Royal College of Psychiatrists Statement

[dorade]

What hope is there when respected scientific organisations uncritically adopt phrases like "sex assigned at birth" and use "two spirit" people as evidence for the need to mutilated bodies to a facsimile of the other sex?

Report here

Yes rat that's why I think it's a problem. Trans people going about their business in contexts that don't affect other groups - all well and good. Trans people trying to rewrite the definition of woman is a problem. Letting your 12 year old eat off the adult menu - no problem. Legislate to change the definition of adult to include 12 year olds - problem. That's when you need to get firm about definitions.

Age remains verifiable, regardless of whether you feel like an adult or not. As does sex, regardless of whether you feel like a man or a woman. So you base your legislation around the verifiable concepts, rather than those that are more nebulous. That's the whole issue here, isn't it?

I don't think we disagree either, I see what you're saying. If we take the starting point of, "putting aside the GRA for one second, the way certain concepts are written in law right now is mostly fine", I guess the GRA then looks like it has the power to subvert those verifiable concepts and replace them with a subjective one - i.e. legal sex change in line with one's gender.

I can see why that looks like unverifiable concepts then being enshrined in law.

There are reasons why I think that isn't a huge problem; mostly because the impact of that change was considered when introducing the GRA, and exceptions written into it where knowing someone's biological sex would be critical. So essentially you can change for legal purposes EXCEPT for sport, medical treatment, residential care etc., because in those cases it would make a difference. Seems like it's been thought about to me.

Secondly there's the fact that this is very rare, and I don't think for a second self-ID would see half the population changing legal sex. The state and national law can cope just fine with a limited number of known exceptions IMO. I'm confident a digression from the purity of "measurable concepts" on rare occasions is totally manageable, especially when doing so brings big personal benefits to a community.

That's just it really - confidence. I'm confident we're all smart enough and sensible enough to manage a little flexibility without finding ourselves completely incapable of protecting women.

With a bit of waffle added to ensure that people who're not female could be squeezed into the definition

Um, the idea was to come up with a definition that would include me and you (female) and transwomen (not female). So, er, yeah. That's what I did.

Surely terms such as "adult" are more akin to gender than sex - society-based descriptions. Someone's adulthood is dependent on the context, their biological age isn't. If a 60yo were asked how old they are & replied 21, people wouldn't believe them. Even if they could produce a passport that agreed, people would be sceptical. The only way someone who appears to be 60 could actually be a 21yo would be if they had a condition that accelerated the aging process. It would be deemed unacceptable for a 60yo to insist they be recognised as a 21yo because some other people have a medical condition which means they look different to their biology.

And I rejected it as nonsense, because women are female and male people are not women. Which, again, you already knew was going to happen, hence disingenuous.

Given how little confidence I have in your judgement (or honesty) the fact that you're confident that everything will be fine isn't very reassuring.

If a 30 year old says that they identify as a teenager, do we let them enroll in high school? How about if they want to date "other" teenagers?

(Not irrelevant in that a trans person just recently made this argument, that it was OK for him to have sex with children because he identified as a child.)

A law where the rights of 33 million people exist in a badly written exemption clause that is never invoked is no law at all.

The safeties you think exist do not.
A right that cannot be exercised is not a right.

Every right granted to a male to become the legal fiction of a woman will remove the right of one or more women whose path he crosses to her own rights.

He literally gains the false right to BE her (female) whilst she loses the true right to be herself (different from him)

Unless trans people live in a vacuum they will be infringing the rights of women every time they tick a box, use a female space, take a position for females, represent females.

Rights should be inalienable. Not something you get so long as you aren't one of the unlucky ones to be affected by that minor legal fiction we created. It shouldn't be a lottery.

The exemptions aren't being invoked, and the current push is designed to remove them. If Labour were to win the election that's exactly what they would try to do.

Not that the original law wasn't terrible, as Barracker said, but even if we were to accept that it was fine (it's not) it's not much use writing in exemptions if attempting to invoke them results in a torrent of abuse and then a quick backing off accompanied by apologies for attempting to apply the law as written.

Given how little confidence I have in your judgement (or honesty) the fact that you're confident that everything will be fine isn't very reassuring.

I don't believe a word that poster says. They have consistently proven themselves to be sly, goady and disingenuous. They grandstand across multiple threads and just waste everyone's time with nonsense.

The exemptions aren't being invoked, and the current push is designed to remove them. If Labour were to win the election that's exactly what they would try to do.

I've said before, it's always enlightening to watch transactivists reaching for the exemptions to reassure women when you know they'd get rid of them immediately if they could.

That's just it really - confidence. I'm confident we're all smart enough and sensible enough to manage a little flexibility without finding ourselves completely incapable of protecting women.

I am not that confident. As others have pointed out, the exemptions are already being challenged. The boundary of what it means to be a women have been redefined and are being pushed back further by self-ID and that is a step too far. People appear to think they are legistlating to protect those with gender dysphoria, but a move to self-ID goes much further.

boundaries

argh woman not women (must edit before posting!)

The boundary of what it means to be a women have been redefined and are being pushed back further by self-ID and that is a step too far.

This is exactly it. I think it's wrong to claim there is any other basis at all for special treatment than other men than their apparently serious medical condition. (And I still believe that it should be possible to have female only spaces) So the medical gatekeeping needs to stay.

I don't believe a word that poster says. They have consistently proven themselves to be sly, goady and disingenuous. They grandstand across multiple threads and just waste everyone's time with nonsense.

Sea lion. Arf arf. I'm not a TRA, honest, I haven't made up my mind about anything, I'm just asking questions...

The original justification for accepting transsexuals in women's spaces was basically look, we all know they aren't really women, but they're very unhappy about being men and wish they were women and also they're all gay anyway so at least they're not going to try to rape anyone in women's spaces, so maybe we can deal with the very small number of them trying to access those spaces on a case by case basis. If any misbehavior happened, women were able to complain and out they went. The fact that they knew that presumably helped to keep any urge to misbehave in check.

Nobody who either grudgingly (or even happily) agreed to the original compromise or who narrowly voted through the GRA was expecting "trans" to go from meaning "a tiny number of unhappy, effeminate gay men" to meaning "anyone who says they're a woman, including the ones who're kinkier than a corkscrew and who get off on flashing or voyeurism, or who're just MRAs excited about finding a new way to bully and intimidate women". Nobody though it was going to mean Eddie Izzard, ffs, or Stefoknee the kinky 6 year old grandfather. If they had the GRA would never have passed in the first place.

Sea lion. Arf arf. I'm not a TRA, honest, I haven't made up my mind about anything, I'm just asking questions...

This! It's uncanny...

If any misbehavior happened, women were able to complain and out they went

The problem is that there is potential in the proposed changes to the GRA for any complaint by a woman about a transperson's behaviour to be positioned as "hate speech," so the complainant, rather than the transperson misbehaving, could be prosecuted.

Oh yeah, the current law is shit too, and more open to abuse in the current climate than when it was passed. Less insane than self-Id though in that I'm not sure how anyone without a severe head wound or a vehement hatred of women could think that was a good idea.

The problem is that there is potential in the proposed changes to the GRA for any complaint by a woman about a transperson's behaviour to be positioned as "hate speech," so the complainant, rather than the transperson misbehaving, could be prosecuted.

YY. The CPS implied exactly that in the awful "anti bullying" schools pack they wrote with Gendered Intelligence.

The problem is that there is potential in the proposed changes to the GRA for any complaint by a woman about a transperson's behaviour to be positioned as "hate speech," so the complainant, rather than the transperson misbehaving, could be prosecuted.

Agree. Have to say, as a relative newbie, I find these posters you call sealions help me to get the arguments straight in my own head tho...

See, Rat? You're actually helping to turn people away from rather than towards the nonsense that you're attempting to promote.

Bit of an own goal, that, but I guess it's hard to aim well when bouncing a ball on your nose.

The problem is that there is potential in the proposed changes to the GRA for any complaint by a woman about a transperson's behaviour to be positioned as "hate speech," so the complainant, rather than the transperson misbehaving, could be prosecuted.

Which neatly brings us back to Rat asserting that their voluminous experience of drafting legal text saw no problem in legislating for something called gender identity without ever defining with clarity for the law what gender identity is because, you know, different people might mean different things.

But then subsequently agreeing that a clear definition of adult was definitely needed for the law even though we sometimes use that terms in different ways in everyday life.

This would lead us to Angry's conclusion...

Sea lion. Arf arf. I'm not a TRA, honest, I haven't made up my mind about anything, I'm just asking questions...

Angry

I don't believe a word that poster says. They have consistently proven themselves to be sly, goady and disingenuous. They grandstand across multiple threads and just waste everyone's time with nonsense.

Sea lion. Arf arf. I'm not a TRA, honest, I haven't made up my mind about anything, I'm just asking questions…

I'm a newbie and I find @RatRolyPoly is measured, reasonable and refrains from personal attacks.

Rat - is that you?