Merched Cymru

We are a grassroots organisation of women in Wales working to protect and promote the rights of women and girls.

[Sex Matters @SexMattersOrg]

Our new report, Getting back on track, explains how the Equality Act provides the legal framework for protecting and providing for women and girls in sport.

We explain the law on sport in layperson’s terms, and call on government ministers, sports councils and sports national governing bodies to protect the female category for women and girls.

Yesterday we launched the report in the @UKHouseofLords. As @MForstater said in her speech, for the past 15 years legal misunderstandings have removed the focus, opportunity and resources women and girls need to thrive in sport.

Organisations, sports leaders and public bodies do not need new legal tools to protect women’s sport. They just need to use the legal tools that already exist.

Protecting, celebrating and promoting women and girls in sport isn’t just what the law allows. It’s also the right and fair thing to do.

Read the report: https://t.co/SN6eOOuo4O

[Tony Dowson @TonyDowson5]

"Police force ‘insists trans officers can use women’s toilets’

"Gwent police have been threatened with legal action for what one campaign group calls a clear breach of the Supreme Court’s ruling on sex"
https://t.co/LPjQqoQcah

[Jane Waring @CreeAnt]

So trans identified men refuse to be ‘outed’ by using third spaces or the men’s toilets, but menstruating girls can go to a special period toilet? Who sits in the meetings where this kind of misogyny goes unnoticed and ideas like this are rubber stamped?

[Councillor Kirsty Williams @KWilliamsLabour]

@unisontheunion @unisontheunion as a union where almost 80% of your members are women, please clarify, are you now campaigning for the Equality Act to be changed so 'sex' is no longer a protected characteristic?

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

‘Unisex toilets outside the main toilet area for menstruating girls.’ In a British school in 2026. This is where ‘be kind’ policies have got us.

[Women Won’t Wheesht @WWWheesht]

We have sent an FOI request to all 32 local authorities in Scotland to request details of their school toilet provisions to ensure they are all compliant with their legal obligations.

We'll keep you informed.

[TransgenderTrend @Transgendertrd]

This school had toilet blocks of cubicles with floor to ceiling doors with M or F signs, shared washbasins in the middle, open onto the corridor. This is exactly the set-up used by so many schools now.

Judgment: Indirect sex discrimination against female pupils.

[SEEN in Journalism @JournalismSEEN]

‘Darren Rigby, who sent hoax death threats to schools is jailed’

All girls’ schools were specifically targeted. Rigby ‘threatened to carry out deadly attacks supposedly in response to the treatment of ‘transwomen’’. None of this features in the coverage across outlets, despite the evidence emerging in email evidence and in court, neither does it feature in the Merseyside Police report.

‘I’m going to kill every girl and woman staff member I come across’

‘I'm going to shoot and stab all your girls’

It’s a crime of extreme misogyny in the cause of ‘fighting trans oppression’ but any mention of ‘trans’ has been erased by the police, PA and all news outlets. In addition the BBC report hides the fact that it was a crime against women and girls.

https://t.co/mEtjqOXI7D

https://t.co/MjqUMeGDGa

[Merched Cymru @MerchedCymru]

Schools in Wales need to take note. Our report is here - https://t.co/pDy1RiQVHI

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Polite notice to schools still breaking the law by failing to provide single sex bathrooms: you will be sued and you will lose 👇

[Merched Cymru @MerchedCymru]

Excellent commentary from @soniasodha on those MPs who are '...too dishonest to say they disagree with the law as it stands, and so who resort to attacking the EHRC instead.'

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

I've written about the dishonesty of the MPs opposing the EHRC's Code of Practice on single-sex services

https://t.co/0dDN04Fx1e

[Shaking The Tree @Bad_Bad_Apple_]

It actually has shocked me just how many men have been resenting women's advances into the public sphere over the last century and have grabbed this opportunity to 'punish' us with their whole being, and how many women are helping them do that.

[Akua Reindorf KC @akuareindorf]

A higher standard of legal literacy from the Lords than the Commons, and a decent job answering questions from @Jacqui_Smith1:
https://t.co/2Rd3orNdst

But what’s missing across the board is an acknowledgement that the status quo ante was based on deception & confusion.>

[Labour Heartlands @Labourheartland]

Let’s stop pretending this is about toilets.

That is the smallest doorway into a much bigger argument.

This is about women’s rights: the right to assemble as women, organise as women, speak as women, and be represented as women.

It is about dignity, privacy, safeguarding, safe spaces, fair sport, single-sex services, hospital wards, refuges, changing rooms and the basic right of women to set boundaries without being smeared for it.

The toilet door is only the symbol.

The real battle is whether women are still allowed to have anything of their own.

https://t.co/1pN4Wg68C3

[Sarah Phillimore @SVPhillimore]

It’s not legislation! The legislation was passed in 2010 and will remain in force. It’s guidance! It makes zero difference to the law!!

How did we get here? Why does this issue of all the issues, eat people’s brains? Is lack of legal education in this country as serious an impediment as lack of access to housing and health care?

[Jill Foster @JournalistJill]

ITV are hiding replies. It’s only a matter of time before they turn them off completely.
The issue of ‘hardly any complaints’ is because women are ostracised, punished or dragged through tribunals Sandie Peggie style if they DO complain. But no mention of that.

[Natasha Asghar MS @natasghar]

🧑‍⚖️ The Supreme Court's ruling was crystal clear: single sex spaces must be used on the basis of biological sex.

❌ Yet we still see dither and delay, which is leaving girls and women at risk.

🚨 The Govt must put women's safety first and act now

https://t.co/9Qa06bpAeY

[LGB Alliance Cymru @LGBAllies_Cymru]

It's a genuine puzzle that guidance on a law which has been in place since 2010 has so exercised politicians that they spent yesterday afternoon debating how single sex toilets might work as if the idea was novel. Stonewall really did a number on our institutions.

[ripx4nutmeg @ripx4nutmeg]

Labour MP Jonathan Hinder says his party could "die" if his parliamentary colleagues continue to ignore important issues facing voters and instead keep making statements supporting cross-dressing men

[SEEN in Journalism @JournalismSEEN]

Totally fascinating clip. The 👀 that @Jonathan_Hinder gives Derbyshire, as she actively works to get him to describe ‘trans rights’ as a ‘middle class hobby horse’ - which would be quite a gotcha - followed by her disconcerted silence when he just says ‘men’ instead.

She knew exactly what he was thinking of, and he knew exactly what she was doing. But the work on renormalising natural language has paid off. A couple of years ago he would have had to say ‘trans’ in some form, or ‘gender’, to describe events. Now he can just say ‘men’ and the power of that language trickery drains away completely.

[Lola @thefempire50]

There is a worrying amount of MPs who think rejecting the guidance will somehow make it lawful for men to enter female spaces.

There is a worrying amount of organisations who forget that this guidance is not about the workplace and they still had to comply with workplace regulations.