I sent an email to Justine Greening saying I was glad she was taking more time over the GRA decision. I put forward two objections to self id. One was the philosophical one, that if we define "woman" in the way the trans movement wants us to then we are rolling back decades of feminist struggle against the oppressive culture of essentially masculine/feminine ways to dress and to behave. The other was practical - if you remove the "gatekeepers" so that any man can legally become a woman for any reason, then you can't keep out men from women's spaces, regardless of whether they are really transwomen or not (whatever that may mean).
Here is the - anonymous! - response from her office. It doesn't address the first point at all, and as for the second, I don't see any real response to that either, just a lot of twaddle. The "guidance for service providers" that they link to is all about supporting TG people and nothing at all about maintaining any sort of single-sex provision, except this one paragraph: "You may only treat people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment differently regarding access to services reserved for their self-identified gender if you can
demonstrate that the way you have approached a situation is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’ and so is objectively justifiable. You need to be able to show that there is no less discriminatory way to achieve the aim." This is so vague and the threat of being accused of discrimination is so ever-present, I think this would prevent most people from daring to ask anyone of the wrong sex to leave anywhere ever.
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Thank you for your email, addressed to Justine Greening, regarding the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). I am responding on behalf of Justine Greening, Minister for Women and Equalities.
The Equality Act 2010 allows organisations to provide single sex services. We have no intention of changing the safeguards that women’s single sex services already have in place to protect vulnerable women.
We recognise that the provision of single sex or communal facilities is a particularly sensitive issue and have therefore previously issued guidance for service providers. This guidance can be found at www.gov.uk/government/publications/providing-services-for-transgender-customers-a-guide.
In regards to your point on prisoners, all transgender prisoners must be allowed to express the gender with which they identify. There are already strong safeguards in place to ensure prisoners who may be a risk to other prisoners are dealt with appropriately and a robust risk assessment protocol is in place to ensure that transgender prisoners are located in the most suitable environment. Decisions to locate transgender prisoners in prisons that do not accord with their legal gender can be made only on the recommendation of a Transgender Case Board.
We will consider how reform of the process of gaining a Gender Recognition Certificate might impact upon prisons and these risk assessments will be considered as part of the GRA consultation and Government Response.
We propose to run an open consultation on how best to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004, and want to hear views from all stakeholders, including women’s groups and refuges. We have already began consulting with a range of women’s groups so we can better understand their concerns. We will continue to do this throughout the consultation process.
Thank you for taking the time to write to us on these important matters.
Kind regards,
Government Equalities Office