Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH

Artist, producer, citizen and doer. Honorary Prof, Director Sitting Rooms of Culture, Chair NDUK and the Peace Orchard.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@LPantykris27565 @oneyedsun @AyoCaesar Whats luxury communism....?

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@WestMids_CA absoultely hopeless service. Trying to renew a travel pass online and system isnt working. The message is try later - well I have several times and no luck. So called customer services and the wait time is 1hour 45mins....not joking.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

Thankyou for speaking out @trevorphillips.

"This guidance isn’t just another chapter in culture wars. It is a halt to the efforts to undermine one of the most important pieces of legislation on the statute book".

[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.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@akafaceUS @RoyLilley Heres my dog Tilda she wont stop climbing trees!

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@AdamsArtist @redrumlisa Sometimes it feels like cultural interpretation has become detached from the people whose histories and traditions it represents. Curators have an important role, but so do communities. If institutions want to stay relevant, they need to respect the heritage people value .

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@redrumlisa Cultural instutions with their woke ways of creating access for all have no idea of the damage they wreak. Forget culture war its become a class war.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@redrumlisa Same here Coentry led by University and developer pals.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

https://t.co/CHsi7Xj0dz

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

This is the state we live in ..... nee legal rights for women ignored as if they dont matter.

Enjoy this article for free.

https://t.co/PB77jtaJsU

[John Templeton Foundation @templeton_fdn]

What if living a meaningful life isn’t about breaking limits—but embracing them?

Discover why slowing down and leaning into awe and wonder could be the antidote to technological overload here: https://t.co/z1jPv2HNBo

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

""Curiosity helps us overcome obstacles and persevere in achieving goals. A curious mind builds our capacity to hold complexity. All of these skills, from critical thinking to creativity to empathy for others, are more important than ever in today’s world".

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

Are we not curious as we age and move into our later years, are we not worth investing in? Im appalled at the lack of interest in our continuuing learning by the 'system' and the waste of our talent and expertise and skills.

Post 3 of 4

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

Yet formal learning and support often is non existent if you are deemed old by the system. So lets not pretend lifelong learning is more than an empty promise, it just doesnt exist at scale in the UK.

Post 2 of 3

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

Interesting read .... but the elephant in the room is that lifelong learning is shouted from the rooftops by policymakers academics, researchers and eduaction providers all of whom make up the delivery system.

Post 1 of 2

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@jaquie_f @pressgazette And the complainants - why do they wqnt pregnant people to replace pregnant women? That is what needs to be investigated.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@GlamourMagUK @JKRowling @Tinder @Unilever @FabianGarcia

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@GlamourMagUK Your Awards Supporting Partners, Simple and Tinder will of course want to ensure their reputations arent impacted by this cruel and unjust targetting of @JKRowling who speaks for the many of excluded girls and women who would nevwr grace the cover of your magazine.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@GlamourMagUK Your Awards Supporting Partners, Simple and Tinder will of course want to ensure their reputations arent impacted by this cruel and unjust targetting of @JKRowling who speaks for the many of excluded girls and women who would nevwr grace the cover of your magazine.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@fionagoddarduk @TheGriftReport Source: Bromsgrove District Council https://t.co/3WlDhavgYd

His conduct is very questionable and he isnt holding up the duties of a councillor. The Local Gvt Association also have clear standards that should be applied.

[Heather Davison FRSA FRSPH @heatherdavison]

@jfoster2019 @BernardMcEldown @EllieAnnRe71927 He is bringing his own council into disrepute because of his behaviour and Im sure he is breaking their code of conduct as he is in public office.