picklemepopcorn, I agree entirely.
To me if you 100% believe you should be a sex other than you biologically know that you are then the first thing you should be doing is go see a doctor and find out if there is an actual reason you innately seem to believe this.
It pretty obviously appears to be a disorder of something - body, mind, genetics, who knows - as it is not the normality you see around you so pretty early in life you figure out you are out of step and must want to find out why .
So go find answers and the best way experts believe that you should fix it. Not to do that just does not make sense to me, but it is now what seems to be the plan for all.
When Theresa May stated that she accepted being trans was not a medical matter I thought something is very wrong here - either my whole life so far is going gaga - or her understanding of this is misguided. So it was time to find out which.
The more I look the more it seems obvious that there are two different things involved here.
One is medical - as in physical or psychological but clearly recognised by the person as being an anomaly - and the other some kind of desire to self express with more freedom in your personality.
Possibly they could be different expressions of the same thing filtered through very different social eras. Because today's social media driven, free thinking and quite litigious generation is very different from the 50s and 60s where I grew up trans and you were who you were and you were taught to do what adults said and trust doctors to resolve your problems rather than lawyers.
Or they could actually have entirely different causes because I do see major differences between transsexuals who largely accept biology and want to transition physically and once done so feel no longer trans and just want to get on with a life interrupted. Hence no real push for rights until the turn of the Millennium. Britain being not in front of the queue here by any means.
And on the other side today's activists who want to redefine every word in the dictionary to suit and invent needless terms like CIS (which I only accept in the sense that my mum was a CIS woman as she once worked for the Coop Insurance). And change the world to suit them not adapt themselves to fit the world.
Not up to me to decide what those differences mean but they do stand out to me. And unfortunately there are few of us and an awful lot of the latter, hence what you see out there in the media. Especially as we are conditioned to keep our heads down.
A transsexual will fully understand we have NOT changed sex as that is biologically impossible. We have been socially accommodated in our identity in a mutual pact where we change physically as much as we are able, blend in and get on with life and demand nothing.
For 31 years of 45 post transition I had no legal recognition and never expected any. I saw the GRA as a formalisation of that mutual understanding, no more. Not a signal to change the status of women or a demand for words to be altered or a new reality to be imposed.
The new breed of trans identifiers seem to want all those things for nothing in return and seem argumentative and insistent and not willing to budge much for what seem very reasonable concerns expressed by women. Many of which I share.
There seems a huge lack of give and take and a lot of talk of changing how everyone thinks. I do not find that helpful or likely to achieve anything but mistrust.
Is this just a different generation, different way of thinking?
Or is it a hard core of those with a rare problem of still unidentified origin willing to do anything to fit in and get on with a quiet life versus a social revolution someone, somewhere is pushing to ride the coattails of a little confusion between the application of the GRA and Equality Act?
Just asking that question, not answering it.
Either way moving from 6000 with a GRC most of whom have fully transitioned physically and seem not that eager to get involved in any fight is a giant leap to 600,000 asking for one without any medical or psychiatric assessment or period in which to prove sincerity and permanence of transition and that this transition actually has worked and not left them much as they were before.
All of which seem pretty fair safeguards if you expect to be given a very different status in the world.
You do not have to be a feminist to worry about the potential repercussions on many aspects of our society.
Simply waving it through is not good sense for anyone.