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[DonnaBe]

Mumsnet has been invaded by a small group of people who are giving out wrong information about the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

They claim that women’s spaces are being invaded and women are being silenced. Please read this and make up your own minds!

A gender Self ID law – like the one proposed in the UK - was recently introduced in Ireland. To change your gender on government records, you need to sign a Statutory Declaration in front of a solicitor and declare that you are living in your acquired gender and intend to stay that way. This is a legal document.

Self ID has not caused problems in Ireland. This is the kind of thing that is being proposed in the UK. It's about making a statement under oath about your acquired gender.

It has been claimed that anyone will be able to claim to be the opposite gender whenever they want. Not true. Nobody is proposing that big blokes with beards can say “I am a woman today” and have legal protection to use women’s loos. If they were, I would be campaigning against it. That is absolutely not what is being proposed

The group behind this campaign are not new. They have been conducting anti-trans campaigns for many years. I don’t think their agenda is women’s welfare so much as expressing their hatred for trans people. The self id proposals have given them an opportunity to attack trans people. Again. They claim they are being silenced, but their views are regularly aired on TV and in the newspapers. And on Mumsnet. They have a right to speak, but I wish they’d tell the truth.

Believe it or not, this all starts with a discussion about marriage. Before 2004, trans people could not marry or stay married because there was no legal way to change the gender on their birth certificates. There was no same sex marriage back then.

The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 introduced the ability to stand in front of a Gender Recognition Panel (cost £140) and get a Gender Recognition Certificate which allowed you to change your birth certificate and get married! This is a bureaucratic arrangement that involves an element of body policing which is not nice.

The proposal now is to replace the GRP / GRC arrangement with a legally binding statutory declaration. Or something like that. That’s all. No whimsical notions like “It’s Friday. I’m a woman today.”

In fact, you can now get married if your transgendered under same sex marriage legislation. So getting a GRC is less relevant. I don’t know if there’s any research on this, but my feeling is most trans people don’t bother getting a GRC anyway.

So this is how things stand today:

There is no law banning men from women’s toilets and changing rooms. There’s only an unwritten rule. The recent Man Friday campaign where women invaded men’s toilets could have the contradictory effect of weakening this rule and end up harming women. The logical conclusion of their campaign is body policing with guards on women’s toilets and women will have to prove their gender before having a pee.

Trans women already use women’s toilets and changing rooms. I do. Nobody notices. I don’t make a song and dance about it. There is no slackening of the law defending women’s spaces because there is no such law. We get on fine without it.

The Gender Recognition Act makes exceptions for things like women’s refuges. These exceptions should be used where appropriate. Already law. Not changing.

You can live in your non-birth gender already. If you pass as that gender well enough, you just do it. You don’t need a law or certificate to do it. Thousands of people live this way and nobody is harmed by it.

I think it's good to talk

Oh me too, every thread like this does sterling work in peaking more people. Go for it OP.

Is there a campaign to repeal the GRC?

@ReluctantCamper

Nope. I'm new so I don't have much Kudos. Also I'm not a mum. This is not my place.

But a small group of people are spreading lies that harm me. What I wrote is the truth.

I don't think kids should be forced to undress in front of ANY other kids. Same gender or not.

Lovely. So I expect you'll immediately be starting a tour of England, Wales and NI to install cubicles in every school PE changing room in the land?

Let us know when you're done.

Chop chop.

@CorbynTrouserPress

There is no campaign to repeal the GRA. Not that I know of.

DonnaBe :
It is trans organisations (and only them) that are in schools telling children precisely this . See here:

www.transgendertrend.com/who-is-making-policy-for-schools/

DonnaBe

An analogy to your post would be that rape is now illegal. You don't have to worry about it.

The women here, most of whom have been on this site for years and years fully understand what the law says. There seems to be an impression that the feminists here are new. We're not. We've been talking about this, here, for years. Especially since Maria Miller published her report.

We know that a gender recognition certificate is only really useful in terms of prisons and all women shortlists. We also know that the Labour Party have given men identifying as women, women's roles, without one. Breaking the current law.

Many transsexuals do not want the criteria of the gender recognition certificate to change. They believe that gate keeping, assessment and commitment is very important. Both to address their condition of gender dysphoria, and make a distinction between them and people who might acquire one without it.

What the proposed changes to the act have done is highlight the way the equality act is being exploited.

Trans pressure groups are instructing schools and organisations, with one sided and biased information. The impression given is that gender reassignment as a protected characteristic trumps that of sex, and sexual orientation.

When it doesn't. There are exemptions in place which are not being invoked. Partly because misinformation about them is being disseminated.

Hence Swim England taking down their guidance after the #manfriday campaign.

Hence Girl Guides doing the same.

Girl Guides had been left with the understanding that 14 old boys had to share tents and showers with 10-year-old girls and parents were not to be told. Thereby removing not just the act, but the concept, of informed consent.

A Woman's place UK wants the exemptions to the act to be beefed up and widely disseminated.

At the moment, trans-activists are going out of their way to exploit the equality act, in any way they can.

Being able to acquire the legal fiction that men are women, has led to the persecution of lesbians and given rise to the lady penis aspect of the cotton ceiling.

Men who want to exploit this law are doing so. Competing as women in sports, rapists been transferred to female prisoners, 19-year-old male bodies people becoming women's offices and claiming they can get pregnant and targeting people who disagree.

If the proposed changes and the realisation of how the equality law can be exploited wasn't enough for concern, the reaction of whole swathes of misogynistic bullies determined to target women, is.

To understand how women are being silenced, threatened and subjugated over this issue, the link below exposes transactivism for what it is.

This isn't about transsexuals. It never has been.

This is about making a distinction between them and transvestites/cross dressers/autogynephiles and the men's rights activists who are attracted to the movement as a means of intimidating women.

crikey @DonnaBe you are green. there are many women here who aren't mothers. there are even gasp some men, although they generally know better than to make a big deal of that in their posts.

This can be anyone's place. You just have to be prepared to hear some opinions you don't like.

Donna, are you a woman? If so, in what ways are you and I both women?

I am not anti trans. I want sex segregation to continue to be based on sex, so that sex protected spaces for changing and sleeping can continue to be provided.

I think some TRAs are antitrans and homophobic, judging by the effect their aggressive behaviour is having on people's perception of transwomen.

Gender is a social construct

Yes it absolutely is. And a damaging one at that.

Sex isn’t though.

How do you get to the conclusion that acknowledging sex differences leads to biological determinism and women's fate being controlled by their hormones and reproductive system? Can you explain your thinking here as it seems a bit muddled?

@ReluctantCamper

Trans women already use women’s toilets and changing rooms. I do. Nobody notices.

I couldn’t let this pass unremarked. We do notice. Women are very adept at spotting transwomen and read them as male, most of whom who do not pass nearly as well as they think. This is because women have to constantly assess situations for risk, particularly when they are in settings where they are vulnerable to assault. Up until now women have been tolerant and accepting because it is widely assumed these transwomen are post-operative transexuals. When the wider public realises how wide the trans umbrella now is and that increasing numbers of transwomen without bottom surgery are using women’s sex-segregated spaces, attitudes will harden because that is not the arrangement existing honour systems were based on and the risks of harm are increased. It won’t be just women sounding the alarm either - most men with children, particularly young daughters, understand the risks of opening up women’s spaces in this way.

Donna, it sounds as though you have only been listening to one side in this discussion. You haven't read around very widely, and seen both perspectives.

Oh, and before you jump in the statement above, it is not transphobic - how are women to tell the genuine transwomen with no ill intent from the chancers and predators?

@DonnaBe , no I'm not because I'm not proposing to change changing for PE from a single sex to a mixed sex activity.

@Lemonjello

Gender is a construct of both biology and society. Which one we are determines how we behave and how we are treated.
Different societies treat genders differently. The gender roles we see in modern western society are not universal either historically or geographically.

To deny society is make women prisoners of their biology and to consign us to being brood mares and drudges. And it is evidentially wrong.

Some of us have had HRT and surgery. If I wanted to 'change gender', I could have done that without all that stuff. My bodies' chromosomes are still XY but I have done a hell of a lot to get my body as closely aligned mentally with what I need it to be.

Well, exactly - so it's pretty disingenuous for OP to talk about sex and gender being different, how this is a gender recognition thing, and sweep under the carpet that actually it's about legally changing sex.

That's called bait and switch.

If it was just about gender, then I agree, you don't even need a piece of paper for that.

If you had written, 'I am a transwoman and I don't really understand what your concerns are. Can you please explain them to me?' I would have had a lot of time for your op. I think there would have been a good discussion.

Instead you come on and tell us we're not capable of thinking for ourselves and dismiss our concerns as groundless. If I needed any further evidence that women and transwomen are not the same then I have it right here, so thank you for that at least.

So do we actually know what will be allowed under English/Wales law?
Can you point us to Thebes draft law

I understand that everything is up for discussion

Ireland allows for differentiation based on sex in some cases.

Some people in the U.K say that that all differentiation should be banned.

Some people in the U.K say that the new laws should prevent us tracking if there are any detrimental effects to women ( or to transwomen)

I don't care how people want to live provided it is in a way that does no harm to others

I do know that some victims of rape would find being examined/investigated/cared for by a biological male traumatic in a PTSD type of meaning

I do know in Canada it took 10 years for a women refuge to be allowed to exclude a transgender person

I also know that some people want to give teenage girls surgical and hormonal treatment. as a teenager, I would have been an obvious candidate for this in today's climate. It would have been unbelievably bad thing to even discuss as it would have made it harder again for me to understand my place in the world, to accept myself as I am and to understand that the bias was an problem of society not me

Thebes? The!

@ReluctantCamper

Neither am I. It was awful as a same sex activity.

All that is being proposed is a change to teh way you get a gender recognition certificate.

Don't be disingenuous. This proposed change comes with a backdrop of global societal changes and trans lobbying for policies which benefit them and are to the detriment of women and children.

They come with a backdrop of an outrageously biased "trans Equality enquiry" which disregarded all negative or merely cautious submissions and recommended all the exemptions women have to protection in intimate spaces from trans identified males should be abolished.

Thankfully the Tories no longer seem to be so gung ho about it and Brexit stopped the proposed new legislation in its tracks. But I have no doubt that if Labour get in as things currently stand they will move to remove these.

The word woman has become meaningless as it must always include males. Schools are seeing an upsurge in young girls identifying as boys, so many of them are autistic, or lesbians. Schools and healthcare professionals are adopting a confirmation only approach which can leave a healthy child sterile. Female sport includes males and women are coming second or staying at home. Girls are advised to undress in front of males even though sexual assaults against girls are increasing at a frightening rate. There is an agenda that wants girls and women to have zero boundaries, to never be able to say no to boys and men. Do you think girls have too many rights?

Don't come on here and accuse women of making this shit up. we are seeing these changes in our schools and kids clubs. We are seeing gender non conforming children pushed towards trans. Gender stereotypes and sexism is increasing and we are losing the language we need to challenge this.

There are misogynists who are given political representation that was reserved for women. So we lose a female voice and gain a misogynistic one. This is not progress, it is sexist, homophobic nonsense.

So if gender is a social construct then...what makes someone a woman if not biology ? Feelings I assume ? But which ones ?

I’d really like to know because I’ve never had any feelings in regard to my womanness. I just exist as me. And happen to be female.

if you don't accept that you end up with biological determinism and women's fate being controlled by their hormones and reproductive system. You end up harming women.

Recognising the real consequences of having a female reproductive system does not harm women as the consequences can’t be avoided.

Claiming that being female has something to do with an innate female identity or describing women as ‘cis’, implying everybody has a gender identity, is offensive and wrong.