Unintended Consequences of Self-ID Proposals

[Winewinewinegin]

It is becoming increasingly clear to many on here that the implications of Self-ID are far, far wider to groups outside the trans community than seem to have been picked up by MPs and trans-focused groups.

I thought it would be useful to capture some of these (feel free to link to other threads that list them) here. These could be things you have noticed already happening, or things that you are concerned about happening if the change in law goes ahead.

I didn't know that thebewilderness

Do you have a source?

Cementing traditional gender roles and characteristics - being a woman/girl will be about wearing a skirt, having long hair, behaving in a feminine way, preferring dolls and ballet and fairies to dinosaurs and rugby and diggers.

The Equality Act is not being changed by this government so the single sex exemptions will stay as they are. These exemptions allow exclusion of men AND transgender people - having a GRC makes no difference. They can still be excluded because they are trans despite being legally female.

Gender Recognition Reform only matters if a policy is based on legal sex status - like in prisons. Its the single sex exemptions we need to fight for. Gender recognition Act reform will not mean single sex spaces will become banned. GRA reform will impact sex based monitoring, All women shortlists (a sex based positive action) and prison locations (policy based on sex)

fairplayforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/EA2010_womensrights_-factsheet.pdf

Thank you for this. I've been discussing this with my 18 year old daughter, she's very intellectual and can't see any issue with self id at all. She has a couple of trans friends so she's not unaware of trans issues. But she is being very belligerent in trying to understand the potential wider issues (I've only been enlightened fully by reading here) so these arguments here are useful to me, help me debate with her further.

And personally? I've cancelled membership of my 24hr gym and I didn't sign up for a "women in nature" course or attend a women's march because I knew the very names would be a magnet for a MRAs.

Provision of services by local authorities / nhs. If the percentage of teenage ‘girls’ becoming pregnant drops (because the cohort of teenage ‘girls’ physically able to get pregnant reduces) then teenage pregnancy services will be deemed less necessary. True for other service provisions too. Scary.

Here is the study, but the location within the school of most assaults is glossed over. Personal testimony of the victims is where I noticed that they seemed to be more carefully planned than expected with some boys guarding the door for their partners in crime. Recently one school in the US removed all the doors from the children's restrooms in an ill thought attempt to reduce assaults.
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmwomeq/91/91.pdf

Residential trips. In school and in extra curricular organisations. There is no way I would want to organise a residential with some children expecting to be segregated by gender, not sex. The additional costs that can arise as a result of needing more supervision, more rooms etc...

What will be taught in biology or anthropology courses in schools/Universities? Are we to raise generations of kids that will have their science courses based around 'feelz' rather than actual factual science.

Which then in turn affects research. CharlieParley had a post about her DH doing research that was tainted by an XY being added to women's only study. It almost destroyed the study until they found out. This was a study that could help with women's health!

Young people will not learn the lessons of gaslighting, they won't learn consent.

I’m extremely concerned about safeguarding.

I work with children. I’m legally obliged to report suspicions of abuse, including pending FGM and potential kidnapping for forced marriage.
There are known cases of a parent falsely claiming a child suffers from allergies or illnesses and using this to cause a child harm, either by withholding food or by making them undergo unnecessary medical treatment. Daniel Pelka is one extreme example.

Will we be able to raise concerns about children being manipulated to trans? I don’t think so! I think we’ll be accused of transphobia and told we have to move with the times.
Therefore, how can we stop FGM if the parent says it’s their culture and the child has been conditioned to agree to it?

I’m also very concerned about the effect Self-ID has on strict religious communities. Again, it’s the girls that will drop off the radar because we will never see them after puberty. This is already a problem and it’s going to get worse. How can I protect a child from a forced marriage when I don’t even know she exists?

I’m supposed to raise concerns about Witchcraft - a number of abuse cases have centred around this.
If we accept that some people were born into the wrong body, how can we logically challenge someone who believes that an entity has possessed their child?

It's the slippery slope towards people having to accept and play along with other falsehoods or potentially end up on the wrong side of the law.
It opens up the doors to mass mind control and fear of thought crime.

The most fundemental right to observe and speak the truth will dissolve.

Negative consequences on lesbian culture and communities have been noticed by many. Including shutting down of female only lesbian groups, dating apps, culture and other spaces. Thread with more info here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3199220-Lesbians-and-the-Trans-debate?pg=1&order=

That is a major concern to me, SexMatters. Codifying belief into law is so very 2+2=5. It has been done before and never ended well.
This has been my question from the beginning:
Can you mandate belief?
Can you codify into law the idea that some people can mind over matter themselves out of material reality and into the opposite sex, and must be treated accordingly?
It is like transubstantiation. A belief that no one actually believes.
Will you allow people to drug and mutilate children based on this belief that no one believes?

Another post on implications for lesbians, including worries from some in the community about lesbian erasure due to over enthusiastic trans ideology:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3146166-Transactivism-and-the-lesbian-community

Excellent thread on issues for female health and disability:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3188880-Anyone-want-to-talk-about-sex-gender-and-issues-of-female-health-and-disability

It is the slippery slope to other forms of self id - transracial, transabled, transclass etc. Oppressed groups will no longer be able to name themselves or organise out of the watchful/domineering presence of the oppressor.

Follow on legislation could lead to shutting down research and critical thinking about the best interests and treatment of those exploring their gender identity - e.g. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3201424-Terrible-Bill-against-gender-identity-conversion-therapy-proposed-in-Ireland

Instilling a sense of entitlement in boys/men to intrude upon/use womens private spaces, when we are needing to teach girls and boys to have and respect boundaries.

Opens the door to a further path of confusion between sex and gender with gender fluid, which would seemingly allow people to call themselves women one day or moment and men another, and act accordingly. This would surely make a complete nonsense of any rights for women as protected in law? How would we even know which gender someone was at any legally relevant point except by asking

Implications towards all human rights. If women lose rights by unintended (or intended) results this undermines the principle of all rights.

This leaves it open for lobbying via social media to close debate through harassment and intimidation and to create false impressions of public opinion.

It sets a precedent to try and remove all rights. The ECHR is already being eyed up by the right. The far left will do the same in the name of not going far enough to protect the most vulnerable in society and how the ECHR limits this.

Also it encourages further lobbying to enter into medicine and erode it being led by evidence based medicine.

Women's health in particular will suffer as most ideology in medicine in the uk currently surrounds womens health.

It will further restrict research in certain areas deemed 'politically sensitive'. All you have to do is create a narrative which makes certain areas gain this label. This works for both left and right. So breastfeeding and abortion become the battle grounds for both, whilst women caught in the middle of such a debate get shat on, as those campaigning don't really give a shit about them. Its just about winning an ideological argument.

Also medical consent gets ridden rough shot. Again there are dangers from both the left and right. Which politics focuses on ideology actual patients aren't listen to and the reasons why they are vulnerable are silenced more than they already area.

The problem when you start fucking with language and start insisting that black is white, is that people don't actually believe it. This creates hostility. And if you silence this with intimidation and harassment you create a culture where all debate dies. Not just in the thing you first arguing about but in all topics. Trans is a gateway to totalitarian style government. One where whistleblowers are the enemy and transparency is a sign of weakness and debate is promotion of hate.

Orwell didn't write primarily to make money. He wrote to warn us.

Health care and medical research is the obvious area for me

I doubt that even the most ardent TRA wants older TIMs to die from prostate cancer because their medical records fail to report that they have a prostate (and therefore should be called for screening and the disease be considered when reporting typical symptoms). Or want clinical trials for HIV anti-virals or heart disease or antidepressants to be rendered useless because of the inability to have clear male and female test groups

Plus, if clear records are not being kept, how will we know the long term effects of various hormone treatments and surgical interventions? both positive and negative?

What if it turns out that having a double mastectomy before the age of 25 offers significant protection for women against severe osteoarthritis in later life? What if taking spirolactanone (female hormones) in combination with certain other drugs offered protection against developing Alzheimers?

This has been an interesting read, I hadn't considered some of these.

It will impact on some women feeling able to access health care as no guarantee the same sex clinician they request will actually be a woman. This will impact women depending on their religious and cultural rules as well making it less likely women who have suffered abuse will feel able to attend
It will have huge implications for HCPs who will be bound to treat someone according to their identified ‘gender’ instead of their biological sex. Effectively making the first rule of medicine ‘do no harm’ very difficult