Question about gender change

[lougle]

If someone is making a transition to one gender from another, what does their sexuality relate to - their original gender, or their new one?

For instance, if a man is transitioning to become a woman, and is attracted to women, would that make them 'straight' or 'gay'?

If a woman is transitioning to become a man, and is attracted to women, would he then be 'straight' or 'gay'?

I'm likely to have to explain 'gender change' to my children, but it occurred to me that I really don't understand the 'gender' part of it at all.

I understand the physical processes and the medical timeline, etc. (ie. live as new gender for x period, medication, initial reassignment surgery, final reassignment surgery), but I don't understand how someone who has had gender reassignment would identify their sexuality.

I hope I haven't offended anyone - I may not have used the right terminology and may have been clumsy in the way I've asked the question.

I get the impression from women I know that it - like so much else with all medical services - is a bit of a postcode lottery, and different doctors will give weight to different things. (There's a major assessment centre right near where I live, which shares a waiting room with another local medical service I've used.)

You don't need surgery to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. Of course you need to convince them that you really do want to "live as a woman" for the rest of your life. And as part of that you would have to explain why you do not want genital surgery. However to refuse a gender recognition certificate purely on that basis, would be against the legislation.

Lovecat - it's not the easiest bit of law but to put it in (possibly too) simple terms

• a public body has to treat a trans woman as a woman regardless of their stage of transition - e.g. if you are social services or a bank and someone says that they wish to be addressed as Ms, you write down Ms whether or not you privately think .

• single sex provisions remain perfectly legal

• it is legal to exclude trans women from women's spaces where there is a "legitimate aim" for doing so, e.g. there is nudity going on or (the example that's usually given) it is a rape counselling service where the presence of trans women might put off attendees.

• Yes, really. I know it's not the same in Canada, although even there the rape crisis centre won their case against a trans employee, successfully arguing that she wouldn't be able to empathise with women who had been socialised as girls.

• If the "legitimate aim" can be served by different provisions then those should be done first - so for example can a dress shop have a changing room with individual cubicles rather than a communal area? Can a swimming pool provide a mixed / family changing room? If so, they should do that rather than ban trans women from the changing room. If they can't or it is impracticable for any reason, then they are entitled to exclude trans women from the provision.

• where a trans woman is "visually indistinguishable" from a cis woman then they should "normally" be treated as a woman for the purposes of single-sex provision. (I think this boils down to: if nobody can tell then they won't be challenged anyway.)

It is legal to exclude MtoF from women's spaces if there is a legitimate aim. But the service providers should consider whether they can provide the service in a different way to MtoF. THe guidance given for example is a MtoF in a woman only rape counselling group who clearly looks male. In this case the guidance says the service provider should consider providing 1 to 1 counselling instead outside of the centre. So the MtoF actually gets a better service than others in this scenario.

Here is the explanatory note:

739. This paragraph contains an exception to the general prohibition of gender reassignment discrimination in relation to the provision of separate- and single-sex services. Such treatment by a provider has to be objectively justified.

Example
A group counselling session is provided for female victims of sexual assault. The organisers do not allow transsexual people to attend as they judge that the clients who attend the group session are unlikely to do so if a male-to-female transsexual person was also there. This would be lawful.

The guidance says that the provider should consider providing 1 to 1 counselling but they don't have to, and lack of funding would be an acceptable reason not to do it, so few do.

It applies also to employees of the provider, not just the service users:

Schedule 9: Work: exceptions
Part 1: Occupational requirements

A counsellor working with victims of rape might have to be a woman and not a transsexual person, even if she has a gender recognition certificate, in order to avoid causing them further distress.

I believe that both of these make adequate provision for women who want cis women only space in these circumstances.

Thanks Posy. Maybe that needs to be more widely dessiminated so that women trying to organise women only space don't get constant harassment and told that they are breaking the law if they exclude MtoF's?

Quite possibly. I do organise women only space (although my events are trans-inclusive because I have so far had no legitimate aim to serve by excluding) and I think harassment is par for the course, people do not like women only organising, trans-inclusive or otherwise. I think being called an "unrapeable bigot" was one of my favourite insults from the last event (courtesy inevitably of a cis man.)

My best friend is in the middle of gender reassignment. He was born a female, has always been attracted to female but sees himself as a straight man trapped in a womans body iyswim.

When he was female, he would never date lesians as he did not see himself as a lesbian

So which part of that law would you think you would use at RadFem conferences to exclude transwomen?

I wouldn't; RF have not had any good reason ("legitimate aim") to exclude trans women. I'm not involved in RadFem.

I can imagine having a conference where there is a workshop that is cis only, although quite frankly it won't be happening with anything I organise because I haven't got a bloody clue how it would be enforced. "Oi, you, you're a bit tall, come over here and let us body shame you for failing to conform to the patriarchal beauty standard" - no thanks.

Having said that, I'm not certain that RF or any other group would be covered as they are not a public body and they are arguably not an 'association' as defined by the Act. Which means they have no duties under the Act.

Do you think trans women should have the right, if they wish, to organise support services separately from other women, Kim, on the basis that they have life experiences which other women haven't and can't share? I have no idea if any would wish to, but on the principle of the thing.

(Disclaimer: I've never been to a radfem conference, and have no wish to do so, though I saw bits of the kerfuffle - last year? - play out on twitter, and it didn't look to an outside observer that anybody involved on any of the sides covered themselves in glory.)

Posy, Kim - I'd hope that if there was a workshop that was (legitimately, not just for bullshit reasons) trans-only or cis-only, the people attending would police themselves, and not come if the workshop wasn't a right fit for them. Having others police them is impossible and ridiculous, as you say. All it would take was a tickbox on the workshop registration form: "tick here to confirm you are [whatever is the requirement for the workshop]".

Kim - well, yes, that's why I said I didn't know if anyone would want it. But you have life experiences I will never have, just as I have life experiences you won't have had, and there might be people who would want to explore this in a space where they didn't have to explain themselves every two minutes. "Out" trans people do exist - if some of them wanted a trans-only event, do you think this should be supported?

The Equality Act does not apply to events like RadFem conferences. That's why transactivists and their allies use harassment and intimidation directed either at the organisers or hosts to try to close down these events.

Flora I think that it does apply to, for example, the Conway Hall (as a member organisation with more than 25 members) - so although RF itself couldn't be offending under the EA, the host could by hosting it, which is why they lost the venue. So in practice it would be difficult for an event which was non-compliant with the EA to find a venue.

Posy that's not the case. The London Irish Centre took advice on this last year and cancelled the event due to safety concerns for their staff. Camden Council ended up hosting the event. Conway Hall said they weren't satisfied the event "conformed with the Equality Act' which is not the same as saying it is illegal under the Equality Act. They said it was against their "ethos". Yes, women talking about oppression of women is apparently against the ethos of Conway Hall.

As I understand it, the UK law says females have no right to meet without the presence of males, if any males want to be included? It baffles me that so many women are OK with this. If you want to have trans-inclusive spaces and activism, that's fine, but to have a law that says females have no right to meet anywhere without male supervision - it's rather medieval. Or worse than medieval times, actually, since they had female-only spaces in the form of nunneries then.

Also the threats from trans activists to the London Irish Centre are very telling. Radical feminists don't protest and threaten trans conferences, nor have they tried to stop trans-only events from going ahead. It's obvious the agenda here is to intimidate women and stop them from ever claiming any space to themselves.

Flora thanks for that, I stopped following it after the Conway Hall stuff. I knew they'd cited the Equalities Act (I think their fear was that if they hosted it then they would be sued for hosting a non-EA-compliant event.)

Donkey no that's wrong I'm afraid. Cis women have every right to meet without the presence of trans women or men. A public body or an association however has to include trans women in "women" unless there is a good reason (a "legitimate aim") in not doing so.

Personally I can't for the life of me see why this wouldn't be considered perfectly reasonable.