Reform of the GRA - can someone answer a question?

Do point out this part of the Equality Act?

You can't give someone something they already have.

Still trying to work out how you misread that and how to make it clearer.

Your point: the majority of women (claim unsubstantiated) are fine with it

My point: An obvious group of women and children are not, and will have very significant problems with it.

You seem not to be remotely bothered about those women and children. Are 'minorities' to be disregarded then?

ArmchairAnnie

I have one question for you: Who benefits from self ID?

You keep saying it won't have a negative effect on women, and it won't change anything, but if it won't change anything then why change the law?

Someone must benefit from a change in the law, or there is no point in changing it. So who benefits, and in what way will it change their lives?

Let me explain this for you:

Your post was about my 'utter' dismissal of concerns. I had previously said the 'majority' of the public did not have an issue. That indicates I realise that some people have an issue, otherwise I would have said something like 'not one, single person has an issue'. Therefore I am not making an 'utter' dismissal of concerns. Get it now?

support self ID for gender, BUT ONLY IF SEX AND GENDER ARE CLEARLY SEPERATED IN LAW (and prisons, refuges etc are divided on birth sex, not chosen gender).

YY. This is how it appears to work in Ireland despite it being held up as a beacon for trans rights.

There's a difference between 'majority' and 'utter'. Get yourself a dictionary.

There's a difference between MTF trans and woman but you don't seem to realise.

Try re reading. Your - your personal view in your post quoted - utter (total) - dismissal (of the concerns of).

What does that have to do with 'majority'?

Yes, I do enjoy your utter dismissal of women and girls who are concerned and restricted by their culture, religion, history of sex abuse and rape etc and will no longer be able to access public toilets, refuges, changing rooms, go swimming, going to Girl Guides, and so on. Such a noble sense of inclusion.

There's a difference between 'majority' and 'utter'. Get yourself a dictionary.

Spaces aren’t nearly as relevant as legal protections.

The legal fiction of the GRC, if expanded beyond the tiny number of current holders (under 5,000) will leave us unable to prove sex discrimination in court.

For example, a woman constructively dismissed because she is breastfeeding and needs a private space/time to pump/a fridge to store milk will no longer be able to prove sex discrimination in court because a the company lawyers will simply say ‘but men can breastfeed too’.

This is why the entire GRA needs repealing and starting again. Live how you want, dress as you want, but changing sex is impossible.

I support self ID for gender, BUT ONLY IF SEX AND GENDER ARE CLEARLY SEPERATED IN LAW (and prisons, refuges etc are divided on birth sex, not chosen gender).

Women's and girls' consent was assumed. We were not asked to consent. Now we are explicitly withdrawing that consent. The way we can do that is to reject the GRA/GRA proposals.

This. Obviously the first step is stopping the ludicrous GRC be any easier to get.

there isn't one as far as the majority of the public are concerned

Yes, I do enjoy your utter dismissal of women and girls who are concerned and restricted by their culture, religion, history of sex abuse and rape etc and will no longer be able to access public toilets, refuges, changing rooms, go swimming, going to Girl Guides, and so on. Such a noble sense of inclusion.

MOVE ALONG. Nothing to see here, you silly women.

It's made very clear in the Equality Act about the fact that a GRC doesn't suddenly give you magic access

Do point out this part of the Equality Act?

The majority of organisations already choose not to exempt using the Equality Act provisions, not because of some mass TRA lobbying,

Oh, you mean like the Fire Service chose not to exempt last night, just a few days after publically abstaining, and a lot of lobbying? #thisneverhappens

And like the Girl Guiding Association saying basically their hands are tied?

You can minimalise until the cows come home, the facts are right there speaking for themselves.

The majority of organisations already choose not to exempt using the Equality Act provisions, not because of some mass TRA lobbying, but because they don't see an issue and there isn't one as far as the majority of the public are concerned otherwise we would already have seen people up in arms about it.

That's nonsense from start to finish. If that were the case there wouldn't need to be any guidelines penned by Stonewall, GIRES, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, Allsorts would there?

Because of course we all know that people with GRCs walk around waving them in people's faces like some 'let me in' badge of honour.

The majority of organisations already choose not to exempt using the Equality Act provisions, not because of some mass TRA lobbying, but because they don't see an issue and there isn't one as far as the majority of the public are concerned otherwise we would already have seen people up in arms about it.

If an exclusion is in place then anyone getting a GRC now or in the future will just have to deal with it, that's not going to change. It's made very clear in the Equality Act about the fact that a GRC doesn't suddenly give you magic access and as the Equality Act isn't changing what's actually ludicrous to suggest any GRA changes are going to have some huge effect on the numbers of transgenders using the spaces they want to. They already are.

Annie take a look at my post above on how well the Equality Act exemptions are working to protect biological women and girls.

ArmchairAnnie

Who benefits from a change to self ID? Predatory males, but who else? I'm struggling to think of any other group that would benefit from a change in the law.

I'll just point out to you that the entirety of the Equality Act is based on the perceived victim of discrimination or harassment making a legal claim.

And people with a certificate don't have absolute legal rights either. The Equality Act makes it very clear that they can be excluded where necessary. Getting a certificate isn't going to magically say to anyone 'here's the magic key to the toilets, go and use them'.

Except two things. One, what Spartacus said. Bringing lots more male people into the female sex class will obviously erode the idea of what the legal class female means. So it will be increasingly difficult to exclude males.

Secondly, the possession of a GRC obviously strengthens a discrimination claim. This is agreed by many transactivist legal experts. It is a very high bar indeed to exclude a male GRC holder. So yes it does affect women's spaces to relax the gatekeeping and need for medical diagnosis.

Those against the changes are throwing around all types of claims about floodgates opening to crowds of men who will be able to identify as a woman at the drop of the hat and then go back to normal.

No, ArmchairAnnie, that's not what we're saying. If a man can legally become a woman just by signing a document, there will be some men who will do this to gain easier access to women and children in order to commit sexual crimes. There will be no 'going back to normal', whatever that is, that man will be legally female for the rest of his life. Some men will do this. It would be extremely naive to think otherwise.

Men who do this will not need to do anything to their appearance to convince us that they are women, because 'woman' in the eyes of the law will have been reduced to a feeling that some people (men) have about their identity.

This law is all about changing the definition of woman from 'adult female human' to a feeling of gender identity.

And people with a certificate don't have absolute legal rights either. The Equality Act makes it very clear that they can be excluded where necessary. Getting a certificate isn't going to magically say to anyone 'here's the magic key to the toilets, go and use them'.