EHRC position on GRA review

Pages 197 to 199 deal with people who identify as trans and who wish to access opposite sex provisions. It's entirely written without a single reference to Gender Recognition Certificates, and states that people who identify as trans should not be excluded unless it is necessary and legitimate. Only the 2018 statement acknowledges that there is a difference between people who identify as trans with a GRC and those without.

The Code of Practice was criticised for thus misrepresenting the Equality Act by the Women and Equalities Select Committee who noted in their report "Enforcing the Equality Act" that it needed to be rewritten to reflect the law properly.

Published August 2019, that report is here:

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/1470/1470.pdf

@IloveJKRowling

This is what I tried to establish in my brief stint on twitter. Do transwomen want to use womens facilities because they are sometimes the only alternative to the mens (where they insist they dont feel safe, blah blah) or because they only feel validated in their 'identity' by using the womens? If that makes sense. Needless to say I never got a straight answer.

Code of Practice

www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/servicescode_0.pdf

2018 statement: www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/our-statement-sex-and-gender-reassignment-legal-protections-and-language

a) a screenshot or link to the July 2018 guidance?

b) a screenshot or link to the old Codes of Practice (I think it was the Code of Practice - could have been other guidance) that expressly said that excluding a trans woman with a GRC from single sex spaces would be unlawful?

I think I read somewhere that there is recruitment for new board members as Chair David Isaac's tenure ends next month with new appointments expected by Winter. Time for a shake up?

That would be sensible, Charlie

The issue is achieving fairness for all when these services are run by zealots who fundamentally believe that awkward bits of reality should and can be blotted out to achieve whatever it is you want to be the truth, and so 'disappear' the bits of other people's reality when inconvenient to their agenda. Hence the not doing impact assessments to avoid coming up with unwanted information, or just denying that certain groups exist even after meeting with them.

We have reached the point where equality law has to be created to have firm enough boundaries and firm enough accountability that ideological extremists cannot just pretend away the defences and rights of others when inconvenient to their personal political agenda.

You could if you grant those using sex-based exemptions the reasonable belief exemption that religious ministers got.

If you make sex-based exemptions opt-out, rather than opt-in.

If you only allow opt-outs after impact assessments showing including males will not negatively impact on any woman using their service or space.

The birth certificate says they're born female. All their male, intact self.

And some people who oppose self id say that the GRC process needs to be made easier Why add to the mess?

What a mess.

As Nic Williams points out;

When a transwoman gets a GRC they don't just become legally female. They get a birth certificate saying they were BORN female. Plus it becomes a criminal offence for an official to ever reveal their true birth sex. This effectively erases their trans history. /3

This means transwomen with a GRC actually become non-trans women. They disappear from trans statistics in prisons. Every single piece of ID says they are a natal female.

So how can service providers implement the lawful single-sex exemptions? /4

On paper service providers will still be able to lawfully exclude transwomen from female only spaces - but if it is no longer possible to know who is trans then these exceptions are unworkable on the ground. /5

It doesn't work. With a GRC, you could never invoke the exemptions, because on what basis would you be doing it? The birth certificate says they're born female. All their male, intact self.

mobile.twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1283735618732924928

As always with this topic, the message is clouded by the conflation of sex and gender. The EHRC statement includes:

A GRC enables trans people to have their gender recognised in law, and reflected on their birth certificate.

And also

Since 2004, the GRA has provided a mechanism for trans men and women to change their legal sex.

But the birth certificate records sex, not gender. So should we deduce that to the EHRC gender is the same as legal sex (and of course only 2 gender options are available under the GRA), but that legal sex is different from biological sex (which cannot be changed)? If so, do the single sex exemptions apply to legal sex or biological sex?

Yesterdaysleftovers is right - the EHRC statement is massively disingenuous.

The EHRC was most likely the first regulator to be captured in the UK. It has been giving undue weight to trans rights organisations since its inception, because the Equality Act, which the EHRC was created to uphold, restored rights back to the female sex class that the GRA had first removed.

And that is why they have been fighting so hard to abolish the EqA's sex-based exemptions in regard to GRC-holders.

When the GRA was set up in 2004, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which provided for a number of female-only legal set asides, was amended so that no male with a GRC could be excluded from them. No one gave any thought to the impact this might have on women at all.

If an employer looking for a female person and using a Genuine Occupational Requirement clause in their ad was confronted with an obvious male, but one in possession of a GRC and therefore legally female, and sought to exclude such a person as being unsuitable for the role, because they clearly hadn't fully transitioned, the newly amended Sex Discrimination Act now stated that the final arbiter on whether the applicant counted as fully transitioned was possession of a GRC. And not an actual transition. Or the needs of the women this employer catered to (IIRC, the example given was a carer).

If you remember that the GRA was purposefully written so as to only make a medical diagnosis but not an actual medical transition mandatory, it's completely incomprehensible that not one person in Blair's government raised any concerns about the impact on women. But they didn't. Not publicly and not in internal communications.

On the contrary, the minister and department responsible for women's equality and rights were cheerleaders of this amendment.

It's the Equality Act which gave us our right back to exclusively female-only legal set asides that could lawfully exclude all males including those who had a GRC.

Trans rights organisations thus did the next best thing - they exercised enormous influence on the statutory guidance the EHRC was writing. This guidance, which is legally binding, duly set out that GRC-holders should be treated "as their acquired gender" at all times (i.e. not be excluded at all), and those who identify as trans but don't have a GRC should normally be treated "as their acquired gender" but could - if justified - be excluded. Which is not at all what the EqA said.

Undoing the consequences of this undue influence will be an enormous undertaking.

Enormous.

But not impossible.

We need a complaint against st the EHRC to go to the parliamentary ombudsman. This takes the involvement of an MP. I don't feel I can be public at the moment Is there any group that could do this? It would need to be first a complaint to EHRC then escalate that once they respond. EHRC need to start being held to account!

They sound about as neutral as Stonewall.

Maybe that's because their recent chairperson IS ex Stonewall.

And yes, it is a lie. A bloody huge one.

With the GRC they get the added protection of the female sex as a protected characteristic. The comparator for discrimination is a woman.

Without a GRC, it's a man.

And, again, yes to the only reason it was passed is because there were so few. That was the basis. The magic number 5000.

And then Stonewall added in cross dressers and transvestites.

Dear God. I just want law makers, transactivists and feminists to sit in a room and have it out, once and for fucking all.

This is agonisingly slow. It's like sending your counter argument by carrier pigeon.

Again, deliberate.

Smashing Yesterdays, comments swivel everything around and puts what TRA's are campaigning for into a real context. They have moved the goalposts

Public sector lawyer here. The EHRC statement is massively disingenuous. The GRA was passed on the basis that it affected “1 in 18,000 people“ ie fewer than 5,000 people in total in the UK (it’s all there in Hansard from January 2004). To say that it needs “simplifying“ and “modernising” because the 200-500k people who now fall under Stonewall’s trans umbrella don’t have one is just wrong. The Act has actually been a huge success, given that around 5,000 people now have a GRC - ie pretty well everyone who was assumed to want one duly got applied and was successful. Strict gate keeping was the whole bloomin’ point!

Instead, they want women to have less. And some women to have none at all

It seems more and more that there is really is some kind of warped need to see females excluded, suffering and put down, there has to be a visible and punished 'loser' or there's no win. The childishness, the lack of empathy, the self serving use of wholly empty words such as 'respect' and 'diversity' and 'intersectionality' when there is no actual holding of those values and no care or compassion for anyone else however harmed they are - it's gobsmacking. It's devoid of morality. And yet apparently intelligent adults are standing behind it.

Instead, they want women to have less. And some women to have none at all, because they could not use spaces not truly single-sex. Some women have already self-excluded from women's provision on that basis.

Very human rights focused, that.

lnThe Times:

The emails also show co-operation with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), another official body with a public stance of neutrality in the transgender debate. In the correspondence, the EHRC appeared to seek trans test cases against schools and service providers.

They sound about as neutral as Stonewall.

Paris lees is already on the ‘human rights must apply to all’ backed up by David Allen green (possibly the person I’ve been most disappointed in)

For the millionth time - trans ppl are entitled to all the human rights I have & I’ll fight for them. What they’re not entitled too are women’s rights

It may just be my natural optimism but I read that as a more positive attempt at an even-handed approach than most I have read over the last few years

I read it as a desperate attempt to look like even-handed civil servants rather than a transactivist lobby group.

The only skin off the TRA political lobby's nose if female only services are maintained alongside mixed sex and male only services, is the knowledge that somewhere there are people recognising that sex is a thing and females are getting spaces and recognition that hasn't been pulled under male colonisation and control. That's it. That's all. Pique that other people's needs are being met somewhere in a way they don't agree with. The skin off female people's nose is actual total exclusion for many females from any services. Especially vulnerable women.

Agree. Third spaces would solve any problems trans people have whilst retaining rights for women and children and yet somehow they're not keen - tells you all you need to know. I'm already self excluding from some spaces (well I was prior to coronavirus).

Great post Michelle

It may just be my natural optimism but I read that as a more positive attempt at an even-handed approach than most I have read over the last few years