Should gender reassignment remain a protected characteristic?

It seems to me that the definition of a trans person within the context of that law is "anyone who says that is what he or she is", because it doesn't require anything more specific than an intention to do something to alter the individual's appearance or even body parts – which may remain indefinitely as an aspiration, and never in fact be fulfilled.

The Act says "A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex."

(The muddle about there being or not being a difference between sex and gender is already within that section of the Act.)

"proposing to undergo" is nebulous and impossible to prove or disprove. Anybody can propose to do any damn thing under the sun and not get round to doing it.

That is why I feel that this ought not to be law: as worded, it relies on an individual being honest, and I don't see how that honesty can be proven or disproven since it is entirely in the mind of that individual.

What is your definition of a trans person and what protect do you want them to have?

Should every or any male school teacher have the right under GR to be call Miss with she/her pronouns while teaching children?

It’s not a loaded argument. If you’re saying trans people don’t need a protected characteristic that I have to ask why you think that and what level of discrimination you think is acceptable.

The PC exists and it protects trans people. The SC went to great lengths in the FWS judgement to explain how trans people were still protected and had lost no rights, so the SC seems to think reassigning sex is possible enough to have the protected characteristic.

In your ideal world, who would be protected and what would/wouldn’t be covered?

Nobody thinks protection against discrimination should be extended to men who larp as Napoleon, why should it to those who larp as women?

Is there any other area of the law where something so batshit crazy is a PC?

Gender is meaningless, sex is important and how we sometimes need to categorise people, to provide single sex spaces for women and girls.

Gender cannot be reassigned....everyone has a personality and they can express it-but they cannot change their sex.

Ah, the loaded question argument.

Everyone should be protected, but how can people be protected when reassigning their sex, when its impossible to reassign sex?

Who are we protecting and what are they doing?

Are we protecting men to perform drag at work?

Use a woman's name?

Hide their sex on documents?

Pressure companies to remove SSE because they need to balance rights of these men with women.

Stop people laughing when a man uses 'woman' voice?

Stop people from saying they are a man?

When people claim its about access to work, they are only talking about half the story because its not only about recruitment, its about how other people are expected to relate to them.

Its about MrJohn Smith being able to change his name to Miss Jessica Smith, even when they are a school teacher.

RareGoalsVerge

Makiing a term like "Gender Nonconformity" a pc would make the system more of a mockery than it already is.

Lots of people are discriminated against because of their accent, class or education. They are not protected characteristics. It doesn't follow that all discrimination needs to be a PC.
You’re right, it doesn’t follow that a PC is necessary for all discrimination, but it has already been decided that gender reassignment should be a protected characteristic. Why do you think trans people don’t need a protected characteristic?

This makes me think that the protected characteristic should be something wider like "Gender Nonconformity" - though possibly a better term than this exists - an umbrella term that would include everyone who identifies as trans but also plenty who don't, but isn't about the invisible ideas in someone's head about whether they are "really" the opposite sex (which is a matter of faith) but a general protection for anyone who doesn't conform to the cultural stereotypes for their sex, regardless of what their gender beliefs might be. So it upholds the right for males to wear dresses and makeup and wigs and not be ridiculed or discriminated against because of it, and the rights of boys to enjoy ballet and barbie dolls if that's their choice, and similarly in mirror for women and girls.

What cannot be perceived cannot be discriminated against, what is discriminated against is that which is perceived and disapproved of, so it is the outward manifestations of being gender non-conforming that elicits discrimination that should be protected against - and that is suffered by a wider group than those who claim a trans identity.

A butch lesbian with a masculine presentation is subject to a greater and different kind of discrimination than a lesbian who presents in a more feminine way. Someone who is going to be discriminatory in this way is not going to differentiate in their hatred between the butch lesbian and a transman because the internal identity of whether they consider themselves to be a woman or a man is not what is perceived

I think it should remain in the equality act. Trans people do suffer discrimination so they need to have the protected characteristic. Sex has been clarified now so I don’t see what removed the characteristic would achieve.

Lots of people are discriminated against because of their accent, class or education. They are not protected characteristics. It doesn't follow that all discrimination needs to be a PC.

The problem with the PC of GR is it protects people 'proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex' which makes no sense because its impossible to reassign sex.

Its this confusion thats the problem. A man with the PC of GR is still male and a man. If the PC was rewritten clearly, there wouldn't be confusion around SSE and we would be having a different discussion.

If someone's protected characteristic makes them actually unwilling or unable to do the job they're in, then it doesn't constitute illegal discrimination to sack them. You'd see first to what extent that was a necessary part of the job, whether there was a similar role they could do within the organisation that didn't require the contested part. For example you could employ a police officer on the front desk or out responding to incidents instead of in the custody suite. (I don't know if that works in terms of how the police operate but that kind of thing.) But you're not required to employ/keep on someone in a wheelchair as a tree surgeon for example.

I posted this earlier but got zero response...

What if they were a male prison guard and their job was to strip search for example male inmates. But then out of the blue refused to strip search males as they were 'proposing to undertake something something who knows what that is to transition' they then wanted to strip search women?

What would you do with a man who refuses to do his job?

I didn’t even see your comment before it was deleted. I see discrimination as refusing to hire someone or serve them at a business just because they’re trans. It could also be firing someone just because they plan to transition.

apologies if I upset you and had it deleted, I’d asked what was seen as being discrimination.

@ALovelyPinkUnicorn did you try to reply to my message?

I think it should remain in the equality act. Trans people do suffer discrimination so they need to have the protected characteristic. Sex has been clarified now so I don’t see what removed the characteristic would achieve.

I think it should be removed, I think it’s incompatible with women’s rights

I think we need to go back to using the original terminology, and scrap the concept of gender completely. We need to clarify that sex is physical, and gender is an outdated stereotyping concept rooted in patriarchy that benefits no one and actually harms everyone. Once we’ve resolved that everyone can wear whatever the fuck they want irrespective of their genitalia or XX/XY/XYZ status, and those who have surgery and take cross-sex hormones are once again referred to as transsexual, and no one uses single sex spaces according to what they ‘identify’ as.

Somehow I can’t see the TRAs going for that though.

And there was Dame Edna Everage. Barry Humphries was a genius.

I regarded drag and pantomime dames in much the same way as each other: stage performance. Or indeed any acting: a man did not become the part that he played in King Lear, and wasn't really pretending that he was, he was assuming a rôle, and putting it away and going home at the end of the evening. They were not real life any more than Tinkerbell or Mickey Mouse. And one felt desperately sorry for the few actors who got so caught up in the rôles they played that the fantasy took over.

It's like old-skool drag artistes, isn't it? Whether or not you think drag is ever acceptable, the fact is that Danny La Rue was Daniel Patrick Carroll who dressed up as Danny La Rue; Lily Savage was Paul O'Grady who dressed up as Lily Savage.

They were men who dressed up as women and put on a theatrical performance, and then took off the sparkly dress and the make up and returned to being men.

I've known people who were muddy evil in the same way. As a result, I still use the phrase "subtle as a Sussex axe-man" occasionally.

Ha, yes, an ex of mine enjoyed larping as an English civil war soldier on the odd weekend, it didn't translate into his daily life....

Another thing TRAs have spoiled, then.

It really isn't fair to talk of it as "role-play". I know a LOT of people who do live (to rhyme with hive not with give) role-playing as a recreation, and I have never met one whose entire life was centred around banging on and on about the character he or she played and how mean everyone was to that type of character.