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

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

I think both are true. Haldane's interpretation means that the treatment of sex in the EA makes very little sense (although to be fair to her, the nonsense started in 2004 with the "for all purposes" in the GRA). Sadly it isn't uncommon for legislation to fall apart under scrutiny (eg, consumer protection law was completely impenetrable until the Consumer Rights Act made an effort to sort it out).

This absolute mess of conflicting legislation is only going to be sorted out if cases come to the courts that address each inconsistency in full (unlikely to happen), or if Westminster feels sufficiently motivated to change the legislation (possible but won't be quick). Until either today those things happen then we are stuck with service providers interpreting the EA as best they can, and in the face of Haldane's judgment and the "all legal purposes" part of the GRA, we are in all practical terms stuck with the "self ID changes legal sex for all purposes including single sex exemptions" interpretation for the foreseeable future, no matter how egregious the effects of that are.

It's the misinterpretation of the equality act - there should be no need to state that transwomen should not be in female prisons if they have committed sec offences because the equality act allows all transwomen to be excluded as a class from women's prisons

But the equality act is being ignored with regard to sex and then they make it easier for people to get the gender reassignment characteristics

I wonder when is it enough for women to properly protest. Like to the baricades!

Anything that continues this insane trend of denying the real, unchangeable, biological differences between men and women can only be a bad thing. I can't honestly believe it has gone as far as it has. Attitudes that I once thought the stuff of science fiction are being normalised. It truly does feel as though a vocal minority of the world has gone mad, and they're dragging the rest of us along with them!

Good post, @GentlySobbing.

I've been wanting to write to my MP about this for a while but was unsure what to focus on and didn't want it to come across as an unhinged rant.

Maybe this would be a good topic to focus on.

Here is the thread with the petition linked.
Please sign, no matter where you live in UK as this has consequences for all of us. Ask you husbands, friends, neighbours to sign

Petition: Update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic “sex” is biological sex www.mumsnet.com/Talk/petitions_noticeboard/4668426-petition-update-the-equality-act-to-make-clear-the-characteristic-sex-is-biological-sex?msgid=-4668426#-4668426

I completely agree with you. I have changed - I don’t believe that this old dog cant change her spots, late, true, and I’m actually ashamed at myself for that. I yelled at the ‘little bit kinder Scotland’ references the last few days in the SP. Be kind does my nut now too.

I wish the GRA 2004 had never been passed into law. Parliament rushed it through in response to a case the UK government had lost at the European Court of Human Rights. Some farsighted MPs and Lords pointed out many obvious problems, but the Labour government of the time still curtailed discussion on the grounds that this was just a very minor matter that would hardly affect anyone at all. Their advice was that there would only ever be about 5000 GRCs issued because so few people would qualify. That proved pretty accurate but of course what they hadn't grasped was the activists regarded the GRA as just a first step, and lo and behold, here we are with massive changes pushed through in Scotland, dispensing with most of the safeguards from the original Act.

If I self identify as a pensioner can I claim my pension? Sounds ridiculous but when in rome and all that

People don't get it. I don't know why. My gay friends think I'm being really horrible to the nice trans people who just want to live their lives and this is like it was for gay people before. They will not recognise the concerns and just find it offensive so refuse to actually listen. It's so hard as i can't believe they genuinely support what is happening, but even when told, even age 16, even sex offenders they just don't or won't get it.

Maybe show your friends this delightful specimen using the f*** word to insult someone. twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1594430891123564544?s=20&t=suhCzG1mI7xCrt5wwCAMgw Incredibly homophobic stuff.

Then there's Juno Dawson: 'A lot of gay men are gay men as a consolation prize, because they couldn't be women'. www.independent.co.uk/voices/juno-dawson-attitude-magazine-interview-transgender-gay-man-lgbt-trans-woman-a7752701.html

Quite

Can someone link the petition mentioned above please?

@twoandcooplease

Have thought more on this.

I don't understand why men can't accept that some men like wearing dresses and skirts or wearing makeup.

Women have always been accepting of women who have short hair and wear masculine clothing. We have widened our bandwidth of what women look like, within our sex. We have butch women, feminine women, women who wear makeup and women who don't. Women who are engineers and women who are nurses. Doctors, cleaners, office workers and athletes. We share our biology.

Why can't men do the same? Be more accepting of a wider range of what man and men look like. What is it that makes them not want to be male any more or what makes them not want to accept different looking men?

And we are told again and again, 'it will never happen' -

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3348290-It-will-never-happen-resource-thread

Looking at the womens aid website they are saying they will protect female only spaces. I've read through it quickly so may be wrong and am happy to be corrected.
Whole thing is a mess though.
www.womensaid.org.uk/womens-aid-single-sex-services-statement/

Because that wouldn't get them access to women's spaces and sports?

”Women have always been accepting of women who have short hair and wear masculine clothing.”

this is a very rose-tinted view of women’s attitudes towards non-gender conforming women. For example, one of my teachers at school was quite butch (I had a massive crush on her). Other girls were always making jokes about her being a pervert, a dirty lesbian, how they were scared she was going to touch them.

Hopefully the vast majority of them have changed their attitudes as they grew up and times changed, but that sort of view was in my experience pretty common (among adults as well as teenagers) as recently as the 90s, and I’m sure is still around today to an extent.

In England. Scotland's Women's Aid is very different matter.

An elderly relative often talks about her women teachers at school in the 1940s. The generation of educated women who did not marry following the massive loss of men from the population in WW1. They wore tweed, had very short hair with shaved backs, wore ties, used surnames. Still women. No one confused about this at all.

Another relative is now in her 70s and has been all her adult life a full bulldyke. Crew cut, the lot. Very masculine appearing. Again, no confusion. No issues in female spaces.

Different thing to homophobia. Which incidentally is back again: except its now the male centric political movement calling homosexual women 'dirty lesbians' for refusing to provide sex to men. Terribly fashionable.

It means that any bloke can claim he’s a woman to access female spaces. Potentially could rape a woman in a female changing room then wind up in a female prison because that’s how he identifies. It’s dangerous.

They can do this anyway, with or without a gender recognition certificate.

The only difference having a gender recognition certificate will make is that they will be classed as a female inmate and we will no longer have any idea how many men are in women's prisons.

I don't know why more people aren't up in arms about this.

It is not only dangerous it is heartbreaking.

And if we don't smile and budge up we are labelled as terfs, Karens or any number of misogynistic insults.

babyjellyfish I agree.

And if changing gender becomes easy I can't see why any male prisoner facing a lengthy jail sentence wouldn't change.
If you are facing a lengthy sentence in Scotland as a man you will be assigned to one of the prisons that cater to that need, or to a prison that caters for particulary violent criminals.
These men's prisons are horrific. Constant violence, hard conditions very unpleasant.
Scotlan's women's prison is not a holiday camp but the level of violence and threat is a lot lower.
If you are facing a sentence of 20 years- why wouldn't you change gender and be sent to a relatively " easy" women's prison? It is a no brainer for the prisoner- he has little to lose- and a lot to gain.

The current number of male prisoners in scotland is 7600.
The current number of female prisoners in scotland is 228.

I would expect a large influx of "female " prisoners if this becomes law.