MPs are being briefed that the GRA needs to be reformed to align with other European countries

Do you have any evidence, though? Things he's said.

'Translucent' trying to get changes to the GRA before the Scottish judges come to their conclusion on 'Sex'?

Watch it get kicked into the long grass.

Do you have any evidence for this......from Starmer? The last i heard him say on the matter was that "modernising the GRA was an election/manifesto pledge".

I was responding to this bit:
It's pretty likely (hopefully) that the Supreme Court will decide that sex in the EA means biological sex. Therefore, as per Ruth Crawford's speech in court, this means that any male who identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is a man as far as the law is concerned.

You seemed to be saying that the effect of a judgement that sex means sex would be to confirm that a person with a GRC had changed sex for the purposes of the EA, and those without one hadn't and only the former group could access opposite sex spaces.

So presumably there's going to be a MASSIVE uptick in the number of GRC applications. And this lobbying is about preparing the way for GRC holders to have access to all the sports, spaces and services that they want.

I was just saying that a decision that Sex = bio sex would effectively disapply the GRA from the operation of the EA. There would be no interaction. Of course this could be changed by new legislation, but until then a clarification that Sex = Sex would not be an incentive to apply for a GRC. The judges would not have to refer the EA back to Parliament if they took this view, so the Government wouldn't have legal "cover" to make changes. Though that might not stop them!

Unfortunately, there is already momentum on forcing EU countries to adopt another country's recognition of someone's "gender". Here's Romania being put under pressure and found to be unlawful as far as the EU is concerned:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romania-infringed-transgender-mans-rights-eus-top-court-rules-2024-10-05/

So it seems that the EU mandate does get to cover this. That's presumably where Robin is coming from by saying we're "behind Europe".

Yep understood.

But the EA could be specifically updated to clarify how a GRC interacts with it.

The GRA says that it can be subject to future legislation. The best place to put that future legislation, so that the GRA and the EA aren't in conflict with each other, is in the EA.

The Labour and Conservative parties both have very active GC women's members groups who are working very hard at briefing MPs - Labour Women's Declaration and Conservatives for Women. I would think they're taken much more seriously and have much more access to MPs than a random lobby group no-one's heard of. I know SNP doesn't have such a group (their GC members have all left, it seems) but they're a small enough party at Westminster to be insignificant. Not sure about the LibDems. I can't imagine there are very many MPs who will take this 'briefing' seriously - maybe a few of the ideologues, no-one else.

But other countries don't think we should (and if they do, at least as many think we shouldn't). The only people implying that are this lobbying group, with some thinly-veiled suggestion that British politicians (and, by extension, all British people) will be collectively regarded as bigots and pariahs by "right-thinking people" in those other countries if they don't immediately give in to all the group's demands.

I think we risk giving succour to the Brexiteers and Reform Party supporters (who never saw a straw man argument about the EU that they didn't immediately embrace) to advance the suggestion that Brexit might be protecting us from trans lunacy, or any other extreme social policy position, when that simply isn't the case. 🙏

(That works both ways. I also have no doubt that if Brexit hadn't happened, this lobbying group would be demanding that the UK take the issue up with Brussels, and would be in a huff when they discovered that Brussels said "Not our problem, sunshine"!)

I wonder if the Labour Government are hoping that the Supreme Court will deem sex in the EqA as biological sex so much like Cass it will save them from having to face the issue head on.

Briefed by men who won't take no for an answer.

I think it's both relevant and irrelevant, if that makes sense.

For me it's only relevant in the sense that we know that sovereignty is very important to people in the UK and that we don't want to be swept along into major social changes we don't agree with just because other countries think we should.

Therefore, as per Ruth Crawford's speech in court, this means that any male who identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is a man as far as the law is concerned.

This has always been the case and will continue to be so regardless of the verdict.

It's pretty likely (hopefully) that the Supreme Court will decide that sex in the EA means biological sex.

It could go either way. I wouldn't say it was "pretty likely". The law is an ass.

But the EU is a trading bloc and the legislative authority that we delegated to the EU was never supposed to include matters such as gender recognition.

Well then, it's a good job that the legislative authority delegated to the EU by member states does not include such matters.

As I mentioned in my PP, the EU does not have any mandate or position on family life and related social questions. Nor are there any proposals for it to do so. Apart from anything else, even with qualified majority voting, any gender recognition proposals would not get the necessary votes because most countries in central and eastern Europe would be against them. Some EU member states still don't recognise same-sex marriage, and there is neither a Directive nor a Regulation on the matter.

The fact that a UK-based lobbying group mentions "other European countries" does not suddenly mean that the EU has, or proposes to have, a position on this. Nor is there any likelihood that it will because the EU has always stayed out of social/moral issues, partly because its mission is to avoid conflict among member states and Catholic/Orthodox Europe is some way behind the secular Scandis and Dutch on many of these topics.

So yes, Brexit is, and remains, completely irrelevant to this discussion. 🙏

If the court decides that sex means biological sex only, a GRC is irrelevant to the operation of the EA. It won't make a man a woman for the purposes of the Act.

The PC of Gender Reassignment (already) applies to anyone who claims a special identity, whether they hold a GRC or not.

Started typing this ages ago, so apologies if it says something that's already now been covered....

I presume this is a timing thing.

It's pretty likely (hopefully) that the Supreme Court will decide that sex in the EA means biological sex. Therefore, as per Ruth Crawford's speech in court, this means that any male who identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is a man as far as the law is concerned. The full explanation that she gave also brought sexual orientation into the mix: according to Ruth, a male (who identifies as a woman) who is attracted to women who doesn't have a GRC is a heterosexual man. That same person who does have a GRC, according to Ruth, is a lesbian woman.

So presumably there's going to be a MASSIVE uptick in the number of GRC applications. And this lobbying is about preparing the way for GRC holders to have access to all the sports, spaces and services that they want.

The GRA currently says that some of the "rights" within it could be superseded by future legislation. So presumably Robin and friends are worried that a tightened up EA might not allow a £5 certificate to give them what people in Germany etc can have.

I think Brexit is relevant because only a few short years ago we had a very heated public debate about sovereignty. Slightly more than half of those who voted in the referendum voted to leave the EU, largely on the basis that the UK is a sovereign country and its laws should be made by our democratically elected parliament, not unelected Brussels bureaucrats.

I suspect that the number of people who actually believe sovereignty is important is even higher than that.

I was an ardent remainer and still believe that leaving the EU was a stupid idea.

But the EU is a trading bloc and the legislative authority that we delegated to the EU was never supposed to include matters such as gender recognition. The same way that it doesn't include matters such as abortion, and indeed there are parts of the EU where it is still difficult or even impossible to get an abortion. We never consented to the EU having any kind of authority over our rules about gender recognition, so the EU can butt out. And that would be true even if we were still members.

Now when we're talking about other, EU adjacent organisations or treaties to which we are still a party, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, yes, the argument is that we haven't left, we are still members, we still have to respect the rules. But the principle of sovereignty still applies. And when the UK was a founding member of the ECHR, when we actually agreed to uphold the principles in the treaty, there was nothing in there about gender recognition. All this guff about it being a human right to be legally recognised as the opposite sex to the one you actually are has been retrospectively interpreted into the treaty by reading between the lines and squinting very hard. But we never agreed to it. So if other individual countries want to introduce self ID or make it a hate crime to misgender someone, that's up to them. But we are under no obligation to follow their example. They have no authority over us. They have no democratic legitimacy in the UK. And I would argue that they are the ones in breach of the actual human rights obligations that are actually written in the treaty, not us. The UK is, at most, in breach of imaginary obligations which are not written in the treaty (but which unelected trans activists think should be), and which are not actually obligations at all because we never agreed to them.

Well they'll find out the hard way at the next election if that's the game they want to play.

The two most powerful briefing groups on the gender realist side [besides religions who are pushing their own gender ideas] are Sex Matters linked above. They have been inside Parliament recently more and more and are increasingly influential.

The other is Labour Women's Declaration who have four open supporters on the Labour Front bench.

Shabana Mahmood MP, Birmingham Ladywood, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Dame Diana Johnson, MP Hull North & Cottingham, Minister of State (Home Office) - (Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention).
Feryal Clark, MP, Enfield North. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology - AI and Digital Government
Jess Phillips MP for Birmingham Yardley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office) - (Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls).

Mahmood is a a very powerful figure inside the Starmer cabinet.

All unthinkable 4 years ago ! They are at all the Labour conferences openly and are hiring a full time lobbyist at a good salary:
https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/senior-consultant-to-lead-on-policy-parliamentary-liaison-public-affairs/

The war inside Labour is ongoing, but no debate is over and the TAs are now playing defense and they are not that good at it.

For instance here is LWD's MP briefing – Labour proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act
https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/mp-briefing-proposals-to-reform-gra/

Unlike the translucent briefing a bunch of MPs will have read this briefing.

I know someone is going to accuse me of being a Labour shill and saying everything is FINE far from it. The Tories, Labour, SNP even Lib Dems and Greens are being forced by active resistance inside their parties and outside to recognise more and more women and homosexuality are real. That progress has happened and everyone who ever posted, contributed and spoke up helped.

Huge victories have been made. Lots more to be done. Yes the TAs are trying a bunch of sneaky stuff. They can be stopped though and Mumsnet is a big part of that.

As they fall down the cliff they hang and grab to every structure, be it grass or rock to avoid ending up in the ocean, that will surely wash them away.

And the friends they once had will not risk their own lives to save them. Not even a float, they will not cry as they walk away.

This is what we are watching, in slow motion.

Thank you. As we slowly starts to return to sanity over this issue, those who are used to pandering politicians "Of course women don't need male free places to undress in - mixed sex changing is so inclusive" are now howling into the wind. They're discovering that with the disappearance of #nodebate, women's rights, single sex spaces and sport, children being free from gaslighting that changing sex is desirable are actually what society wants. And society is saying so very clearly.

Even without Brexit, this is not something that the EU would have had anything to do with. (People on both sides of the Brexit argument are often surprised to find out how many huge areas of legal and social debate are not within the EU's remit. During Covid a lot of people were surprised to discover that the EU has almost no responsibility for public health, for example.)

Even the European Convention on Human Rights is silent on quite a few topics. You will scour the Convention, and the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, fruitlessly if you are looking for statements that, say, access to abortion is a human right.

Anyway, this document is just a pressure group saying "We think that these other (carefully selected) nearby countries do this better, so you lot should feel bad". Which as a political tactic is fair enough --- I would do it too if there was some issue that I was campaigning on. But don't imagine that this is not some kind of neutral civil service briefing about trans issues. It's lobbying by an interested party, but I guess that if you write "briefing note" at the top of the page it sounds better.