Author Archives: Em Dean

Em Dean

What is “biological sex”, according to the UK Supreme Court?

By Em Dean | Sat 26th April 2025 - 1:12 pm

In its recent judgement on “biological sex”, the Supreme Court avoided defining what “biological sex” is. It says it is “commonly understood”, however the phrase does not appear in most leading dictionaries. 

This is of particular interest to me. As an intersex person, I am not, in UK legal terms, transgender, and I am comfortable presenting as a man in many contexts. I typically use men’s loos, and play men’s sports. But I would not call myself “biologically male”, except in some very peculiar contexts. Reading the recently released EHRC guidance, this seems to imply that I should not use men’s loos or play men’s sports. Does it?

Wiktionary, the only dictionary I have to hand that attempts to define the phrase, defines biological sex as “assigned sex”, that is, the documented sex one receives at birth from a brief identification of one’s observable sex characteristics. Unfortunately, this is clearly not what the Supreme Court intended, as it does not mention birth certificates or medical identification at all, and it explicitly distinguishes between “biological sex” and “certificated sex”. It also wouldn’t help intersex people, who have all sorts of fantastic claims made on their birth certificates.

It also cannot refer to how “biological sex” is sometimes used in genetics, that is, to chromosomal sex. Chromosomal sex is almost never observed in humans, and when it is, it is observed to be only one of many factors that contributes to the meat (as it were) of what is observable “sex”.  

One must infer, therefore, that the UK Supreme Court intended to define biological sex as “some observable sex characteristic or characteristics at birth, which is typically recorded on a birth certificate”. And perhaps this is what they mean by “commonly understood” – that is, sex at birth is what is observable at birth to some common analysis. 

Now, nobody is a woman or man at birth – these are terms we use for adults – and trans people have all sorts of biological and biochemical characteristics, depending on their medical transition or absence thereof. Unless the Court imagined transgender people as springing like Athena from the mind of a god, one must therefore further infer that what they mean by “biological man” is “a person who was identifiable as male at birth due to some bundle of biological characteristics”, and the same for “woman” and “female”. 

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 7 Comments
Em Dean

Why you should respond to the Future of Policy consultation

By Em Dean | Tue 24th December 2024 - 10:55 am

Members should have received an email last week regarding a new policy consultation which has just launched. All members should respond to it.

I joined the party in 2016 – the evening after Brexit, in fact. I was not alone. That summer saw the biggest increase in Lib Dem membership in the post-merger era.

Since that day, it has been a period of intense turmoil for UK society and politics. We have had six prime ministers, three general elections, a pandemic, and an ongoing cost of living crisis.

For much of that time, the Liberal Democrats have been, in terms of UK influence, a tiny third party. While I do not mean to ignore the achievements of the European Election in 2019, or our government in Wales, it has to be admitted that we have been, mainly, a party of protest.

The Liberal Democrats on the Rise

But this is changing. We now have a large number of MPs and face an increasingly unpopular government. We should expect the Liberal Democrats to continue to thrive and grow. It is not unreasonable to expect that, in five years or ten, we may find ourselves back in government.

This opportunity is not merely born from the fact that we got a lot of votes one day in July. It is also because we are a party of expertise, evidence, and accountability. While other parties are mired in scandal, chronically dysfunctional, or reliant on populist personalities, ours is not.

This is not a coincidence. It is because our party is led, not from the top, but by people like you. It is because our expertise, evidence, and accountability are democratic.

And our responsibility to make good on this opportunity, as ordinary members, comes now – not later, when elections are called, campaigns go into their highest gear, votes are counted, MPs are elected, and ministers are appointed. And that responsibility is not merely to serve as cheerleaders and staff for those of us who pursue higher office. It is also to vet them, instruct them, and hold them to account.

This cannot be done without robust, evidenced policy.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 7 Comments
Em Dean

Conservative leaders have become allergic to excellence

By Em Dean | Tue 15th October 2024 - 1:00 pm

Love them or hate them, one of the enduring legacies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – the beacons of conservatism for the English-speaking world in the late 20thcentury – was the pursuit of excellence. “Hard work,” Thatcher pragmatically opined, “will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.” More optimistically, Reagan claimed that “Entrepreneurs are the heroes of modern times.”

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | 11 Comments
Em Dean

Why I voted for Joe Biden

By Em Dean | Sun 1st November 2020 - 8:58 am

For the first time, I have voted for a Democrat for President.

In doing so, I cast my vote more for the party than for the candidate. Joe Biden was not my first, second, third, or fourth choice in the primary contest. I will not pretend that voting for Biden is exciting, compelling, or particularly virtuous. But he is a competent representative of the values of the Democratic party, which I have supported in local and state level contests for some time.

As an Iowan, my vote has considerable weight. Iowa is one of the perennial swing states, and the only state which pollsters correctly and consistently predicted would switch from Obama to Trump in 2016. Four years later, it has a real chance of flipping back.

On top of the very competitive Presidential race, Iowa is home to a competitive Senate race (over $13 million has been spent on the Iowa senate seat alone) and three competitive House races. But this is nothing new to Iowans, who are used to their airwaves being saturated by political ads.

Though much of the advertising is of an attacking nature, there are a couple stand-out positive messages: increased access to healthcare, and, on a more intangible note, the tenor and reputation of our highest political offices. On the former, the top of the Democratic ticket is not as ambitious as many Iowans might want. It does not look like Iowans will be free from the grip of insurance monopolies anytime soon. But on the other, there is no question that Theresa Greenfield and Joe Biden are the best exemplars of American values.

And on both counts, the Democratic Party has been the only reliable source of competence and positive change in recent years. This is not to say it is faultless. Many of the things we deride about Trump and his administration – such as mass deportations, neoliberal economics, an empowered health insurance lobby, and corporate welfare – have been enabled and supported by Democrats of the past. I do not pretend that positive change will be immediate or fast. But Joe Biden has cast himself as a listener. I hope that he will listen to the burgeoning voices, not only in his party, but across the country, calling for a rediscovery of social democracy in the US. Americans living in America deserve fair access to healthcare, a comprehensive liberal education, and a positive conversation on minority rights – things many Europeans take for granted.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 11 Comments
Em Dean

A woman for all seasons: remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg

By Em Dean | Mon 21st September 2020 - 5:01 pm

In an early episode of the American cartoon sitcom Family Guy, the central characters are in their sitting room experiencing a case of spontaneous speech synchronization – they keep saying the same things at the same time. The sketch ends with them all spontaneously saying the name of the same person: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg”.

The joke worked because Justice Ginsburg was someone who everyone knew, but rarely talked about. Like any good lawyer and judge, her late career was marked by a fight for fairness, equanimity, and rapport – values hard to come by in an age of increasing political polarization. Her friendships, such as with Chief Justice Roberts and the recently deceased conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, set a tone of collegiality for the court, even when they were most divided.

My partner is a lawyer, and (not uncoincidentally) an extremely principled person with a thirst for justice. It is sometimes difficult, in the legal discipline, to square that circle. Lawyers themselves often see lawyering as a necessary evil, a symptom of the broken world that they are trying to heal. Thomas More, himself a lawyer and judge, imagined in his Utopia that “There are no lawyers, because no one wishes to conceal anything”.

Continue reading »
Posted in Obituaries | Tagged | Leave a comment
Em Dean

Why do right wing immigration reformists like Liberal Canada’s points system?

By Em Dean | Sat 3rd August 2019 - 8:55 am

oris Johnson may have hoodwinked a number of European liberal activists by promising to instate a points-based, also known as “merit-based”, immigration system, something for which the Liberal Democrats advocated as recently as Brighton Conference last year.

In 2018, proponents of the immigration motion passed by Conference gave weight to their arguments by comparing the policy to Canada’s, a country generally seen as having a generous approach to migrants’ rights. This much is fair. But we should delve a bit deeper into that policy to understand why it’s suddenly popular with the anti-immigrant Conservative government.

Canada’s points system was established in 1967 by the Liberal government of Lester Pearson, an internationalist to his core. Canada’s previous system was based principally on a migrant’s country of origin and ties to Canada and the Commonwealth. At the time, immigration to Canada was 85% European, mostly from the UK and France. Canada was committed to opening its borders and its culture to place itself on the international stage.

But the nature of the Canadian economy restricted Canada’s otherwise bold immigration reform. Canada is, and was, an export economy, with much of the country’s GDP coming from its energy sector, and most of that coming from oil. With the massive consumer economy of the USA on its doorstep, retaining this status was and is crucial. 

So when I hear UK immigration pundits saying “be like Canada”, I often think of some weaselly post-EU theorists saying “be like Norway”. We’re not an export economy, and unless you’re a Brexiteer fantasist, it seems unlikely that we will be. The world doesn’t have an insatiable appetite for marmite, curiously shaped dogs, and novelty cheeses. Like it or not, we need low-skilled immigrants. We need relatively uneducated immigrants. Moreover, Canada did not (and does not) have a substantial demand for temporary workers. Britain, by contrast, needs large numbers of temporary workers to sustain its agricultural and construction sectors, among others.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 38 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • George Thomas
    Have just come from the latest post discussing Welsh Lib Dems struggles to a post regarding better transport. Does this mean support for retrospective funding f...
  • Tristan Ward
    “Let’s start by arguing that the economic benefits of the Single Market far exceed having to accept freedom of movement into the UK, and take it from there....
  • Chloe
    'Needless to say the poorest in British society paid the price for this' I remember canvassing , the poorer the area the less interested they were. Membership ...
  • GWYN WILLIAMS
    A balanced and fair assessment of the Senedd campaign. Unlike in Scotland, Wales has not as yet polarised into for and against Independence camps. The Welsh Lib...
  • Jana
    The logic of this article is that we should be rejoining the Single Market. That is different from signing up to complete political Union by joining the EU. ...