EHRC single sex guidance out

I read it as pointing out that biological sex and legal sex are not necessarily the same thing.

In the case of sex discrimination, a person’s legal sex is what is on the birth certificate, which in the case of a GRC where the legal sex has been changed then it is not the same as their biological sex.

What I think is desperately confusing is this:

There are two facts stated which contradict each other:
A.
Sex’ is understood as binary – being male or female – with a person’s legal sex being determined by what is recorded on their birth certificate, based on biological sex.

B.
A trans person can change their legal sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate through procedures set out in the Gender Recognition Act 2004

A Says that sex is is biological.
B Says that (with a special legal status [which does not require much to get] sex is not biological.

A and B seem to be given equal weight.

Bloody brilliant post Artichoke
Nailed it. That’s the problem at the heart of this. A hierarchy being built of who gets to control language and ultimately the perception of reality. And spoiler alert, it’s an oligarchy not a democracy!

And:

Under the Equality Act people are protected from sex discrimination on the basis of their legal sex. This means that a trans woman who does not hold a Gender Recognition Certificate is legally male and is treated as a man for the purposes of the sex discrimination provisions, and a trans woman with a Gender Recognition Certificate is treated as a woman. The sex discrimination exceptions in the Equality Act therefore apply differently to trans people with and without Gender Recognition Certificates.

The EHRC defines legal and biological sex here:

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/protecting-people-sex-and-gender-reassignment-discrimination

In the Equality Act 2010 the protected characteristic of sex protects people from being discriminated against because of being a man or a woman (Equality Act 2010, Section 11) – defined as a male or female of any age (Equality Act 2010, Section 212 (1)). ‘Sex’ is understood as binary – being male or female – with a person’s legal sex being determined by what is recorded on their birth certificate, based on biological sex. A trans person can change their legal sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate through procedures set out in the Gender Recognition Act 2004. A trans person who does not have a Gender Recognition Certificate retains the sex recorded on their birth certificate for legal purposes.

This is going to be a fundamental problem when working from a philosophy that feelings create reality; not facts; and that facts are something you select from and suppress in order to maintain that chosen, authentically felt, subjective reality.

It is never going to work in law. It's unworkable in society, because it separates society into those who get to create their personal realities and others who don't get to create anything or even follow their own perceptions but have to maintain other people's subjectively chosen reality. Law cannot be based on different people's subjective individual versions of reality and alternate truths because there is no shared meaning.

This is what we're seeing destruction tested.

Just to add... I've done a bit of digging and one of the objections appears to be that the term 'biological sex' doesn't appear in the Equality Act (no but 'female' does, and it's not a stretch to say that female refers to a biological sex) and that the guidance refers to the Scottish Board cases which apparently has a legal but 'flawed' definition of sex. But...your objection can't be I think the law as it is is currently flawed so the guidance is wrong. if the Scottish Boards case has said sex is a biological, binary concept then that is what the law says! People seem to be confusing what the law IS with what they want it to be.

I think they are either lying or genuinely believe Stonewall's interpretation of the law is the correct one.

Can someone help with this? I'm so confused seeing certain legal experts say that this guidance is 'illegal' and clashes with the Equality Act. I thought this guidance just reiterated what the Equality Act already says, and just gives more concrete, fleshed out examples (some of the examples are even in the original guidance.) So why are they so mistaken about this and why do they think this guidance massively clashes? Or are they just lying?

Imagining those at the EHRC office this morning swearing into their coffee that after months of work and careful planning before publishing, it's taken a day for their advice to be reworded and reframed to the benefit of a particular political agenda to defend themselves against having to deal with the inconvenience of other people having rights too.

The Fawcett Society believe that a company board etc. made up of 50% of male men and 50% of male 'women' is equality.

They are idiots.

The Fawcett society is supposed to advocate for women, not their pet fringe beliefs.

The Fawcett Society says some of the examples go too far, and the bar is too low for exclusion.

Since the Fawcett Society have no fucks to give about the bar for excluding female people from female services to give male people more choice and better provision? I don't think they're in any position to comment.

So no, Fawcett Society, acceptance should not always be the starting point. The law and fairness and genuine equality should be the starting points.

Fawcett Society continues to learn nothing from its embarrassing contributions over the last few years and their compliance with giving away the language of women as a sex class and therefore contributing to the erasure of women in policy and law.

The Fawcett Society says some of the examples go too far, and the bar is too low for exclusion.

They’re so confused. It’s just the law. Where a person of one sex might reasonably object to the presence of a person of the opposite sex, a provider can make alternative arrangements.

That might mean saying no males at all, it might mean setting up a separate mixed sex service (like a gender neutral changing room as well as female or male only options), it might mean saying there are certain times or days when the service is one sex only.

It’s about being fair and accommodating to everyone.

So no, Fawcett Society, acceptance should not always be the starting point. The law and fairness and genuine equality should be the starting points.

I don't think the onus should be on the woman to CHECK she actually has a woman examining her intimately. We should be told if the person is a biological male and give clear consent?

Without consent it is a form of sexual assault, because the woman is being clearly misled, violated and at some point one would imagine the horror of discovering who is doing the examination mid way. There seems to be no safe guards around this at all in the NHS.

As if we haven't a confidence crisis already in women's healthcare, this is now the next thing we have to contend with. Along with underfunding, open sexism and maternity hospitals sinking under the pressure due to a lack of investment and resources. I am totally sick and tired of being a second class citizen in this country.

At my last smear test I asked the receptionist if I could be booked with a female nurse and she reassured me that all their nurses are female. If I had then had a transgender (TW) nurse I would have had to postpone as would not be comfortable to be examined intimately by a man. With the EHRC statement I now know that my rights would allow me to complain. I hope others feel stronger now too.

It's Schrodinger's bloody everything.

It's Schrodinger's Medical Condition.

The thing is Fieldofgreycorn, it's no longer their decision.

Any man, whatever he says, can be excluded from women's spaces, if it is negatively impacting the women in them.

The EHRC has just given all women, everywhere, that power.

We decide.

and the woman herself felt compromised and violated?

And according to this political movement, said woman needs to either shut up and feel compromised and violated without upsetting the male person who wishes to do this whether or not female patients are ok with it as a part of affirming their identity, or to go without any care at all.

If she shows feeling compromised and violated, she is at risk of accusations, anger, shaming or worse.

HOW is this ok? Please God will someone tell me what is remotely ethical about this?

I am just now thinking that if you realise you are being examined intimately by a man, instead of the female nurse you thought it was. How would it even be charged with sexual assault, even if it plainly was an assault and the woman herself felt compromised and violated?

He was simply doing this job, as a woman and there was no need to alert anyone to the fact he is a man because that is against the 'rules'.

Anyone who works in the courts, can tell you how hard it has become to produce convictions for sexual assault and violence in the last few years in particular, and we could see a whole new layer of society experiencing sexual assault potentially en masse without even having the means to defend themselves or see justice served.

One might argue that some men work in a medical field with women intimately, but that is different because the woman is consenting to a male accessing her body, and not having it inflicted on her.

I would not know where to start with a case as above - it would be a very grey area, and the implications and the publicity.
We are rightly as a society waking up to the danger, some of us have been for years, it is not just to our dignity and privacy and our ability to play sports fairly at stake, but the stuff that further down the track that is truly terrifying.

Anyone from stonewall or the trans community care to tell me how this would ever be okay to inflict on another human being for your benefit? I genuinely have no idea how any decent person can continue to support this hate campaign against women, which is what it is.

No MrsOverton I haven’t mentioned self identification.

This sure is forcing some people to have to come out and say that they don't think women should have the right to single sex anything, isn't it?

There are times when everyone, female or male has the right to single sex things.

Hasn't transgender been taken off most medical illness lists?

It's still in the ICD (I believe this is used in preference to DSM in the UK). It's been moved from mental health conditions to sexual health conditions and renamed 'gender incongruence' (hands up, who's 'gender congruent'? )

Thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4512853-why-was-gender-dysphoria-changed-from-being-a-mental-illness

If you are for example as a nurse completing a smear on a female patient, where does a medical examination stop and serious sexual assault start if it is being carried out by a male without your consent? How on earth do we protect ourselves in surgeries and hospitals?

The case of the patient being raped in hospital but no males were present according to the hospital for an entire year it was denied is a case in point, who is going to stop this from happening on a wider scale, a much wider scale - and will we get the same shrugging of shoulders and 'no men here' response over and over again, even thought it was a clear lie?

Are the hospital trust being taken to court? Are the people placed in charge of self guarding continuing in their roles undisturbed?

How can we trust the very people that are supposed to be caring for us if such lies are able to persist, and who is really checking this stuff at recruitment level now even?

It is a huge violation - and yet who can stop it if we are silenced into submission?