If LawFare has failed, can the Rule of Law survive?

The reactions to the Supreme Court judgment about the meaning of 'sex' in the Equality Act, makes me worried for the rule of law and how long we will have to fight.

April 16th 2025 should have been the glorious culmination of a seven year battle to restore women’s rights to single sex spaces and associations, along with the freedom of us all to talk about it, with the Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland v the Scottish Ministers. The rule of law would prevail and sanity would be restored.

But even my seven year exposure to the dishonesty and viciousness of many gender ideologues to any attempt to reign them in, did not adequately prepare me for the backlash to the judgment. I am now concerned about where we will actually go from here and what we can do now, given that even a judgment from our apex court appears to leave so many unmoved.

There have been some attempts at critical legal analysis. Michael Foran has written a detailed response to Crash Wigley’s criticisms of the ruling on the UK Constitutional Law website. It was particularly good to see Strathclyde University offer a right to reply to Naomi Cunningham after it published a blog from Emeritus Professor Kenneth Norrie which attracted much critical response, not least because he could not correctly identify the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. His use of language showed precisely where his ideological bias lies and I share Cunningham’s disquiet at his use of ‘chutzpah’ and ‘shame’ to describe grass roots campaigning groups.

This was at least an attempt at some analysis, even though Cunningham’s conclusion seems spot on

The legal reasoning in Norrie’s blog post is surprisingly weak. In fairness to Professor Norrie, it should be remembered that this is in the nature of a “first pass” at a substantial Supreme Court judgment in an area of law in which he is not a specialist. What is more disquieting is his approach to a conflict between men’s wishes and women’s privacy, dignity, autonomy and safety which displays a tender empathy for men who want to be women while stereotyping women’s meticulously evidenced objections as feigned or hysterical. Norrie’s call for kindness is in truth a thinly disguised demand for submission.

But the reactions of many more were to reject any attempt at legal analysis, instead to go straight for the hyperbolic disavowal, rejecting the Supreme Court judgment as morally questionable.

I was particularly concerned by this from the Fire Brigades Union. Not only did I think it surprising that this particular union apparently focuses on ‘fighting for the rights of minoritized people’ rather than the working conditions of those who do a dangerous and important job, but that it chose to comment in terms which clearly strike at the legitimacy of a Supreme Court judgement, declaring it morally unsound.

Some objected to my characterisation of this as open defiance of the law, claiming it was merely legitimate and necessary criticism. I continue to disagree. I am all for legitimate and necessary criticism and made some myself. But to declare that one has the moral authority to condemn a ruling of our apex court in these terms goes far beyond criticism and into a declaration of illegitimacy. This does not merely strike at one judgment; it brings the entire rule of law into question. It is not a criticism inviting reflection and/or challenge - it is an attempt to make any challenge an example of moral turpitude and therefore shut down debate.

Others were much cruder in their attempted demolition the rule of law. It was suggested that my wish to protect single sex female spaces was in fact a cover for my sexual excitement over the ‘dehumanisation’ of men.

There were the usual threats to do me physical harm, to tell me I was as ugly as a trans woman, etc, etc, etc. Sophie Molly popped up telling his followers to take a ‘shite’ on JK Rowling’s head. Helen Joyce finally made it on to Women’s Hour on May 14th 2025, where it was suggested to her that the judgment was unworkable as men couldn’t be expected to obey it. As Dr Jane Clare Jones commented on X on 15th May 2025

All this 'it's unworkable' nonsense is just code for 'we dont like it and intend to carry on doing exactly what we want.' All laws are unworkable, or unpoliceable, if you start from the assumption that no one can be expected to follow the rules. We can't stop people getting in a car drunk if that is what they decide they want to do. It's not a reason to change the law on drunk driving. Follow the fucking rules. They are there for a good reason.

The importance of the Rule of Law

Well. Quite. It shouldn’t require much imagination to envisage what our society would look like without the Rule of Law. No society is worth living in that does not have laws which are accessible, enforceable and which apply equally to all. For further discussion of this concept and importance, you can listen to this episode of the Double Jeopardy podcast.

Of course this does not mean that simply because any atrocity is labelled a ‘law’ that it becomes unimpeachable. I hope that if I had lived during the Second World War, I would not have hesitated to hide Jews from the Nazis. But a recognition that sex is real and it matters and asking that the law protect this is not anything like a fascist regime attempting to murder people for being the wrong religion, no matter how hard gender ideologues strive to make that connection.

As Michael Foran pointed out in his response to Crash Wigley on the UK Constitutional Law website, it is simply wrong to assert that the Supreme Court paid no attention to the arguments of Amnesty International about the human rights of trans people; the Supreme Court did consider those arguments and recognised that in the area of sex and gender, other people have rights too.

The Article 8 right to respect for ‘private and family life’ is a qualified right: it can be lawfully interfered with where proportionate and in pursuit of any of the legitimate aims identified within Article 8(2), including the protection of the rights of others. Women (and men) have recognised sex-based rights in our law and anti-discrimination legislation is one of the primary means by which Parliament has chosen to protect those rights …

Nowhere has it been suggested that Article 8 requires a member state to make provision for a complete change in legal sex for all legal purposes with no exceptions. The ECtHR only concluded as it did in relation to marriage, pensions, and birth certificates because there was no concrete evidence that substantial hardship or detriment to the public interest was likely to flow and because there was scope within areas such as family law for member states to carve out their own approach within the margin of appreciation. It heard no argument about the effect of a change of legal sex in the context of single-sex spaces or women’s Article 8 rights, because Goodwin did not claim an entitlement under Article 8 to use such spaces.

This recognition that women and gay people have sex based rights that are deserving of protection is one that always seems to elude those who agitate for ‘trans rights’. It is manifestly not ‘fascism’ nor a first step on the road to ‘death camps’ to attempt to balance rights that are in tension.

A further and overwhelming irony is that those who are seeking to undermine the rule of law, are the ones who need it most. How are they going to protect their fragile selves from continued ‘hatred’ and discrimination without the rule of law?

Proponents of ‘queer theory’ and ‘gender identity’ are parasitic on a healthy and functioning society, which will not merely tolerate their ideologies, but actively protect their right to engage.

So where do we go from here?

I look back on my seven year younger self with rueful compassion. Just a few cases will sort it out! I told myself. We had those few - and many more - and we ended up at the highest court in the land yet still the denial, rage and threats keep raging. Jolyon Maugham and the increasingly inaptly named ‘Good Law Project’ has raised an astonishing amount of money for a very vague ‘fight for trans rights’ which appears to include sending Victoria McCloud to the European Court to demand the overthrow of the Supreme Court, or something. It’s always hard to tell what exactly the Good Law Project is aiming for, other than to part fools from their money.

Those who dislike LawFare say what is needed is a change in culture. I agree. I have correctly maintained that without the law to protect our rights to challenge a pre-eminent ideology, change is very difficult. Without Miller and Forstater, any attempt to challenge gender identity would have risked arrest; until 2021 such challenge was not deemed worthy of respect in a democratic society, to call a man a man was a calculated act of hate. These views still exist of course but the law has at least succeeded here in putting them back into their boxes. Now we have the Supreme Court on our side, it ought to have been even easier to make our case, but that is not what has happened. Some organisations have responded with admirable swiftness to say they will now protect single sex spaces, but many others have refused.

How then is this cultural shift to be achieved? I wrote this piece because I was hoping at the end I would have found some suggestions. I have not. All the things I thought would have to work - courteous debate, reliance on fact, unambiguous court rulings - have failed. And I have failed to recognise until very late in the day that this is because what we are facing is not something that was created honestly and with good intent; it is essentially a men’s sexual rights movement which has gathered up vulnerable teenage girls who hate their female bodies as ballast. It will not permit examination or challenge because that will reveal its true nature. These men who have most to gain from it are the men who have no qualms whatsoever about using their male privilege to ensure it is achieved.

In keeping with the tragedy of our age, male barrister Robin White was the first to be interviewed by ‘Women’s Hour’ on May 12th 2025 about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling. He is quite happy to call those who question his essential self, ‘evil’ and ‘hate groups’ But his own blog of 2012 set out explicitly why he wanted to be a woman - to enjoy ‘proper’ straight sex with a handsome squaddie.

Reliance on male privilege of course includes threats of violence and abusive language, to put those uppity bitches who dare complain in their place. This is either hinted at in the language and disdain of those such as Professor Norrie or explicitly screamed by the likes of ‘Sophie Mollie’ and ‘Sarah Jane’ Baker.

So I have got nothing. I don’t understand how gender identity ideology came to entrap every public institution in the land and why so many still defend it with claims to moral absolutism. I have to admit lawfare has failed to go any further than to allow me to write and publish this without credible fear of arrest or regulatory action.

And perhaps I should not lose sight of what an incredible achievement that alone is, how only a brief few years ago I could now be waiting for the knock on the door, even supposing a social media platform existed that would allow me to publish. If we have to keep on keeping on, then that is what we will have to do.

I can see now exactly where failure to heed Popper’s paradox of intolerance leads us - we have to tolerate a very broad spectrum of idiocy; it is only when an ideology seeks to silence challenge via violence, must we intervene to stop it. It is high time that gender identity ideology was stopped. At its heart it relies on violence to achieve and maintain its power. The attempt to deny the legitimacy of a Supreme Court ruling alongside activists who urge baying crowds to punch women in the face, is an example of domestic terrorism.

This has gone far beyond issues of sex and gender; its is now about power and who gets to wield it, and truth and who gets to say it. I am willing to keep up the fight for as long as it takes or for as long as I have.