@picklemewalnuts
Can the extract answering the q about TWAW be shown here, please? I'm keen to see that!
Peter Gibson
Thank you for clarifying that no advantage was given to them. Could you each confirm for me your view as to whether a trans woman is a woman and whether a trans man is a man, please?
Professor Freedman
I will go down the law route because that is my expertise, and I think you would rather have my expertise than my personal opinion. In law, it says that a man is someone who is born male with biology in terms of chromosomes, gonads and genitalia, and a woman is someone who is born female with the same biological factors. Now, there is the legal fiction where a trans woman or a trans man may gain a gender recognition certificate that changes their legal sex but does not change their actual sex. Currently, in law, a trans woman is a trans woman unless she holds a GRC, in which case she is male, she is a trans woman, but, legally, she would be recognised as a woman for many but not all purposes.
That sounds complicated because the law is currently in a bit of a mess and that is why we need to change and streamline it. My opinion, therefore, changes depending on whether someone holds a GRC, but I stick in line with what the law currently says, which is that your sex is determined by biology.
Dr Stock
I think that we have two sexes, males and females. We have the human versions, the human males and females, and we have the adult and younger versions, adult and younger human males and females. We need a category to describe the adult human male and the adult human female because it aids communication about a vast range of things, given that we are a sexually dimorphic species that reproduces via heterosexuality. In other words, woman is adult human female and man is adult human male. That is the best understanding of those categories.
Professor Sullivan
I have been very clear. There is a distinction between sex and gender identity. Both of them are quite properly protected characteristics and we need to see them as distinct. The slogan “trans women are women” has been really unhelpful. Grown-up, mature adults do not talk in slogans. We need to think about the fact that there might be contexts where we want to treat trans women as though they were women and trans men as though they were men. In other contexts, that may not be appropriate. For example, if we think about sporting categories, changing rooms or data collection, all sorts of different issues may come up and we need to have a sensible conversation about those different contexts.
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Copy and paste from the downloadable PDF available here: committees.parliament.uk/event/2998/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/