The Tories aren't serious about protecting biological sex - Spectator article.

Popping in very quickly in the middle of cooking dinner to post this article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali that I think is relevant to the thread:

'The recent tide of transgender activism, which used to focus more on the tribulations of men who were typically feminine and women typically masculine, has been a boon for AGPs. Not only can these men, many of whom are high-powered, high-IQ, and even narcissistic and sociopathic (as posited by the ever-prescient journalist Steve Sailer) now impose their fetishes onto others. They can be hailed as virtuous and brave for doing so.'

https://www.restorationbulletin.com/p/misogyny-on-the-left

I always get the feeling that Kemi Badenoch is battling to get the issue heard in cabinet and that she would go further if she could. I do think she gets the issue fully and is seriously commited to srting it out. I hope she gets the leadership of the Conservatives when Rishi goes.

I'm slightly confused why anyone thinks the GRA is necessary to allow males to wear women's clothing?

Surely if a man is discriminated against for wearing a skirt (for example) he could use the pc of sex discrimination if he is treated differently for being a man wearing a skirt?

My understanding is that the entire purpose of the GRA was a work around for Gay marriage which is no longer required.

The Equality Act as it is drafted allows for the pc of Gender Reassignment which does not require a GRC to operate as a pc.

I think a full a frank discussion needs to be had to give trans people rights in relation to housing and employment without the right to falsify documents and and to enter single sex spaces reserved for women.

These issues just need to be broken down and laws amended so that everyone gets protection.

A man who wears fetishitic clothes at work such as prosthetic breasts ought to be able to be disciplined for wearing inapprorpriate work wear in the same a woman would be, being trans identifying shouldn't be a 'get out of jail free card'.

I'm not asserting any need for extra protection this is already covered. I don't think that protection under the category of religion or belief is sufficient because there are plenty of people who believe in genderwoo magic who aren't trans themselves so it's not the belief that gets discriminated against.

Wouldn’t it come under “the expression of a belief”? Believers in particular religions, etc, usually suffer discrimination because of their outward expression of their belief, rather than their private thoughts.

That's a lot of words and I'm still no wiser as to what it is your trying to say.

And I checked, I'm not hungover, I'm not terribly tired and I've eaten. I still dont understand, sorry.

@DexaVooveQhodu

This is a thread in which it is being proposed that protection for trans people should be removed. Last sentence of the first paragraph of the OP. Which I am arguing against. Arguing against this is not the same as saying it's more important than other protected characteristics.

I'll ask again, in your view what is it about "trans" that requires the protection of the EA10?

The GRA 2004 Section 9 meant that holders of a GRC actually changed sex -
'(1)Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman)."

It is evident that some people realised fairly quickly that this caused problems, as shown by the fudge of the exceptions in the Equality Act 2010. The EA had its first reading in April 2009, but the work of drafting it had been going on since at least 2007.

But not enough people realised it, the fudge was not effective - and of course in practical terms the gender ideologues got themselves into powerful positions and took over the whole narrative.

People have always been insulting towards men and women who don't conform to gender sterotypes.

This is really true. I still struggle to do certain gender non-conforming things without bracing myself in anticipation of the jibes and bullying. It was formally called ‘sexism’.

@DexaVooveQhodu
Transphobia does exist and is abhorent - and I am talking about being insulting or demeaning in any way to people whose gender doesn't conform to the stereotypes associated with their sex.

What do you mean by 'gender' in the above statement? Are you talking about their presentation or a feeling in their head?

Many people who don't identify as transgender also don't conform to stereotypes associated with their sex.

Many people who do identify as transgender look no different from most other people of the same sex but claim to have a feeling which makes them transgender.

Who is it you think should be protected under the category of 'gender diversity'?

@Ingenieur

What is your basis for saying this particular sort of discrimination is wrong?

This is a thread in which it is being proposed that protection for trans people should be removed. Last sentence of the first paragraph of the OP. Which I am arguing against. Arguing against this is not the same as saying it's more important than other protected characteristics.

What about the undefinable category of "trans people" requires additional protection to those already provided by the EA10?

I am not arguing for additional protection. I am arguing for a similar level of protection with clarifications to ensure that it is clear that trans rights do not include the right to ignore womens needs and rights. I am arguing against the assertion that trans people should have this protection removed.

Do you not believe that "trans people" already have the same protections afforded to the rest of society, without needing an additional category just for their particular belief?

As I'm not asserting any need for extra protection this is already covered. I don't think that protection under the category of religion or belief is sufficient because there are plenty of people who believe in genderwoo magic who aren't trans themselves so it's not the belief that gets discriminated against.

I am very much gender-critical feminist myself but I have dearly-loved family members who identify as trans (we are a neurodiverse family and it's well-known that neurodiverse people are more likely to identity as trans too). I very much want my rights as a woman and my rights as a non-believer in gender-woo to be protected and I want discrimination against trans people to remain illegal despite this not being a belief system I share. I've already said it needs to be clearly defined that asserting and protecting womens rights to single-sex facilities and opportunities is not and never will be discrimination against trans people because sex and gender are different.

It’s been around for 20 years too long. It should never have passed.

I think you're right....it is not on the horizon at present, but that doesn't mean that it should not still be an end goal. Everything is going to be incremental, and it is going to take time. Years of time.

Only more recently...lots of women have been banned from Mumsnet for posting similar. Things have started to ease up a little over the last couple of years,

@DexaVooveQhodu

You seem angry, I'm not sure why, and you have misinterpreted what I said. But happy to talk soecifically about what you've asserted.

Discrimination against trans people in housing, employment and the provision of goods and services is totally wrong.

What is your basis for saying this particular sort of discrimination is wrong? What about the undefinable category of "trans people" requires additional protection to those already provided by the EA10? Do you not believe that "trans people" already have the same protections afforded to the rest of society, without needing an additional category just for their particular belief?

People have always been insulting towards men and women who don't conform to gender sterotypes. That is not 'transphobia' . Transphobia is a recentlly coined term designed to accompany the rise of transgender ideology.

The way you are using 'gender' suggests to me that gender = presentational style, rather than anything more substantial

I didn't say it was more worthy. Why not engage with what I actually said rather than curving in stuff I never asserted? I don't think there should be a sliding scale of "validity" but if there were then I would place things that people have no choice about - sex, race, age, disability, sexual orientation - above things that are a matter of free will - gender diversity, religion, marital status. Maternity/pregnancy may be a matter of free will on an individual basis but society would collapse if no one did it so would go in the middle. However making such a scale official would be ridiculous to enforce - and should never mean that then needs and rights of a particular group are ignored, rather than being met in a way that has less impact on the needs and rights of another group. There will always be a need for sensible unbiased judgements to balance and evaluate the impact of harms done where the needs of two groups with different protected characteristics will clash.

If ‘gender reassignment’ was re-worded as ‘gender diversity’, we’d need to be really clear what the word meant, and that it could not be interpreted as a duty to accommodate any public kink or sexual expression, which could be experienced as harassment by others.

In my opinion, people should not be harassed for expressing their identity, (I am not just speaking about anything which is considered to be gender related) but there must be grounds for certain stipulations, for example in the workplace, certain expectations of conformity in order to not put off customers. People can express their goth identity in their own time.

In practice, I think expression of identity is, at best, an expression of belief.

Why do you feel that this particular characteristic is more worthy of protection than other more valid ones?

@UtopiaPlanitia I think we are basically in agreement but proposing slightly different paths to resolution.

The protected characteristic should be something very broad like "gender diversity" and should certainly be reworded as I said in my last sentence of my 00:13 post. Sex never changes, and many trans people don't have any plans for amy kind of reassignment process in amy case. What is reassigned is gender and whether or not any kind of surgery or medical treatment has taken place is irrelevant.

Your suggestions about lawful discrimination are unnecessary if it is properly clarified that sex and gender are different. No discrimination is taking place if a male who is trans is treated the same as a male who is not trans when it comes to accessing facilities and opportunities reserved for females.

The discrimination which does happen and must remain illegal is denial of employment or housing or goods/ services. When it comes to services, any service that is legitimately sex-segregated is not being discriminatory to uphold the legitimacy of the decision to make provision based on sex.

If a swimming pool has mostly entirely mixed sessions but has 3 sessions a week which are for female people only then all males are excluded from those 3 sessions, whether or not they are trans, so a transwoman is not being discriminated against if excluded. Discrimination would be taking place if a gender-diverse male was treated less favourably than a gender-conforming male.

Transphobia does exist and is abhorent - and I am talking about being insulting or demeaning in any way to people whose gender doesn't conform to the stereotypes associated with their sex. Respectfully recognising someone's sex isn't transphobic though.

I'm not surprised at all.

I agree with your opinion that compelled belief is wrong, and I very much agree that the legislation desperately needs clarifying with regards to terminology.

It's late so I'm going to do my best to answer your question but please allow for inelegances owing to tiredness. In UK legislation governing employment, and the provision of goods and services, discrimination is considered either lawful or unlawful. Discrimination in itself is not considered inherently wrong. I would like the EA 2010 to allow for lawful discrimination to prevent males from accessing female-only spaces; to prevent males from taking advantage of legal/educational/employment/governmental provisions for the redressal of disadvantage suffered by female persons because of their sex; to prevent males from participating in female-only sports; to prevent males from encroaching on events and associations for females, and to prevent males from claiming female rights, exceptions, protections and legal status.

The EA 2010 defines the protected characteristic of gender reassignment as 'proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex'. My view is that the definition is unsuitable because it describes a process as 'reassigning sex', something which is physically literally impossible, and I think it effectively allows for self-ID when it includes 'proposing to undergo'.

Also, EHRC guidance for the Act states that, 'There are some circumstances when being treated differently due to being trans is lawful', but then battens down these circumstances by use of limiting and unhelpful examples which leaves nobody any the wiser about the legality of applying lawful exceptions and which leaves organisations afraid of being sued if they try to implement any of the exceptions. The law was very much written with the aim of protecting transexuals from unlawful discrimination but is so widely drafted as to also give cover to fetishistic transvestites to take their paraphilia into the public sphere of employment and education etc, which then makes life difficult for the women who encounter them and the disadvantages thereof.

No I don't think it is overly broad at all. If anything it's a bit narrow. Who is it that you want to be allowed to discriminate against?

I do think it needs to clarify that "failing to believe what you want me to believe" and "saying 'no' to you if you want a thing that is reserved for people with a protected characteristic that you do not have" is not discrimination. And that it should tidy up the wording where sex and gender are used interchangeably.

I think K-JK is underestimating the impact this can and will have actually.

It what the EHRC recommended.

It does mean that legal sex, so GRA certified sex, in effect becomes toothless as it will confirm in law that the exemptions can be used for biological only and exclude men with their certificates.

Men have always manipulated this the other way round to say because sex can be changed by a certificate, sex in the Equality Act includes both, and no proof needed from men.

Well it no longer can be fudged like that with the word biological and the proof issue is turned back around, services don't need to prove a man is not a woman as men can't go to court anymore saying that sex means anything a man wants it to mean.

I know legal sex is a ridiculous idea, and this change actually makes it more ridiculous effectively, as their certificates become not worth the paper they are printed on.

That's why men are online slagging off this as requiring birth certificates to use the loo, they still haven't realised that the onus of proof is reversed.

Probably because they can't actually hear women when they talk and so Kemi's words didn't register and got drowned out in their mansplaining.

She was quite clear to anyone that's followed the to and fro between EHRC and government over the recent years since Baroness Kishwar took over. Most talking heads in the media haven't as they like to call this a culture war as if the privacy and dignity of women wasn't just normal decent culture.

Men like Ed Balls who talked shite at Kemi acts like he's in a war he has to win, he wants to win culture. The culture these men want to obtain is a culture where men have pushed around and belittled women until they submit. That's when they could say the culture war is over, when they have won a culture that has belittled the normal decent privacy and dignity of women. They want that win badly.

I can't tell you how much contempt I have for so many men mostly on the left now. Their ugliness and disrespect has been staggering. If Labour are elected the backlash against women will be vicious.

The GRA is a piece of legislation with no purpose. It doesn't have anything with whether it is ok to discriminate against men in dresses, or people with a transgender identity, or anything else.

It's totally about creating a fiction of legal sex that is different from biological sex. Which is useless and dangerous.

I doubt that we are near a point that it's serious to talk about repealing it, but it's good to have that glove thrown in the ring now imo.

There was some thought that he was trying to get off work with his pension intact.