Sunak intends to review the EA

The interesting thing would be whether this goes onto a Tory manifesto and raises sufficient voter support to mean there would be the support within the house to put a repeal/reorganisation through.

It will eventually. Labour et al have never had public support, and the more it is pushed (and the more mess starts to come out) the more public opinion will shift. To be honest, its going to end up more win/win if something is done about it than if parties try to hang on and keep looking anywhere but at the growing mess until there's a huge burst of public fury and the action demanded is dramatic. The quick action on the Tavistock hints strongly at how worried government are about the optics when the Cass report is finished.

I will vote Conservative, if he actually does this! It would be a huge step in the correct direction for biological Women’s rights!

I’d like to see organisations having the duty (instead of the right) to provide single-sex facilities.

Laws can be repealed. How often or how easily is that done, though? Do you think that anyone would ever have passed a GRA or a Convention right if they didn't hold a general belief or philosophy of rights?

Would Parliament repeal the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act (and leave the European Convention on Human Rights), the GRA, even if the government wants to? Can you see the MPs voting to do that? That's where we are.

Who among MPs or the public doesn't believe, or say they believe, that people who want to, have a right to change sex? People say it all time here as well: people have a right to be who they want to be. What do they think follows from that?

All that.

It needs to move to there must be single sex facilities for the 99% of the population who need this, and organisations may provide additional gender neutral provision.

And had the question deleted by MN...

YY, Thelnebriati

I want 2 more things. (I know, I'm greedy.)

1. None of this wishy washy 'organisations may provide single sex facilities'. I want people to have the right to a single sex facility, where you would expect them to be provided. No more NHS hospitals gaslighting patients that wards are single sex, or covering up rapes.

2. Official documents including birth certificates, passport and driving licence to reflect a persons sex, not their gender identity.

About how far down that slope are we?

Quite far. The OTT privacy clauses in the GRA which prohibit knowing what sex someone is or sharing this information are a big part of the problem. They are obsolete. Hardly any of these male people pass. No one is going "stealth" if anyone ever could. And I don't actually think people should have the right to do so.

I'm sure most of the general public don't even have the smallest clue what the GRA does. That a man can actually change his bloody birth certificate! Without any kind of surgery, whatsoever.

I really don't think it would be difficult to repeal it. Or re-define it to such an extent that it's meaningless.

But I still suspect they won't do it. I suspect they will be thinking of tightening the criteria. And the only tightening that would be acceptable to most people is that you have to have surgery.

But then they will be accused of promoting castration.

Whatever they do, there will be emotional blackmail to undo it. Which is why the whole thing needs to go. Like ripping off a plaster.

He might be thinking that if they strengthen the EA, and that the only men who can be considered women are those with a GRC, it will be so few, that the furore will die down.

But then you will be faced with the unintended consequence, that only those men who are utterly determined to screw over women will get a GRC. Which means you're still faced with strengthening the criteria for that, otherwise it's a predators' charter.

Whichever way you look at it, the GRA has to go. It provides too many loopholes.

And I'm sure they don't want to do that. And I'm equally sure, once they go thru the whole process that we've been going through on here, they'll end up with the same conclusion.

That doesn't mean they'll do it. But they will know they should do it.

The GRA is fine so long as the EA is given primacy

I disagree. The GRA is a fundamental affront to the integrity of the Law, as it gives a lie statutory force. That is absolutely wrong and it's appalling that there was so little examination of that principle at the time, regardless of the contents of the Act.

Most 'legal fictions' aren't actually fictions - they are situations where the Law recognises the truth, but sets it to one side - for example when a court transfers parental rights from biological to adoptive parents. The Law then treats the adoptive parent as the child's parent, but it doesn't start pretending that the adoptive parent is actually the biological parent. It's not illegal to recognise the existence of the biological parent - on the contrary, open adoption is now common, and adoptive parents are encouraged to acknowledge a child's biological background.

The GRA, by contrast, forces us all to pretend to believe something that we know to be untrue - that a man has become a woman, or vice versa. It doesn't just direct institutions to behave as it this is the case, it makes it a criminal offence for institutions to acknowledge truth (the person's biological sex).

This is corrosive to the integrity of the Law. Once you start pretending that a lie is the truth, you are on a slippery slope. Once you start allowing individuals to change identity at will, you are on a slippery slope. Above all, once you start criminalising the telling of the truth, you are on a very, very slippery slope.

With the framework of legislation and rights that we have, I'm not even certain you can ensure women's rights are protected. The underlying arguments are fundamentally about competing ideas about rights.

When cases came up about religion and sexuality, religious rights weren't upheld and couldn't be exercised at the expense of pre- existing legally enshrined rights not to be discriminated against on grounds of sexual orientation but that did amount to curtailing the exercise and influence of rights to exercise or practice of religious freedom.

The GRA stands and to repeal it would probably not be politically or legally viable - I can't see that happening, can you? At the least it would cause a huge bunfight politically, lengthy parliamentary proceedings and journeys through the courts here and in Strasbourg. To amend it...perhaps a way could be found but only by reviewing the GRA and Equality Act together and finding some sort of arrangement that would accommodate different needs but not be absolute protection for women and girls.

That. ^

I'm sure there will be many and multiple attempts to continue the 'cosy cups of tea' in quiet backrooms to make anti democratic law, evade transparency and ignore things like law and safeguarding children, but Sunak and co are wise to all this, it's been tried and done so often and now look at the mess.

The Cass report is going to be very, very embarrassing for government.
The support of the utter binfire of Mermaids is very, very embarrassing for the govt, BBC and everyone else involved
The Tavistock, heavily owned and steered and backroom driven by Stonewall and Mermaids etc is very, very embarrassing.
Kemi Badenoch is openly stating in the HoC how the editor of the Pink News (Stonewall's mouthpiece) shows behaviour rather interesting and not really to be indulged.
We're going to see Sturgeon sorting out the mess of yesterday's vote for months and it may well finish her.

You can only con people for so long. And once they see through you , you've had it. The government would be nuts not at this point to be being very very careful to keep dodgy lobby groups out of policy making.

Well at least it would be a step forward. If it doesn't get watered down too much.

He could be tightening the criteria to get a GRC. He won't be alone in thinking that eg surgery should qualify men as women.

If he's going to strengthen the EA so that biological sex overrides gender identity, then what's the point of having a GRC in the first place?

In theory, changing a birth certificate won't get you anywhere. Except how are these people going to be identified by their biological sex?

We're back to the same situation where a man is obviously a man, but his paperwork says differently, so how are you going to prove it?

The GRA needs to go.

Perhaps he’ll be more amenable if you talk about clarity in legal language and all the unnecessary judiciary time and public purse funds (and crowdfunds) that have been spent on the issue in the last few years?