To call to all: You have less than a month. Please act now to protect women's rights (Closes 1 March 2018)

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The Scottish Government's consultation on changes to the GRA closes on 1st March 2018.

The rest of the UK will likely follow Scotland's decision, so this is your chance to make your views known.

For those who don't yet understand the risks to women from changes to the Gender Recognition Act, please read this document. It is pretty straightforward

leyaterra.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/gender-the-gra-and-womens-rights/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Then please complete the Scottish Government's consultation.

You do NOT have to be Scottish or live in Scotland to complete it.

consult.gov.scot/family-law/review-of-the-gender-recognition-act-2004/

The brilliant Dr Nic Williams wrote a guide to the consultation

fairplayforwomen.com/scottish-consultation/

PLEASE complete it and pass to friends/family

Done.

Thanks for posting OP.

Done. Lies should never be enshrined in law.

On the how many times should someone be able to change gender question I pointed out that it should be once and once only and if they think there is a possibility that people might change their mind a lot maybe it isn't a good idea in the first place to enshrine this ideology in law.

Done. Unfortunately I also get the sense that this is all but decided unless there is a huge groundswell of opposing opinion. It terrifies me that my daughter might grow up in a world where her safety is less important than validating a person’s feelings.

Done

Can someone help me with my answer to the question about recognising non-binary people?

I want to get into a big philosophical on how gender shouldn't exist as a binary anyway so non-binary is meaningless .... but really I'm just concerned with the effects to women's rights - I don't really care what people want to call themselves.

I'm getting in a tangle here!

DH and I’ve just done it. Thank you. I hadn’t seen it before this post.

Sent it to all my family.

Can I also thank all the brilliant posters on MN for the insightful and thought provoking debate I see on here. Like others, I bite by tongue at work and on Facebook where I try to ignore the ridiculous bull shit people seem to be posting in the interests of looking right on.

It’s a contrast breath of fresh air to be reminded that not everyone is drinking the coolaid.

I’m so angry again I’ve lost my appetite. Doesn’t happen often!

What do we think is going to come of this?

I literally put that non binary makes no sense whatsoever and people are either one sex or another whether that be in biological or legal terms.

Thanks for the reminder and the links.

I've been trying to fill it in but have found the way it is written tough going and most of the questions are worded like it's already happening and are just asking how many times people should be allowed to change gender and from what age we should let children self-declare a new gender etc.

I'll read the links and hopefully they will help me with writing it - I've already written to my MP on this issue but I'm not used to responding to consultations. I guess at the end of the day my main concerns boil down to:

• concerns about women and girls' safety (e.g. men in women's changing rooms, rapists in women's prisons)

• our right to privacy, dignity and single sex services (e,g, to be able to request a female nurse for a smear test or to attend a rape counselling session and know it will be with an actual woman)

• concerns about data recording (e.g. misrepresentation of male sex offenders as women in the crime states, the 'highest paid female CEO' actually being a man etc).

so maybe I'll just write something short and to the point even though it's a big topic with lots of implications in different areas. I think the main thing is that we do respond.

Do we have to give our name and contact details to respond?

Done. Thank you.

I need to marshall my thoughts on this so will complete it soon. At the moment I'm just horrified. I worked at the Scottish Government and I know some of the people working on this. I know they're doing it with the best of intentions, but it's so short sighted. They really don't mean to be throwing women under the bus but it's what is happening - not will happen, is happening. And the culture there is such that if you do speak up in person you'll be squashed and told you're trans phobic and to buck your ideas up. You can't question this nonsense.

To reply to pp - yes it will be assumed that trans women are women and that's all there is to it. It's not really open to question there: the party line is that men can be women if they say so, at any point they say so, and objectors are misinformed.

Anne I absolutely think this is a done deal based on the wording of the questionnaire. They weren't really asking should it happen just how it should happen. I did make sure I put that I didn't think it should happen at all.

I suspect what they may do is give more weight to replies from organisations and many of those organisations will be groups like Stonewall, Glaad, Mermaids, Gires etc...

Our individual replies will probably fade into insignificance in the face of a load of propaganda from lobbyists.

Scottish, living in Scotland, voting in Scotland. Have completed with many of the same comments as the same as others - sex isn't gender, we should be creating a society which accepts that men can wear lipstick and frocks and that's OK rather than saying they are women. If the SNP turn up on my doorstep to cart me off to bigot-prison I'll let you know. (Actually, the SNP hate me already - was blocked on Twitter by my SNP ex-MP as I pointed out his vanity in using a 25 year old photo on his election material in 2010. )

Anyway. A few things to point out on this consultation thingy from a Scottish perspective.

1. SNP are all about independence. Everything they do is skewed towards that main aim. If they can use this legislation to further the idea that Scotland is totally different from the rest of the UK in terms of culture/acceptance, they will. "Look at those nasty English people with their bigoted attitudes, while we're all accepting and tolerant and everything in Scotland. We're so DIFFERENT, we need to be independent."

1. The SNP move en masse. The way the party is structured is such that individual MPs or MSPs are not allowed to vote on their conscience or in the interests of their constituents. They HAVE to toe the party line. No rebels. No abstaining. So if the SNP leadership recommends pushing this through, they will get the backing of all their MSPs. And the weak and wishy-washy Greens who would vote to allow people to identify as broccoli if they wanted to. It will be passed if it gets that far.

1. The SNP have form for passing bad legislation. In 2011 they passed legislation to tackle sectarianism in football. Everyone said it was a piss poor piece of legislation which couldn't be enforced and wouldnt work. But they block voted as always, and it got through. A couple of weeks it was repealed as experience showed it just didn't work. There is every risk of the same thing happening here.

inews.co.uk/news/politics/anti-sectarian-football-laws-set-repealed-scotland/

Done and I hope it helps. It's great that they've made it open for all but on the downside it also makes it easy for Trans-activists to do multiple submissions.

I filled it in with gory detail. The bit about whether a self id change, should or not be grounds for divorce made my blood boil.

Why should I be forced by law to change my sexual orientation, to suit his rebrand?
Hell no.

I fear you’re probably right @OvaHere

My rage feels so impotent. Nothing has made me want to get out on the streets and scream common sense at people who ought to know better since the Iraq war and there was no fucking point then as no one listened but at least we tried to have our say.

This is on the doorstep, here and now, in our country, hurting people we see around us and I don’t know where it all came from.

I’m a woman. Whether I’m wearing jeans and no make up or dressed to the nines. Whether I’m kicking a ball or baking a cake. I was born a woman, I’ll always be a woman. Why has everyone become so obsessed with gender. What world are we letting happen that our children are going to have to navigate. How on earth, when I clearly wasn’t paying attention, did some men find this corrosive way of taking what we’ve fought for to make the world safer, fairer and better for everyone.

Sorry. Ranting.

Thanks Ova, that's pretty much what I wrote too!

I wrote that if our society weren't so entrenched in binary gender roles then the non-binary label would be meaningless. That biological sex exists as a reality but it shouldn't affect our life chances and opportunities and that trans rights should be protected but not at the expense of hard-won women's rights.

Somehow it feels significant that it's 100 years since the right to vote and we're here discussing the potential end of the protections that women need in order to achieve equality.

I love you lot for all your help, advice and clarity on the subject. You rock

I know Anne

The bit about whether a self id change, should or not be grounds for divorce made my blood boil.
Yes, that bit is pretty chilling.

Ifyousee

Non binary is the 'woke' term for 'personality': every one has one and should be allowed to express it as they wish, as long as it doen't harm anyone else.

But some people are so much more interesting than others. They would be the ones who discovered bands in the past because they heard them 1 month before their peers

Ova I know what you mean but it's not a done deal, we do have a voice. Suffragettes! We can organise, we can say we don't consent to this.

k2p I get you hate the Nats but we need to rise above partisan issues.

Iseeyoyrita, I know, because it is outside of their wit to see that there will be women who don't have the financial resources to leave, trapped into sexually abusive relationships. By their law.

Absolutely @IfyouseeRitaMoreno

I do hate the Nats ;-) But the way they operate en masse means that we have to make a huge noise about this to be heard.