To not fully understand the outrage of the gender recognition reform?

[iamop]

Leaving my views at the door on this subject....I am just hoping to gain some clarification on one main point for my own information.

Opponents of the gender reform bill claim that this will effect single sex spaces. I was appalled hearing this but I've done some reading. And it would seem (unless I'm getting this wrong) that due to the equality act 2010, a man claiming to be a female or vice versa can already use single sex spaces due to gender identity being a protected characteristic under this act. And as the equality act is a UK wide legislation implemented under labour, this has nothing to do with the Scottish gov. So am I correct in saying, that actually the gender reform bill won't actually affect single sex spaces any more so than the equality act already does?

I completely disagree with rapists etc being able to change genders and therefore force their victims and the courts to call them by a different pronoun. I think the age of 16 to be able to do this is bonkers, and I think the SNP have lost my vote moving forward.

I was just looking for some clarification to my main point above to be explained by people smarter than myself

Thanks

It is terrible legislation in my opinion because:
1 it allows any man to self-declare himself as a woman and be legally recognised as one. This includes any man, including any man who wishes to harm women, to access single-sex spaces needed by vulnerable men and women such as changing rooms, women's wards in hospitals, women's prisons etc. There is now no requirement for professional assessment, no need to have been living as a woman for a certain time in advance, no definition even of what it means to "live as a woman".

2 It allows children of 16 to self-ID legally. I am the mother of a 16 year old. I can tell you that at that age they are not ready and equipped to make life-changing decisions like this. Again, there is no requirement for professional assessment.

3 Many teenagers suffering from gender dysphoria are autistic. This legislation is creating a situation where autistic teenagers struggling to "fit in" and blaming it on being the "wrong gender", will choose to self-ID without requiring any professional or adult input (including from their parents). This actually amounts to purposeful and legislated neglect of the needs of autistic children in my view.

4 The hard-won right for women to have a certain percentage of places on eg electoral candidate lists has now been lost. Men who choose to self-ID as women can take up these places. I refuse to accept that trans women can represent the needs and experiences of women.

5 If you are a vulnerable woman or girl in Scotland, or a woman belonging to a faith which needs single sex health care, you will no longer be able to ask for a female healthcare professional and be assured that the person who appears to treat you is a woman. And if you challenge this, you will be breaking the law.

It is a very sad day in Scotland for women and girls.

On the issue of a sex offender changing his name to a woman's name.... could he not just change his name anyway (to another man's name)? He wouldn't need to get a GRC necessarily to change name?

He wouldn't get a new birth certificate in that case, which he would with a GRC.

Check out the Mumsnet petitions board. There is a petition to update the Equality Act 2010 to make it clear that the single sex exceptions that allow single sex spaces and services are based on sex (biological female) not gender (mixed sex).

If you only do one thing to support women and children's rights sign this petition so that this important legal protection is sound. This is not an anti-transgender action but a positive step to support biological women.

And what are we going to do as a society with all the female type women who now can't use women's spaces because they cannot (often for reasons previously equally protected in the equality act) use a mixed sex space?

They're tax payers too. Paying for facilities they now can't use at all, so that male people (and it's only male people, not TQ+ people, this is binary sex based) can have their preferred choice out of all the facilities. That's wholly unacceptable.

It is considered more important that some women suffer rape in prisons than men have to hear the word 'no' and have restrictions on the degree of transition. Men's emotional needs over the life changing physical and mental impact of rape.

This creates a hierarchy of need in which men trump women. And women aren't even allowed a word for themselves. This is just straight forward male supremacism entering into law.

My biggest concern around self ID like this is it oversimplifies the wider issue and by making it so easy risks making it so those who have issues surrounding gender dysphoria go for the simple self ID and don’t get proper support to understand what they are going through.

it is also very worrying from a women’s rights POV

I actually am the reverse OP and cannot understand why anybody thinks that this bill is a good thing!

Even trans women have come out and said they think it is wrong!

It's truly shameful.

Not forgetting of course that stonewall, mermaids, gendered intelligence et al have been lying about what the law says ie saying that you can’t exclude a man with a GRC from single sex spaces when you can as long as it’s proportionate to achieve a legitimate aim e.g rape crisis services for women, womebs refuges. However Thanks to thar along with the the influence (and frankly threats & rage) of the trans lobby, the vast majority of organisations have been led to believe that it is not possible to ever exclude a TW without or without a GRC from female services.

the Scottish government makes it a condition of funding that women’s organisations include TW and serves are recorded by gender not sex

so Scotland now has a rape crisis services for women run by a TW who does not have a GRC so is legally male. They applied for the job knowing full well it was designated for women using the exemptions in the equality act and yet they got the job, and then went onto tell female rape victims they needed to reframe their trauma

''This creates a hierarchy of need in which men trump women. And women aren't even allowed a word for themselves. This is just straight forward male supremacism entering into law.''

This.

And I will add. Women are not allowed a word for themselves. Women are not allowed a space for themselves,no matter what their needs are. And if a woman protests this she is breaking the law and can be arrested. Women in the law courts have been sanctioned for hate crimes for daring to refuse to say their rapists were women because of a convenient ID change.

And if you want to know what it means practically- check our 'Karen White'. Or even better - this link below, which details many other cases where we are told 'that never happens'

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/this-never-happens

PPs have already made some excellent points which I won't repeat.
My worry is the statistics around male violence against women and girls. If predatory men start to identify as women in order to more easily access women and girls then this will skew the figures, meaning we suddenly don't have an issue with male violence against women .....

In fact, the potential for us to be able to identify inequality and discrimination becomes redundant because the statistics will be meaningless.

Yes, I think that's roughly where I am on the matter @HeadNorth. My problem is not with self ID per se, but with a significant number of natal males, a minority, but still a significant number, who are abusive to women, or to transpeople. Who would take any opportunity to access women, or children, or verbally abuse or beat a transperson up in a men's toilet or changing room, which means everyone ends up in women's spaces, which become rather crowded, and particularly unsafe for vulnerable women and girls. The problem is not people changing gender legally, the fundamental issue is violent, entitled, perverted, abusive men in society, and to consider why we ever segregated men and women in the first place in settings where clothing is removed or people are vulnerable.

They do have to pledge that they will live forever as the opposite gender. There is no explanation of what it means to live as the opposite gender. The example given is to change your name on households bills. In reality there is no particular way of living as a man or a women.

I'm still waiting for a definition of what living as a women looks like. I suspect I'm womaning wrong.

Existing law assumes a GRC has been given after a safeguarding process- an ineffective one where organisations are fearful of enforcing single sex spaces :Karen White, Katie Dolatowski, Edinburgh Rape Crisis- but a safeguarding process of sorts.
Holyrood has changed the parameters by which a GRC can be obtained and has removed what safeguards there were.
So that is why there is a problem. Scottish law has, in effect, messed with UK law.
Discussion of this means more sunlight.

Sorry, that was a misunderstanding. My YABVeryU was to the OP - I don't think it's difficult to understand for anyone why the gender recognition reform is insane.

You are right that it is still legal to provide single sex spaces and services and exclude people with a GRC.

it’s also true that there is no law that prevents somebody entering an opposite sex toilet. Social convention, not the law maintains many single sex services and spaces - so a public toilet will have a notice warning that a male cleaner is in the women’s loos, and young children are usually tolerated in opposite sex loos.

However this new law does change things. The current law is already a mess and mixes ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ without ever defining whether they are used synonymously - probably the drafters just didn’t foresee that the distinction would become more important. However now self ID makes definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ completely subjective.

This is a problem for a few reasons including:

1). It renders equality law meaningless if the groups ‘male’ and ‘female’ have no coherent definition.

2). On what grounds can a biological male with a GRC be refused a placement in a woman’s prison? Do all prisons need to invoke the ‘legitimate aim’ legislation to ensure that they are single sex? Will they?

3. How will possession of a GRC affect the treatment path for teenagers with gender dysphoria?

Meanwhile nobody has ever explained what ‘gender’ is or what is being recognised.

These problems need to be addressed, but Sturgeon’s aim is to create conflict with Westminster, not to create good law.

It blows my mind that the most stereotypical “sensible and practical” nation of Scots, the birthplace of the enlightenment, has passed this insanity.

Apologies for the misunderstanding.

That is one of the arguments. Even if the Equality Act did allow me with GRC's to be excluded from women's spaces and services (which is widely believed to be the correct legal interpretation, but the law desperately needs clarifying), the new Scottish Act has the effect of rendering it impossible to legally define women and men in law (and therefore in policy), by reference to their sex. Instead it will categorise people by sex unless they decide they want to be cateogorised as the opposite sex (for whatever reason), in which case people who are one sex will be forced to share spaces, services and rights with people of the opposite sex simply because those other people want to. The existing GRA is bad enough but at least attempts to ensure that only those who have gender dysphoria are granted opposite sex status and was drafted on the assumption that only transsexuals (those who fully transition to the point of being indistinguishable from the sex they seek to adopt) would want to gain a GRC. The new Scottish legislation dispenses with all that and assets a world where self-declared gender identity can override biological sex. It does not categorise everyone by gender identity (ie explaining what that means and ask everyone to pick a gender identity), but rather mixes the two categories setting up a situation where it is increasingly difficult to use sex based language to refer to sex and impossible to create policy by reference to sex.

There are loads of problems

Also around court for example - of your rapist ‘changes sex’ you have to address them in court as their new sex/pronouns/name or
risk being punished - recently
someone was not awarded compensation due to refusing to do this.

can’t remember the case sorry.

How is this lifelong pledge going to be monitored? Could someone (who?) drop in for an unannounced inspection to make sure your wardrobe is full of skirts and heels and your female name is still on the gas bill? And if you are found to have broken the pledge, what are the consequences? Is it a criminal offence, do you get the GRC revoked?

Basically though TLDR version the category women now includes adult human females and men who say they feel like women (how a woman feels as opposed to a man is not defined). There is now nothing that is for women - everything is mixed sex

Actually just checked and it’s a criminal offence with imprisonment up to two years or an unlimited fine. Still not clear how a false application would be found out, although a “person with interest” can make an application to the sheriff if they suspect an application was fraudulent. Doesn’t look like any proactive checking would be made.

I just hope that this doesn't create a reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Eg you are 16, hate having periods and breasts, don't really like pink or makeup. Fancy girls. Am I a boy?

It makes me feel sick to the stomach & I'm glad I don't have a daughter

Has Lady Haldane stated that the correct comparator for a male with a GRC is a female without a GRC? That makes no sense.

The correct comparator for a male with a GRC is another male without a GRC.

I think they also rejected any sort of data gathering to assess the impact of the Act further down the line. So it’ll be a case of “nothing to see here”. The potential for gaslighting women is huge.

Also they have no means of proving that someone has fraudulently applied for a GRC because no proof is required to obtain one in the first place other than “living as a woman” . It’s going to be almost impossible to police.

There are people in ScotGov who want children as young as 6 or 7 to be able to have a GRC.

When you start doing research into it, it uncovers all sorts of nastiness.
Think very hard about WHO you are voting for next time, not just the party.