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

Absolutely.
If I was a male prisoner and I had the choice of a male prison or a female prison, why wouldn't I choose the female one?
I'd have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.
I don't get why the 'be kind' brigade can't see it?

If the EA2010 were used as permitted we might not be having this conversation but there are far too many examples where it is not and women suffer as a consequence.

Brighton Rape Crisis runs supports groups for men, trans people and women but the women's group is not female only. Imagine a rape crisis center not offering single sex support groups. Anyone would think that women are a minority group when it comes to rape. In practice this means that a transwomen could attend all three groups but there is no space for female rape survivors to seek support in a male free environment.

Job adverts can specify sex if there is a genuine occupational requirement for the post holder to be one sex or the other. Edinburgh Rape Crisis used this exception to sex discrimination laws when they advertised for a new CEO and then gave the job to a male WITHOUT a GRC.

If the EA2010 were used as permitted we might not be having this conversation

Yes.

And if there was the faintest trace of respect or compassion for female needs we might not be having this conversation.

But in reality we all know that any women's place stating they dare to provide a female only space? It's rats nailed to the door and screaming about genocide time.

JK Rowling's new service - in a sea of mixed sex women's provision - would be the one and only place the excluded females could use for help. And the TQ+ lobby are doing their absolute best to either get males in there or destroy it.

So no. The exceptions do not work. Nothing about this works for the half of the human race who are female.

Absolutely.
If I was a male prisoner and I had the choice of a male prison or a female prison, why wouldn't I choose the female one?
I'd have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.
I don't get why the 'be kind' brigade can't see it?

I agree - and this is a one way street. I can't imagine any female prisoners changing gender in order to serve their sentence in a male prison.
Just a case of- "budge up ladies and remember to smile."
Just because hundreds of dicks attached to violent men are moving into your unit- remember these are lady dicks, and we must be polite.

@Blueberrywitch sassy I think it's partially shit stirring with the U.K. government. It will cause all major of problems where we have two separate processes.

Agreed.

If trans activists were content to fight for better protection and provision for trans people without taking anything away from women, this debate would not be raging the way it is today.

But it's not enough for them to be provided for. They must have everything. Women must not be permitted to have anything that excludes them, whether it is a changing room, a rape crisis group, prison accommodation or a sporting competition.

Stonewall, which receives huge sums of money from the taxpayer, actively lobbies rape crisis centres and local authorities NOT to provide single sex services. But JK Rowling's new service will not receive any taxpayers' money, because she has deliberately not registered it as a charity, precisely to try to protect it from this kind of interference.

And that's why the Equality Act now needs to be amended, to say, "Yes, trans people, you have a protected characteristic, but biological sex is also one and this has nothing to do with gender." And the exemption allowing certain organisations to provide single sex services should in some cases - such as rape crisis centres, for example - become a positive obligation to provide them.

There are a total of 20 trans women housed in the female prison estate in the whole of the uk. Obviously you think that’s 20 to many, but it’s certainly not hundreds. Having a GRC does not automatically mean being placed in the female estate, so there’s no reason to think an increase in the number of trans women with a GRC would affect that number.

There's 11 in Scotland alone. Including this delight -

news.stv.tv/west-central/scottish-prison-service-criticised-for-moving-trans-woman-katie-dolatowski-to-cornton-vale-stirling

@aseriesofstillimages and stats show that 50% of transwomen in prison are sex offenders so which 10 lucky women have been locked in a cell with a sex criminal?

Trans women with GRCs are not counted in the statistics, so nobody knows how many there are.

In Scotland, following this new law, any male prisoner could get a GRC just like that, be transferred to the women's estate, and the statistics could show that there are zero trans women in women's prisons, even as female prisoners continue to be raped and sexually assaulted.

Obviously, the number of male prisoners in the women's estate should be zero.

Has anyone mentioned the fact that a male sex offender can acquire a GRC and get a new birth certificate in his chosen new name, which then won’t show him up as an offender in a DBS check.
This relies on the sex offender being honest and offering up his past name.
What could possible go wrong?

Having a GRC does not automatically mean being placed in the female estate, so there’s no reason to think an increase in the number of trans women with a GRC would affect that number.

I really don't understand your point.
So "women" won't be placed in a woman's prison?

Yes, exactly. Because of the exception in the EA, a trans woman, with or without a GRC, can be excluded from a single sex women’s service/space. The EHRC guidance makes this clear.

it’s amazing how many people here believe that a person having a GRC means they cannot be excluded.

luckily we remember how much time stonewall et all have spent training organisations telling them that should not exclude TW from women’s services under any circumstances. They called it “getting ahead of the law”. They have constantly and consistently misrepresented the law in this area with entirely predictable consequences

In reality though the funding has already been captured and government funded provision has already filtered these places out. Hence why JKR had to fund a new female only centre recently.

Not sure if a PP has already mentioned this, but the law will also make it virtually impossible for female HCPs, Police Officers, Prison Officers etc to refuse to perform intimate searches on male bodied prisoners who declare themselves to be trans.

Those in custody should not be searched by an opposite “sex” person so, unless one of the on duty male officers decides to game the system too, by declaring himself female for the purpose of the search (where he’d be putting himself on dodgy legal grounds), then one of his natal female colleagues would have to do it.

I can only imagine how many male prisoners are going to try that one on, once it becomes common knowledge that they can do so.

Males have certainly been placed in women’s prisons and there’s not reason to think that they won’t continue to be, and in those greater numbers that this Bill will undoubtedly facilitate, particularly given the amendments that have been voted down.

The fact that males can be excluded from female spaces offers no reassurance that they will be, since institutions don’t have the knowledge or stomach to take on lobbying groups and activists who operate by misrepresenting the law, threatening people and other nefarious means.

I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing, or to try and ‘win’. You raise issues that need to be considered properly and objectively. But it doesn’t help anyone if you go around confidently believing and stating things that aren’t true - such as that it is not legally possible to exclude a trans woman with a GRC from a single sex service.

The vast majority of trans women in the prison estate are housed in male prisons, which suggests otherwise.

I love the term vast majority for a population that is meant to be so small we shouldn't be concerned about them

You are probably true as it takes sone time to get transferred and only the most serious offenders are in prison long enough to get through the process

Having a grc will speed that up

The vast majority of trans women in the prison estate are housed in male prisons, which suggests otherwise.

You state that with such confidence, I assume you’re relying on published stat’s to back up your assertion?

The same stat’s, one assumes, that FOI requests have revealed aren’t routinely being recorded…?

aseriesofstillimages

such as that it is not legally possible to exclude a trans woman with a GRC from a single sex service.

With regard to the new legislation/proposals, can you post links or references. I would hate to be in a state of ignorance.

So considering the type of criminal that has been allowed in women's prisons what's the criteria for exclusion then?

OneTC like you I have not seen " criteria exclusion"

‘Vast majority’ refers to proportion, not number. If there were ten trans women and 9 were in the male estate, that would still be the vast majority of them.