Government says it is too complex to make changes to the GRA to include non binary

Fantastic, well done @MNHQ

My history post has been reinstated

Thanks MNHQ!

It reminds me of a talk I went to a few years ago when a TRA lawyer was arguing that women had no reason to be concerned about safety because the stigma of men taking on a feminine appearance was so strong that no man would do it unless it was "genuine".

That is such a telling statement isn't it? It shows just how much contempt women are held in by men that it is considered a stigma for a man to have a feminine appearance, it couldn't be any clearer how women are considered so much lesser and that is the core reason for the mess we are in with the GRA.

I wanted to make a point that if women's safety depends on men being stigmatised for presenting as women, surely we would need to maintain that stigma. I don't want people to be stigmatised for how they look but there is a serious flaw in saying X won't happen because of Y deterrent while also arguing for dismantling the Y deterrent.

Very good point. It's so obvious once it's pointed out.

Now it is becoming clearer that any inch will be stretched to a mile, I think women are becoming more comfortable in saying "you know what, I was never okay with this".

Absolutely.

Males in women's prisons. Males taking women's medals and awards. Males in rape shelters. Males in women's hospital wards and changing rooms. And on and on.

And yet people keep babbling on about toilets to make women seem trivial and petty as NiceGerbil says. (Single-sex toilets are not a trivial matter by the way.)

Women's spaces are not some automatic prize for males who jump through an arbitrary set of hoops.

It is deeply unethical anyway for governments to mandate surgical procedures so individuals can access certain spaces or rights.

Empress thank you

I actually recommend people buy Pressing Matters vols 1 and 2 if they can bear to give Christine Burns a few quid (£3.99 for each volume on kindle)

I think I might, actually. And thank you for providing the screenshots

There was a post further up about the criteria for an GRC not having been changed and while that is strictly speaking true, there was a regular poster here about 8 or so years ago who was going through the process. That person said that it had been the case that although not technically required in the legislation, it was necessary in practice to have had surgery to evidence their commitment to the transition. It was changing at that time to a position where surgery was not required, partly because of the serious and unpleasant nature of the surgery. When the GRA was passed, I believe the general viewpoint was that if someone was willing to go so far as to get surgery, that would be a deterrent for casual, bad faith chancers. Now that is no longer the case, it does undermine the balancing up that was done when the GRA was passed.

It reminds me of a talk I went to a few years ago when a TRA lawyer was arguing that women had no reason to be concerned about safety because the stigma of men taking on a feminine appearance was so strong that no man would do it unless it was "genuine". I wanted to make a point that if women's safety depends on men being stigmatised for presenting as women, surely we would need to maintain that stigma. I don't want people to be stigmatised for how they look but there is a serious flaw in saying X won't happen because of Y deterrent while also arguing for dismantling the Y deterrent.

I really think that blues idea that surgery should be a requirement to be fully considered a woman for everything is a bad idea.

I agree. I also think we need to appreciate that what the older male transioner wants might put pressure on the younger, mainly female transitioner.

Empress thank you

I actually recommend people buy Pressing Matters vols 1 and 2 if they can bear to give Christine Burns a few quid (£3.99 for each volume on kindle)

The books are so information rich - and obviously we can't type out the whole two books - and they are chock full of links to even more information rich sources, including a lot of archived material that is otherwise difficult to find.

For anybody wondering how we got where we are now without anybody noticing, these volumes are an extremely valuable resource.

I would be very wary as it's very unusual to have toilets at tube stations and I'd worry they'd take the easy, money saving option of closing them.

I did complain once when they were single sex. When 3 women were waiting for ages- I was heavily pg and desperate. We were all looking at each other like fgs and knocked etc.

After ages a man came out, smirked at us and sauntered off, leaving the most terrible stink.

He was a driver and so yes I complained in the station.

Loads of places eg my tube station have changed their signage. It's now the original set of gents which are still gents, the other facilities are all mixed sex.

NiceGerbil can you complain about that? Train stations are one place I would feel very wary of using mixed-sex facilities, especially at night.

And the bogs thing sadly is a bit moot. The social contract, the invisible barrier as it were, has been destroyed. Turning things back will be very difficult.

The reason bogs is raised is to make women who don't want to share with males seem trivial.

For many reasons it's not actually trivial.

Already though. I've been to restaurants where the ladies has been turned mixed sex, realising space for more dining.

Loads of places eg my tube station have changed their signage. It's now the original set of gents which are still gents, the other facilities are all mixed sex.

I don't understand how this helps anyone except for men.

I really think that blues idea that surgery should be a requirement to be fully considered a woman for everything is a bad idea.

It's a huge risky operation. Must be incredibly painful and recovery can't be that quick.

No one should be encouraged in any way down that route. Saying that having the surgery is a ticket to something that essentially says yes you're going to be seen and accepted as if you were female for everything, which I imagine is a pretty big deal, is encouragement.

I can't accept that as a separate category for that reason.

Is it ok to say that a post op transsexual is the same as a cross dressing fetishist?

Young, old, gay, straight, fetishists, not fetishists, any ethnicity: all male.

That's the criteria here. If any male person, whether a post-op transsexual, fetishist or any other subcategory of male is in a female only space, it is no longer a female only space.

How you want to distinguish between categories of male persons for the purpose of keeping some male persons safer from other male persons in male spaces is an issue for men to work out and campaign for. It's becoming clear that women are getting sick of being expected to be human shields or emotional support humans for vulnerable males.

There was never widespread acceptance of some males in women's spaces. There may have been acquiescence by some women due to fear, politeness or level of passing the went unnoticed but that is not the same as consent. Now it is becoming clearer that any inch will be stretched to a mile, I think women are becoming more comfortable in saying "you know what, I was never okay with this".

So some women are OK with trans women in the female toilets. Why should their position be forced on the vulnerable or those with religious reasons for not wanting to share with males?

On balance, I personally don't have much of an issue with a post-op trans woman sharing the women's toilets but 1. I fully understand, appreciate and support those who don't (or can't), and 2. How would we police this? Unfortunately the floodgates of self-id have been opened and whilst i sympathise with you that's neither women's fault not their problem.

Thank you for typing that out EmpressWitchDoesntBurn.

It is good to see it set out so clearly that this was the plan all along.

Christine Burns wrote:

'Until human rights campaigners like us came along, talking about umbrella concepts, this diverse community had got along with a relatively stable lexicon for many years. There were 'transvestites' and 'transsexuals' - TVs and TS's in the community shorthand - and that was more or less the only language you needed to know for more than a generation since Harry Benjamin had coined the latter term in his book 'The Transsexual Phenomenon' in 1966.

Our successes as a campaign were grounded in progress made for people who fitted the clinical definition of transsexual. At the heart of this was a tacit understanding that people in positions of power might be persuaded to change laws for people with some kind of clinically underwritten status - something they couldn't help being. This is why 'Transsexualism - The Medical Viewpoint' was seen as strategically important and why all the key court cases had rehearsed the developing scientific understanding of a basis for us being born or developing this way. It was also why the government would expect to include a medical definition of 'transsexual' in the forthcoming employment protections they planned to consult upon.

We knew in our hearts at that time that policymakers and judges weren't yet sophisticated enough in their understanding to contemplate rights for people whose difference appeared self-identified or impermanent or maybe even optional. That didn't mean we weren't going to try where possible. There was a valid freedom of expression case to be made for people to be able to present in whatever way they wish. But we were also pragmatists, careful not to frighten the horses at this early stage. (Note, however, that in the Equality Act 2010 - which replaced the Sex Discrimination Act - the requirement for having been medically diagnosed was finally removed).

I cannot recall exactly how we reached a consensus inside Press for Change. It wasn't written down in email correspondence - it arose in telephone or face to face conversations, including the long calls I was now having with Claire McNab on Sunday afternoons before setting off for another hotel. Somehow or other, however, we arrived at a consensus that if we maybe all used the word 'trans' as an umbrella term - and words like 'transsexual' only when we needed to be more specific' then maybe some of that would catch on gradually.

And so that is what we did. From there on, without fanfare, my essays and our web content discreetly began to use this language. Claire took the opportunity during the move of the PFC website to revise the existing content in the same way.

In the weeks and months ahead people would sometimes ask what the word meant or why we were using it. Then we would explain the rationale and suggest why we thought it was important. The change was gradual. In fact it took years for the word to begin sounding familiar and to hear it in other people's language. In 2002 when we were consulting over government press releases to announce the forthcoming Gender Recognition Bill, the officials still weren't convinced that enough people understood the new word to use it. Yet today most people seem to embrace the word naturally - when they are not simply calling themselves men or women.'

Is it ok to say that a post op transsexual is the same as a cross dressing fetishist?

There are clearly some AGPs who have had full surgery and are considered to be ‘transsexuals’ some have even admitted this. A male whose AGP led to him being diagnosed with dysphoria and undergoing surgery, and say a gay male whose experience of homophobic abuse led to him being diagnosed with dysphoria and undergoing surgery, are both surgically altered males aren’t they, i.e. ‘transsexuals’?

Even if the law was changed and surgery became a requirement for a GRC how we can tell which men have had surgery from those who haven’t just by looking at them? Males whose AGP led to their dysphoria and them undergoing surgery would still be eligible for a GRC under a law which required surgery. Why should women and and girls be forced to provide validation and/or safety for males with dysphoria?

In my view all males need to be kept out of women’s spaces and the definition of woman in law.

I'm not buying this golden time when every women freely, but unspokenly allowed transsexuals but not transvestites or transgender males into our spaces. Maybe in pubs when the individual was known, but in public toilets and changing rooms where girls would likely be alone?

If we all knew which people were ts and which were tv, when did we lose that ability? If TS were generally accepted as women, why do they need the legal secrecy that a grc gives?

I do think theres probably two types of trans males - those who would do anything not to be 'outed' so would avoid sex segregated spaces, and those who don't care. I suspect that's the difference we are experiencing now.

@BlueLipstickRocks hats off to you for sticking it out on this thread. It can't be easy.

I am deeply concerned about the clash between trans rights and womens' rights that stonewall ET al have set up, and tried to stream roller over. There should be no males in female sports or prisons. Women should always be able to know and choose the sex of their health care providers. Lesbians being told that ladydicks are real and they should embrace them is sickening. The erasure of the word woman enrages me.

But toilets? As long as everyone is behaving appropriately I am not that bothered. However allowing a male into female toilets, any male including post op transexuals , is not my gift to give. Whilst I would happily welcome you in any bog I frequent, many women would not and their consent takes priority.

I can see you too are the victim of the extreme position of Stonewall. In days gone by, transvestites and post op transsexuals were broadly discreetly welcome. But now you will forever be seen as the Trojan horse that will bring anyone who decides they are a woman into our spaces. As someone said up thread, this trust has been broken, and it is hard to see how it will be repaired.

That totally sucks for you and I am sorry you are caught in the crossfire.

It is very strange because in their interviews and writing, Chritine Burns, Stephen Whittle and Alice Purnell all seemed to be very proud of their achievements. Yet somehow it's a bad thing to share them. Have they all been cancelled or something?