Big research project to decide if we still need sex as a legal category

@Bindelj

Hi Julie

There have been a number of threads on this project the most recent one is here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3732308-Future-of-Legal-Gender-academic-talk and in that there are links to all the other threads.

But may be worth posting your comment there.

I do know that the project has been deleting comments on their blog post summarising the response to their survey that are critical. Even relatively mild ones, like did anyone check that your survey questions are valid eg you have to agree to gender before you could complete the survey!!

Hello everyone, I am looking for the tweet that Davina Cooper has deleted which said some outrageous things about gender critical feminist views. I don't know when she deleted it, but she posted it I think on 12 October, at least that was the day that I saw it and responded to it. This is my response to the tweet: twitter.com/bindelj/status/1183379219839102976 if anyone has the original DC tweet I would appreciate it. Cooper is publicly funded to do this research, and it is glaringly obvious that she has already made up her mind. Best to all, Julie

Grassroots will surely mean those organisations that have already been infiltrated.

I don't know Davina Cooper from Eve, but that article linked above contains several references to "anti-trans feminists" (not gender-critical feminists), and also references "trans-positive" organisations (not trans-accommodating or pro-trans organisations) which suggests to me a value judgement on opposing the TWAW line.

That said, it's a co-authored article with Flora Renz that's been through peer review (both of which can involve compromise in language expression) so it's hard to be certain they are DC's preferred descriptors. It does suggest an ideological standpoint that is not gender critical, however.

The best thing would be for a Woman's Place UK (or who's that other group with the leaflet on sex vs gender?) to approach Cooper as PI of the grant and ask to be involved in the consultation stage as a representative of gender-critical grassroots campaigners.

The project does say it's going to consult 2. GRASSROOTS AND POLICY CAMPAIGNING ORGANISATIONS; SERVICE PROVIDERS.

We shoudl see how to get manfriday and sex matters involved in the consultation.

This scares me shitless. Where are our legal campaigns? Have we heard back from any of our allies in MSM?

For some time now I have been crossing out gender on forms and writing "I think you mean sex". Whenever someone says gender to me I correct them if they are talking about sex.

We all need to do this All the time

The question should be “should gender BE a legal status assigned at birth; and what would be the implications of reforming this?”

How can they possibly study the implications of reforming something which isn’t actually the case in the first place?!

should gender remain a legal status assigned at birth; and what would be the implications of reforming this?

Eh? But it's not, is it?

Your sex at birth is recorded. It's your biological sex that is noted and written onto the legal document recording your birth.

Nothing is "assigned". Certainly not "gender".

How could this study be helpful if it starts there?

I don't think Stephen has the best interest of women at heart. In fact I strongly suspect Stephen is a bit of a

flowersonthepiano thanks

Stephen Whittle wants to change the meaning of the word 'sex'.

So what implications does the Gender Recognition Act have for current conceptualisations of what constitutes a ‘sex change’? Does this effect changes in what constitutes ‘male’ or ‘female’; ‘man’ or ‘woman’? Has the category ‘sex’ changed?

We demonstrate, using the debates about the Gender Recognition Act in the House of Lords, how the assumed embeddedness of sex in scientific knowledge was used to discredit the idea that one can legally ‘change sex’. Yet, paradoxically, it was also the mobilisation of scientific discourse in discussions over the category ‘sex’ which demonstrated the failure of science to fully locate ‘sex’ at all - suggesting that ‘sex’ may not be an immutable somatic fact in ways that it has been previously understood.

Changing sex for the purposes of legal recognition then, is not about changing biology or changing bodies to ‘match’ genders, but about changing how sex is legally defined. In that sense ‘having a sex change’ has a different meaning with new political consequences and challenges.

www.socresonline.org.uk/12/1/whittle.html

Gender: What Future does it have? Professor Stephen Whittle

It's all tied up with Stephen Whittle. They are referred to in the Trans Ageing powerpoint I linked to, and the Yogyakarta principles are partly SW work, his paper is obviously wanting sex =gender.

Research council funding is highly competitive. You will not have a hope in hell of getting any without an excellent record of academic achievement in the field of research you propose to study. Plus, you would be expected to have infrastructure to support your research (i.e., usually a university or research institute position).

So, unless any of us has academic records similar to those of the researchers on this grant, we wouldn’t be likely to get any money for this type of research.

I wrote a big grant for the Medical Research Council (MRC) a few years ago. It got the best possible rating, but wasn’t funded because other research that also got the best possible rating was considered more competitive.

This is what the ESRC is about:

esrc.ukri.org/about-us/what-we-do/

Could we get involved in the research project? Or may be women's group(s) or Transgender Trend could seek funding for a research project?

Wow - they admit to conflating sex and gender : thus totally begging the question?

That's not research, it's PR.

Terrifying....

especially given the fact that the government is not commissioning an impact report re impact of Self Id on women and girls (real ones that is)

I had a quick look at the paper linked to by pencils. Note 1 says:

The relationship between sex and gender is complex and contested ... To avoid repeatedly referring to sex/ gender, we use “gender” to cover both the state’s legal assignment of sex or gender status, and the regulation and expression of both sex and gender identities.

So it looks as though the whole research project is based on the conflation of sex and gender.

I’m not sure I share your optimism to be honest - the premise itself looks very biased.

For starters, how can gender be codified in law? Are we going to actually define what female gender means in law? How? What repercussions will that have for. Girl who doesn’t conform to it?

It’s like codifying belief.

Davina Cooper is IMHO an excellent researcher. She is a feminist and (if I remember rightly from her blog) a lesbian. I’d trust her to do this work well, and heartened that there’s a mention of women’s equality.

This needs a thread in AIBU too, I think.

People do not understand what is happening, and what the whole Trans thing really means.
They think it is connected to gay rights, which (obviously) should not be a controversial issue now.

Interesting in the bit about geriatric trans issues that suggests trans people with dementia sometimes forget they are trans.

Imagine.

And I don't need a fucking research grant to figure out why that might be.

West Yorkshire academics are a hot bed of misogyny. Lots of trans activist types. They even, without any critical eye, bleat on about the made up suicide stats. Terrible waste of tax payers money.

Wow Van Gogh. That's real world change!