If you're pro Self ID for trans people please could you explain it to me?

LML83 those genuinely self id'ing don't do me any harm. If it makes them feel better/normal I don't have an issue.

When people talk about 'self-ID' they may be talking about one of two things:

1. self-ID in the everyday sense. We effectively have this already in all sorts of situations. It's not based on law and is subject to legal challenge in situations where it's infringing the rights of others.

2. the proposed legal changes to the GRA. At the moment to get a GRC a transwoman needs to have 'lived as a woman' for 2 years (in practice this means 2 years worth of documents/household bills etc. in the new name) and you need 2 medical reports, one of which has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Changing to self-ID would mean you can get a GRC by simply downloading and signing a form in the presence of a solicitor.

A GRC is of extremely limited use anyway. The GRA was brought in essentially to allow trans people to marry someone of the same biological sex. Also to allow them to retire at the same age as those of the sex they wanted to be. We now have equal marriage and pension age is due to equalise in the very near future (this year or next I believe?) so a GRC is no longer necessary for those things.

Without a GRC it is already possible to change all your documents except your birth certificate. You can even change the sex on your passport with a letter from a doctor and a deed poll. The vast majority of trans people don't bother with a GRC simply because it's not necessary. It's pretty much obsolete.

Having a GRC makes a difference in a tiny few situations that are the subject of single sex exceptions in the equality act - i.e. exactly the situations we are concerned about:

A GRC makes it legal for a transwoman to stand on an all women shortlist (but labour and libdems are flouting the law anyway and allowing self-ID in the everyday sense for this)

A GRC removes the prison service's ability to apply discretion over where a trans prisoner is housed. A male prisoner with a GRC MUST be housed in the female estate. A male prisoner without a GRC can still be housed in the female estate but a panel of sensible people will make a hopefully sensible decision on a case by case basis.

The thing too is the principle - should it be legally possible to 'identify' as something you're not and have that identity treated as if it's as valid as someone born that way?

What about trans abled people who identify as having a disability? Does no harm if someone wants to use a wheelchair or crutches to support their feelings - but should they be registered as disabled, be entitled to make their place of work accommodate their lifestyle choice to use a wheelchair at work, be entitled to use disabled facilities where people who can't identify out of their disability at any moment it's inconvenient have to compete for those resources? What about benefits? Support dogs for trans blind people. Access to jobs and college support programmes for people with autism? What about if they want access to physio or funded hoists at home and wet rooms as 'cis' disabled people have, with a lot of talk about how 'cis' disabled people are privileged? Will that do no harm to genuinely disabled people and their rights and protections?

Trans BAME people?

Trans age people?

These are all actually a thing. Self ID law opens the door to all this, and it will be very difficult to draw lines once it's done. Should these lifestyle choices really be legally catered to and services provided which means sharing those resources with genuine users and spreading them more thinly? Does that really do no harm?

I have read this thread with interest. And one thing has come across to me quite strongly in most of the posts by those who are pro self ID.

It appears to me that the majority of these posters do not necessarily really believe "it'll all be ok" but that they so desperately want it to be all ok that they are prepared to twist themselves up like pretzels to make it so. And this even in the face of some pretty compelling arguments that it really won't "all be ok." Including some evidence that the fears we have, have in, many cases, already manifested.

I don't pretend to know their reasons for this almost desperate desire to ignore the clear and present danger before us.
But I suspect it's largely fear.
Whether that be fear that this juggernaut can't be stopped now and we will have to live with it anyway, or fear of being labelled intolerant and bigoted I can't say. Maybe a bit of both.

I want to thank the OP for starting this thread though. It has made the reaons behind the arguments of the pro ID side clearer to me than ever before. I have been knocking about these boards for some time and occasionally been very frustrated by the apparent wilful blindness of some posters.
I may have it wrong of course, but I think I do understand their position better now.
We are all afraid of this (and of standing against it) in some measure, after all.
Some of us more than others.

However, pretending it's not a problem isn't the answer to those fears.

LM

Do you believe it would make it easier for people though? If it's no longer considered a mental illness and its open to everyone and this reduces the amount of supoort available how can that be a good thing?

@Italiengreyhound why not? those genuinely self id'ing don't do me any harm. If it makes them feel better/normal I don't have an issue.

The issue of stopping people misusing self id is complicated though, and that may be a reason not to.

Do Canada and America have self ID?

@vesuvia it is my understanding that despite passing self ID Ireland does not allow males to go into female prisons.

Take a look at this short (at the moment) thread. It seems to show very clearly there are a lot of exceptions which would not necessarily be the case in the UK.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3141014-The-GRA-in-Ireland?watched=1&msgid=75718300#75718300

hyperspacebug wrote - "other countries allowed self ID already. What were their arguments and what became of these countries?".

Norway introduced transgender self-identification in June 2016. I think one positive aspect of this is that this legal change abolished the previously compulsory sterilisation of transgender people, so I think it has helped transgender people there much more than proposed UK self-identification law changes would help British transgender people, because compulsory sterilisation does not occur in the UK.

Denmark, Malta and Ireland have also passed transgender self-identification into law.

Sweden abolished the compulsory sterilisation requirement in 2013 but, last I heard, it has not yet passed its proposed self-identification legislation into law.

The creation of new law should always focus on the intent of that law and make it as narrow and as unambiguous as possible. It should always think about the unintended consequences and how it come be misused. How does that law work for you, but also how does that law work for your political enemy or someone who does not have the same moral compass as you.

Ideology is about the utopian potential vision which doesn't have to work out the practical application or the devil in the detail. It has the luxury of being able to gloss over and ignore the problems of it. It can use propaganda to mask faults.

Politicians who fail to understand how to navigate from ideology to law, are bad politicians as they make poor law makers.

@LML83 just out of interest why do you think people should have the right to legally identify as the opposite sex to the one they are born?

Excellent post, @RedToothBrush

The network of other law is also a reason why you shouldn't come self id in other countries with the potential for it in the UK.

Our law and culture is unique to us. We might have gaps which others do not, and vice versa.

It has to be about how it would work in the UK.

For men like Lily Madigan identifying as transgender is the ultimate male dominance display.

Self ID relies on trust.

The problem is when trust is broken. And that does happen. That's effectively what criminals do for a huge percentage of crimes.

You have to believe that there will be no crime to believe that self ID is a good idea. That comes either from a position of privilege or a position of naivety.

The trouble is when it comes to sexual offences, breaching trust is a key feature in a huge percentage of cases. These are men who actively breach trust with women in particular, but also men and children. To suggest that all men will act in good faith and respect others over self-id is absurd in this context.

And that's what you are in essence doing. It makes not one bit whether you think transwomen are women, if one of the issues is about how men might exploit this.

As it goes there are sex offenders who are claiming to be transwomen and they are held up by trans activists as being persecuted - so are readily accepted by the community as trans rather than opportunists exploiting a loop hole. So the trans community has to accept in doing so that they are supporting those who commit sexual crimes which is somewhat of a worry for women in its own right for obvious reasons.

It makes it hard for many to agree with this statement
Because we accept that trans people are the gender they claim to be and the decent thing to do is be inclusive.

Changes to the GRA to allow self ID, won't necessarily change other areas of law, unless this allowed to be properly debated. Issues need to be flagged up fairly and without the fear of being accused of being transphobic. Any changes which interact with other law might render other areas meaningless or create gaps.

I've just crossed paths with this example in which other law fails:

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/victim-vile-bondage-paedophile-tells-8608834.amp?service=responsive&__twitter_impression=true

Owen, 61, admitted two counts of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

But she was spared jail and walked free from court with a two-year conditional discharge when the judge admitted he had difficulty sentencing a transsexual because courses designed to help sex offenders reform were only available to men.

The thing is, that Self ID might sound like a wonderful thing to some. It sounds like a nightmare to others. Whatever you think about it, how it works in practice and the potential for its abuse MUST be given a proper airing. Safeguarding is stopping abuse of power by limiting the opportunity for potential crimes. This risk needs to be assessed and it needs to thought about critically.

Case examples that have happened and are happening, need to be taken seriously and not dismissed as transphobia or bigotry or prejudice.

They are important, not just to women and children but to other trans people to stop them being victims of a backlash or victims of a sexual offence themselves, from widespread abuse by men (or sex offending transwomen).

Not considering the possibility of abuse is short sighted and idealistic to the point of negligence.

I just can not get my head around those defending it for that reason: its not about the innocent transwomen. Its about the lowest shits in society who are happy to shit all over idealism.

Nice ideas don't work when you apply the shithead factor in life. I wish humans weren't capable of that kind of lack of respect for others and how their effects don't just harm their victims but also to the possibilities for making society a utopia in which everyone is free to live however they want without fear.

Transitioning is the most binary attitude possible. Its not at all tolerant to trans your gay kids (and sterilise them in the process).
In Iran, the govt tells gay people to transition or face the death penalty.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11903290/Eight-of-Irans-womens-football-team-are-men.html

We need to expand the meaning of 'male' and 'masculine'. Not erase women by including everyone who does not fit a stereotype.

Thanks UpstartCrow and LangCleg

Interesting that Malta and Pakistan aren't the countries that you'd consider tolerant and accepting of diversity. How on earth did they manage to get rights to self ID??

I was told other countries allowed self ID already.

The usually cited countries are Malta, Pakistan and Ireland.

The first two have lamentable records on women's rights. So we can discount them. Women in those countries didn't have many rights to lose.

There was a long thread on here recently about Ireland with some good points made (Ireland is woeful on reproductive rights but does well on gender pay gap and other stuff). But Ireland has an important exception for prisons in its self-ID regime.

The main rebuttal to the "but what about Malta/Ireland/Pakistan" argument is this: how would you know if there were any deleterious effects? You wouldn't be able to measure them because those who would previously have been recorded as men are now recorded as women. The inability to measure outcomes is one of the big arguments against self-ID.

hyperspacebug
Men are going to get self ID because men demand it. Thats the only reason why. Women are not clamouring to let men into women only spaces.
Self ID erases women's rights and the rights of gay people. Its the only way its possible to achieve that in Western democracies.

Elsewhere, women have been silenced. A woman in Canada faces being prosecuted for hate speech for carrying a sign at the Women's March about biology and hate speech.
www.feministcurrent.com/2018/01/22/vancouver-womens-march-becomes-opportunity-misogynist-threats-women/

Crimes committed by men are recorded as having been carried out by women (and that is already the case in the UK). Google 'Wendy Jones extreme animal porn' or 'rapist Lisa Hauxwell'. Rape is a crime that can only be carried out by a man.

Men are in women's prisons - right here in the UK, a rapist and a murderer are in prison with women (double rapist Martin Ponting and murderer Alex Stewart – previously Alan Baker( they are not transsexual, they have made no attempt to transition. they just self ID as women.

The latest from Canada is that they will begin separating prison inmates by gender instead of by sex. They have had some problems with rapists assaulting women, however they are unconcerned about the safety of females because the law is the law.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France

@MrsMcGarry that's really disappointing. I was hoping for someone to put forward the clear argument that means that everyone here is wrong. If you know that all the points being made here are nonsense, it must be possible to write it down succinctly?

I've only read half of the thread and will carry on, sorry if this has been asked before already.

I was told other countries allowed self ID already. What were their arguments and what became of these countries?

LML83 wrote - "I don't think a male would ever be employed in a shelter/rape counsellor role. Even if he claimed to be a different gender."

I hope that the Women's Aid employment review will agree with you.

This thread is full of sensible and very patient women explaining over and over how self ID will damage women and girls.

We are still waiting for a counter argument as to how self ID can be implemented without that damage happening.

Flounce off the thread by all means but if you have some workable solutions wouldn't it be better to tell us?