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Fears Rishi Sunak will renege on promise to clarify definition of biological sex

290 replies

IwantToRetire · 05/06/2023 00:29

Rishi Sunak is facing calls to make a public “cast iron guarantee” to follow through on a pledge to rewrite equality law to protect women, amid Tory MPs’ fears that he will renege on his promise.

Conservative backbenchers are planning to challenge Maria Caulfield, the minister for women, to give an undertaking in the Commons that Mr Sunak will deliver on his promised legal changes to ensure that “mothers and women are not erased from public life”.

Sources close to the Prime Minister insist he remains committed to the pledge, with one saying that the Government is carefully considering advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the matter and another saying, “It’s certainly not being delayed or dropped”.

But senior Tories fear that the party will lose its opportunity to change the law if Mr Sunak fails to act swiftly ahead of an election next year.

One backbencher said: “There is a debate within government about whether this is a hill to die on and it’s unclear how much of a row the Government wants, doing this in the run-up to an election. But if they can’t say what a woman is by the time we go into an election we’re in trouble.”

More ...

A Telegraph article reprinted by Yahoo Fears Rishi Sunak will renege on promise to clarify definition of biological sex (yahoo.com)

I wonder at the motive of the DT for pursuing this (not complaining just wondering)

Also confused:
Maria Caulfied is not the Minister for Women see https://www.gov.uk/government/people/maria-caulfield
Kemi Badenoch is the Minister for Women https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-for-women-and-equalities--3

Wonder why the article refers to MC as being the one who should ask Sunak in the House of Commons to clarify. Is there some signifigance in this that I dont understand?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
13
NotHavingIt · 13/06/2023 07:52

Runnersandtoms · 13/06/2023 07:43

Of course he can and will break his promises, he's a Tory. That's why I don't buy the idea of voting Tory purely on this issue. As my DH is always quoting "never trust a Tory." There are so many other areas where Tory policies do disproportionate damage to women. I'm very GC but still wouldn't vote Tory.

I'm not suggesting you vote for a party you don't trust, but if you think a Labour administration is going to be any more trustworthy I suspect you are in for disappointment.

Starmer has rowed back on virtually all of his previous commitments now that the reality of resonsibility is dawning. All, that is, except for Self Id, which seems to be the one Corbyn relic he's most attached to.

SunnyEgg · 13/06/2023 07:49

Runnersandtoms · 13/06/2023 07:43

Of course he can and will break his promises, he's a Tory. That's why I don't buy the idea of voting Tory purely on this issue. As my DH is always quoting "never trust a Tory." There are so many other areas where Tory policies do disproportionate damage to women. I'm very GC but still wouldn't vote Tory.

Who will you vote for?

Runnersandtoms · 13/06/2023 07:43

Of course he can and will break his promises, he's a Tory. That's why I don't buy the idea of voting Tory purely on this issue. As my DH is always quoting "never trust a Tory." There are so many other areas where Tory policies do disproportionate damage to women. I'm very GC but still wouldn't vote Tory.

xabia · 13/06/2023 07:41

I agree that US women and press are looking over here with interest.

NotHavingIt · 13/06/2023 07:40

TooBigForMyBoots · 10/06/2023 21:33

What wider context is needed for the Tories to fix this?

More unfortunate events and shocking realisations, I imagine.

This thing is embedded and it is going to take a couple of decades, I reckon, to un-do. This is long haul, truth matters business.

NotHavingIt · 13/06/2023 07:36

The madness won't stop until there is serious push back and legal actions in the U.S. That effectively means that there has to be a Republican win at the next election, even though inevitably some states will go their own way as they are already increasingly doing so on any number of issues.

Mind you, i do think that legislators and media in the U.S are actually taking a lead from what is going in Britain - so I wouldn't lose all hope for the impact of what is going on here.

The best we can hope for is that Trump drops out of the race and someone else takes the helm.

NotHavingIt · 13/06/2023 07:30

RealityFan · 13/06/2023 00:20

I'm very much with you here.

My take is that there is a regulatory system that is evolving globally. I don't mean evil forces or even NWO scary stuff.

I mean a human rights machine that is embedded at all levels of UN, NGOs, US government, the EU, ECHR, WHO etc.

Self ID is accelerating across the West, and now even making progress into India, N. Africa.

Only China and Russia are immune...no suprise there, and a sign of things to come.

The UK has been a major outlier in resisting Self ID and trans conversion therapy legislation, but look at Ireland, the closest country culturally to us. Together with Canada, Aussie, NZ, and more and more the US, Ireland has absolutely gone down this route, soon with some of the strictest hate speech laws globally.

No way are the Tories going to resist this for long. With a Penny Mordaunt or Rory Stewart at the helm, they will relent to the gender narrative seamlessly.

Any Leftist govt, it's a done deal.

Show quote history

Gender Ideology is on a march around the world for the reason it is being funded by organisations such as the George Soros 'Open Society' foundation and the 'Ptizker Foundation'.

xabia · 13/06/2023 07:29

On the other hand the US is becoming much more resistant to males in female sports. Plenty of court cases by athletes and detransitioners and they will be in a different place.

Howpo · 13/06/2023 07:24

IwantToRetire · 10/06/2023 17:56

Sunak/Tories are refusing to do so.

Sorry this is just too silly. In the face of Brexit, Covid, the Ukraine war and resulting fuel crisis, (and horrendous in fighting) it is remarkable that there has been any political movement on this. eg statements from ministers, appointment of new chair to EHRC whilst being undermined by biased civil servants.

Lets face it if Labour had been in power, the full changes to the GRA would have happened and the EHRC would be totally stonewalled.

Although I dont agree as a recent article tried to suggest that the Tories are doing this as part of the "woke war" to appeal to red wall voters thinking of returning to Labour.

Oh Dear!

Its always someone else's fault!!! though your claims do go to show how important female rights are to the Tories.... down there with changes to dog licencing :(

Bottom line is the Tories have introduced plenty of other laws but have NOT chosen to change the GRA or anything else, indeed the numbers of GRC's issued are at record numbers per year.

Proof is in the pudding as they used to say.

SunnyEgg · 13/06/2023 06:49

I agree it’s marching across the west and further, can the U.K. be an outlier?

Very difficult when major world organisations pick up gender ideology as they are

Maybe we can. Not giving up yet, not voting for Labour or Lib Dems who will be speedier than Speedy Gonzalez

That debate last night, I’m not sure we would have heard such sense on biology matters anywhere else?

US would have been woke goes to die from right and no where else is debating it.

Left would have been similar - political stick, dog whistle etc

Not giving up

ScrollingLeaves · 13/06/2023 00:21

ResisterRex - Yesterday 05:57
Thank you for that article.

I was struck by this remark. Isn’t this what has just happened with the EA ‘clarify the meaning of “Sex”’ debate?

Whitehall has solutions for ministers wishing to dodge difficult decisions: issue another call for evidence for information you already have

RealityFan · 13/06/2023 00:20

Slothtoes · 12/06/2023 23:43

But even giving Kemi and Matt Hancock the benefit of the doubt- the pandemic was in 2020 and for many many years prior women have been writing to successive Health Secretaries and Ministers and their MPs with their concerns.

And still literally nothing has been said or done by government about children being given permanent invasive ‘medical treatment’ which has terrible known side effects and no evidence of permanent benefit or of safety. That is a medical scandal.

The Cass Review NHS-commissioned because of the legal commissioning responsibilities for children’s GIDS services that the NHS has. Cass’ role isn’t to stop the current practice of GIDS at all. It’s to gather up the available research and then present that, so it can better inform the commissioning of future services by the decision makers in the NHS.

I would have hoped that with this scandal being pointed out by women and parents and detransitioned adults, and then with the carefully evidenced and crowdfunded legal actions that women like Keira Bell have been taking- that any concerned Health Minister over the past decade plus would have set up a total moratorium on PBs or cross sex hormones being legally prescribed for kids in the UK, pending robust research assuring these patients of safety and effectiveness. But no.

Nadhim Zahawi as education Minister said for example that schools should not socially transition kids without the knowledge of parents. I’d have to research whether that was at all binding on schools and I don’t have the time to do that right now. But even if Hancock or any Health Minister could have just said something about the concerning lack of evidence for something so invasive and permanent that’s being done to kids, that might have helped? He didn’t though- none of them have.

Kemi Badenoch’s self congratulatory tone for me is therefore quite misplaced. She actually in that Times article to seem to blame the opposition for not pressing the incumbent government on this issue- as if that were some kind of excuse as to why government haven’t acted? Plus she also seemed to blame journalists for being too scared to tell the truth- when actually investigative journalists like Deborah Cohen and Hannah Barnes at BBC Newsnight and well informed commentators Janice Turner at The Times, have been telling this exact truth for years.

For years these kids have been othered and let down by the government, who are more culpable than any opposition party. They have certainly been let down by the opposition parties too, and it’s still an ongoing scandal.

I'm very much with you here.

My take is that there is a regulatory system that is evolving globally. I don't mean evil forces or even NWO scary stuff.

I mean a human rights machine that is embedded at all levels of UN, NGOs, US government, the EU, ECHR, WHO etc.

Self ID is accelerating across the West, and now even making progress into India, N. Africa.

Only China and Russia are immune...no suprise there, and a sign of things to come.

The UK has been a major outlier in resisting Self ID and trans conversion therapy legislation, but look at Ireland, the closest country culturally to us. Together with Canada, Aussie, NZ, and more and more the US, Ireland has absolutely gone down this route, soon with some of the strictest hate speech laws globally.

No way are the Tories going to resist this for long. With a Penny Mordaunt or Rory Stewart at the helm, they will relent to the gender narrative seamlessly.

Any Leftist govt, it's a done deal.

RealityFan · 13/06/2023 00:06

Can someone re-link the Kemi Badenoch relevant piece?

Slothtoes · 12/06/2023 23:43

But even giving Kemi and Matt Hancock the benefit of the doubt- the pandemic was in 2020 and for many many years prior women have been writing to successive Health Secretaries and Ministers and their MPs with their concerns.

And still literally nothing has been said or done by government about children being given permanent invasive ‘medical treatment’ which has terrible known side effects and no evidence of permanent benefit or of safety. That is a medical scandal.

The Cass Review NHS-commissioned because of the legal commissioning responsibilities for children’s GIDS services that the NHS has. Cass’ role isn’t to stop the current practice of GIDS at all. It’s to gather up the available research and then present that, so it can better inform the commissioning of future services by the decision makers in the NHS.

I would have hoped that with this scandal being pointed out by women and parents and detransitioned adults, and then with the carefully evidenced and crowdfunded legal actions that women like Keira Bell have been taking- that any concerned Health Minister over the past decade plus would have set up a total moratorium on PBs or cross sex hormones being legally prescribed for kids in the UK, pending robust research assuring these patients of safety and effectiveness. But no.

Nadhim Zahawi as education Minister said for example that schools should not socially transition kids without the knowledge of parents. I’d have to research whether that was at all binding on schools and I don’t have the time to do that right now. But even if Hancock or any Health Minister could have just said something about the concerning lack of evidence for something so invasive and permanent that’s being done to kids, that might have helped? He didn’t though- none of them have.

Kemi Badenoch’s self congratulatory tone for me is therefore quite misplaced. She actually in that Times article to seem to blame the opposition for not pressing the incumbent government on this issue- as if that were some kind of excuse as to why government haven’t acted? Plus she also seemed to blame journalists for being too scared to tell the truth- when actually investigative journalists like Deborah Cohen and Hannah Barnes at BBC Newsnight and well informed commentators Janice Turner at The Times, have been telling this exact truth for years.

For years these kids have been othered and let down by the government, who are more culpable than any opposition party. They have certainly been let down by the opposition parties too, and it’s still an ongoing scandal.

Slothtoes · 12/06/2023 23:31

Signalbox thanks and ResisterRex thank you for the Times article link. it’s really interesting to read Kemi Badenoch’s version of events.

Even she doesn’t claim that the Cass review is an appointed-by-government report (of which there are many across all areas of government policy) though. It’s not going to be one of those government reports with the foreword from the Secretary of State or a junior minister on it. It’s not going to even get a direct government response I guess, or at least government isn’t obliged to give a response as they would to say a Parliamentary report. It’s ‘just’ an NHS independent advisory report, which publishes publicly. which is great because it will be very influential on policy and focus on the evidence for what is being commissioned (or lack of it).

I have no idea what support from a Health Minister might have been signalled for what became Cass behind the scenes during the pandemic (as Kemi Badenoch says happened ) but frankly none of us normal people can know because if that happened, it wasn’t made public.

If I am wrong about that I’d be interested to hear any insider accounts of that or to see anything that was made public supporting Hancock’s involvement in commissioning Cass review at the time. (And of course I would be very happy to be wrong and to find a lot of Ministerial support for not medically or surgically transing kids- that would be absolutely brilliant.)

PerkingFaintly · 11/06/2023 12:18

SunnyEgg · 11/06/2023 08:45

I’ve found the posts on the lead up to where we are interesting

The talk this morning is Johnson’s mutiny has fallen flat, hopefully so. I don’t really care that much about him either way and have a different view on partygate but he is good at making politics about him, stirring, getting airtime and headlines which just makes it harder for something like this issue to get attention.

Labour and Lib Dem have made it clear that they don’t care, or actively see women as dinosaurs, unless they have a penis so that’s not hopeful.

This is why, if Johnson does decide to stand in Dorries' seat at the by-election, it would be amazing if KJK stood against him.

Grab that airtime and headlines.

DameMaud · 11/06/2023 11:11

Slothtoes · 11/06/2023 02:44

My recollection of 2004 GRA is of no big popular campaign around gender identity rights at all. It felt like a done deal suddenly being debated in Parliament having been (we now know) heavily influenced behind the scenes via Press for Change et al.

Reason they could get such a foothold was a legal case went to European court and in 2002 the European Court required the (then Labour) UK gov to look again at its laws because existing laws didn’t allow changing of birth certificates. And it didn’t allow a man (who wishes to present as a woman) to marry another man. Which was actually discriminatory. The religious lobby in the UK at the time would never allow same sex marriage. We only had UK civil partnerships (specifically not marriage) many years later in 2017. let alone actual gay marriage..

So the UK Labour government legally had to make some kind of response to ECHR case where someone wanted to change their birth certificate to become legally female.
The government had a choice here- instead of saying humans can’t change sex, adults should leave their birth certificates alone, and instead of supporting equal lesbian and gay rights, and correcting other unfair homophobic legal restrictions on same sex couples, or even saying it’s fine to dress or name yourself as the opposite sex.. the government of the day acted within their own homophobia, and kowtowed to the religious lobby of all parties and to the TRAs. The government’s best way to respond to the challenge was to take literally and support the sexist and homophobic fiction of ‘born in the wrong body’, as a neat solution. Rather than to stick with material reality and to try to legally promote actual equality around sexual orientation and women’s rights.

And therefore the GRA was hastily cobbled together, by what sounds like Press for Change working much too closely with civil servants who in combination were so misogynistic, unquestioning and usefully idiotic that that they
-didn’t include anything at all in GRA to deal with the legal possibility that women could have a GRC saying they are male and still get pregnant and have kids
-didn’t allow for people to change their mind later and wish to revoke their GRC, naking it a lifelong and irreversible status, unless GRC holder says they had lied to start with- which shows no understanding of consent and is highly othering of people who are trans.

I’d imagine the drafting team didn’t ask enough questions, and assumed or they were told that all men seeking GRC would have ‘a sex change’ operation. And I see in that a wholly male-centric view that a man who lives voluntarily without his penis could ever wish to consider himself male, or could ever still be seen as a man again.

They clearly felt that penisless men might as well actually be women… which is wildly insulting to both men and women. And that’s why detransition never seems to have crossed their minds as something they’d need GRA to be dealing with.

Thank you for this summary Slothtoes!

SunnyEgg · 11/06/2023 08:45

I’ve found the posts on the lead up to where we are interesting

The talk this morning is Johnson’s mutiny has fallen flat, hopefully so. I don’t really care that much about him either way and have a different view on partygate but he is good at making politics about him, stirring, getting airtime and headlines which just makes it harder for something like this issue to get attention.

Labour and Lib Dem have made it clear that they don’t care, or actively see women as dinosaurs, unless they have a penis so that’s not hopeful.

Signalbox · 11/06/2023 08:40

ResisterRex · 11/06/2023 08:14

On Cass, I thought that Mordaunt said she would commission research? But when I looked at that (GEO page, IIRC) it didn't seem to have led anywhere.

Then there was more and more in the press, and then there was Cass. As pushed for by parents, ex-GIDS staff (and serving?), some MPs and then Hancock.

I think this was my understanding too.

ResisterRex · 11/06/2023 08:14

On Cass, I thought that Mordaunt said she would commission research? But when I looked at that (GEO page, IIRC) it didn't seem to have led anywhere.

Then there was more and more in the press, and then there was Cass. As pushed for by parents, ex-GIDS staff (and serving?), some MPs and then Hancock.

Signalbox · 11/06/2023 08:03

ResisterRex · 11/06/2023 05:57

Cass Review was Hancock

"Even more credit should go to health secretaries such as Matt Hancock who in the midst of the pandemic pushed for the commissioning of the review by Dr Hilary Cass that led to the closing of the Tavistock and also his successor, Sajid Javid, who provided support when I raised numerous concerns that the Department of Health refused to prioritise."

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0df1a300-1022-11ed-b7aa-67f5549661eb?shareToken=9f447178d1a36a207bf13a1cd7e0e16a

Oh yes I remember that now. So the Cass review was instigated by the Tories? I’m confused now.

ResisterRex · 11/06/2023 05:57

Cass Review was Hancock

"Even more credit should go to health secretaries such as Matt Hancock who in the midst of the pandemic pushed for the commissioning of the review by Dr Hilary Cass that led to the closing of the Tavistock and also his successor, Sajid Javid, who provided support when I raised numerous concerns that the Department of Health refused to prioritise."

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0df1a300-1022-11ed-b7aa-67f5549661eb?shareToken=9f447178d1a36a207bf13a1cd7e0e16a

Signalbox · 11/06/2023 04:03

Signalbox · 11/06/2023 03:51

Signalbox sorry that’s not quite right. It matters that the Cass review was commissioned by the NHS.

Thanks Slothtoes my mistake.

It was this that had me confused. I’d assumed that the government had ordered it…

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/16/minister-orders-inquiry-4000-per-cent-rise-children-wanting/

Minister orders inquiry into 4,000 per cent rise in children wanting to change sex

An explosion in the number of children wanting to change sex has prompted an inquiry by ministers.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/16/minister-orders-inquiry-4000-per-cent-rise-children-wanting/

Signalbox · 11/06/2023 03:51

Signalbox sorry that’s not quite right. It matters that the Cass review was commissioned by the NHS.

Thanks Slothtoes my mistake.