On HFs twitter feed, someone posted about selfid saying.^ "It means swearing a statutory declaration that you are living as a woman (and there are legal consequences if you lie), changing your name and documents, telling friends, colleagues, family"
There are no legal consequences. Because it's also written that you can change your mind. 'Non-binary' is also included under the trans umbrella and is consistently pushed by trans activists as a legitimate trans status. (It isn't, at the moment in terms of law).
Which means you can be a woman one day and a man the next. See Philip 'Pip' Bunce, the highflying Credit Suisse executive, who does exactly that. And won a 'top 50 women in business' award. Before all this happened, he would simply have been called a cross dresser.
In Ireland, only 230 people have a gender recognition certificate. It's a negligible amount. If they have this certificate before they are imprisoned, they go to a female prison. They're not allowed to transition in prison and then be transferred. Unlike here. Transitioning in prison here is beneficial, whereas in Ireland it isn't.
Hence male born people like Karen Jones claiming the only reason they attempted to rape a woman is so they could go back to prison and get onto the treatment programme to transition.
The main problem here is that people are talking about two different things.
Self identification in order to get a gender recognition certificate. And gender reassignment being a protected characteristic under equality law.
The first will benefit people mainly in terms of prison and all women shortlists. Very few trans people have a gender recognition certificate (1%). You need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. And many of them don't have that. That's part of the problem.
What's happening is that men who don't have gender dysphoria and don't have a certificate are exploiting the equality law.
The furore around self ID is only connected to that in terms of highlighting how it's being exploited.
Under equality law you simply have to say that you are trans. The way it is worded allows it to be that woolly.
It doesn't mean you get to female prisons (unless you are assessed on a case by case basis) and it doesn't mean you can go on all women shortlists. (Although the Labour Party have ignored this - hence the crowd funder to challenge them).
It does mean that you are protected under the equality act for other things.
When the equality act was written it was assumed that this protected characteristic of gender reassignment would only apply to genuine transsexuals who have gender dysphoria. But since it doesn't specify, it means that anyone can use it.
Hence people using it to play on female sports teams, enter female locker rooms, change Swim England guidelines, Girl Guide guide lines, school toilet segregation, etc, and claiming that the word woman is discriminatory.
This is an exploitation of the law. Not a following of the law.
The law (both EA and GRA) was designed to help people struggling with a diagnosable medical condition. That is, and this is crucial, incredibly rare.
It wasn't designed to help transvestites, autogynephiles, cross dressers, 'non binary' people or simply men who like to intimidate women, to target everything to do with women.
The drive to talk about self ID, does indeed muddy the waters, because self ID is only part of it.
Equality law is the part that is really doing the damage.
There are exemptions written into the equality law specifically to make sure that women can retain their spaces, should the need arise. They didn't expect the need arise like this, though. They weren't expecting this amount of people to claim they are trans.
So the exemptions quite vague and narrow. The wording is 'a proportionate means to a legitimate aim'.
I.E excluding a transwoman from the Marks & Spencer changing rooms must be proportionate means of action, to achieve a legitimate aim.
They were not expecting numpties like Travis Alabanza, who identifies as a 15-year-old girl on nights out, to insist he changed with the teenagers at top shop, despite the sales assistant saying but there are naked girls in there.
Topshop doesn't understand that they can legitimately exclude him. But they have to first cite the relevant part of the equality law, then be prepared to back it up, in court if necessary.
Much easier for them to change the changing rooms to unisex.
And that's how it happens. Is happening.
None of this has been tested in court. And the exemptions are simply not being used. Anywhere.
One of the driving parts of a A Woman's Place UK initiative is to beef up those exemptions and have them widely disseminated to retailers, organisations, schools, etc.
But, at the moment, it's a losing battle, while transactivists target everything to do with women. Hampstead women's pond, bra fitting services for teenage girls, lesbian restaurants, all women gatherings, midwife forums, girl guides, anything that has the word woman/girl in it.
This is why you will find women arguing the toss over every single part of the trans ideology means.
This is why they will patiently and relentlessly expose every single time the law is exploited.
The equality law was not written so that secondary schools get targeted by 50 or 60 different transactiivists to force them to allow a boy in the girls' toilets. Leaking the story to the newspapers and splashing it all over Twitter to pile on the pressure.
Transactivists know this, full well. They know they are exploiting a loophole. They don't want women to talk about it, because as soon as the general public understand there will be uproar.
Hence #nodebate and the relentless targeting of women who speak up.
Like me. Here. Now.