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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

GRA REFORM OR REPEAL?

88 replies

AnnieBarbour · 04/02/2022 21:12

I have a question, and I would love to know what you think.

I want those who experience gender dysphoria and those who identify as transgender to live lives free of harassment, stigma and prejudice. I have a transgender grandchild, so I know how difficult it can be to identify as trans. I think as a society we can do better, indeed we must do better. Some of that ‘doing better’ is about societal acceptance and education out of prejudice, while some of it is about legislation, and it’s on legislation where I’d like your input.

It has seemed to me for some time that some of the mess we are in now is down to mistakes that were made with the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) in 2004. Some of the impetus for that Act came from the need to protect the rights of transgender people in marriage – a need that no longer exists since we have had same sex marriage. Some of it came from a need to protect transgender people from harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Sadly, the good intentions behind the Act did not have entirely the best outcomes. It led to an understanding that it is possible to actually change sex, something we all know (although not everyone admits) is impossible. And that understanding has led to considerable conflict with other group who are have protected characteristics under the Equality Act.

So, I want to make a bold suggestion. I suggest we do reform the GRA, but not by just simplifying the process of gaining a Gender Recognition Certificate. I suggest we completely reform it, making it more fit for purpose. I suggest we may find we can repeal it because we don’t need it after all.

To do so, I suggest we ask:

  1. Where does recording someone’s sex actually matter? My suggestion is it is no longer necessary on passports, driving licences its; especially now we have iris recognition etc, but that it IS necessary for data collection.
  2. Are there any areas where the harassment, stigmatisation, and discrimination of transgender people is not already covered by existing legislation?
  3. Is the current trend of conflating sex with gender really helpful to transgender people?

Looking forward to hearing your views!

OP posts:
AnnieBarbour · 05/02/2022 03:36

Redlake, you say: ‘The new birth certificate provides all that is needed. It leaves no question as to someones legal sex.’ Therein lies the problem, in that it wrongly suggests sex can be changed legally. It can’t. Sex is not a costume you can put on, nor is it something that can be altered by medical intervention. The GRA is based ona legal fallacy. It’s bad law.

You also say ‘Some nasty bigoted people would like to take that away from a tiny minority who really depend on it's security’ I suggest it’s real easy to brand anyone who questions these issues as nasty and bigoted. I can’t speak for others, but I am not. I genuinely want the best for trans people and I don’t think it matters whether they are a tiny or a huge minority. - everyone matters, everyone’s security matters. I feel that the GRA made transgender people’s lives worse, rather than better. The absurdity of saying and believing that it is possible to change sex has unleashed bigotry, rather than preventing it.

OP posts:
AnnieBarbour · 05/02/2022 03:23

This one, I mean: www.repealthegra.org/

OP posts:
AnnieBarbour · 05/02/2022 03:22

Thank you! I was unaware of this site.

OP posts:
Dougalskeeper · 05/02/2022 02:48

Repeal. There is no value in making lies the truth.

oviraptor21 · 05/02/2022 00:14

Repeal.
At the same time, define in law what the word sex means, and create a new legal definition around a term such as gender identity. Do not allow the two to be muddled.
Create new terms for the 'feminine' and 'masculine' gender identities so the words man and woman are clear and unambiguously used to refer to sex only.
Then collect data and organise ID etc etc using these two separate categories.
Well I can dream .....

DrDinosaur · 05/02/2022 00:02

Repeal.
It’s an ill conceived law rooted in sexism and homophobia. And it’s not helpful to the mental health of people with dysphoria to pretend they can change sex.

thinkingaboutLangCleg · 04/02/2022 23:33

Repeal. No amount of reform will solvethe basic problem: theGRA can’t work because it’s based on fantasy, not on facts.

FOJN · 04/02/2022 23:00

I'm in the repeal camp now too.

I celebrated a friend getting their GRC after the law was passed, at the time I naively believed it was progressive. I look back at my 2004 self and shake my head at her.

We should never base law on a lie and we should never have permitted revised historical records to be issued. We have no principled defence against demands for other official records to be changed and that is quite dangerous.

PaleBlueMoonlight · 04/02/2022 22:54

If 'gender' is too hard to define we can define sex. Just so long as its clear the two terms have completely different meanings and aren't confused or conflated.

Sex does have a definition in common law. It is not perfect though - something to do with congruence of chromosomes, gonads and genitalia. I'll have to look it up, but it is discussed in the case law that led to the GRA.

OhHolyJesus · 04/02/2022 22:49

I agree Domesticated but laws need to interact without conflict and without pretence (legal fiction).

Under the GRA someone with a GRC is able to be 'treated as' their 'Acquired gender' but the EA states that 'gender reassignment' is the protected characteristic upon which someone cannot be discriminated against, and this is defined as "undergoing, has undergone or is proposing to undergo".

Nothing about sex - unless you look at the single sex exemptions in the EA and the PC of sex.

The GRA undermines the more recent law of the EA, which protects trans people anyway. The GRA needs to go in my view.

The Hansard transcripts on it are most revealing...

PearPickingPorky · 04/02/2022 22:48

We would never allow someone to conceal their age on State records or identification documents, no matter what age they looked, or believed themselves to be. The idea is absurd.

Doing it with sex is orders of magnitude more absurd.

The GRA should never have allowed a fictitious sex to be recorded on documents. We should never have allowed men to pretend to be women (and vice versa), and the fact it was done to let some homophobes sleep easier with allowing other people to get married is a great shame on us.

It's Repeal for me.

terryleather · 04/02/2022 22:40

The "nasty bigoted people" are the ones who want to take away the hard fought for sex based rights of women and girls and centre the wishes of men who demand we call them women.

Repeal the GRA.

RoaringtoLangClegintheDark · 04/02/2022 22:38

@Ereshkigalangcleg

The GRA allows the issue of a new birth certificate.

Yes, and some people feel that it should never have been possible to falsify a historical document in this way.

Yes indeed, and I’m absolutely one of those people.

Legally mandated falsehoods are in a general sense a route to and a feature of totalitarianism (not just, as in this case, the annihilation of women’s sex-based rights) and as such are to be avoided at all costs.

DomesticatedZombie · 04/02/2022 22:36

@OhHolyJesus

All we need is for the legal definition of gender to be super clear

You can't say some people haven't been trying. It can't be defined legally as it can't be any one thing. It's different things to different people...a feeling, presentation, an expression of some inner personality or thought, and it's not even fixed, it's fluid. It's personal and subjective.

I know it what it isn't, it isn't sex and most of the time it isn't real, in the way sex is real, unchanging, visible, tangible and defined in law.

I'd love to see a legal definition but so far no one can pin it down to a uniform, widely agreed, socially acceptable sentence.

If 'gender' is too hard to define we can define sex. Just so long as its clear the two terms have completely different meanings and aren't confused or conflated.
RoaringtoLangClegintheDark · 04/02/2022 22:33

@Redlake

The GRA allows the issue of a new birth certificate. THAT was the original intention of the recognition campaign. The new birth certificate provides all that is needed. It leaves no question as to someones legal sex. Some nasty bigoted people would like to take that away from a tiny minority who really depend on it's security.
Some nasty bigoted people. Interesting phrasing and not, I would suggest, in the spirit.

But seeing as you introduced the phrase, let’s turn it round and see things from the perceptive of women who care about women’s sex-based rights instead.

Some nasty bigoted people would like to take away women’s rights to single sex spaces, sports and service, rights that we really need and depend on. They want to take them away despite knowing that we are the more vulnerable, more disadvantaged and more marginalised of the two sexes. (Or perhaps because of knowing that: who knows? Who can fathom the mind of a nasty, bigoted person?)

They want to deny the impact of being born female in a world calculated and designed to serve those born male. They want to make it impossible for those born female to take the steps they need specifically to redress the huge imbalance of power, wealth, economic security, personal safety between the sexes. They want to make it a crime, in social terms if not legal ones (though often in legal terms too) for women to even want to do this.

They want to turn the truth on its head in more ways than one, and make out that those of us defending ourselves from this onslaught on our rights are actually the aggressors the ones trying to take away other people’s rights, just as you intimated in your post, your post that some of us see as nasty and bigoted, Redlake.

Just as domestic abusers, for example, are wont to make out their victims are abusing them. It’s a very, very common dynamic, this type of gaslighting and reversal. So common it even has its own acronym: DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender.

Because those with more power who use that power to control those with less power hate being called out on it.

Some people are nasty and bigoted indeed, they really are. And when those people have power and privilege by virtue of the sex they were born, so that governments listen to them and change laws around them and accord them even more power and privilege than that which they were born into, while taking rights and safety away from those who were born into disadvantage on the sex axis - then those nasty, bigoted, misogynistic people are very dangerous to women.

BattyOrange · 04/02/2022 22:30

I'm in the repeal camp - I don't think the GRA works well for anyone really. Everyone knows "legal sex" isn't actual sex and I think it's an unkindness to pretend that anyone believes it - including those people who have a GRC.

1.Where does recording someone’s sex actually matter? My suggestion is it is no longer necessary on passports, driving licences its; especially now we have iris recognition etc, but that it IS necessary for data collection.
Like PP, I think everywhere too. Remember that police appeal last year when they said they were looking for a woman on the lose with a knife? Only it wasn't a woman... Sex matters everywhere.

2.Are there any areas where the harassment, stigmatisation, and discrimination of transgender people is not already covered by existing legislation?
I can't think of any.

3.Is the current trend of conflating sex with gender really helpful to transgender people?
No - not helpful to anyone

VestofAbsurdity · 04/02/2022 22:18

What magical security blanket does this new Birth Certificate endow?

OhHolyJesus · 04/02/2022 22:16

All we need is for the legal definition of gender to be super clear

You can't say some people haven't been trying. It can't be defined legally as it can't be any one thing. It's different things to different people...a feeling, presentation, an expression of some inner personality or thought, and it's not even fixed, it's fluid. It's personal and subjective.

I know it what it isn't, it isn't sex and most of the time it isn't real, in the way sex is real, unchanging, visible, tangible and defined in law.

I'd love to see a legal definition but so far no one can pin it down to a uniform, widely agreed, socially acceptable sentence.

Clymene · 04/02/2022 22:14

There is a massive issue with issuing new birth certificates to adults in that they are an excellent method of concealing past identities and past crimes. We know that men who have been convinced of heinous crimes against women and children have been successful in applying for GRCs. We also know that the DBS relies on applicants' honesty when asked about previous names.

It's a system which a 5 year old could drive a coach and horses through.

Clymene · 04/02/2022 22:11

A lot of very prominent transpeople don't have GRCs. I don't think it's had any significant impact on their lives.

Robin White, who frequents these boards, doesn't. It doesn't seem to have had any adverse effect.

In what sense does it impact someone's security @Redlake?

I think the Act should be repealed. It's a crappy, hastily drafted law that causes endless confusion in the way it interacts with the EA.

OhHolyJesus · 04/02/2022 22:11

@titchy

And the original reason for issuing a new bc was so that same sex couples could get married - obviously and thankfully no longer needed.
And for adopting parents, for legal parental rights, with the original preserved for the child.

Recording reality and recognising legal rights all in one process. Not undermining reality and replacing it with falsehoods.

titchy · 04/02/2022 22:07

And the original reason for issuing a new bc was so that same sex couples could get married - obviously and thankfully no longer needed.

titchy · 04/02/2022 22:06

Why is a new birth certificate so important though? Passports and driving licences are de facto id docs with sex in them - birth certs aren't usually accepted as id in their own so having a new one serves no purpose.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 04/02/2022 22:05

Yes, some people. They get to have their say and campaign for things they believe are right.

soapboxqueen · 04/02/2022 22:04

Years ago I would have said reform, now I think repeal.

It has fallen to the law of unintended consequences not to mention the fact that it was created looking at very different criteria.