1/ So, so many emotions this morning. Relief & anger amongst them: just imagine if that crowd storming the Capitol was Black.

Never thought I’d be grateful for @VP Mike Pence - but I am. He gave one of the finest speeches of any politician last night.

2/ But most of all, despite everything that happened overnight in the US, I never thought I’d feel fear about a Democratic president, with control of both Houses of Congress - but I do.
3/ I’m a Democrat. I’m also a Black British feminist & a lesbian. I believe that sex is real & immutable. I believe passionately that gender-diverse & transgender persons must be protected from discrimination, but not at the cost of erasing ’woman’ as a sex based legal category.
4/ @biden has said that he will pass The Equality Act / HR5. If he does, women’s sex-based rights in the US will disappear & this will reverberate around the world: males able to elect to be locked up with women in prison; the end of women’s sports & scholarships...
5/ ... any mediocre male will show no shame in declaring themselves women & playing women’s sports; the end of safe spaces for women in hospitals, psychiatric units... it will mean that it will become impossible & illegal for women to organise & meet in the absence of males.
6/ ... it will mean the rapid medicalisation & sterilisation of gender non-conforming youth, who overwhelmingly would grow up to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or straight. It will mean demanding that children grow up & go through puberty will be ‘hateful’ discriminatory & illegal.
7/ Everyone in the US who has shied away from scrutinising what HR5 means for women’s sex-based rights & safety must now speak up.

It’s not hateful to demand that women are protected as a sex-based category, distinct from males, however those males identify.
8/ It’s not hateful to demand that children grow into adulthood before making *adult* decisions about the sex they would wish to present as in adulthood.

Kids have no idea what it means to be an adult male or female. See #KeiraBell’s case for the dangers of believing they do.
9/ America, I have long loved your country. When my parents divorced when I was 6 years old & my beloved (imperfect) father made the USA his home in the 1970s, it became a magical place in my imagination & it still is.

Please don’t let me & women around the world down.
10/ You can protect the rights of trans people without erasing women; without replacing sex with gender.

Don’t believe the spin & the BS. The UK has some of the most robust protections for trans people in the world, including against discrimination & hate crime.
11/ You’ve been told that it’s progressive to replace sex with gender — you’ve been misled, you’ve been lied to.

The world is watching.

Please #AmendTheEqualityAct

END

(Resources in embedded thread.👇)
12/ * @JoeBiden
* @KamalaHarris

Congratulations, now listen to women & more diverse voices #AmendTheEqualityAct

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