Apr 21, 2025 04:32 AM
(This post was last modified: Apr 21, 2025 04:35 AM by C C.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkx78zlm4po
EXCERPTS: Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has called the vandalism of several statues in Parliament Square, including one of women's votes campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett, "disgraceful". Transgender campaigners gathered on Saturday in front of Parliament to protest against the Supreme Court ruling that biological sex defines a woman for the purposes of the Equality Act.
[...] "Criminal damage like this, including to statues of men and women who fought for freedom and justice like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Millicent Fawcett, is disgraceful - it is right the police are investigating," Cooper said.
[...] Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces "if it is proportionate to do so". The judges unanimously ruled that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act "refer to a biological woman and biological sex" rather than "certificated sex".
Protests against the ruling also took place on Saturday in Reading, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Ch Supt Stuart Bell, who was leading the policing operation for the protest, said: "It is very disappointing to see damage to seven statues and property in the vicinity of the protest today. We support the public's right to protest but criminality like this is completely unacceptable."
A spokesperson for Women and Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson, speaking on the damage to Dame Millicent's statue, said she "utterly condemns the appalling defacement of such an important national monument to the fight for women's rights. There is no excuse for this disgraceful criminal damage."
[...] The statue of Dame Millicent by artist Gillian Wearing is the only statue of a woman in Parliament Square, where others honoured include international statesmen like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and former prime ministers Sir Winston Churchill and David Lloyd-George.
Unveiled in 2018, it is also the only statue by a female artist in the square, and was erected following a campaign and petition by the feminist activist Caroline Criado Perez... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): What does UK Supreme Court ruling on definition of woman mean? ..... PM Keir Starmer's 5 days of silence after Supreme Court gender ruling on what a woman is
EXCERPTS: Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has called the vandalism of several statues in Parliament Square, including one of women's votes campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett, "disgraceful". Transgender campaigners gathered on Saturday in front of Parliament to protest against the Supreme Court ruling that biological sex defines a woman for the purposes of the Equality Act.
[...] "Criminal damage like this, including to statues of men and women who fought for freedom and justice like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Millicent Fawcett, is disgraceful - it is right the police are investigating," Cooper said.
[...] Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces "if it is proportionate to do so". The judges unanimously ruled that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act "refer to a biological woman and biological sex" rather than "certificated sex".
Protests against the ruling also took place on Saturday in Reading, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Ch Supt Stuart Bell, who was leading the policing operation for the protest, said: "It is very disappointing to see damage to seven statues and property in the vicinity of the protest today. We support the public's right to protest but criminality like this is completely unacceptable."
A spokesperson for Women and Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson, speaking on the damage to Dame Millicent's statue, said she "utterly condemns the appalling defacement of such an important national monument to the fight for women's rights. There is no excuse for this disgraceful criminal damage."
[...] The statue of Dame Millicent by artist Gillian Wearing is the only statue of a woman in Parliament Square, where others honoured include international statesmen like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and former prime ministers Sir Winston Churchill and David Lloyd-George.
Unveiled in 2018, it is also the only statue by a female artist in the square, and was erected following a campaign and petition by the feminist activist Caroline Criado Perez... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): What does UK Supreme Court ruling on definition of woman mean? ..... PM Keir Starmer's 5 days of silence after Supreme Court gender ruling on what a woman is