There's not much I can add to this thread, but I will mention a few things.
The Equalities Act 2010 states that an individual only needs to declare they are of the opposite gender, or that they intend to become the opposite gender, and the state must treat that person as that gender.
According to the Act, there is no need for an individual to undergo surgery to alter their biological physicality, take hormones, or perform femininity or masculinity. All they need to do is say they are the opposing gender.
You must remember that this Act is relatively new. We are just now seeing the implications and consequences of the Act as individuals bring cases to court. We simply do not know how the Act will work on the ground when it comes to transgender cases.
DH is an expert on the Equalities Act. In his words, in terms of transgender issues: "the sky is the limit."
Now ... I have been trying to determine whether or not there is any legislation that protects biological women and girls as biological women and girls from the implications of this legislation because, quite clearly, there are huge implications. If all a biological male needs to do, by law, is declare he is a woman for the state to have to treat him as a woman, then we have an extremely problematic situation that is open to abuse.
Indeed, we are already seeing this with in the evidence submission of the British Association of Gender Identity Experts to the transgender equality panel.
"The converse is the ever-increasing tide of [transgender] referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this.
These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard."
data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19532.html
And here is where the Tara Hudson case, which has been publicised in the media, comes into play. If Tara Hudson is transferred to a female prison, then what prevents any incarcerated biological male that declares they are a woman, regardless of biological physicality or gender performance, from being transferred to a female prison?
My second point would be that the majority of women in Britain that have not suffered male physical violence really have no idea how strong the majority of biological adult males really are, regardless of the gender performance of that biological male. I am of the opinion that films and TV shows have deluded biological females into thinking that, even though there is a difference in physical strength, it is not as vast as it actually is.
My last and more controversial point is a question: does no-one else find it interesting that the recognition of transgender issues, tied as they are to synthetic hormone therapy, began to come to the fore at the same time as the bottom dropped out of the HRT market?