Earl of Balfour wants daughter to transition in order to take title

Wow, that is a great letter. YY to ‘feminists and many others’. This disallows the view that eroding same sex segregated space is a niche and bigoted radical feminist concern.

TEMO - trans exclusionary many others doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

I don’t think the Earl of Balfour was confused, so much as making a tongue in cheek comment on the transgender agenda to further his own cause. But well done to Clive Layton for seeing the opportunity to make a clear point. I think we genuinely rely on men to grasp the nettle here, because they can less easily be decried as radical feminists, with all the negative connotations that carries (to the lay person), and the more well-educated the man the better. I wish that were not true, but it is.

Hurrah for Clive!

Pre-Norman conquest, the Anglo-Saxons were a bit more pragmatic about who should sit on the throne, choosing the best equipped son to rule, rather than the first born, whilst elsewhere in medieval Europe there was a patchwork of rules about what claims to thrones / titles / land / power women could have.

AFAIK there is no actual law governing the succession to the various peerages, surely the Earl should be petitioning the Queen to amend the terms under which the title was conferred on his family back in the day?

However, every time someone bursts into print about this the more the issue is highlighted, so, right or wrong, bravo Clive

PS - wait for the TA hate that will now be coming in his direction.....

I don't think the Earl of Balfour was confused. That letter is unfair.

His primary point is how ridiculous it is that his daughter can't inherit and his secondary point was (ignoring the exemptions for titles) how ridiculous it would be that she could inherit if she claimed she were a trans man.

Thank you Clive.

Interesting follow up in the Times letters today

BREATH OF FRESH HEIR
Sir, The Earl of Balfour (letter, Nov 29) makes the mistake of confusing gender with sex. However much his daughter might elect to be regarded as a boy she would never acquire a Y chromosome and as such would remain forever female. She might display masculine attributes, both mentally and physically, with the help of surgeons and pharmacologists, but until such time as science enables the manipulation of the sex chromosomes any wish to become male would never be fulfilled.

The distinction between gender and sex lies at the heart of the way in which transgender people are perceived by the rest of society. Confusing the two, or trying to assert that they are in some way the same, does nothing to advance the cause of transgender people or to understand the reasons why feminists and many others have concerns about sharing previously segregated spaces.
Clive A Layton, FRCP

Bravo Clive - who is a cardiologist (by the looks of it) and so presumably has some grasp of biology.

I'm pleased he has brought visibility to this issue.

No , entails were abolished under The Abolition of Feudal Tenure (Scotland) Act 2000 but in any case large estates were and are far more likely to be owned by trusts (in which there may be multiple beneficiaries) or corporate ownership or a mixture of the 2 than individual ownership.

I thought many estates were entailed, Lass, so that the estate did follow the title? But my knowledge is mainly gleaned from Golden Age detective fiction so I dare say I'm out of date ...

TBF though I don't know if this is a devolved thing and Scotland already got rid of the primogeniture rules or this bit of the GRA

The Scottish Government is consulting with a view to consider how the Act should be amended in relation to the law in Scotland.

Scots law has its own rules on succession and inheritance law. The right to inherit hereditary titles is not a subject I know much about. I deal with clients who have titles but beyond calling them by the correct name I'm not hugely involved in how they got them.

Btw the right to inherit the title does not include the right to inherit the land (or any other assets) which. Land and houses have to be specifically bequeathed, failing which they will be allocated to classes of beneficiary in order. All children are in the first class of descendant, regardless of sex and age.

I have no idea about English law.

Does it matter what his overall aims are if the result is it exposes the hypocrisy of the GRA to a more mainstream audience, Edith?
I agree, whatever his personal aims are he’s helping to show up GRA for the farce it is. We’re all going to have to accept the strange bedfellows this legislation will throw together. Just last week I read many posts from usually left leaning mntters praising Rod Liddle and Peter Hitchens for their pieces in the Sunday Times and MOS respectively.

How could present law be applied to argue with that, given the way this area is developing?

See here Mr Earl Bloke.

There was nothing in the Scottish consultation about removing that section. TBF though I don't know if this is a devolved thing and Scotland already got rid of the primogeniture rules or this bit of the GRA.

.

He has a point. I'm sure he doesn't want the title to pass away from his direct line. If he had a son he might still want the title to go to a worthy daughter rather than a wastrel son.

Sadly, no. Martha Kearney was going along with it being a jolly jape. I hope that if she were to think about the real issues feeding into this she'd be saying "hang on, there's a problem here".

It is sexual discrimination that his DD can’t inherit. But not a joke.

I am betting those laughing were all men.

Zero content. It's being referred to as "sexual discrimination" and talked about as a joke.

He's on radio 4 NOW

With credit to Lord Balfour - he's managed to get himself on the World at One on R4 in a mo, and get in the telegraph and the Mail.

This all seems to have come from a letter he wrote to the Times yesterday:

HEREDITARY HEIRS
Sir, As far as I can see, on the same day that I meet my maker one of my daughters could declare that there has always been a man screaming to get out of her female body. She could thus claim my hereditary title as a son. How could present law be applied to argue with that, given the way this area is developing? And should that even be necessary in this day and age? Surely the time has come when we can nominate which child we want to be our successor, regardless of their current, past or future gender.
The Earl of Balfour
Burpham, W Sussex

I'm all in favour of his mischief-making since it brings some of the public gaze onto a mess that Parliament are thinking of creating.

But it is right that the exemption for hereditary titles will be dropped as a result of a proposed GRA? As we know, reporting in this area is random and mostly seems to be parroting whatever they've been told by the last person they spoke to.

I don't think it matters what his motives are or that it highlights an anomaly. What is important is that it publicises how ludicrous the proposed GRA changes are. If it helps to highlight the collateral damage to women by making people, who may never have thought about it until now aware of its stupidity then go for it Lord Balfour.

My ‘I don’t think he’s wonderful’ probably came across wrong. I don’t think he’s terrible, and I’m quite amused by the story, just thought the ‘wonderful’ was overstating it

Well you're right, i don't think he cares much about the GRA. But I'm less convinced it matters. Seems to me the laws around premogeniture are a feminist issue in their own right.

I guess my feelings are that he is using the GRA as a jolly jape to campaign against the primogeniture rule, and I doubt he would so bothered about his eldest daughter inheriting if he had a younger son.

It’s like those boys who were complaining about not being allowed to wear shorts during a heatwave, they came to school wearing skirts and everyone had a good laugh about gendered dress codes, but the boys didn’t actually want to be allowed to wear skirts, they wanted to wear shorts.

I don’t think he’s wonderful. He wants the law changed so that his daughter inherits instead of his brother. I imagine if he had a son he wouldn’t give a stuff.

It is in his interests to help push through the proposed GRA changes. Not an ally but good that he is giving an example of how people will abuse the changes for reasons other than a deep feeling of gender identity.