Annaliese Dodds: "sex and gender are different"

There is little that is clear.

The whole purpose of the article is too ditch self ID but try and sound radical at the same time or at least more radical than the Tories.

It is largely addressed to TRAs. The message is the traditional one that Labour sends to activists - we will not give you what you want but the Tories are worse.

You can’t rely on the word sex anymore

Those who are fully subscribed to gender ideology use it without clarification hoping people won’t notice

Now we have to check that too.

She accuses the Tories of stoking a culture war but most of the article is about attacking them rather than making clear Labour's position.

The only point of clarity is that self ID has been dropped so Labour will now be ripped apart by trans activists.

The real issue here is making sure Labour do not back track on that.

Surely the absolutely key thing here - which she doesn't mention - is whether the single-sex exceptions relate to biological sex or legal sex?

Because if she means the former, then we don't need to care about whether it's easier to obtain a GRC or not.

If she means the latter, then making it easy to obtain a GRC through one doctor's signature could easily open the floodgates to men becoming legally female and using single-sex spaces.

VG point, and one we need to make more forcefully in public.

Whether a man changes gender on a whim or deeply and sincerely believes he was born in the wrong body, has changed sex etc etc etc matters not one whit: he hasn't, and women's spaces are not for him.

This is what she said earlier in the year when she was asked about changing rooms, and, as expected, she doesn't care one jot about women:

That is a slightly different question from the one I was discussing. I hope the hon. Member is aware of the fact that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has recently released guidelines on those matters. I may well already have shared such a changing room; very often, women’s changing rooms will have separate cubicles, and in any case, that is how people often choose to try on clothes. If the hon. Member is interested in that matter, he could look at the EHRC’s guidelines.

In the spirit of what I have just said, Labour urges the Government to focus on the treatment of non-binary people, and to especially focus on the need for research. The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) referred to the fact that the Government’s LGBT 2018 action plan committed the Conservatives to launch separate calls for evidence on the issues faced by non-binary and intersex people. The Government appear to have contracted the National Institute for Economic and Social Research to investigate that area, but no research appears to have been carried out. The EHRC has also

“recommended that further understanding was needed before any legislation was brought forward”.

We believe that additional research is particularly important when it comes to those people who might describes themselves as intersex, or as having differences in sex development. That refers to the relatively small number of individuals who are born with any of several variations in biological sex characteristics—for example, in chromosomes or genitals—some of whom may describe themselves as intersex and some of whom may describe themselves as non-binary. I appreciate, again, that not everybody uses those categories.

This is basically the same position as the Tory Party.

Have the Tories vowed to modernise the GRA?

Until they apologise to Rosie Duffield and meet with women’s groups and reinstate Joan Smith I won’t believe a single thing they say

This is basically the same position as the Tory Party.

So I don't see the logic in "I'm going to vote Tory instead of Labour on this issue even though the Tory position is pretty much the same."

I'm afraid this will just give ammunition to those claiming that being GC is inherently right-wing.

I was just thinking about the Uxbridge result where the SDP got 0.8%. As nobody except us knows the SDP is still going, I think we can assume that is the hard core GC protest vote. Obviously it's disappointing that it's so few, but it is also not far off swinging the result in a marginal seat. Perhaps Labour will take notice when they start to lose elections due to a pro-women candidate.

They know. They’re hoping we won’t talk about it.

They know that the single sex exceptions are currently unworkable in practice. Trans women are completely open about using opposite sex services like toilets and changing rooms and other services and sports are too cowardly to implement them. If they really believed the SSE are important they’d be promising to clarify the meaning of sex in the EA so it was clear it doesn’t mean men with a GRC.

You can't have both the Gender Recognition Act and an Equality Act that recognises Single Sex Services and Spaces.

Either or. One undermines the other.

And the Labour Party seem not to understand that the people that will use the GRA to access spaces, only want the Single Sex Services and Spaces in the first place.

Or they know it, and don't care.

They do just pretty much mean self ID through the back door don't they? I guess at least it will put up barriers to the Barbie kardashians of this world.

The tone of that article is awful though. They deride the approach of the Scottish nationalists but the whole tone is very Nicola Sturgeon. "We'll take no lessons". 🤔

It’s an interesting attempt at a compromise.

I know it’s sometimes mentioned here - but I’ve been thinking for a number of years (since kids at school started identifying as trans) that, rather than being a psychiatric condition, gender dysphoria is a manifestation of autism. If we think about other conditions that are misdiagnoses or presentations of (especially female) autism - bipolar, EUPD, personality disorders, gender dysphoria, anorexia - then society might be start to change the way we support different presentations of autism, without dismantling safeguarding.

So trying to give something to both again

Weasel words. It won’t work

If I have a delusional disorder which leads me to believe Im Elvis, should that be now termed something different from a MH disorder to avoid me having to say I have a psychiatric disorder

I now identify as Elvis and everyone just needs to allow me to be Elvis rather than diagnose correctly that I have a MH illness.

They just don’t get it. Even if they turned round and said they had been wrong, I couldn’t believe them now.

If it’s not a psychiatric condition and (presumably) not a physical one, why is it taking up nhs time and resources?

I don't care whether people make a decision to change gender lightly or not. I care that men stay out of single sex spaces. I actually think its good to recognise that genderbia different than aex. Next step is to recognise that it's also irrelevant. No need for bits of paper to declare it because most peole don't care. Its like being a fan of a football team. You say whether you are and of which team if you want. It doesn't change the law of the land and many people couldn't give a stuff. Spaces are, and always have been, segregated by gender. If men are making TW uncomfortable in men's spaces then that's on them and it's for men to sort out not women.

Changing gender is not a decision anyone makes lightly,” wrote Dodds.

How does she know? Has she met every single person who has changed gender? And what does she mean by “changed gender”? Genital surgery? A GRC? “Girl mode” of lipstick and thigh high stiletto boots some days and “boy mode” of lucrative male acting roles other days?

If this political party actually cared about the well-being of truly vulnerable individuals, they’d be campaigning for research into the causes of this huge upsurge in female adolescents expressing discomfort with their sex, challenging the viciously porn-soaked world that children are growing up in, highlighting the wholly inadequate mental health support services for troubled teens, and committing to listening to and platforming detransitioners to reduce the number of individuals making the same mistake.

And the same goes for the Tories campaigning on this issue.

Dodds said: “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.

If sex and gender are different, why does anyone need a gender recognition certificate? What is its purpose? A GRC is no longer the thing that confers the right to marry a person of the same sex, as equal legislation conferred that right. If sex and gender are different why would a GRC give access to opposite sex facilities?

Dodds said the current process meant that “a panel of anonymous doctors” got to decide something of momentous significance, “based on reams of intrusive medical paperwork and evidence of any surgery”. She added: “This is demeaning for trans people and meaningless in practice. A diagnosis provided by one doctor, with a registrar instead of a panel, should be enough.”

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

Simpler GRC could easily be turned into Self ID through the back door.

Or is it about trying to recreate the idea that only a teeny tiny number of lovely and adorable males would ever hold themselves in such contempt that they would self-describe as the opposite sex, so women can stop worrying their silly little / meany old selves about the removal of women’s right to single-sex female-only male-free facilities?