Bernadette Maguire

Interested in education, language, news and views.

[Julie Bindel @bindelj]

New laws in Afghanistan, introduced by the Taliban, mean that men can now marry girls at any age – there is no limit. Male relatives can arrange this with other men, and it’s only once the girls reach puberty that, in extremely limited circumstances, they can ask a court to dissolve the marriage. What’s happening in that country is horrific, and it begs the question why Amnesty are not putting all of their resources into tackling this latest child abuse atrocity.

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

Humiliated NHS trust pays out after huge trans row | UK | News | https://t.co/3zDA2kG2v6. 800k in total spent to try & keep men in the womens changing rooms intimidating nurses. Money that should have been spent on patients. Heads should roll https://t.co/gv7TaqKUbn

[Malala Yousafzai @Malala]

The EU has invited Taliban officials to Brussels to discuss a migration deal — and today I am shaken and deeply disturbed by this.

This is the same Taliban that banned girls from secondary schools and forced them into marriage. The same Taliban that, earlier this month, arrested dozens of women in Herat for how they were dressed. The same Taliban that detains, beats and executes women who dare to speak out or break their rules.

Through its system of gender apartheid, the Taliban have erased women and girls from public life. Europe must not legitimise a regime responsible for one of the worst human rights crises in the world.

Any engagement with the Taliban must begin and end with the rights of Afghan women and girls.

[Partido Feministas Al Congreso @feministas_cong]

📢✊♀️
Este 20 de junio de 2026, en muchas ciudades de todo el Estado, las feministas nos manifestamos para exigir al Tribunal Constitucional que no demore más su decisión y declare la “Ley Trans” inconstitucional.

📍 Acude a la que tengas más cerca. 📣 Que se oiga nuestra voz. 💜 #Juntashacemoshistoria
✊♀️💜🔥
#LeyTransInconstitucional #SesoNoEsGénero #PFAC #FeministsAlCongreso #20J

[𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ @NiohBerg]

This Iranian artist, Parastoo Ahmadi, has been sentenced to 74 lashes for "dressing inappropriately and singing".

Flogging is one of the most painful forms of torture for the human body.

$300 billion will go to her torturers.

[Rapiegas @Rapiegas]

Y en Reino Unido, donde la ideología transgenerista lleva años implantado, pues esto⤵️⤵️

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

1. To Kevin McKenna: should men like Barry therefore be placed on women’s wards in NHS hospitals?

[Sharron Davies HoL MBE @sharrond62]

When Labour MPs like @labourlewis & Lib Dem’s like @EdwardJDavey say trans women (males) are no danger to women in changing rooms & bathrooms they always conveniently forget about the 60% plus of those males already in prison who ID as women, in for sexual assault against …Women!

[Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins]

Belatedly, a government guidance document upholds the Supreme Court ruling that a woman is – guess what? – a woman. 70 MPs have signed a rearguard motion opposing it. Presumably they think a man is a woman if he says he is. Among them is Layla Moran, for whom I used to vote.

[Bernadette Maguire @BernieMag]

@DreyfusJames @PankhurstEM Spot on James. As always. Xx

[Bernadette Maguire @BernieMag]

@Jose__Errasti Lo siento muchísimo…terrible noticia 😞

[Trevor Phillips @TrevorPTweets]

My thoughts on the @EHRC guidance laid yesterday; this is not about non-existent "rights". It is about the safety of women - mothers, sisters, wives, daughters. We men need to hear their voices. Virginia Woolf : "Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes".

My intro on @TimesRadio yesterday:

Where I live there are two different routes to and from the tube station. One, let’s call it Acacia Avenue, is quiet and residential. The other, London Road, is a busy major route with lots of traffic. At all times of the day, I automatically head for Acacia Road. It’s just much nicer.

The women in my family, on the other hand, will never willingly make that walk after dark. They live with an anxiety that most men find it hard to imagine, and frankly, rarely think about unprompted.

Last year 739,000 women were sexually assaulted in Britain. Virtually all such assaults - nine out of ten - are perpetrated by men. One in four women have been attacked at some time in their lives. Acacia Avenue is exactly the sort of place in which most women fear that they become vulnerable, and they are right.

As the author Virginia Woolf once wrote " Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes".

I think this is the right context in which to understand the furore over the guidance being laid today by the government, over the meaning of the words man and woman when it comes to providing services and facilities in workplaces.

Many men think this is about a rather arcane dispute about who gets to use what loo. For their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, it isn’t.

In a previous life, as Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I had a hand in writing this country’s equality laws, in particular the 2010 Equality Act. It never occurred to any of us that there could be any confusion or dispute over the meaning of the words man and woman. But it has taken a decade of campaigning, a Supreme Court judgement and now hundreds of pages of guidance to settle the issue.

This is not about so called trans rights, which are completely unaffected by this guidance, since no-one has ever had the right to walk into a changing room reserved for teenage girls.

What it does mean is that women and girls are guaranteed the protection they deserve, and that their safety, which we spent half a decade drafting law to ensure, is protected.

But the whole business illuminates some serious issues in our politics.

First that many of our institutions, in spite of the fact that they always knew what the right thing to do was, decided to ignore the fears of their women customers and employees, under pressure from noisy pressure groups. Instead, the people who were supposed to be the grown ups behaved as though the law said what campaigners wanted it to say, rather than what it actually said. They settled for what they hoped would be a quiet life.

In a democracy, there’s little point in Parliament deciding anything if the law is then made an ass by activists intimidating bosses in companies, schools, universities and the media into doing something different.

Second, at the heart of the campaign to undermine the Equality Act is an idea that we specifically rejected in 2010, so called self-identification. That is to say, that it should be up to the individual to decide whether they have what’s called a protected characteristic - are you male or female, are you black or white. The problem is that self-ID would destroy the operation of any law against discrimination.

Look, it would almost certainly have been to my advantage as a young man to self-identify as a handsome, white public schoolboy. None of those things is true of me. And at various points I am pretty sure it’s been to my disadvantage. It is certainly statistically likely to have been to my disadvantage.

But according to the logic of those who say that self-ID should be the rule and that anyone should be able to decide for themselves whether they are male or female, black or white or Asian, were I to complain about racial discrimination, it would be difficult for anyone prove that I’d been discriminated against because of my race since anybody to whom I’d lost out could just tell the courts that they too were black.

I know that sounds like Alice in Wonderland but you can google the case where a chap, both of whose parents are white, insisted he should get money from the Arts Council because he so identified with the black struggle that he considered himself black, and everyone should accept his point of view. In the United States and Brazil exactly such outlandish claims have been made and people rewarded to the disadvantage of people actually born into minority families.

I have even been told about firms who, when reporting their gender pay gaps have put men who just happen to like wearing dresses at weekends - nothing wrong with that, let me be clear - into the female column and told their women employees that they really haven’t got anything to moan about because statistically they are paid equally, and they should get back in their box.

So today’s guidance isn’t just another tiresome chapter in culture wars. It is , I hope, a halt to the efforts to undermine one of the most important pieces of legislation on the statute book, by people who, for their own reasons, would prefer us to be living in the 1950s world of Mad Men.

[Bernadette Maguire @BernieMag]

@guntinesa @LibreliketheWin Vergonzoso. Deprimente. Cabreante.
(Y para sorpresa de nadie …)

[Julie Bindel @bindelj]

.@AndyBurnhamGM you are done for, sweetheart. 'Dr' Webberley is backing you:
https://t.co/AUhwodrh1n

[James Dreyfus @DreyfusJames]

Another unelectable berk…

[Feministas Socialistas @FemSocialistas]

Comparecencias informativas Feministas sobre la ley trans asturiana
@aliciamiyares experta en el campo de la Filosofía, docente universitaria
Integrante de la Junta de @FeMeS
El s3xoplanismo no se debería consagrar por ley
Negar la categoría sexo es pura misoginia

[Bernadette Maguire @BernieMag]

@BillboardChris Gobbledygook 🤪

[Women's Action Group @womenwillspeak]

Another Australian woman being dragged through legal proceedings for stating the truth.

Via HRLA: -

Jasmine Sussex is being taken to court for criticising men who say they can breastfeed.
She is an Australian breastfeeding expert with 15 years of experience in the field.
This is the absurd situation our country finds itself in today.
You can have your life upended, simply for saying what you believe.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Jasmine has now been stood down from her role as a breastfeeding counsellor, dragged through the media, and stands accused by a male complainant (who identifies as a woman) of inciting “hatred”.
Just for confronting trans activists with a simple truth: men cannot breastfeed.
It’s time to stand with Jasmine and free speech – or we’re all next.
Show Jasmine you’re with her – add your name to the open letter today.
https://t.co/fmZqdcU14A

[AJay - Mountain Streams @HDealla]

Great ad!!!

Well done.👍

[Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ @sappholives83]

#IStandWithSallGrover

Pass it on.