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

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.

Institutional change takes time, and it hasn't only been since 2017 that this has been brewing. It's a lot longer, and for many, because they see it as part of the broader civil rights movement, it is extremely difficult to just reverse.

Neither MPs, not the PM, directly run the country. And very cleverly this ideology has been thoughouly indictrinated into key institutions, right down to the service user level. AT a time when new workers are in short supply.

Heck, a whole industry has grown up around making sure organizations and individuals are taught this approach and feel obliged to do it.

‘The government have u-turned on self ID, they have blocked the GRR bill in Scotland, they have commissioned the Cass review’

Signalbox sorry that’s not quite right. It matters that the Cass review was commissioned by the NHS. Independent of the Tory government of that day. Not commissioned by any government at all. That would have been a Tory government being protective of distressed children who have focused on gender identity. But no.

So far the successive Tory governments since 2010 have done nothing to protect children except to seek to introduce Self ID, then to U turn on that (thank goodness!) in the Tories’ own electoral interests. That trajectory has then also influenced but not dictated the welcome challenge of the UK gov to the Scottish gov on their self ID plan for Scotland which is in direct conflict with the EqA across UK so such a challenge would have to have been done anyway. It’s unworkable to have laws in one nation of the UK that fit incredibly poorly with other parts of UK and are incongruent with UK law applicable in their own nation.

They only introduced it in 2017, how long do they need to fix it?

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “it” here. What did they introduce in 2017 and what do they need to fix?

If you mean self ID, they did introduce the idea and then they did a u-turn after a consultation so there’s nothing really to fix there because nothing happened. It’s frustrating they haven’t gone further in the right direction by clarifying the meaning of the PC of sex in the EA but political change rarely happens “now” especially when it is a contentious issue and against the flow of what is happening across the Western world. The point is things haven’t got a whole lot worse (although arguably they have in schools) and some progress has been made in some areas and I just think it has been beneficial for women for things to have stood still for a while and hopefully when Labour do gain power they will do less damage than they might have done on this particular issue because women are now organised and ready to fight any madcap gender ID policies that Labour attempt to introduce.

How does any of that prevent the Tory government from fixing this now? After all for years we've been told that they "know what a woman is" and that they are "rolling back" on this bullshit.

They only introduced it in 2017, how long do they need to fix it?

I do wish the Tories would do more though. Just read this story and honestly wtf...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/10/gender-ideology-foster-mother-nearly-lost-children-class/

It does seem that this upcoming WM debate will give us a strong indication of whether the Tories/Sunak are going to do what they said they'd do and fix the Equality Act, or fudge it and kick the ball down the road.

The outcome will probably decide my vote, tbh.

The wider context is that many other Western countries have gone full steam ahead with Self ID and laws that prohibit women from having services / spaces / sporting events separate from men. As ResisterRex already pointed out we are an outlier. Whilst we may not have made the progress that we would like in terms of strengthening women's rights the government have not (yet) implemented laws that will be almost impossible to reverse once they have been passed. The government have u-turned on self ID, they have blocked the GRR bill in Scotland, they have commissioned the Cass review, they selected Baroness Faulkner for chair of the EHRC, they have put the breaks on and listened when they could quite easily have just ploughed on with reform in an attempt to make themselves look progressive. I feel like they've held a space for women to be able to build up a resistance and start a conversation so that when Labour do finally get into power it will be much more difficult for them to go full steam ahead with GRA reform / self ID / keeping children's transition in school secret from parents / allowing males into female prisons etc.

IANAL but I gather they can go the statutory instrument route. But they need to have an indication there's a problem (prisons, rape crisis, health and so on), have the advice from the right body (EHRC), and evidence there's a need from elected representatives (Monday's debate), and those things have to happen in an order for due process to take place. The government has to weigh all this up, and not be rushed.

Pending the outcome of the debate - and the quality of what's said in it - then I don't see why they can't put a statutory instrument through Parliament. I'm not sure what would stop them, unless something emerges in the debate or some astonishing and solid evidence from Stonewall and co is produced.

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

I disagree and find your "fanfic" point rather childish. If we want to, we can point out the fact of the GRA and who was responsible.

This has mushroomed across the West with the rise of Big Tech. We are an outlier if you look at the US, Canada, Australia, Spain...there is a bigger picture.

I agree I want the current government to do much more. But I'm not myopic. We can't afford to ignore the wider context if we want to start to put this right.

They are still in power and could repair this if they had the will. The fight is happening now.

Absolutely this.

With the added pressure of if any of the other parties win the next election, trying to repair women's rights and equality and access is going to be horrifically harder, because we won't be trying to get them to do something from a standing still position. We'll be trying to slow a head long gallop into misogynist heaven.

Reality matters. No point in indulging in if Labour were in power... fanfic.

We are where we are because of the Tory party. They are still in power and could repair this if they had the will. The fight is happening now.

If Labour were in power, the GRR would've passed. We would have self-ID through a devolved administration.

To not see this in the context of a global phenomenon enabled by Big Tech is a mistake. We've done well to hold the line as much as we have here. Context matters.

If Labour were in power we would...

Labour weren't in power. The Tories were. We are where we are because of them. The Tories are still in power. They could actually do something to repair the damage they've done to us.

But they won't because half believe TWAW and the other half know, but don't give a shit about us either way.

This 100%. This fight is happening now.

So was this then taken up later by the academics, the left, parma, abusers, dudes who want microchips and then ESG bankers who saw an opportunity?

I came to this much later via mn. I remember some poster names who really started to get it in front of people. They hit backlash as we still do but likely more than now. Im
not sure if they left or were forced off but I’m grateful

Three by elections now.

I am sorry that you worked so hard and were ignored. Thank you for all that you did for us.

It was very much, be kind, most marginalised, brave, stunning, but in a subtle way.

They are not being kind to Dementia patients either, it is one way traffic.

Sadly Hadley Freeman left due to the stance at The Guardian and didn’t Suzanne Moore have an article at The Telegraph tweeted to millions by Musk?

The press on the left have lost two good journalists for a reason. It’s not capable of holding GC views.

That’s the centre left, maybe the Morning Star is a different situation I don’t read it, but I wouldn’t say it’s mainstream enough to make a convincing representation for the parties such as Labour on the left.

question their supporters need to address is why the Tories have allowed this shit show to continue and why they still refuse to do anything about it.

The same reason Starmer stammers and witters on like an idiot when asked a direct question about it. Fear. A hell of a lot of westminster is in thrall to this, and the pressure from the activists has always been dreaded. And unfortunately Boris may have successfully fucked any chance of them doing anything as now Sunak has to fight two by elections and increasing pressure, and will be less inclined to stand up to the left parties in the house and some of his own people who will make it very hard and be very unhappy about any return of balance and care for the rights of women.

What is needed is very strong action, and at this point centralised action. There has to be growing awareness at top level that the political capture is now causing very serious problems, and that it is all getting increasingly unhinged and out of control. But the guts to turn it around? Yes, I would love someone to have them. Right now though, I have a choice between woo hoo burn women's rights, yippee, we're all on the magic reality roundabout parties, and the er, might be a problem, let's talk about and think about this and yes, women's rights matters too parties.