House of Commons Library Gender recognition and the rights of transgender people 16/07/2020

I've just started reading it in the hope that someone will finally define 'gender identity' in a way that isn't either based on stereotypes or nonsensical. It's not looking likely, though:

From the first section on 'Transgender Identity':

Each of us is at birth assigned a sex (male or female), based on our physical characteristics.

First of all, we're not 'assigned a sex', our sex is observed based on our physical characteristics.

Most people’s gender identity (the gender with which they associate themselves) and gender presentation (how they outwardly show their gender) will not differ from that typically associated with their assigned sex.

What does it mean to associate oneself with a gender? Is that to do with liking the stereotypes for your sex? Gender presentation is also presumably based on stereotypes. I'm unsure why people not wanting to adhere to stereotypes should be the basis for legislation.

Trans people, however, have a gender identity which differs from that of their (assigned) birth sex. Trans identities take a wide diversity of forms.

Is a 'gender identity' which 'differs from' someone's sex viewed as abnormal or unexpected in some way? Is this not just a way of saying we should all adhere to the stereotypes for our sex?

Trans identity can be “non-binary” in character, located at a (fixed or variable) point along a continuum between male and female; or “non-gendered”, i.e. involving identification as neither male nor female.

Why on earth would someone need a 'gender identity' or a 'trans identity' in order not to adhere to stereotypes?

Thank you for locating that. It's clear and seeks to be even-handed, at least. Bless David Davis.

The articles at the end are really, really interesting reading.

Julian Norman, barrister:

Where women are in prison, in refuge, or in shelters, female only space may be vital to their rehabilitation or recovery. No statistics can capture the discomfort of women in being expected to endorse a belief that woman is a perception and not a reality.

Many people believe that they have an innate gender identity, fixed and immutable, and that a person is a man or a woman depending on that person’s self-perception rather than on their biological sex. Many others believe equally firmly that they do not have such an innate gender identity, pointing to the temporal and cultural variations in gender, indicating that social projections of gender are neither innate nor immutable. They regard dysphoria as a medical condition for which transition may be an acceptable treatment, but they do not believe that womanhood or manhood is dictated by innate gender or by self-perception. If gender is innate, then the cultural norms attached to the female sex (which have historically served to oppress women) are not a bug, but a design feature. A philosophy which seeks to ascribe women’s subjugation globally and historically to something innate within them has never ended well for women.

In a nutshell.

I find it disturbing politicians are so blinkered on this issue. People cannot change sex, a man who wears stereotypically female clothing is still a man and should be treated as such.

Good find!