Should the GRA be repealed ...

C** doesn’t refer to me or any other woman in any respect whatsoever.

I know, Nink; it's a bullshit idea invented to push the idea that we're all totes cool with being oppressed. No one is cis, no one is trans; it's an illusory distinction that functions to divide us.

I mean, we could start by trying to wean them off the idea that men need to have beards...but yeah, from an older person's perspective young people dating looks like they're all performing gender at each other as hard as they can and it's exhausting. That's going to have a (very negative) impact on any kids they have too.

C** doesn’t refer to me or any other woman in any respect whatsoever.

I’d like a legal separation of sex and gender, then a commission/investigation/discussion into what things are segregated by sex and which by gender. The analysis would involve looking at why we separated these things into two groups and whether that reasoning still holds.

So clothes, toys, pronouns are all gender-specific. There’s no real reason to maintain this separation anymore. Therefore there is no need to police those and anyone can use whatever they like. (I’d argue there’s no need to define things like this as male or female at all.)

Other things (toilets, refuges) are separated by sex because of the threat men (as a class) pose to women (as a class). So those still need to be separated by sex or alternate provision needs be made (eg unisex loos of single cubicles each with basin, or separating loos into urinals and cubicles - again, cubicles need to be single with complete walls and basins.)

We’d need to employ far more police to ensure men didn’t react violently to anyone not performing masculinity properly.

Yes, it's men who need to learn to be more understanding, create some cultural space for men who're not into masculinity, stop using violence to try to enforce gender conformity.

As always, women do have a role to play in this. And it's categorically not the role of emotional nursemaid.

Our job is to stop playing along with the delusion, and accept that non-conforming males are still men just as non-conforming females are still women, and not get in the way of non-conforming males in their fight to be acknowledged as men.

I realise I'm preaching to the converted here (as it were), but someone really needs to tell the libfems that they're complicit in the vastly increased incidence of dysphoria.

And someone needs to sit the nonbinary lot down and explain to them that they'd get a lot more traction if they'd stop omitting words and conflating sex with gender. Yes, we know you're neither ciswomen nor transmen. Neither are we. Cis and trans refer to one's position re: sex-role stereotypes, not sex itself.

Yes, it's men who need to learn to be more understanding, create some cultural space for men who're not into masculinity, stop using violence to try to enforce gender conformity.

Women may, possibly, have won this particular battle, but the war on us isn't over yet. A short break to celebrate is fine, but there's a lot more work to do and many bad policies that are already in place to be undone.

Women have won.

Why must it always be framed by those in favour of this anti-female activism as winners and losers? It makes it bloody evident the whole aim was conquest and triumph over women, and that for some, the goal of 'trans rights' was actually the elimination of female rights. Can you envisage a situation in which everybody's needs are equally met? Other ways forwards?

The GRA has opened a doorway that is causing significant issues to another vulnerable class. It is not in other people's best interests. There are other ways to solve the issues for trans people other than grinding females into the dust.

Look around and read a bit with your eyes open. There's no parties, no one shouting 'yay', there's no victory parades, there's relief and a lot of 'thank God, someone might be listening to females too'.

So how would one get it repealed?

Birth certificates and UK passports should not be modified so that people who are male sex appear to be confirmed by the state as being of the female sex.

As many have said both marriage and pensions rights are equalised.

In order to start reinstating a Safeguarding framework which is robust these forms of identification must remain accurate.

The DBS system also needs to be reformed to ensure that employers have full disclosure of all employees.

The potential loophole created by an innacurate birth certificate, passport and DBS has very serious Safeguarding implications for children and Vulnerable Adults.

I thought it was having a culturally female-associated name on a gas bill.

I know a bloke called Daisy. He goes around doing man things, like having a penis and describing himself as a gay man. I wonder if he realises he's actually been living as a woman for the past couple of decades.

Society needs to accept that some men like to wear dresses-thats fine-they are absolutely still men though.

Men. Men need to accept that some of their own like to wear dresses. Men need to stop defining their masculinity by harassing and assaulting other men who don't conform.

Women, on the whole, never really had so much of a problem with understanding that a man in a dress is just as much of a man as a man in trousers, with the obvious caveat that we've always known damned well that some blokes are doing it for sexual kicks.

Women have won. Why push it further and create more resentment and hostility?

Because we haven't won. Girls are still being taught to gtfo out the category "woman" to make space for pornsick boys.

And besides, the GRA is and always was a sexist and homophobic piece of law. We haven't won while it still stands. We haven't won while the legal fiction of ladybrain still exists.

I think there should be a discussion about the GRA, the rationale for it and whether it really helps the individuals it was designed for (human beings with severe body dysmorphia). It is uncanny that all the negative consequences that were warned about in 2004 seem to have come to pass.

This discussion also has to be frank about the political objectives of the trans rights movement which go far beyond making life easier for a small number of people and aim to eliminate sex as a politically relevant category. This will always disadvantage women as a group. The GRA has turned into a wedge issue for a male supremacist political project.

At the same time, I don't think now is the right time for this discussion because there is enough work to do pushing back the influence of unelected lobbying organisations and the misapplication of existing law. Only a couple of weeks ago the NHS still lied about the impact of puberty blockers. Gendered Intelligence and Stonewall are still providing training to public sector organisations and corporations. UN Women's tweets are contradicting the accepted definition of 'woman' used in major international treaties such as CEDAW. To my mind, we don't yet know enough about what we are actually up against.

No. I think it's enough that the GRA isn't going to be reformed and there will be extra protection for women's spaces.

Women have won. Why push it further and create more resentment and hostility?

Yes. We deal in absolutes.

Women are women, and will always be women, with female bodies. Men are men, and will always be men, with male bodies.

We know exactly where the line is, and we will not be moved.

Biological fact, material reality.

We/women did not cause this. We/women are not to blame for this.

I also am all out of fucks to give. Not my circus, not my monkeys. If at some point TRAs stop openly declaring their desire to beat the shit out of women, or boasting about having done so, perhaps I may eventually find it in me to care again. But not until women's rights have been firmly secured. You wanted us to choose? Fine, then I choose women.

HPFA

I'm not sure I've seen evidence of TRAs trying to reconcile anything. That Fallon Fox seems to enjoy the opposite of reconciling.

Until I see this happening I'm frankly not interested in anything which makes life easier for trans people while potentially making worse/more difficult for women and girls. I'm sick of listening and empathising. My compassion is dwindling.

definitely repeal the GRA. There must be a better treatment path for gender dysphoria rather than hormones, medicalisation & mutilation of healthy body parts. Society needs to accept that some men like to wear dresses-thats fine-they are absolutely still men though. I also question the ethics of any Dr who would give breast implants to a male-it just seems a bit bizarre. Women are denied breast reductions or hysterectomies incase we 'regret it'. I would fully support repealing the GRA-there is no justification for it.

There might not be much that can be done for those who have intractable sex dysmorphia right now, but we could sure as hell be doing more to reduce the number of kids laying the foundations for it right now.

Indeed.

I still have to pinch myself sometimes with the insanity of it all.

Gender dysphoria is being taught to children in school. By identifying who you are on the basis of a series of drawings with Cinderella at one end and GI Joe at the other.

*Just once I'd like to see someone actually define "living as the opposite sex". If you can't clearly define it then it has no business being included in laws”

I thought it was having a culturally female-associated name on a gas bill.

Just once I'd like to see someone actually define "living as the opposite sex". If you can't clearly define it then it has no business being included in laws.

I remember talking to an hsts person around the time the GRA was brought in. We had an excellent rant about how bloody ridiculous the "two years' living as the opposite sex" requirement was, because it reinforced sexist stereotypes. Requiring hsts people to adopt a ridiculously overblown parody of "women's clothes" in order to get legal recognition didn't help them or us at all; and look where it's ended up - blokes dressed as the worst excesses of the 'whore' stereotype thinking this makes them women.

I would like to see better support and treatment for people with gender dysphoria

A new theory being proposed is that some men have an addiction which presents as dysphoria.

Just once I'd like to see someone actually define "living as the opposite sex". If you can't clearly define it then it has no business being included in laws.

A GRC should go alongside the original BC and states that this individual lives as a member of the opppsite sex

No, because this presupposes that there's a way to live "as a member of the opposite sex" without having that biology.

Wearing clothes, painting your face, styling your hair as you see fit - these are not woman-things, they are human things.

Living as a woman means menstruating / worrying that you're not menstruating / dreading that you're going to menstruate / having investigations into why you're not menstruating / thanking your lucky stars that you no longer menstruate. The female biological reference points are what allow our experiences to be described as "living as women" rather than "living as humans".

No. That [people realising gender roles are oppressive to all] doesn’t address sex dysphoria.

It does if you're not wilfully blind to the fact that strictly enforced sex-roles and sex-role stereotypes are major factors in sex dysmorphia.

Go and read the accounts of the old-school transsexuals, if you don't believe me. Read about their childhoods. There's a common theme. Rigid and often violent enforcement of masculinity standards; rampant homophobia; corrective physical and sometimes sexual abuse crop up again and again.

There might not be much that can be done for those who have intractable sex dysmorphia right now, but we could sure as hell be doing more to reduce the number of kids laying the foundations for it right now.

It's important to look at the purpose of the law.

It was not a validation of identity; it was allowing a very small group of people (5000 were predicted and the uptake was near exactly that over 16 years) to have the legal fiction of the other sex in order to have equality in rights of marriage and pensions.

That was it. It was never intended to do any other job.

It's been radically repurposed. In the meantime, every possible concern raised (viewable in Hansard) about the impact to the female sex has happened, with a whole lot more than the MPs and HoL ever foresaw.

And on top of all that, it does nothing to promote acceptance of gender nonconformity, not even accidentally.
It turns 'gender' into a weird, sexist, goal-oriented process with labels, and no amount of tinkering with the GRC criteria will solve its fundamental flaws.

Yes, it should be repealed. How - in the same way any other Act would be.

Once you define it, it all falls apart.

There's a hole in every bucket.
What is a woman
What is female
What is sex
What is gender

If you ever get an answer to these they will either be circular, or the end of the chain of questioning will be undefined.

If female means what female actually means, no male could ever have a female marker on any document.

You have to redefine millions of people in a class to allow a different class of people to appropriate their name.