DEBATE NOT HATE: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GENDER

Scrap the whole changing sex legally part and make Gender non conformity the protected bit - after all if you 'pass' you're not going to be discriminated against for being trans.

Still allow people to take hormones, change body, name etc if that's what helps get through the day/floats your boat.

YesVeryGoodVeryStrong

You know, I looked at that. And I thought that doesn't look right. Then I just stopped thinking.

There is no way for women to have womens spaces, sports, bursaries or opportunities, to keep male predators out, and also let trans people in.
The reality is - as much as trans people dont want to hear it - that faced with a man who says he is a woman, people have no option but to either go along with it or challenge it.

Trans people need to have their own spaces. Thats the only way it can be an offence for a man who is not trans to try to use them.

How could gender identity be a protected characteristic?
Nobody can be discriminated against because they demand pronouns that don’t match their sex? Because they wear clothes not usually associated with their sex? Come on. Men aren’t discriminated against for being male. If they are also BME or gay men then they do face discrimination, and those are already protected in law. Women are discriminated against for being female whatever their gender identity is.

cheesetoast

Sorry Datun (great posts as ever) but your MRA typo has made me laugh. Those bastard MRI technicians, always jumping on the bandwagon

Let it lie - let folk live as they wish, with respect for others. That is what we should be teaching our children.

An excellent decision. Unfortunately, if gender identity is a protected characteristic, it won't be yours to make.

Schools and institutions are being told they must affirm a child's gender identity. Regardless of whether the parents agree.

Gender reassignment protection or gender identity protection, surely just means not discriminating against someone in terms of jobs, health care and housing?

Like all the other protections.

I do wonder if, when the documentation was first written, they hadn't realised a) quite how many extra trans there would be, in terms of your cross dressing fetishist, b) how those people are the ones who are determined to exploit the protection law to force people to view them as women and c) how all the MRI thugs would jump on the bandwagon.

Frankly, if they had taken those three things into account, they are despicable. If they haven't, they're idiots.

They really opened Pandora's box and have absolutely zero way of shutting it. They're too scared, to self interested, and too prepared to sacrifice women.

TBH I think the less we talk about it the better - it has simply become the latest cause and the danger is that it will swing too far one way and our children will be subjected to influences that could mar their lives at a sensitive time.

Let it lie - let folk live as they wish, with respect for others. That is what we should be teaching our children.

'Society can still be protected from people pretending to be trans without expensive and intrusive medical intervention..'

Paraphrased you there Clare.

Can I ask how?

I have worked with sex offenders. I can foresee deviant individuals taking advantage. I really can.

I've been reading but not commenting and the overall impression I get from their posts is that Clare appears to put womens needs, wants and safety secondary to trans womens. Even trans women who are male bodied rapists.

And we're to believe that Clare is an example of a transwoman with moderate beliefs? Hmm.

I'd support extending protected characteristic status to non-binary as long as woman = female, and where there is a conflict the presumption is that women will be given the preferential treatment (eg it is not criminal to only employ female bra fitters; women can refuse to receive intimate care or medical treatment from a TW without breaking the law)

Everyone of these threads which "debate" this issue, reads to me like a group of grown women attempting to negotiate with a toddler holding a marker pen. And the child is loving all the attention.

LadyChatterleysKnickers

The new boss is worse. It's the old bus with knobs on.

Datun I suspect it will be rather like the transwoman in the article about how feminists fighting objectivication of women was transphobic, because they craved being objectified. However they added perameters around it that they should only be objectified when they wanted to, ie when out clubbing at the weekend, and not when they were trying to work or were busy.

Women don't get to choose. They don't get to put limits around it. They don't get a say at all. It's called oppression.

Biologically born men do not get to appropriate the bits of women's experience that suit them, while keeping and using their male experience to set boundaries and limits and not bother with the inconvenient bits - and meanwhile legally rip away biological women's rights to even talk about this never mind resist it. It's using women to facilitate, enable and empower men.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I have been abused in the street, propositioned and sexually assaulted

Me too. It's a common experience for women, in fact there's an article today about young women being so used to being groped that they regard it as just part of a night out. I'm not keen to line up for more of it, or have women only bathrooms removed. I've seen my share of women crying in bathrooms in clubs, bars and other places where they've escaped from an abusive man. If this legislation goes through the man will just follow them.

I don't think the possibility of having a trans woman prisoner transferred there is the biggest threat to women in prison or the biggest scandal about women's prisons.

It's not exactly going to help, is it? Saying it's not to you the biggest threat or scandal is a nice way of dismissing and invalidating the conversation. As I said above, the prison service themselves are concerned about the sudden, very sharp increase in men referring themselves as transwomen, the massive majority of whom are serious sexual offenders. They have collected from the men themselves the reasons for this, and two of the big ones given are easier access to victims and the privileges attached to trans status. As for 'serious sexual offenders' - are you aware of how serious a sexual assault or rape has to be to get a conviction at all, never mind a prison sentence?

I've been wondering why the trans narrative is very keen to keep including non-binary in everything they say and do.

I'm wondering if it's got anything to do with changing gender reassignment to gender identity.

Could it mean they can chop and change on a whim, and we all have to comply?

So someone is a she on Friday night, but a he on the Monday morning.

I have no idea Bob, the consultation documents have not been released.

I'm sure they will not be validating 71 different genders identities, though.

It will be just transgender.

Since there will be zero criteria, and being trans is unidentifiable and unverifiable, it's going to be the biggest stick with which to beat everyone that men ever possessed.

clare

All your experiences are what women have to put up with on a daily basis. And have done for millennia.

If the law changes, this will only increase and objection will be utterly silenced.

There are very many transwomen who find harassment validating.

The unequal power dynamic between men and women is always underpinned by the knowledge that they are far more vulnerable and weaker. It's not in the slightest bit validating, it's incredibly threatening.

I'm sorry for your suffering and I wish you didn't have it, but I agree with a pp that there are very few transwomen, who aren't instantly prepared to sacrifice women for the sake of their mental condition.

There are lines in the sand. Redefining the word woman and all that it implies is one of them.

It shouldn’t be a protected characteristic for the reasons above. I’m not willing to accept a law that says I have to use female pronouns for men or call them women. Religious people don’t force me to type g-d or go to church do they?

How is it possible to protect gender identity when no two people use the same definition? What would protecting gender identity mean in practice? Is it the right to wear whatever clothes you want or be seen as the opposite sex?

If gender identity is a protected characteristic, everyone will be forced to use the pronouns du jour, lest they commit a hate crime.

Currently gender reassignment is the protection.

I, for one, am deeply against being forced by a law to call a man a woman. I do it out of politeness.

Same as protections for religious reasons for dressing or behaving a certain way, maybe, Adelind?

Meanwhile: Dear Labour party, I would like your 'Women in Leadership' representatives to be actually female.