Broomfondle I agree with everything you’ve said.
Our physical bodies absolutely signal different attributes which are then read by others with social meaning added on. This is especially easy to read in person, rather than in photos. I think it’s probably innate, we all do it. I scan for whether the approaching person on the pavement is male or female. I can feel uncomfortable in all-male groups. Walking past an all-male group.
The social attitudes towards those various attributes will include discrimination in some cases. So that’s why it’s great that we have the Equality Act. Also why as we already have hate crimes legislation that these provisions should be extended to cover all the protected characteristics including sex. (Which the Law commission will soon be considering..)
We do need MPs to debate how the UK law should respond to individuals’ fear of being ‘outed’ and the pursuit of ‘passing’ and what the drivers are for those motivations and what we can do about those drivers. I don’t think leaving the GRC in place as is, is the answer.
The fear of outing and the pursuit of passing do seem to contribute to some of the external pressure on young people to have invasive and permanent physical interventions, although oddly, this kind of pressure appears not to be upon the male later life transitioners. So what is going on there and how should the law respond?
And in my experience individuals presenting in signifiers typically associated with the opposite sex: via their clothes, hair, etc are often not ‘passing’ at all, but are read by others with awareness of the biological reality being signalled to them, as with any other human being. ‘Passing’ is often a social convention, a matter of good manners and ‘doIng as you would be done by’. So in these instances, the relevant individuals are rightly met with empathy, politeness and thoughtfulness as to their feelings, as a matter of goodwill.
Some campaigners seem to use these drivers as levers for a male sexual entitlement agenda, by arguing that women should have to abandon social and legal protectIons and boundaries in order to validate other groups. This, despite the evidenced risks to women of mixed sex spaces, is sometimes argued because we can have no idea of the physical sex of others.
Then, because of course everyone knows deep down really, that most people can really tell physical sex of other humans, the TRA lobby and their political supporters, gaslight us by telling that biological sex is a social construct (rather than saying that gender- the meaning we place on sex- is a social construct). Then any women who question that are branded political wrongthinkers liable for punishment ie T*RF. So trying to win the argument through silencing and threats as a last resort.
Men who question don’t get the same abuse so it is all as sexist and in democratic as it sounds. So more MPs should be speaking up against the ‘debate’ tactics and seeing this for the culture war that it is.
So I think Kruger is right to emphasise that sex and ensuring non discrimination (except where recognising sex is justified, ie single-sex spaces etc) is the concern of the state. Just wish he/the Tories would take the next logical step into asking whether validating gendered presentation in law (and calling it a change of legal sex) is what the state should be doing, if gender is not the state’s business.