The Times: Westminster poised to intervene over gender bill assent

How does this work in practice? If their birth certificate was originally issued in Scotland then they will get a new birth cerificate, whether the UK recognises their GRC or not. There is nothing on the new birth certificate to say it has been falsified.

This is highly pertinent - from a Scottish lawyer:

's.33 provides that within that twenty eight day period various law officers, the relevant one here would be the Advocate General for Scotland, may refer a Bill to the Supreme Court for their opinion on the Bill's legislative competence. Their view is final. That is stage two at which a Bill could be stopped.'

(only if this fails would it go to s.35)

ianssmart.blogspot.com/2023/01/35-or-33.html

And also:

'There has been much criticism of Lady Haldane's judgement in For Women (Scotland) No.2 . I think this is unfair, She simply applies the law. It is the law, particularly s.9 of the original GRA, which is an ass.'

Referenced:

rozenberg.substack.com/p/scottish-gender-recognition-who-decides-a41

'UK ministers can veto legislation but courts have the last word'

Of course any new word identified as meaning that group formerly known as women and girls will become the new target for attack, theft, colonisation and assimilation to try and render it mixed sex as fast as possible.

Which makes option 1 again the only real option.

Reading the KPSS document in depth, really the govt have two options now.

Repeal the GRA and start again separating sex and gender clearly in law and ensuring that male freedoms of identity do not clash with and eliminate female civil and human rights.

Or re define the half of the UK population formerly known as 'women and girls/females' with some new invented term, and re draw legislation from scratch stating their group based protections from that term. And then re draw the EqA and Prisons Act and pretty much every other piece of legislation to add/separate out 'women' (now a mixed sex group meaning nothing) from 'group of people that men have now stolen all the words for, in order to benefit themselves'.

They're currently going with option 3 which is hide in the fridge, hoping that it'll just go away/find its own level (which basically means that women will enable men and just give up their rights/step back out of society/become a subclass and stop 'squabbling').

Fuck That.

Because as with much of this massive legal mess we've ended up with two things trying to occupy the same space and conflicting, confused guidance depending on who last tried to make sense of it.

This. And as I said my key objection is that opening the GRC floodgates to all comers changes the protected characteristic of female sex from being about women to being about women and some male people who have a certificate saying they were born female when they weren't. There aren't many at the moment, but a large increase in them makes the category essentially meaningless.

I want the GRA repealed eventually. It's bad law. Men aren't ever going to be women in any way that matters in any way at all The more people who have a GRC the more difficult it is to have protections for women.

Page 3 and 4 of KPSS's letter linked above, explains all this in clear detail.

Of the 8 protected characteristics, sex is the ONLY one a person can 'identify into.' People can't self identify as a particular race or as disabled....the only solution is to repeal the GRA (imho.) or all sex based protections for women are instantly rendered meaningless.

Because as with much of this massive legal mess we've ended up with two things trying to occupy the same space and conflicting, confused guidance depending on who last tried to make sense of it.

But in essence you have two separate things:

If a male person does not have a GRC the comparator is another male, and not a female in deciding discrimination.

If a male person has a GRC the comparator is another female.

There is an additional exception to protect female sex based provisions, that even if a male person has a GRC they can be treated differently if it is to provide a female only needed service to biological females.

And yes, it's now beyond fucked up with the result it's increasingly hard to protect anything at all for females and the TQ+ lobby has no interest in care, inclusivity or anything else for females. Which now means the GRCs just have to go. Mess beyond fixing with too great a detriment to half the population of the UK.

Hm.

Here is the list:

List of approved countries and territories:

Australia

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Canada – not including Northwest Territories and Nunavut

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Iceland

Italy

Japan

Liechtenstein

Luxembourg

Malta

Mexico City, Mexico

Moldova

Netherlands

New Zealand

Norway

Poland

Romania

Russian Federation

Serbia

Singapore

Slovakia

Slovenia

South Africa

South Korea

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

Ukraine

United States of America – not including Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas

Uruguay

www.gov.uk/government/publications/gender-recognition-certificate-list-of-approved-countries-and-territories/gender-recognition-certificate-list-of-approved-countries-and-territories

A point I haven't read yet, the Scottish GRC will be unlawful in the rest of the UK. Kemi Baddenoch is very interested

Transgender Scots will have to apply for a UK gender recognition certificate in order to be recognised outside Scotland under changes to be made by ministers.
The move aims to combat fears that Scotland’s new Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which will make it easier to change gender, could lead to “gender tourism” whereby people travel north of the border to obtain a gender recognition certificate (GRC) to bypass stricter rules in the rest of the UK.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scots-gender-certificate-invalid-south-of-border-9wslr0mxt

Sorry my links don't work for the Times, anyone got a share token that does work

Sturgeons coat is on a shoogly peg and I’m delighted.

Thanks very much for posting this and the link to the FPFW submission. The only concrete thing in the submission seems to be about the MoJ prison policy, which I’ve discussed above.

On Green (which I have read previously), even though it is pretty clear on the discrimination comparator for trans people without a GRC, it doesn’t seem to be accepted as having settled the position regarding exclusion of trans women without a GRC from female single sex spaces. For instance, the EHRC guidance from last year makes clear that you don’t need to know whether a trans woman has a GRC in order to exclude them from a single sex service, provided you are satisfied the exclusion of trans women is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. How could that be the case if a trans woman without a GRC could simply be excluded on the basis they are legally male?

I fully agree, in reality. But if that's how a GRC is interpreted by the courts, we don't want them to be made easier to get.

Once they do have a GRC, their comparator class is members of their acquired sex.

Why? Even with a GRC they retain all the attributes of their actual sex. Their legal fiction sex does not give them any of the attributes that distinguish females from males.

A male prisoner asks for tampons to be supplied.

"No."

"Why not?"

"You do not need them."

A male prisoner with a GRC (ie legally female) asks for tampons to be supplied.

"No."

"Why not? Other women get them!"

"You do not need them."

@aseriesofstillimages

There was definitely discussion about this on MN but it's worth reading this legal opinion. Julian Norman is a feminist barrister. I've added my bold, apologies if the formatting comes out weird.

https://www.filia.org.uk/latest-news/2018/8/23/has-everyone-really-got-it-wrong?format=amp

It is here where, in my view, it is wrong to argue that amendment of the GRA will have no effect on single sex exemptions.

If there are two ways to become female for the purposes of s.212(1) EqA – and therefore to meet the criteria for single sex provision – biological and legal, and it is proposed to amend the GRA to open up the legal route to many thousands more people with no oversight beyond a statutory declaration, then it is axiomatic that amendment of the GRA will have an enormous effect on the EqA. The effect would be to open up the legal status of “female” gender by way of s.9(1) GRA, and therefore “woman” for the purpose of s.212(1) EqA, to include anyone who signs a statutory declaration.

There are very few cases which deal with this, but I would suggest that this view is supported by the comments of HHJ Jeremy Richardson QC inR (Green) v Secretary of State for Justice[2013] EWHC 3491 (Admin).

In that case the Court was dealing with an application by a male prisoner who had murdered his wife and who now wished to be considered female. Green did not have a dysphoria diagnosis but was treated by the prison and the court with the courtesy of being referred to as a woman (presumably socially, given that neither biological nor legal womanhood applied). At paragraphs 66 - 70 HHJ Richardson said that

“A comparator has to be found in order for there to be discrimination or for the claimant to show she has had less favourable treatment. The claimant asserts the comparator should be a female prisoner; whereas the governor contends it should be a male prisoner. There can be no doubt the claimant has a protected characteristic – gender reassignment.
The claimant is, however, male. The only possible comparator is to a male prisoner who is not undergoing gender reassignment.
It seems to me that I must approach the discrimination issues in this way:

(1) Has the claimant been treated less favourably by the Governor than he would treat others in the exercise of his public function?
(2) If he has so treated the claimant, was this due to the claimant's gender reassignment?
Frankly, it is almost beyond argument that the only comparator is a male Category B prisoner at HMP Frankland. I am influenced by the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Croft v Royal Mail Group PLC [2003] EWCA (Civ) 1045. I find it impossible to see how a female prisoner can be regarded as the appropriate comparator. The claimant is a man seeking to become a woman – but he is still of the male gender and a male prisoner. He is in a male prison and until there is a Gender Recognition Certificate, he remains male. A woman prisoner cannot conceivably be the comparator as the woman prisoner has (either by birth or election) achieved what the claimant wishes. Male to female transsexuals are not automatically entitled to the same treatment as women – until they become women.

… I have no hesitation in saying the correct comparator is a male prisoner in Category B at HMP Frankland. I am utterly unconvinced that the claimant has been treated less favourably than such a prisoner – indeed the reverse. Consequently, the second question I posed does not arise.”

In other words, where a person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment but does not have a GRC, their comparator class in looking at a discrimination claim is other members of their birth sex who are not proposing reassignment. Once they do have a GRC, their comparator class is members of their acquired sex.

This means that if the GRA is amended so that self-declaration is all that is needed, Green would have had the comparator class of females rather than males and would have had a good case not just for access to the tights, wigs, prosthetic vagina and sanitary towels sought, but also for removal to the women’s estate, because the comparator class would become females. Whilst Green was disqualified for want of a dysphoria diagnosis, the comparator class remained males.

'it is open to organisations under the equality act to adopt policies which allow them to exclude trans women with a GRC, and so making it easier to get a GRC doesn’t prevent them from excluding trans women'

Except that organisations which choose to exercise this legal right under the EA2010 find that they are then de-funded by local authorities, and verbally attacked and accused of bigotry. Women supporting this right are hounded out of their jobs and roles. Women meeting to discuss this right are attacked physically and verbally, while the police stand back and allow it to happen, or even tell the women to disperse, rather than requiring the attackers to leave.

This right to exclude men from women's spaces has no teeth.

It's rather like there is no law that excludes men from women's toilets. This custom had teeth because nobody ever considered it at all reasonable that men should enter women's toilets. Imply that males may enter women's toilets under any pretence, and suddenly the custom has no teeth. If any male may enter then any other male may enter.

If anyone is stopped from exercising the right to single-sex women's spaces, then the law that protects the right to those spaces has no teeth.

Who has decided what is 'best practise'? It's WPATH, isn't it? We all know what WPATH are into.

'international best practice' gets a lot of trips out these days, doesn't it?

I wonder if they are still looking into doing this? It's interesting that the government haven't yet responded to the Sex Matters petition that asks for an update of the EA. Perhaps that's because they are planning something. I do hope so! It would make it much more difficult for Labour to fuck things up for women once they gain power.