Conservatives for Women
The subsequent battle for science, sanity, and women's rights has consumed untold resources
By Caroline ffiske 15 July 2022
When she was Minister for Women and Equalities, overseeing the Government Equalities Office during 2018 and 2019, Penny Mordaunt presided over an organisation captured by gender ideology. The output of the GEO under her watch spread gender ideology across public institutions. In doing so it undermined science, free speech, established language, women's rights, and the safeguarding of the vulnerable. The fightback from grassroots women has since consumed untold energy.
This document illustratres this. Much more work must be done to understand how an unscientific harmful ideology completely took over an institution that was supposed to protect women's rights. Many women seek a Government Enquiry into this matter - perhaps the next Conservative Prime Minister could commit to this.
To get underway, it's worth looking back to 2016 to see that the Government Equality Office was not then completely captured by gender ideology. A 2016 report, commissioned by the GEO continued to recognise a distinction, and a difference in interest, between "LGB" and the "T". Extract below.
This 2016 Report continued to sometimes refer to LGB people 'ungrouped' from trans-identifying individuals, a practice that would cease altogether in later years.
But by July 2018, and with Penny Mordaunt in charge, gender ideology seemed to hold full sway at the GEO. Mordaunt was either entirely complicit - or singularly failed to challenge the normalisation of concepts with no backing in science, emanating from 'queer theory' and social media. This is illustrated by the GEO-commissioned National LGBT Survey.
This 2018 report is significant for its consistent unquestioning normalisation of gender ideology. The concept of 'gender identity' which barely existed a few short years ago is presented in unquestioning fashion. New gender identities such as 'asexual', 'pansexual', 'non-binary' and 'gender-queer' make their appearance in a government report:
Despite the open recognition that the LGBT survey suffered from methodology problems, it was used as the precursor for the launch of an LGBT Action Plan that pushed gender ideology across the state sector.
The GEO report normalised the concept of 'cisgender' thereby also normalising the opposite concept of bodily disassocation. Within the report it is defined as follows: "‘cisgender’ is used throughout the more detailed report as an umbrella term for respondents who identified exclusively as men and women where this was consistent with their sex as assigned at birth". The use here of sex being 'assigned at birth' is an incompetent unscientific neo-concept. It implies that biological sex is not real. You have to assume that Penny Mordaunt bought into this undermining of elementary science and the promotion of incoherent unscientific ideology.
The following paragraph should surely have given a competent Minister pause. Was the survey hijacked by young people caught up in gender ideology? Should this ideology then have been seemingly so unquestioningly affirmed by a government Ministry and Minister?
Penny Mordaunt nodded through a bar graph about asexuals, pan-sexuals, and non-binary people. I wonder how many of these identifications were fleeting fads for the individuals concerned. It wouldn't matter but for the policy decisions that were to come out of it.
The survey report normalises young lesbian women referring to themselves as heterosexuals. This person had previously talked about their wife. Nowhere does the survey report flag up concerns.
The survey report captures a sad picture of young women 'transitioning' to identity as trans men. Yet this is presented as business as usual, no concerns.
It is what followed this 2018 LGBT survey that changed the direction of British politics. Under Penny Mordaunt, the GEO pushed gender ideology across key institutions. Practically everything that women have since spent untold resources fighting - in order to protect science, free speech, women's rights, and the safeguarding of the vulnerable - can be traced to the LGBT Action Plan that Mordaunt signed off as a follow-up to the 2018 survey.
The July 2018 LGBT Action Plan was signed off with a flourish by Mordaunt:
As with the LGBT Survey, the Action Plan normalised the concept of 'gender identity' as part of government policy and our national conversation. This is despite this having no grounding in science and being a neologism 99% of us had not heard of ten years ago. It's an ideological concept that effectively has the purpose of over-riding the concept of biological sex as a key determinant in how we live and orientate around one another.
The NHS and women's right to single sex accomodation
The first substantive policy commitment in the LGBT Action Plan relates to Health. Mordaunt commits to the engagement of a NHS LGBT Advisor:
By September 2019, women's right to single sex accomodation in NHS hospitals had been over-ridden. An extraordinary NHS document 'Annex B' prioritises the wishes of self-identifying 'trans' individuals in almost all circumstances.
The following paragraph about non-binary people exemplifies the utterly cavalier approach to respecting existing legislation and norms; and women's rights, privacy and dignity. There is no mechanism for a person to be identified as 'non-binary' apart from simple self-declaration. So here we have the mechanism whereby the NHS waved through any man being able to self-identify into women's spaces. There is no record of there having been a consultation - were any women's groups consulted? What about the application of the Equality Act? How and why were the potential concerns of women so ignored?
Women have been fighting ever since to have their voices heard on this matter and to have Annex B reviewed. To date, no movement. Sajid Javid expressed concerns but they didn't go anywhere.
The exponential increase in the number of girls self-identifying as men
The LGBT Action Plan raises this issue in a rather cavalier fashion. In fact it refers to young women as 'people assigned female at birth'. Here is a thing: I searched for the word 'women' in the LGBT Action Plan. Apart from its use for offices and titles it is only used to refer to men. How did the term 'people assigned female at birth' make it into a government document?
This commitment to gather evidence about so many young women identifying as trans made it into a Times article in September 2018. Even in the GEO statement in the Times article, the scale of ideological capture is evident: "Last night a source at the Government Equalities Office said: “There has been a substantial increase in the number of individuals assigned female at birth being referred to the NHS." Had the GEO already banned the word 'woman'? After that nothing happened - there was no enquiry. By February 2020 the GEO were even refusing to say what was or was not happening, turning down an FOI request that I made. I'm not sure how Mordaunt can now claim this ongoing non-event as evidence of her concern.
Education
Up and down the country, children are being introduced to the idea that they might have been born in the wrong body, or that they have a gender identity they might want to prioritise over their sex. To find this gender identity they should refer to vacuous gender stereotypes. Unsurprisingly, the number of young people claiming a neo- gender identity continues to rise. This trend was fast-tracked by Mordaunt's LGBT Action Plan.
First was the commitment of substantial taxpayer funds to organisations who used it to promote gender ideology to school children:
Most of the documents that were produced as a result of this funding were so bad that the PSHE who initially hosted them, removed them from view. Here is some of the material that was produced, illustrated in an article I wrote at the time:
One particular outfit, Equaliteach, wrote something so bad (using taxpayer funds) that the next Minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss, publicly disowned it. Neverthless, it's still available free to schools to download. Details here - and note that only last year, the Government was still giving this outfit money.
Back to the LGBT Action Plan: yes it also covered the new "Relationship and Sex Education" Guidance for schools.
When this came out, it required schools to teach school children about 'gender identity' just as if this had always been a thing. See page 26:
Parents have been fighting the indoctrination of their children with gender ideology by some schools ever since.
The LGBT Action Plan signed up the Crown Prosecution Service to write a Hate Crimes School Pack.
The resulting document was so bad it had to be withdrawn. I wrote about it here:
Safe Schools Alliance mounted a Judicial Review to get this CPS document withdrawn. They were successful. That's how bad our public institutions got for a while - they produced documents completely captured by incoherent ideology; quite often they misrepresented the law.
The Conversion Therapy Ban which risks criminalising responsible therapists for challenging the gender identification of vulnerable young people? It originated here too.
Women accused of hate crime for refering to biological reality?
Violent male prisoners in women's prisons?
Reform of the Gender Recognition Act? The document commited to making it less bureaucratic and instrusive. (p22)
Statistics? "The Government Equalities Office, the Office for National Statistics and the Government Statistical Service will work together on a cross-government project to develop monitoring standards for sexual orientation and gender identity across central government." Was it this engagement that led the ONS to commit to allowing people to self-identify their sex in the Census? Once again, a decision only reversed via a legal challenge from FairPlayforWomen.
Sports? "Following Sport England’s investment in a study by Pride Sports to identify how to better support LGBT inclusion in sport, Sport England will consider the recommendations of the research." - The start of an increasing presence of trans-identifying men in women's sports?
Privileged access to decision-making? "To help us guide and deliver this plan, we will establish a new LGBT Advisory Panel for government. The Minister for Women and Equalities will appoint the membership for the group and it will comprise representatives from civil society. The panel will advise on LGBT issues that we have an interest in." Here they are getting updates on GRA Reform - and the development of the Census. Were there any women groups getting similar updates? (No).
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All the things women have been fighting ever since seem to have originated or been reinforced in this 2018 LGBT Action Plan signed off by Penny Mordaunt. The presence of violent males in women's prisons, trans-identify males winning trophies in women's sports, the promotion of gender ideology in schools, men who identify as 'non-binary' being allowed into women's hospital wards, the undermining of science via 'sex assigned at birth', the threats to free speech from the definitions of 'hate crime' and 'hate incidents', the slow erosion of women's language via 'individuals assigned female at birth'.
Why did Mordaunt sign it all off? No concerns for science, free speech, women's rights, children's safeguarding? Shouldn't the very first mention of 'people assigned female at birth' have resulted in a major red flag? This is not science - it's ideology. How could a government minister be so easily captured by it all; participate in promoting it? More work is needed to understand this era in our history. What lessons can we learn?
The next Prime Minister must launch a public enquiry so we can document and learn from the unedifying capture of our public institutions by an incoherent ideology that does great harm.
