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

Oh so that's OK then. Not enough children been molested by trans identified sex offenders for you then? The likes of Katy Dolotowskihave been given a free pass to women's prisons and we should all stop clutching our pearls.

And lets not worry about the vulnerable kids who are going to be put on a path to transition in Scotland which will remove their sexual function and render them infertile. Let's not think about the fact that many of these children are disabled, neurodiverse or living in care.

True, but I see that as just a continuation of everyday misogyny. Part of the general package that society throws at women. By which I don't mean that it should be ignored, but that it isn't exceptional in itself.

Telling female prisoners that they are now to be locked up with male sex offenders, and they are liable to get further sentences for hate crimes if they express any fear about this, is a different kettle of fish. It's an off-the-scale abuse of human rights. It needs to be objected to in the strongest possible terms.

Does it though?

The EA specifically envisages scenarios where sex does not include legal sex, i.e. it acknowledges that there is a difference between the two.

Either Lady Haldane is wrong, or the EA needs to be amended to ensure that biological sex is a protected category.

You can't fight for Women's Rights when "women" don't officially exist.
This is basically woke version of Taliban.

I’m not anti trans people, I’m pro women’s rights and safeguarding children, it’s that simple.
As it said on our banner yesterday Safety Dignity Privacy.

I don’t think sunlight matters anymore. Not with a twisted electoral process and politicians with an agenda.

sorry yes

It is not anti trans to point out that at least 122 sex offenders have identified as trans. .

This is the evidence that Nicola Sturgeon refused to listen to instead accusing those who wanted to raise it of bigotry.

Not all that long ago I was unaware and probably of the ‘be kind’ attitude. However, and I can’t remember what, why or when, but my eyes were opened and once you see and question, you can’t unsee. I am just sorry I was so late to become aware. I am also left leaning, labour voting environmentalist, so have found myself conflicted in agreeing and being thankful for the Tories in this issue. Hopefully the sunlight on it can only be a good thing.

Yes, it's beyond grim that they rejected an amendment to prevent sex offenders from being able to change their gender - and therefore their identity - more easily.

Because it's more important to validate sex offenders' imaginary identities than to be able to verify their actual identities, eh?

@babyjellyfish its indefensible

This is grim for Scotland. I think Sturgeon may have overplayed her hand though. While the whip ensured that it was supported by the majority of MPs (shame on them all) it is not popular with the electorate in general. I know many independence supporters who no longer support the SNP and would welcome Westminster intervention on this. Which will surely now come.

The "be kind" nonsense does my nut.

Who is it kind to?

Not women - the female kind.

Not children and young people who are struggling with various mental health issues and have got caught up in this.

Not gender non conforming young people who are now being encouraged to believe that if they don't fit a certain stereotype they are probably trans.

Not harmless trans people who have now found themselves at the centre of a culture war which is making a lot of people start to question whether they should actually have some of the rights that they currently have.

So who benefits?

Men who want access to women's spaces. And privileged people who don't need to worry about prisons, rape crisis centres, refuges or even public toilets ot changing rooms, since they will never need to use them, but get to look cool and woke by having the right opinions.

I am one of these scots.
These legal changes are not democratic.
I hope Westminster does intervene.

Women just don't matter.

We don't exist any more in Sturgeon's Scotland.

The refusal to address genuine concerns of survivors of abuse, the Geneva Convention on Human Rights, The Cass Report , the will of the people of Scotland (two thirds of Scots opposed the Gender Reform Bill) etc , is illustrative of the fact that the only people who matter are the male ones.

And if this is simply politicking then women are just collateral damage to Sturgeons bigger agenda. It's abhorrent either way.

This.

Of course it’s going to be “super rare” because going forward there will be no requirement to audit or record this, which was one of the amendments voted down.

It will now be a case of “look away”, “nothing to see here”, “it didn’t happen”.

Classic gaslighting.

Not gender non conforming young people who are now being encouraged to believe that if they don't fit a certain stereotype they are probably trans.

Yes- it is dangerous, and in fact deepens gender stereotypes.
This is all making the situation worse.

I remember as a child feeling "odd"- I much preferred helping my father fix the car or bulld a fence than decorate cakes or knit with my mother.
At school I gravitated towards science subject, and still though there was something a little "wrong" with me.
I did wonder if I should have been born a boy, but back in those days there was no talk of trans.

Looking back it was sad that I felt like this- the only thing that was odd or wrong was the gender stereotypes - those were warped, not me.

I don't know what trans people are aiming for- a warped and charicatured image of womanhood, all kitten heels and false lashes.

Your initial take on this is what the SNP, TRAs, Stonewall etc want you to understand. However they lie, obfuscate, hide, or in SNPs case utterly ignore, the realities of legally/globally replacing sex with gender - which is what they are attempting to do!

Put as simply, bluntly as possible: gender recognition will, already does, override sex as a protected characteristic. This leaves no effective right to single sex spaces, same sex intimate care etc.

This leaves women and girls with no effective, immediate, automatic safeguarding against any man who chooses to "present as a woman".

Think that through. In order to remove any man from a female space women would have to appeal to an organisation, the law. Any male wishing to enter a female, single sex space would not have to do anything, be vetted, have a piece of paper, a certificate etc.

The assumption, the law, expectation changes from single sex spaces being single sex to them being used by whoever wants to. That makes a total mockery of all safeguarding and many equality laws.

Basically it requires a change of thinking. This would mean that men are automatically accepted women in law and women would have to make a legal challenge to maintain any single sex space.

Utter madness.

I don't know what trans people are aiming for- a warped and charicatured image of womanhood, all kitten heels and false lashes.

The more charitable explanation is that performing feminine stereotypes is the only way they can signal to the world that they are women, because a male person wearing jeans and a t-shirt just looks like a man, unlike a female person wearing jeans and a t-shirt, who doesn't need to "pass" because she is, and therefore looks like, a woman no matter what she wears.

The less charitable explanation is that it is a sexual fetish, and I don't see why the rest of society should be expected to accommodate or participate in that.

I have young boys and my 10 year old goes to the mens bathroom unaccompanied (my 6 year old comes with me)

if I had young girls instead and my husband had taken them out I would be very warey of allowing my children to use the girls toilets unaccompanied - who knows who could be in there now

God it's depressing.

I had comments removed off a women's page recently as I commented on a post expressing that I didn't agree with trans women competing against women in sport.

My comments were removed, so as not to offend our trans women members.

This is a women's specific union page and a woman can no longer express an opinion on it 🤦‍♀️ basically women are being silenced.

I recently entered a local 10k and had the pleasure of competing against a transwoman.

I was determined he wouldn't beat me. But he beat plenty of other poor women. Women who may have finished in the top 10 or top of their age category etc.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but every response I’ve read so far has either been misleading or outright false.

The EA allows single sex services/spaces to exist (and not be unlawfully discriminatory on the basis of sex, despite excluding men, or women, as the case may be) in certain contexts, as long as they are a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim. The EA also provides that such services are not unlawfully discriminatory on the basis of gender reassignment, if they meet the same test.

So a women-only service or space can exclude trans women if it is a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim, regardless of whether the trans woman has a GRC or not. The recent court case that held a trans woman with a GRC is a woman for the purposes of the EA does not alter this.

In many ways it's the fact that trans people expect to access these spaces and want women to prove that they should be excluded that is the real problem

Buy making it easy to change gender without clarifying that it's gender not sex simply makes it harder for women to object

By making it easy to change gender it actively promotes gender as a real thing whereas it's a cage used to hold women back and make men suffer in different ways

@Chesneyhawkes1

Why is it that we cannot be allowed to express any opinion which may offend a trans person, but it doesn't matter if we are offended?

Personally I find the very idea that a woman is something a male person can just "identify as" deeply offensive.

If being a woman is just an identity then the implications of that are that we are to blame for the pay gap, for our own street harassment, for having FGM performed on us, for being made to wear the hijab, for being underrepresented in business and politics, because we are women because of how we choose to identify, not because of what we are. It implies that we could avoid all of these things and benefit from the same privilege males enjoy, if we all just decided to be men instead.

No. It doesn't work like that.

Being a woman is a material reality, not a costume you can choose to put on or take off.