Tom Harris, former MP, apologises for voting for Gender Recognition Act 2004

It really boils my blood to see the word ‘trivial’ and the complete ignorance/dismissal of the great personal cost to many women and girls that this ruling has caused.

Good article.

I wonder if he'll get death threats for it?

I agree, it's telling. Of course, this is the TRAs' big thing about self-ID, isn't it? It's just a "bit of admin", a "piece of paper", "administrative tidying up" etc. Though of course it's also life-saving and they'll all kill themselves if they don't have it.

It's always depressing the way that people become MPs presumably because they have a set of principles they believe in, and then before too long they're voting for the exact opposite because they have to do what the whips tell them to do.

The 'trivial' comment reminded me of this from the Goodwin vs UK judgment in the ECtHR in 2002 which led to the GRA.

"the Court considers that society may reasonably be expected to tolerate a certain inconvenience to enable individuals to live in dignity and worth in accordance with the sexual identity chosen by them at great personal cost."

"A certain inconvenience" makes it sound so trivial, when it is something which potentially has a negative effect on all women and girls.

It was a good read. It showed just how most people really could not have imagined how this would play out. How being ‘kind’ would cause so much harm.

This is telling:

I happened to have dinner with the government chief whip at the time, Hilary (now Baroness) Armstrong, on the evening before the vote and raised the issues addressed by Lord Tebbit, informing her of my reservations about the legislation. Her only advice was not to endanger a future ministerial career by voting against the government on such a trivial subject.

It was seen as trivial. Even though he had misgivings because: "Parliament was about to legislate, for the first time in its history, to allow people to lie."

That alone should have put the brakes on this. He recognised that any law whose aim was to allow people to lie should never have been passed and they should have found another way to accommodate people who were unhappy about their sex. It doesn't matter how 'trivial' you view the subject (and of course this isn't trivial at all), any law which includes the right to lie should never have been passed. And this one also includes a clause in which someone disclosing the truth can be criminalised.

Very interesting. And I started off getting annoyed

Even then, I had no particularly strong feelings about the subject, mainly because I did not possess a time machine and was therefore unable to foresee the chaos and damage – particularly to women’s rights

Some people didn't need a time machine, just experience of certain men.

However

no one at the time imagined that the country would go quite that fucking insane in such a relatively short period of time.

He does recognise it as complete insanity.

which, in all fairness, it really, really is.

I wonder if it makes men like Tom Harris realise that women are up against this constantly, everywhere. This isn't a one off.

And what does the knowledge of exactly how many people went along with it, and still are, make him think?

I'd love to know what he thinks of the rank misogyny that allows this to continue and realises that it's the exact same misogyny that allowed it to happen in the first place.

Fantastic read. Particularly enjoyed the explanation that the GRA went through "because no one at the time imagined that the country would go quite that fucking insane in such a relatively short period of time."

An excellent piece. Thanks for posting.

A very enjoyable read, thank you. It helps us understand a bit about how things got so out of hand but not completely. However, it is interesting to consider what personality types more generally insist on re-writing history and controlling the conversation. Why were these not seen, and still aren't seen, as the red flags that they are?