Important - The Equality Act guidance has just changed

To me it looks like they are getting ready for self-ID and swapping sex for gender.

The new guidance seems like the old guidance - flawed, but in a different way.

Whoever signed off on this nonsense should be in for a poor performance review.

Agree I don't think the new guidance is good news. Changing sex is impossible. The government and official bodies are lying.

Death certificates, well Scottish ones, not filled in any English ones recently just have "sex" on them and you put a cross in either the male or female box.

My main concern is not so much the meaning of the change, but how the fact that a change has been made might be used strategically in order to suggest that most of the concerns of earlier submissions by women have been addressed by the change and can therefore be dismissed. I dunno, but I just wonder if it might have been better to have let the inaccuracy stand to the end in order to then point out how ridiculous the whole consultation was. The whole thing is just shoddy.

Anyone able to clarify what this actually means?

I'm almost glad it isn't only me, WhichBitch

I am totally confused as to whether this is good or bad news. FPFW say good, Posie says bad. Same on here. I appreciate we're all trying to fathom out exactly how to interpret these changes but are there any lawyers on here who can cut to the chase?

I'd like to do that, but have got a bit lost with it

Could someone with working brain cells do an A B C of the changes and ramifications please? Thanks.

PersonWithAVulva

I would suggest that anyone who is concerned about the fact they filled in the consultation prior to the wording of guidance changing or has come across any new information since filling the consultation in, emails their MP with their concerns and asks that they’re added to the consultation.

This will be used to bin all of the responses that relied on the old wording and the new wording will be deemed acceptable as a compromise. Womyn who have put in submissions need to put in new ones.

I think this is it. I think many have replied to the consultation stating the wording and where there is clear issues with the EA/GRA. I think the government does not like that so many women have pointed out that self ID WILL affect single sex spaces (instead of just accepting when the consultation said it wouldn't ) and they are now attempting to just discount the replies that mentioned this now.

'Changing sex' is terrifying in law really, as its impossible.

I do appreciate them not sticking the 'assigned at birth' nonsense, but recorded at birth sounds...off. Especially given the GRC changes birth records (mistake also)

In short, I don't think this is good news at all. But I may be paranoid.

I hear on the grapevine that Gov not very happy with EHRC

Yes I got that impression just from the tone of the questions in the EA consultation.

It is an exercise in using different words to continue to deny physical reality. Not any sort of gain.

I’ve had to request a FOI on this though.
Staggered that this is not important enough to be a routinely quoted statistic.

Oops sorry.
Wrong forum

Stats for children killed in the uk by men in familial roles?

GirlScout, I agree that our underlying rights according to the EA have not changed and it's good news that we have got the EHRC to change their guidance and FPFW have done a fantastic job in highlighting this and getting it changed. It's absolutely shocking that EHRC have been misinforming us all for so long and have only changed their guidance at the 11th hour.

We're not where we were before though. We know a lot more now. We have seen that faced with the task of amending their guidance to comply with the equality act the EHRC have replaced a statement that blatantly contradicts the EA with a statement that makes use of a massive great loophole around the EA. It has brought into sharp relief the effects of the massive privacy protections afforded by the GRA and how they can be misused.

I welcome the fact that EHRC have been shown up for the stunt they have pulled but in practical terms nothing has changed. We've gone from 'you can't exclude tw with a grc' to 'you can exclude tw with a grc but you're not allowed to know who has one anyway' It's technically more in line with the law but we are no better off.

I'm one of the eejits saying this is bad news, not because of this change, but because of another change that's in there:

• as opposed to the physical sex they were born with
• as opposed to the sex recorded at birth

Sex is no longer a physical thing, it's just admin. Many bad things flow from this change.

The EHRC really aren't fit for purpose are they? Wonder whether they will ever be held to account orwillthegravytrainjustchugon

Exactly that. Self ID will mess up how these two laws interact in practice.

Also staggering EHRC are giving mistaken guidance.

I hear on the grapevine that Gov not very happy with EHRC and obvs the Gov consultation on application of the EA (separate to GRA consultation) closed on Friday and I know a lot of women responded specifically highlighting the extremely poor understanding and information about the application of the exemptions.

Thanks Girlscout for the clarification. That's very reassuring.

So, just to be clear, it's not bad news, the EHRC are idiots (I think I knew this anyway, as I am aware that their helpline has been giving people dodgy advice about all this for a while)

But we still need to double down on spreading the word before 19th October and getting as many people as possible to fill in the GRA consultation.

The fight to prevent Self -ID is still on!

(Although that King's Research is one to watch)

Hey TL;DR

I've seen a lot on twitter and FB, to clarify, the EA has not changed, the EHRC have just been reprimanded on their guidance and clarified that transwomen with a GRC can be exclused from female only spaces in some situations (ie they were reminded of the exemptions). And various other bits of good news mobile.twitter.com/OnlyObjectivity/status/1049340702507913216

This changes nothing about the consultation, and we're exactly where we were before, knowing what we know.

To quote Dr Nic (it was she who pressed the EHRC to correct their mistaken guidance) "The ehrc have clarified that having a GRC does not stop someone being excluded under single sex exemptions. There was a mistake in their original guidance that suggested the opposite. This is a useful clarification and doesn’t change anything that we already know"

Here's a reminder of what women's rights are in law fairplayforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/EA2010_womensrights_-factsheet.pdf

So, the issue is with the relaxing of the GRA (self ID) - if any tom dick or harry can get a GRC, then he also gets MASSIVE privacy protections, it's THIS that affects the interplay of EA and GRA. See here: fairplayforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FPFW-printable-guide-1.pdf

I don't know what eejit is telling people this updated guidance is bad news, or more laughably that the EA itself has changed (that'd require parliament, they can't willy nilly change the law!) - we're exactly where we were, apart from the fact that the Gov body charged with interpreting equality law, the EHRC, is on the naughty step and had to eat humble pie.

Sorry to hit and run, v busy, but just thought I'd dive in as seen a fair few panicked women. It's the opposite, this is very positive for us indeed as the EHRC are a statutory body that people rely on to interpret the law, and they got it wrong, we were right!

Also, exemptions apply to transsexuals even those with a GRC. In certain situations transsexuals with a GRC can still be excluded i.e. rape crisis services etc. As legal females they would be able to join the GG as a leader, but they could then be excluded from sleeping and sanitary facilities.

This may be useful fairplayforwomen.com/legal-rights-transgender-people-biological-women/.

I find this very difficult to make sense of too. It's so confusing. At first I read it as a destruction of the single-sex exemptions too but I have posted about this on Facebook and most people have said it's good news because this new guidance specifically reference transsexuals. It nails down the original intentions of the GRA which was to address the specific needs of transsexuals. So changing 'sex' would entail more commitment than changing 'gender'?

From what I understand that means it's specifically about transsexuals who have 'changed sex'. That would mean, I guess that in a legal sense only women and transsexuals would be part of the sex class female - women by birth and transsexuals by having 'changed sex'.

I'm still not sure if I've read this right though.

Amending the word Gender to Sex is a very bad thing indeed, as it prevents women objecting to the GRA consultation/Self ID outcome from pointing out that Gender is a social construct and Sex is a protected characteristic.

It basically ratifies into legislation that all of these bloody 'essence' feelings that are driving this, are in fact, equivalent to Sex.

And they are trying to allow people to change 'Sex' at will.

And if that research is going in the direction that we suspect and as a result, Sex is no longer legally recognised/noted, then women's rights (because Sex in EA2010 replaced the Sex Discrimination Act) are well and truly over.