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Original poster

AIBU to think this Home Office response is a cop out? - to "Require sex of VATP & sexual offenders be recorded throughout justice system."

66 replies

FindTheTruth · 15/10/2021 04:36

[MN please don't move this to the petitions board].

The home office has responded to "Require sex of VATP & sexual offenders be recorded throughout justice system." They pass the buck and say it is for each individual police force to DECIDE what information to record. And cop out, saying there are ethical and logistical challenges recording biological sex.

Does the home office really believe it's logistically impossible to record the biological sex of rapists when legally Rape can only involve a penis?

And saying that biological sex was not 'defined' in the petition 🙄

I hope that more people sign this petition and that the independent petitions committee tells them to re-write their response.

Extracts from the Government response:
-----------

The Government does not plan to require biological sex to be recorded across the criminal justice system

It is for each individual police force to decide what information to record.

Officials have noted that ‘biological sex’ has not been defined in the petition. If ‘biological sex’ is defined in terms of anatomy, or chromosomes, then there would be both ethical and logistical challenges

it would not be appropriate for the police or HMPPS to physically examine every suspect/prisoner in order to determine ‘biological sex’

there are no plans for the police or HMPPS to record the biological sex of prisoners.

OP posts:
thaigreen · 15/10/2021 10:37

@ComprehensiveTea

This is such a cop out, and the fact that it's coming from a government department is absolutely chilling. Makes all the claims about concerns about VAWG look like the fluff they are.
Chilling - totally agree. Delurking to say how angry I am about this and how scared at how far this has gone.
OhHolyJesus · 15/10/2021 10:32

No YANBU it is is complete cop out.
(Or cock out, or cock up).

It's outrageous and I hope those dinosaur costumes have been through the wash and are drying off for round 2.

I'm furious. Again.

BethnalGreenBambinos · 15/10/2021 10:28

I am so frustrated by this. The government cannot decide what criteria should be used to establish biological sex because it hasn't been defined in the petition! Yet, the term "gender identity" dances all over the page. What's the definition of that?

doublemonkey · 15/10/2021 09:40

Very disappointing on a number of levels.

Also, what does it mean for people with a GRC who have a previous criminal record recorded under their birth details? Is there nothing linking the identities together?? Will those convictions not be considered?

ErrolTheDragon · 15/10/2021 09:35

Does this mean we need to deal with this with every single police force in the country? How the heck can there not be a coherent national policy on this? The prison system doesn't operate within the bounds of policing areas.

Cuck00soup · 15/10/2021 09:30

Just seen the email. What a pile of waffle.

Currently, the Home Office does not centrally mandate how an offender’s sex or gender identity must be recorded by police. It is for each individual police force to decide what information to record.
Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Mrsjamin · 15/10/2021 09:28

I got this too. Absolutely infuriating.

Perhaps the MOJ should employ babies who can tell who is male and female from their faces.

ComprehensiveTea · 15/10/2021 09:26

This is such a cop out, and the fact that it's coming from a government department is absolutely chilling. Makes all the claims about concerns about VAWG look like the fluff they are.

Original poster
FindTheTruth · 15/10/2021 09:24

As Errol and PiaPiano have said, I hope journalists cover this. It doesn't help that previous discussions vanished to the petitions board.

OP posts:
BlaydonRaces · 15/10/2021 09:20

It's so bizarre, this idea that we can't accurately tell the sex of someone. It'd be like saying we're not going to ask for people's birth date or age because we can't tell the difference between a child and a pensioner

ErrolTheDragon · 15/10/2021 09:15

Extraordinary response. Confused Very wordy too, which is liable to be obfuscating and make reporting of it harder.
I hope some journos read this and spend a bit of time report it as clearly as they can.

PaleBlueMoonlight · 15/10/2021 09:15

This actually really concerns me. It will say what the minister wants it to say, but it will have been cleared by a lawyer.

It is an absolutely outrageous response.

Gncq · 15/10/2021 09:14

Naughty Step!

Original poster
FindTheTruth · 15/10/2021 09:12

Rainbow, If only they'd KonMari the dogma and let in the sunshine in so that facts are allowed again and democracy can work ...

OP posts:
userchange987 · 15/10/2021 09:10

I was mostly bothered by:

“Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).”

So you sign a certificate and poof your penis drops off and you grow a womb. Magic.

RainbowCrossing · 15/10/2021 09:05

Surely the only possible response to 'well we can't do that because we let people change their legally recognised sex and we didn't foresee this mess' is waiting for the next bit of logical thought which is, 'I suppose we should stop letting people do that'?

Like when my DD12 says she can't find her PE kit because her room is too messy.

Original poster
FindTheTruth · 15/10/2021 08:58

Piapiano, me too. This needs discussing openly and more awareness for the sake of victims of these crimes, women in prison and the general public being gaslit by the (HM Courts Bench Book) medias reporting of sex offenders as female.

OP posts:
Piapiano · 15/10/2021 08:53

I hope some GC journos get their hands on this and we get some good articles on it in the weekend papers.

Piapiano · 15/10/2021 08:52

Why does it keep putting quotes around "biological sex" as if that is some kind of nebulous concept?

It also says "sex assigned at birth" so the ideology of the people who wrote this is very clear.

Also, this is one of the problems with changing legal documents to gender. If everyone's passport or ID documents had to record their sex AS OBSERVED AT BIRTH then there would be no problem, would there?

EdgeOfTheSky · 15/10/2021 08:47

I am horrified by the contents of that response.

Original poster
FindTheTruth · 15/10/2021 08:43

This thread is still showing in Feminism for me, has it been moved? It shouldn't be moved as this is a discussion about what the government is saying

OP posts:
ScreamingMeMesaur · 15/10/2021 08:36

WHY has this thread been moved? Bloody ridiculous.

Original poster
FindTheTruth · 15/10/2021 08:24

VATP - Violence Against the Person

MOJ stats: over > 99% of all sexual offenders for two decades are male

ONS & Eurostats: 88-90% of those "sexually offended against" are female

Signature Deadline: Friday 7th January 2022

OP posts:
malloo · 15/10/2021 08:23

This arrived in my inbox this morning and I actually laughed out loud at how ridiculous the response was. Then I got really angry, this is a communication from the UK government FFS. It sounds like it's been written by a brainwashed teenager.

oldwomanwhoruns · 15/10/2021 08:20

The whole response is so out of the TRA manual (perhaps they have a manual?)

... police or HMPPS to physically examine every suspect/prisoner

No, just the 6' bloke in a dress. It's not rocket science. Or just record him as a bloke, perhaps?
I wonder how many people we are talking about, where confusion is possible. Not many.