To ask about GRA

[HelmetHair1]

Hello all. Long-time lurker but first time poster. I know this isn't strictly an AIBU but I wanted to get people's views on GRA because I'm just filling out the consultation form now.

Like many people, I have some concerns about whether self-ID will enable men to access women's spaces with malicious intentions. I don't have any problem sharing a loo or changing room with a trans woman, but I don't want a man to be able to say 'I self ID as a woman so I should be allowed in' - that would seem obviously stupid and dangerous.

I've just seen that Q6 of the consultation doc asks whether it should be a requirement of self-ID that you make a statutory declaration that you intend to live as your acquired gender for the rest of your life. Knowingly lying when making a statutory declaration is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison.

I didn't really understand the nuances of this so I did some research. Organisations like Stonewall support this being a requirement, so long as it's the only requirement (e.g. no need to provide details of medical treatments or evidence of having lived as your acquired gender for a specified period of time).

I am trying to decide whether this will be enough. I'm inclined to think that this would help solve the problem of men trying to abuse women's spaces - if you have to make a statutory declaration, and falsely doing so is a criminal offence, that will presumably deter people from pretending to be trans in order to be abusive? And it would stop people from claiming to be women or men as and when it suits them - they would have to make a lifelong commitment.

On the other hand, we don't know how seriously any breach of this rule would be taken so it's hard to assess how much of a deterrent it would be. And it wouldn't stop men pretending to be trans over the long term in order to be able to access women's spaces (although I don't know how likely this eventuality actually is?)

What are others' thoughts? Is this a sufficient safeguard? I'm leaning towards thinking that as long as there is a requirement for a statutory declaration I am happy for self-ID to pass, but I still have some niggling uncertainties. Would be interested in hearing others' opinions!

(Sorry this ended up being so long)

@senua Yes, they can have penises, and men can have vaginas. Those with body dysphoria will be very uncomfortable with that and will potentially look to change that, but those are huge decisions and not to be taken lightly and not every transgender has body dysphoria

@DerelictWreck If you read the documentation with the consultation you will see that this is indeed the case.
Your comment about the girl-guides (why not scouts?) is a little suggestive. I think there is a misconception among many that the proposed GRA changes mean you can write your preferred gender of the day on an envelope and go on a camping trip with little girls as an Akela (or whatever they are called - I was never a girl guide) while you're a hairy male sex predator. It doesn't work like that. As I said before, Self ID serves to get legal recognition for the gender you are to replace a complex, lengthy, costly and often traumatising process of doing the same, which deters many from going through it and causes untold harm. You will still have to obtain legal confirmation of your new gender and there is plenty of room to put adequate safeguards in place to protect those at risk.

You are quite right, though, that those safeguards are incredibly important, irrespective of the process. Might I suggest that if you complete the consultation you express that?

It's hard for me to wrap my head around that @senua because gender and sex are so closely related. So it feels really weird to say it / think it. But I do believe that trans people have the right to be considered the gender they identify as, and unless we're going to force medical treatment on people (which is pretty totalitarian) that means accepting that some women have penises. I'm still working through my own difficulty with really understanding that - because my sex and gender to correspond, I find it really hard to imagine a situation where they don't. But I believe trans people when they say that's there experience, which means broadening my understanding of what gender means.

I think that there might be lots of reasons why a trans person doesn't have surgery. It might be too expensive, or there might be medical complications, or it might be that they don't feel the need to have major surgery in order to live as their acquired gender. I think that stuff is ok. I think the world would be much, much worse if we forced people to have surgery before we accepted their identities.

I also think it's kind of illogical. You can have surgery to change your genitals but you can't change your chromosomes or your genetic makeup. There is no way for a person to truly 'change sex' in the sense of becoming, biologically, a different sex from the one you were born as. So it seems arbitrary to insist that people have to have genital surgery to be considered the gender they identify as. I think it's healthier to instead try to accept that gender and sex don't always correspond, and that it's ok to be a woman and still have male biological features (and vice versa).

I also think the insistence on surgery is really harmful to children. Some children identify as trans and I think it's good for them to be supported in their chosen gender, but adolescence can be a confusing time for children and they might think they are trans when they might be non-binary or gender non-conforming. I think that placing too much insistence on surgery (or other medical treatments) being a requirement for being trans is harmful for children who might feel pressured into having surgery or other treatments in order to be accepted as their acquired gender, when actually they should be supported in identifying as trans without the requirement for life-changing surgery which might be irreversible. I think the decision about whether to have surgery should be made by adults who have had time and support to decide if it's really what they want to do.

*their experience not there!

So you can use self ID to get, for instance, a passport showing your gender and that will serve as proof of gender.

Is that right? Trans friends have told me that they can get a passport in their acquired gender without a GRC.

@TuttoNero You are right. You need a GRC to change your birth certificate, but not your passport. However, you still need a supporting letter from a doctor or medical consultant, so process wise it amounts to the same.

Thanks for the info Myriad, it's been really helpful.

Thanks to others on the thread also for sharing resources and opinions!

Any one can change their driving license and passport on request, no GRC needed.

The amendments would allow men to change their birth certificate to read women, therefore there would no way to apply the exemptions in the equality act, which gives women sex based rights.

Ie. We lose sex based rights, as we couldn't legally separate biological men from biological women. We would see they are clearly men (as the moment they move or speak, they fail to pass) but legally we could do nothing.

That is why we need to tell the government no on sex self ID.
Www.fairplayforwomen.co.uk

Tenorlady

What do you mean by 'women who present in a masculine way'?

Knowingly lying when making a statutory declaration is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison.

This kind of provision has been around for many many years. Out of interest I wonder how often anyone gets prosecuted for this offence.

When it comes to self-ID being on the statute books in some form, I would expect the number of cases where "pretend" transwomen would be prosecuted would be near to zero. Maybe one or two in cases of extreme behaviour involving physical or sexual violence but that's it.

I think the "oh no, an insincere statutory declaration!" would have almost no deterrent effect against chancers.

@Nospellingsnomore
"on request" is nopt correct. It is for a driving license, but for a passport change you need a statement form a doctor or medical consultant.
A change of birth certificate does not mean that there are no exemptions for sex based services to deny transgender people to enter or participate. This is clearly spelled out in the documents that accompany the consultation. There may be a question about verification, but that is no different from today; to my knowledge that are no (or if there are there are virtually none) sex based services that require applicants / participants to evidence their gender by producing a birth certificate.

On balance, in the debate between easing the distress and anxiety of hundreds of thousands of trans people and the malicious intent of a few abusers there can, in my mind, be no question that the support for trans people should prevail.

This is precisely where I have a real problem with Fairplay for Women: they do not seek this balance and argue on theoretical issues only, no matter where they are on the scale.

I also firmly believe that, while Fairplay for Women pretend to be campaigners for women's rights, they are, in fact, funded by radical evangelist groups from the US who are using the platform as a vehicle to oppose rights for trans people. I have no direct evidence for that, but there is a horde of circumstantial evidence that arose after the group took out a £ 50,000 full page ad in Metro. But that's by the by.

@nauticant This may be true, but changing your gender is far reaching and not something you do for a potential night's rampage in a women only environment. They'll go through life in their new gender in every aspect. Same as it is utterly distresssing for trans people to be called out with their birth gender in a queue, the hairy abuser will hence forth be call Miss as well. Do you really think that is the length they will go to in order to satisfy their predatory needs?

If the extent of the far reaching changes is signing a statutory declaration and not having any treatment and not changing their physical appearance then I can't see that is any great length they will go to in order to satisfy their predatory needs.

But just to make things clear, I have no problem with self-ID as such but I do with self-ID making it into law. If it does, then I think the exemptions in the Gender Equality Act 2010 will end up becoming unenforceable and so meaningless.

Most transwomen do not have gender dysphoria. That's why they hang on to their penises, the number one physical feature of maleness there is. Most people with gender dysphoria would have no difficulty obtaining a GRC now, it is the crossdressers and the special experimenters who would struggle.

@nauticant
That may be because you have never experienced what it is like to be considered a man when you're a woman. If that happens to you all the time (and, again, if you change gender you change it for life) you will know what it is like. This is one of the main issues trans people experience and one of the main causes of distress and anxiety.

"I assumed Karen white must have one otherwise on what basis were they placed in a female prison?"

No - they said they wanted to transiton and had grown their hear and started wearing "womens clothes".

If a person has a GRC they MUST be treated as a woman ie a KW with a GRC MUST be treated exactly the same by the prison authorities as, um, any other woman.

If self ID comes in then any man in the male estate with access to a computer will be able to change their legal (sex? gender?) and then will AUTOMATICALLY need to be immediately transferred to female estate as who would lock a woman in with the men?

Trouble is:

• Female prison population is hugely different from male. Many times smaller, types of crime different esp regarding sex offences I think 97% of all sex offenders in prison are male.
• Profile of population is different - both populations are vulnerable but women in prison in specific ways with high % of crimes being committed for (male) family members / partners, high levels of DV and sexual abuse etc
• From other threads I have read there are no prisons for extremely violent offenders for women as they don't need them. Not the case with the men obv

So far there have been reports from prison service saying women are "uncomfortable" sharing showers with intact TW, we have had Karen White, and even that couple of TW who were put in they were in sexual relationship and made other inmates feel v uncomfortable with sexual displays anyway they were split up + one of them (or maybe a different TW) it seems minor anyway there was a competition for gym/fitness that meant the woman who won got a bag of goodies, v big deal in prison I imagine. So, a TW walktzed in and of course won it.

Dynamic in womens prisons when you start adding these people will change completely. It will not be safe for women.

Plus, pregnancy, no-one is mentioning this? Whether through consensual or non conseunsual sex, no-one wants women in prison getting pregnant. And then - could this be a way into the units with the babies and toddlers, I dont' thkn TW shoudl be in them.

To borrow from charlestonchaplin, are you assuming that most transwomen have gender dysphoria?

But 'the hairy abuser' will not live life like a woman, most of the time they can let the perception of others stand and still be perceived as a man with all the privileges that entails, they only need to insist on being a woman when they want to get into a woman's space. like Pip Bunce dresses like a man half the time won a woman's job but still gets deferred to as a man due to the unconscious bias of the people around them who see a man even though they know they are a woman

My last post was to Myriad.

@Musereader
Not quite. If you are a woman who was born a woman you have probably never thought about it, but it is only when you have the wrong gender that you realise how often you are identified by that wrong gender, in public for everyone to notice. It is NOT just a piece of paper. It follows you around for the rest of your life, very publicly.

@NothingOnTellyAgain
There is a fair bit of assuming, hearsay and even scaremongering in this message in my view. Talk to a prison officer and you'll find that they have far reaching powers when it comes to where house prisoners and how to deal with them.

Safeguarding is important and if you have concerns about that the consultation is absolutely the right place to express those. You can be sure that the government will take safeguarding very seriously, as they will not want to be facing a serious fault in anything goes wrong.

@nauticant
No, but a good share have and my guess is that more transgender men have dysphoria

I think a small proportion of the supposed 0.3-1% of the UK population who are said to be trans have gender dysphoria.

I think there would be a risk presented by non-gender dysphoric men declaring themselves to be women and gaining access to women's single-sex spaces.

I'm unconvinced by "it's likely nothing bad will happen but if it does the police and courts can sort it out".

scaremongering lol everything I wrote is factual.