That was a very helpful thought experiment Thin showing up how bloody dangerous this crap is for women.
Given we already have hate crimes in law and there are no plans we know of for taking those off the books any time soon, a critical part of rolling back institutional/regulatory capture and protecting women will be that only ‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ is added as a result of this. Because the risk of not adding ‘sex‘ is that we continue on with the same lack of legal protections that we currently have. But the risk of adding ‘gender’ well as ‘sex’ or even worse instead of ‘sex’, will be ushering a whole new world of shit for women.
Look at the pillorying and harassment of gender critical women for speaking thoughts some people dislike now. If ‘gender’ goes in as a hate crime, you can bet that TRAs will use that to the absolute fullest to pick off women from critiquing gender issues. Making things worse for us individually and collectively as women. (Which is a sex-based, not gender-based category).
So it’s essential for us to respond, I’d say regardless of what we might feel about hate crimes being on the books at all. It’s essential to try to ward off women getting into an even worse position via these proposals, which on the face of it could look all nice and inclusive.
We must respond pointing out the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender‘ and showing how women are negatively affected- both when these categories are lumped together, and when ‘sex’ is ignored completely. We will have to balance out the TRAs who will be writing in delighted if ‘gender’ is put up on a legally actionable pedestal, while ‘sex’ is ignored..
I’ve only just noticed that the Law Commission’s words that I pasted in bold in the post above don’t even quote the equality act correctly , despite managing to do so for the other categories covered as hate crimes.
- the Law Commission say that hate crimes covers ‘transgender status’- that’s a widening of the actual brief already. The protected characteristic they mention is ‘gender reassignment’ in the Equality Act. It’s not ‘transgender status’.
Surely ‘transgender status’ is so wide and ambiguous as to be legally meaningless and thus becomes available as legal cover for use by all kinds of people that it wasn’t really meant to protect. Any of us can claim that status for any reason?
It’s the self-ID point all over again. It looks exactly like handing legal tools to misogynists by misrepresenting the Equality Act. Just absolutely no.
Hopefully some lawyers will be along soon to comment on this..