I've got no time for either of the extremes in this debate. One of them routinely gets a hard time: it's easy to criticise reactionary old duffers, and the likes of Sir Humphrey will gladly knock out a blog post or social media post doing just that. D&I credentials displayed, tick, very good, applause gathered.
What's not so easy is to criticise the other extreme; attempts often draw intense and hostile counter-fire. But there's good reason for many government departments having withdrawn from the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme, and the reason is starting to get the airing it deserves in the courts (through Employment Tribunal judgements in favour of Forstater, Meade, and Phoenix among others), and very strikingly last Friday in a House of Lords debate on "conversion practices". That reason is the relentless foisting of gender identity beliefs on people who quite reasonably view biological sex as being the more significant and important discriminator between men and women and are uncomfortable with erosion of boundaries. This proceeds in ways that are overt (eg conversion of ladies' toilets in Main Building to gender-neutral - never the mens', is it? - and "strong encouragement" to put personal pronouns in email signatures) and covert (adoption of Stonewall-approved language in all sorts of hidden policies from HR to, incredibly, procurement). All of the Diversity Champions scheme guidance driving this reflects the law as Stonewall would like it to be, not the Equality Act 2010 as it is, with its carve-outs to exclude even those with gender reassignment certificates from opposite-sex spaces.
Not before time, the tide is turning, and more are prepared to go up against the "no debate" crowd and assert the primacy of biological sex over gender identity, self-declared or otherwise. If Shapps's intervention ends up with MOD breaking its ties to Stonewall then it will have done good, so more power to his elbow, I say.
If you don't believe any of this is a problem, then read
this from Simon Fanshawe, a founder of Stonewall from the gay rights era, who disagreed with its stance on gender identity to the point he left the organisation. Despite being heavily criticised by trans rights activists, he's just been appointed Rector of Edinburgh University, which shows at least one rare corner of academia is escaping Stonewall's grip.
[As a depressingly funny illustration of the knots gender identity is capable of tying organisations up in, how easy and misleadingly consequence-free it is for most men to support it, and the division it's capable of sowing, look no further than the Parkrun palaver which has unfolded in the last few days:
Female runners: "It's unfair that males can declare themselves women and claim all the womens' record times"
Parkrun: "It's only a fun run. Chill."
Male runners: disinterested silence
Female runners: "So why do you post record times then?"
Parkrun: (consults lawyers) "Errr, we won't publish results and records any more."
Male runners: "WTF is this? This is not 'only a fun run'. WTF cares if there are some males running as women? Give us our data back."
Parkrun: silence
Funny: until you consider that militaries rely upon bonding people together. And making the majority unhappy to satisfy a vocal minority of activists is unwise if bonding, and in context, retention is important to you.]