Important - The Equality Act guidance has just changed

•Charliethefeminist* hmm yes, thanks for that, I'm feeling very down about all of this today.

I don't think people should get a new birth cert, there is no need now.

There are no GC people drawing up guidelines anywhere. It's all transadvocates. This shows that though slow and painstaking, policy can be rolled back to be fairer to women.

The people drawing up the guidelines were driven by trans advocacy. The fact they've been forced to row back is good under any circumstances as I don't doubt they are still driven by trans advocacy.

Is very opaque, until they decide what to do with GRA, its impossible to know how the 2 will interact. Birth Cert is useless for services, if someone can get a new one.

someone with a GRC explains quite a few things about how it works including: "The original certificate is not destroyed and is linked to the new one and the two can be seen together for legitimate purposes such as a police investigation."

What about for DBS checks I wonder?

I knew I had seen discussion of this here before.
This short thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3297961-Not-only-do-we-need-to-stop-self-ID-we-need-to-row-back-on-some-existing-laws

someone with a GRC explains quite a few things about how it works including: "The original certificate is not destroyed and is linked to the new one and the two can be seen together for legitimate purposes such as a police investigation."

This thread (from December) about debates in the chamber in drawing up the GRA, and some more recent legal defining:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3103653-Gender-Recognition-Bill-2004-Hansard-records

WarmWishes no, you're not alone in this. I'm unable to make sense of it.

I don't understand what the change of wording means. Am I alone in this?

This is a good point, actually. How will this affect the consultation, given a fairly important factor has changed halfway through? Will the deadline be extended?

I raised this point with the Sports and Recreation consultation because they specifically referred people to EHRC guidance so that they would understand how to do the consultation responses.

I wrote to tell them that the EHRC guidance was wrong and that the corrections were due to be published last Friday so asked them if they were going to extend their deadline for submissions and let those who had already submitted know about this change in case they needed to amend their submission.

The Sports and Recreation people did not respond to my emails until just on 17:30 on Friday. They thanked me for highlighting the issue and said they would not extend the deadline.

I've followed up to ask them if they're going to contact the people who have made submissions to invite them to amend those submissions if they followed the flawed guidance.

more crickets

What a shallow miserable world we have when your clothes and hair say all there is to say about you and the actual physical reality of our bodies are just nothing.

And all to make a bunch of whiny males, who insist on being treated as true women, happy.

And what about the people who don't adhere to stereotypes and don't ID as trans? Everyone is meant to just assume they're trying to "present" as the opposite sex, and who cares if they don't like it or it offends them?

I mean all of this, this whole thing, let's pretend physical sex doesn't exist and if you wear a dress you're a woman (what of women who don't wear dresses? what of men who wear dresses and don't think they're women?) and that's all that matters.

What a shallow miserable world we have when your clothes and hair say all there is to say about you and the actual physical reality of our bodies are just nothing.

"In other words, treat a transsexual person as belonging to the sex in which they present"

But there is no requirement to "dress as a woman" or whatever.
And what does that even mean > lots of women wear jeans and chunky boots and baggy shirts or whatever.

It is asking to guess at what people might be based on the trappings of masculinity or femininity which many people don't adhere to anyway (more women than men prob) and ignore the evidence around any physical characteristics.

How sloppy. You don't change horses part way through a consultation - especially not right towards the end. 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. But overall I'm more just disgusted with unprofessionalism in changing the criteria.

This is a good point, actually. How will this affect the consultation, given a fairly important factor has changed halfway through? Will the deadline be extended?

Have any organisations suggested that they would support Repealing the GRA yet?

How sloppy. You don't change horses part way through a consultation - especially not right towards the end. 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. But overall I'm more just disgusted with unprofessionalism in changing the criteria.

Maybe the new certificate should have the classic trollface icon printed in the margins.

Yes the original cert is still kept on record in the register. I don’t know if you can access this or not. Are birth certs not a matter of public record?

I thought that if a new cert was issued it had a note in the margin to indicate that it was not the original. I’d like to see if this is the case and what the note looks like.

Just one point. I think the original birth certificate still exists, but is 'closed'. So it is still an intact historical document, but no one is allowed to see it.

I hate the way MN ruins links sometimes. The second one works and the first is easy to google.

It was a bad law and set of decisions in the first place, but certainly the expansion of the trans umbrella to include everyone and their uncle was the cause of the situation going from "dodgy, something is going to go wrong at some point" to "complete fucking disaster".

And that's why it took a bad turn for the worse in 2015, when Stonewall with Ruth Hunt at the helm fully got behind trans issues, endorsed the umbrella, and the Maria Miller Trans Inquiry happened and Gendered Intelligence was given free rein to write the government guidelines for employers and service providers.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/484855/Theerecruitmentanddretentionofftransgenderstaff--guidanceforr_employers.pdf

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/484857/Providinggservicesforrtransgendercustomers-aa_guide.pdf

That twitter thread is absolutely incredible. The warning at the end perfectly sums up where we find ourselves now.

OMG, Pencils. That Twitter thread. The 2003 stuff. Fucking hell. People saw it, and questioned it, and it wasn't considered a big enough deal to sort it out.

And all to avoid same-sex marriage. Wow.

It was a bad law and set of decisions in the first place, but certainly the expansion of the trans umbrella to include everyone and their uncle was the cause of the situation going from "dodgy, something is going to go wrong at some point" to "complete fucking disaster".

I just don't know how anyone could pass such a thing and not realise there would be a Pandora's box of problems even in good faith declarations - let alone the bad ones...

Looking at the what happened at the time the original GRA was going through parliament, it seems that many people did realise there would be problems, and it only got through because there were certain checks and balances in place (diagnosis of gender dysphoria, two years living as the preferred sex), and because it was expected that only a tiny number of people would be eligible for GRCs (fewer than 5000, I think was the estimate).