Annaliese Dodds: "sex and gender are different"

God I wish I knew.
IMO it shouldn't. I might feel differently if the NHS was a magical wishing well that fixed everything for everyone but while women can't get HRT or breast cancer double mastectomies/reconstructions that they need, while women can't access abortions because provision in this country is frankly abysmal (I had to travel 60 miles for mine, with severe hyperemesis, on a catalogue of public transport), while women don't get any mental health support for miscarriages, while women can't get gynaecological treatment they need as a result of childbirth complications, while women are routinely dismissed and belittled by the medical profession and told their experiences are "anxiety" or "menstrual problems" or "depression" and while the first resort many GPs give women for nearly any random problem is the contraceptive pill (that makes some of us very ill mentally and physically) followed by sertraline, precisely ZERO resources should be going on this frivolous bollocks.

And what do you do with the female children excluded from the female space because a male child is considered sufficiently special to be awarded the right of access to female children in a state of undress.

What pressures will be placed on these female children of other faiths, cultures, disabilities, histories of trauma and CSA/DV? What penalties if they refuse to shut up and suffer without protest and respect that the boy's rights and standards of service are far higher than they may be entitled to, not just as females but as lowest caste females?

It has to be stripped of the pretty pretty language and looked at this harshly because this is what it is . What the actual fuck is anyone sane doing even considering this without going 'not in my fucking country, ever'.

It is excluding and subordinating female children, including requiring them to undress and suffer indignity, loss of privacy, reduced equality of basic human rights not just for the benefit of sufficiently important male children, but because their subordination and indignity/force to make them validate a male child by exposing their body is an active part of this .

Ffs this group of nutjobs have even tried stating that females do not have a right to privacy and dignity to try and prevent their resistance to validating a male with their body. How many fucking red flags are needed for someone to realise this is really not sane.

If everyone agree that sex doesn't mean gender, we can stop and roll back every new birth certificate issued under the GRA.

We can clearly say if a passport and driving licence record sex, gender or both. The same with the sex marker in the NHS.

We can say which SSE are protected for SS only, and which ones are for gender. And why.

Exactly that. It's illegal to dock dogs' tails without a medical reason so most vets won't do it. But there is a band of vets that you can call and they'll dock the tail and give you a letter saying it was done for medical purposes.
There's always going to some who'll give you what you want when money's involved.

We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act. Put simply, this means that there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access. Labour will defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services.

Isn't this a green light for the Tories to clarify the meaning of sex in EQ act. If this is what Labour really means they'll have to support them. Come on Rishi do it now.

Exactly this. She, and Labour in general, talking out of both sides of their mouths and hoping we won't notice.

I’m guessing you contact Gender GP via Zoom who say, “yes, you can have a GRC and that will be £200 please”.

And absolutely agree about doctors @zanahoria Who wants this responsibility! A bit like schools having to make 'case by case' decisions about which children are 'trans enough' to be allowed into to the opposite sex changing rooms. On what possible basis can you make a case by case decision here? What are the criteria?

I think Labour are moving away from self ID but they will find Trans activists are not ones to compromise.

Many others have come into this thinking there must a a sensible solution but come to realise we not dealing with sensible people.

It is a bit shit, but I do think it's a chink of light. It's going to be incredibly difficult for Labour to row back from the positions they've taken, but stating that single-sex exemptions are real and that sex and gender are not the same things are quite important I think. It's notable that these are buried well after a lot of stuff about making getting a GRC easier, how vulnerable trans people and how mean and horrible Tories are for pointing out that there's a problem here. Trans activists will absolutely hate it. I think what they're going for may be 'We'll make it easier for you to get a piece of paper to validate your identity, but it won't actually allow you to do anything'. But as other posters have pointed out, it's much too late for that. It's going to need clarification of the law that sex means biological sex, and support for service providers to confidently deliver that.

I'm worried by the use of 'single-sex services' rather than 'spaces'. If she just means rape crisis well that's progress at least, but what about toilets, changing rooms and hospital wards?

I also think it is not a coincidence that they've released this while Stonewall have no Chief Exec and a Chair of Trustees who's just had to be sent out in sackcloth to apologise for having publicly conceded similar points. (by the other Trustees? The staff? Who on earth is in charge there?)

Labour's solution seems to be that doctors will sort it all out but are that many qualified for what is essentially an impossible task?

Doctors may not want to play their assigned role in a system that places that much responsibility on them, a responsibility to weed out the bad apples.

I would not blame them if they ran a mile from it.

They wheel someone out every month or so to see if they can’t get a line to make it all go away

New weasel words, same intent

Hmmm. It just feels like they are trying new words combinations to see what works.

I finally got around to reading the GRA out of curiosity.

Aside from the opening line which talks about "a person of either gender" (an implicit statement that there must only be two genders), the rest of it doesn't seem to relate to biological sex in any way. It uses the word "gender" throughout, presumably as a synonym for "sex" from a time where nobody really thought through the impact that we're seeing today. However...

If the EA can clarify that sex in the EA means biological sex, not legal sex as modified by a GRC that seems to sort everything out, to the point where the opening paragraph could even state "a person of any gender" i.e. acknowledging that for anyone that does believe in gender identity, they can be recognised as any gender they like, not restricted to two. Even if this then became their legal sex (i.e. legal sex is linked to gender), it would not impact their biological sex.

Let's hope all politicians continue to push the idea that sex and gender are not the same thing.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

I can't see the difference in what Dodds is saying to what Starmer has been saying. She's flailing around accusing everyone else of doing things wrong but her party doesn't really seem to have .ugh support over this and they haven't moved much. She's going to just make everything easier and quicker.

They're trying to pretend they've listened while the content shows they've not listened at all. The positive is that they understand that it's a live issue. It's also an issue that they're never going to be able to bully journalists out of asking them about.

So every time they're asked about any aspect of this, they'll be incoherent, contradictory fools. Because there is NO rationale, science or ethical narrative behind this ideology. They'll bluff, stutter, ramble, evade & look like fools - every. single.time .

The only good thing about this article is watching and reading the inevitable tantrums from the TRAs.

I'm afraid after years of bitter experience, no I don't think they've moved a fraction of an inch past 'anyone giving a shit about women and saying no to men is a terrible bigot'. I think they're just realising that the Tories have an open goal here, and a few vaguely 'hmm' noises are politically useful.

They show no sign of understanding anything whatsoever about it. These kind of ideas are ten years out of date.

I think this is a chink of light because they've moved past the position that anyone disagreeing is automatically a terrible bigot.

In practice, their policy would be unworkable and just self ID through the back door but by recognising that single sex spaces are important and admitting that sex and gender are important they are now in a space where the merits of the policy can actually be debated and it is recognised that there are legitimate concerns.

It makes me increasingly angry with the left as they witter endlessly about lived experience and listening to voices and how wonderfully caring they are about everyone.

Ffs, the information on all this is everywhere now. Women have spoken in the bloody HoC, there's several grassroots women's groups you can pick up the phone to or meet with to get their views, you can youtube entire meetings where women explain it all in very small words, there are articles galore in the national press explaining all the issues.

And yet still they do not understand even the most basic bloody issues for women, or show the faintest sign of any of it having managed to penetrate their heads, and they think they can come out with bumph like this and get a round of applause for 'middle ground'.

They are expecting people to vote for them to run the bloody country. I expect a minimum capacity for some basic bloody research and capacity to get a full understanding of a situation before opening mouth on it. I wouldn't put up with this from a very junior co worker, never mind a bloody MP.

In other words getting a GRC will be every bit as rigorous as going to your GP and getting signed off sick with stress

well as it's so hard to see a GP, I guess it would create a bit of a hurdle!

Glad she says sex and gender not the same, not before time!

"The GRA was an attempt to keep it to GRC males only, it hasn't worked, males have slammed the door open to the widest extent possible and exploited women and their spaces to the nth degree. There need to be single sex spaces for women that no male at all can enter regardless of what they have on paper or how they identify. Just no males. Meet their needs in other ways. "

Exactly this. Her big position piece basically restates the mess for single sex spaces and makes it easier for AGPs.

Single sex spaces have been effectively phased out regardless of what the current law actually says. Make them enforceable law and create third spaces.

Gormless.

The GRA was an attempt to keep it to GRC males only, it hasn't worked, males have slammed the door open to the widest extent possible and exploited women and their spaces to the nth degree. There need to be single sex spaces for women that no male at all can enter regardless of what they have on paper or how they identify. Just no males. Meet their needs in other ways.

Still absolutely NO recognition (from Labour ffs) that inclusion is not a TQ men only thing: that to let those men be happy and comfortable doing their best life wherever they feel like in the moment means excluding many females from anything at all, most of them from vulnerable and marginalised groups. If you're ok with that, then you can identify as on the political left until you're blue in the face: you aren't. What you are is a male supremacist.

And as pp says: this is the argument about a decade ago. Catch up. It's much much fucking worse now, there's a mountain of mess to pick up because of politicians with their superior woke heads stuffed up their superior, over privileged, woke little arses.

A few Labour mps have come out and attempted to say similar. But Starmer hasn't changed his opinion so its all pointless.
As ever, it's not what she says that matters, it was he says.

Anneliese Dodds is almost as stupid and biased as Caroline Nokes.