The Times Lead Story - Labour Set To Annihilate Women's Rights

All I ever read on here is - we need single sex spaces. I don’t understand why

It really doesn’t take much imagination to work out why single sex spaces are needed for privacy and dignity for both men and women, and for safety for women. Hospital wards and other healthcare settings, changing rooms, domestic violence refuges, rape crises centres, prisons.

The issue isn’t “trans”. The issue is men. And as transwomen are men, they need to stay out of women’s spaces.

FAFO

Thank you but I don't want male, physically intact (as most trans women will be,) or not in a women's toilet area with me. I want same sex intimate care for those who need it. I want single sex women's prisons. You can put up with being unhappy but others cannot be asked to be unsafe.

Please explain how legally redefining women away from “adult human females” and instead as “adult human females plus men who feel like women” in any way benefits women

please explain how one accurately records data on women and the impact of policy around reducing women’s poverty, improving access to employment, improving women’s health when the definition of women includes “and some men”

please explain how it benefits women to have programmes to improve women’s experience in for example STEM or to get more of them into politics when the definition includes “and some men”

plrsse explain how it benefits women to have support and peer groups for women to have to include “and some men”

and that’s before we even get to “and some men” being in women’s prisons, refuges and rape survivors groups

womrn are adult human females. Not adult human females and some men who think performing femininity makes them women

“And some men” are not women

Helen Webberley is available.

I don’t understand the drama about this, I really don’t.
The only thing regarding trans people that is actually an issue is people who have gone through male puberty competing in female sports - maybe a third category of sports events would solve that but even so, not all people are into competitive sport so it stands to reason not all trans people are. It’s probably not that much of an issue.
I really don’t see how making it easier for people who are struggling, because trans people are born that way they aren’t doing it for a laugh is destroying women’s rights. For a start there are transitions both ways and there have been trans people since time immemorial, they just didn’t have the voice.
It seems incredibly selfish to want to deny a group of people, most of whom you will never meet, happiness.
All I ever read on here is - we need single sex spaces. I don’t understand why, these people aren’t out to get you they are living their own lives. And let’s be honest once a trans woman has gone through the dressing over the top wearing too much make up stage that all of us went through as teens when we became women, you don’t even know. They look like the rest of us. You might well have known trans people in your life and had no idea.
Think Mumsnet is an echo chamber of fear on this issue. I don’t need to tell you to think about the way other groups of people have been treated in the past - you know it. Trans people have the same impact on your life as those other groups did people in the past - none whatsoever.
And if the new government will make it easier for people to find happiness then good for them.

BBC take on it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ckrrx571jklt

This is going to be disastrous. "Spousal veto" removed, Lords stacked (um they're already majority crossbenchers and hardly did the Tories' bidding?), "inclusive conversion therapy ban", de facto marriage (which will also usher in the worst outcomes for women and children in certain religious denominations), not implementing Cass in full, reversal of gender questioning guidance, and then what will come down the track on KSCIE, and what will happen with the stayed CPS consultation on sex by deception..?

This will be the worst assault on women and children in this country, in living memory. I cannot vote for them. I will not vote for them. The damage could take well beyond my lifetime to put right. I cannot enable them.

So what happens if my dh decided to be a woman? Does that change our marriage certificate? Why do they never make it more clear what the veto means in these articles?

So that abolish the House of Lords swizz from a couple of years ago has flipped

And yeh I agree. Labour are stacking in all ways possible - votes and peers

Good luck everyone

A single doctor specialising in gender issues will be able to provide a medical report supporting the change to their new gender.

I can see it now, online private doctors declaring their gender issues specialism, with pound signs in their eyes. What could possible go wrong.

And I knew spousal consent would be ditched after reading the wishy washy manifesto.

More bad news for women’s rights as, according to the Guardian, Labour plan to create more peers. So the help we’ve had from the Lords is under threat too.

I can believe this still hasn’t been asked

Hopefully they'll get her on Politics Live to do a bit of unpicking of the issues.

None of the reporters ever seem to ask the right follow up questions. They just accept at face value whatever the politician says.

The only person I'd trust to ask questions is Sonia Sodha but she doesn't seem to do interviews, she just commentates.

It says on the article only 2% of trans people have a GRC, so we effectively have self OD anyway.

Labour will be questioned on this article and JKR’s all next week. I hope the reporters ask the v important question How specifically are you going to protect women’s single sex spaces?

We’ll replace it with a reflection period. It counters the idea that you can put on a dress and then the next day you’ve got a GRC. It’ll be a considerable period of time of two years.

So still based on ridiculously sexist ideas, just with a two-year wait after applying instead of before.

How does

A single doctor specialising in gender issues will be able to provide a medical report supporting the change to their new gender.

The party will also ditch the panel of doctors and lawyers which now approves GRCs.

tally with

However, an idea to have them signed off by a single GP has been jettisoned, after party figures including Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, raised concerns about the impact on family doctors.

So, not 'a single GP', but a single doctor. You need one signature. Shouldn't be a problem.

Well, in fairness to her I think Kemi Badenoch would move on that if she stayed in government.

So Labour is proposing:
(i) to allow a single doctor ‘specialising in gender issues’ to certify a GRC claim.
We now know, both from the Cass review and from many other reports, that there are plenty of doctors ‘specialising in gender issues’ who have been happy to out children onto puberty blockers and vulnerable young people onto cross sex hormones after only minimal assessment. It is reasonable to assume that they will sign off GRC applications without substantial scrutiny. Not much is said here about the reasoning behind having lawyers on the existing panel. What checks and considerations will be removed by jettisoning legal scrutiny?
(ii) the current requirement to provide evidence of having lived as the opposite sex for 2 years becomes a ‘cooling off period’. This implies that no evidence at the end of that period will be required and that the individual seeking the GRC will enjoy full legal protection from point if application rather than at the end of the two year period.
Wgat might this mean in terms of consideration for all women shortlists or access to female spaces?
(iii) removal of spousal consent, so that women married to men who choose to apply for a GRC will remain legally and financially shackled to someone who may now be presenting and behaving very differently, and who chosen unilaterally to change something fundamental about the nature of the marriage.
I think we should be worried about every one of these points and this augurs very ill for a Starmer government’s response to Cass. Bloody hell it’s depressing that we have to fight this stupidity when there are so many other issues at stake.

As well as simplifying the application process, Labour will also get rid of a requirement to have consent from the spouse of the person wishing to change gender.

Will the spouse also lose the right to be informed?

I'm thinking of how they've treated Rosie Duffield and the women they've expelled. Labour Women's Declaration being barred from conference. Wes having a shitlist of feminists. The GRA.

Is that what they mean?

As I said on another thread, we already have de facto self ID. Men say they're women and get access to women's changing rooms, swimming ponds, reserved jobs, awards, etc. etc. - they don't need a GRC to do this. The few people that try to stop these men are abused, vilified and threatened.

What we need is a party that will not just prevent self-ID but actually enforce women-only spaces and facilities.

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As well as simplifying the application process, Labour will also get rid of a requirement to have consent from the spouse of the person wishing to change gender.

There is no "consent to change gender"

It is consent to continue the marriage, and therefore for it to be re-registered as a same sex marriage in a central register, OR for time to be given for the marriage to be dissolved (either by divorce, or importantly for some people an annulment) when an interim certificate is issued.

Nobody is being prevented from changing their gender, whatever that might be.