Poll: Over half of adults back Supreme Court’s trans ruling

The majority of Brits support the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of ‘woman’, according to a poll commissioned by women’s group Sex Matters.

Of 2,106 adults in Great Britain surveyed by YouGov, 63 per cent of respondents thought it was the “right decision” for the UK’s highest court to rule that the Equality Act 2010’s protections are based on “biological sex”. Just 18 per cent opposed the judgment, with 19 per cent unsure.

Almost three quarters of respondents also backed sport bodies’ recent decisions to ban men from joining women’s football, cricket and netball teams in England.

Objective reality

Susan Smith, a director of women’s rights group For Women Scotland, commented: “For all the noise created by activists in recent weeks, this polling indicates that most people believe that women’s human rights matter and that the court acted correctly in determining that robust, clear definitions were critical”.

“We are pleased that there is evidence of heightened awareness of the case in Scotland in particular, which bears out our belief that the more governments push gender identity ideology, the more failings are revealed which strengthens public opposition.”

Last month, the UK’s highest court ruled in favour of For Women Scotland’s appeal against Scottish Government guidance that allows men who identify as female to take women-only positions on company boards.

Writing in Spiked magazine on the polling, journalist Georgina Mumford observed: “The court’s ruling is merely the legal rubber-stamping of what most people have always deemed true – that male and female are objective biological categories not subjective desires.”

‘Outrageous’

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Labour Party has been told that it can no longer allow men who self-identify as women on all-female shortlists.

A leaked paper given to the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) said it could be sued if it admitted applicants who were not “biologically female at birth”. But the Committee voted to delay its annual women’s conference to avoid “political risk”, as preventing men from attending could detract from the rest of the national conference.

Chief Executive of Sex Matters Maya Forstater welcomed the news that the NEC was told to accept the fact that “women and men are, and always have been, two biological sexes”.

But she said “the suggestion that the right thing to do is to postpone the women’s conference rather than simply running the event as it was always intended to be — for women — is simply outrageous”.