Follow on thread III - Feeling sad and weary that feminists and trans-women are constantly pitted against one another.

[SophoclesTheFox]

I don't know if it has the legs to sustain a third thread, but kudos to perfectly for the impeccable timing of finally answering a question on the second to last post before the thread filled up. Genius.

here is the second thread

As I am now the OP, I wonder if this gives me the right of veto over the resolutions that we apparently made in the Great Accords of 2017?

I know it intends to, Erishkigal, but if the legally accepted definition of "woman" changes, then the exceptions can't apply, can they?

There will be no legal difference between a woman and a transwoman.

one of those requirements is becoming pregnant

If we redefine 'woman' as meaning 'woman or man' then it is not beyond the realms of possibility to redefine 'becoming pregnant' as being 'with someone else's womb'. That will probably be the next step.

So 'woman' will eventually be redefined as 'giver of birth'. That is all we are. Wombs.

Maryz and Teardrop, I don’t think either of these are particularly likely IMHO.

The way the law currently works, if you get a GRC you are treated as the opposite gender for most purposes going forwards. It’s not retroactive, so legally a trans woman was born a man and has not always been a woman. Importantly, transwomen are also only legally treated as being the same as women to the extent that the law provides, so if the Government wants to create any law which only applies to women who are not trans they just have to say so in that law. There’s not a fixed list of exceptions to the GRA, you would just need the particular law that you are creating to say something like “This shall not apply to anyone whose gender is female as a result of being issued with a GRC”.

I understand that there is consideration being given to make it easier for people to get a GRC, but to my knowledge no one is seriously considering changing the way things work as set out above, nor would it make sense to do so.

The courts seem to have reacted quite sensibly too so far. For example, there was a recent Supreme Court cases (summary here www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2016-0062-press-summary.pdf) where the judges said that it was fine for DWP to keep data on whether someone’s gender has changed and the courts shouldn’t interfere.

I think there is a useful discussion to be had though around safeguarding (especially if getting a GRC is going to be made much easier) and how to deal with the emerging conflicts between the rights of trans people and women. I thought I should add this as I don’t think I have stated where I stand on this in my previous posts.

@Speedy85

Is there a definition of 'woman' that also includes 'transwomen' but doesn't include 'men'?

And that doesn't include the term 'women', obviously.

@ATeardropExplodes are we talking a definition in the law or something else? To my knowledge, there isn’t a law somewhere that says a woman is [...] and a man is [...]. The GRA 2004 provides that someone who gets a GRC should be treated generally as their assigned gender, although I don’t think it defines those terms and is fairly badly written (conflating sex and gender etc).

As mentioned in my post above, given that trans women are generally treated for the purposes of the law as a woman if they have a GRC, you would have to explicitly say if you were creating a law which applies differently to trans and non-trans women. There’s probably not a convenient accepted word for non-trans women, which is why you would probably refer to the GRC to differentiate the 2 groups as mentioned above.

are we talking a definition in the law or something else?

A definition in law would be a start...

The difficulty we are having on all of these thread, Speedy, is that transwomen are now declaring they are women, and they seem to be being treated as such, without bothering with surgery, hormone treatment or legal namechanges, much less a GRC.

For example, The Labour Party specifically says that their women's officer roles must go to women, but have appointed Lily Madigan (no "transition", no "legal name change", no GRC, just self-declaration of feeling like a woman) .

If that is legal, then surely that's showing that legally "woman" now includes "transwoman".

Following on from that, transwomen are now also saying they are "natal women" - as in women from birth. That too is being accepted.

Any challenge to these new definitions is seen as transphobic.