not be allowed to rely on the ambiguity of the term ‘gender’.
In addition to her care work, Florence is a trained primary school teacher with a Masters in Education (Northumbria University) and a vigilant understanding of safeguarding. In her spare time she enjoys painting, drawing upon her local surroundings in and around North Tyneside to inform her artwork.