Consultation on Self ID to progress

[Pratchet]

Whatever is motivating these female MPs to undermine women's rights, the battle to preserve our spaces is about to get very busy indeed.

A woman is an adult female human, of the sex that gestates and bears young. I am Spartacus. Women rise #wegotthis

I think we have to be persistent and pragmatic and organised. We don’t need MPs to particularly understand or agree especially with what we are saying. That’s going to be too much to expect from some MPs. We just need them to vote against gender self ID.

We need to tell MPs the facts and the issues. Repeatedly. In large numbers. they need to hear this specifically from local constituency people. From a cross section of the local electorate do they know this is unpopular across their whole voter base.

If the MP does understand and agrees with a gender critical position that’s a fantastic bonus. But many of them won’t give a shit about women, but they might decide not to support legal gender self ID coming in eg because they are worried about losing support from a large local religious community who may have religious practices which require men-only or women -only spaces. If on that basis alone that MP opposes gender self ID then, that’s fine. It all helps.

MPs all want to keep their seats. They will be very worried about pissing off a massive cross-section of their electorate if they are getting a big postbag from load of local women, local sporting clubs, local religious groups, local trans people, local men’s groups, local children and young people’s groups etc- all telling the MP that they don’t agree with self ID.

This is why we need to talk and make links way beyond our own political groups to raise awareness and to get anyone worried about this to contact MPs saying that bringing in legal gender self ID is wrong and give their reasons.

We need to get in the media and make the case on as big and as mainstream platforms as possible- Daily Mail etc. This can’t be written off as some niche thing that ‘only feminists care about’ or seen as some kind of hard-to-understand legal concern that the policy people can sort out, nor assumed to be the last bit of the gay rights struggle that needs to be sorted out legally against bigotry..

Chatty you make excellent points.

I am concerned that they framed it as a competition with countries that are ahead of them in rolling back women's rights.

Can I suggest a two step process?

Before the consultation is published, we shoudl continue to talk about the issues raised and make explicit reference to the forthcoming consultation. And when writing to our MPs we should be explicit that we expect the consultation to be a full public consultation - this bit is important, because we want a full, bells and whistles consultation that meets the agreed Government guidelines, particularly about being a genuine consultation and allowing adequate time for responses. TBH publishing over summer is a bit shitty - it's when stuff that needs to get buried gets put out, as journalists and others who might prove the detail tend to be on holiday. Twelve weeks is the minimum time period that the consultation should run.

Once the consultation is published, obviously we need to see what it says and consider the best way to respond to the questions asked. I'd hope that the obvious interest groups will be aware, but we should all make sure that bodies such as professional organisations and large employers are also aware. We need a diverse range of respondents, not just lots of enraged TRAs and Mermaids

We should also respond as individuals - even though our responses are less likely to be read by decision-makers, the volume of responses (including selected answers to specific questions) will tell its own story

on holiday

We have tech.

waddyagonna do by the pool? Read Munroe in Grazia?

I think I'll see my MP again as Chatty suggests. It was surprisingly good last time. I'll also arrange meetings with local councillors and tell them they better start telling the MP she will lose her seat if this consultation is a fake and self ID gets through on the back of it.

Olennas thanks for link. Ok so the Cabinet Office guidelines via that link say you should consider adding more time if you are eg consulting over the summer holidays. Secondly that you should include an impact assessment. There are different types of these.

Impact assessments in government consultations are often very badly done by civil servants. They are not always specialists and may not be given time to get to understand the issues or who only listened to a few points from select lobby groups.

ICO- the data regulator- have guidance on privacy impact assessments.

ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1595/pia-code-of-practice.pdf

‘What do we mean by privacy?
Privacy, in its broadest sense, is about the right of an individual to be let alone. It can take two main forms, and these can be subject to different types of intrusion:
 Physical privacy - the ability of a person to maintain their own physical space or solitude. Intrusion can come in the form of unwelcome searches of a person’s home or personal possessions, bodily searches or other interference, acts of surveillance and the taking of biometric information
 Informational privacy – the ability of a person to control, edit, manage and delete information about themselves and to decide how and to what extent such information is communicated to others. Intrusion can come in the form of collection of excessive personal information, disclosure of personal information without consent and misuse of such information.
It can include the collection of information through the surveillance or monitoring of how people act in public or private spaces and through the monitoring of communications whether by post, phone or online and extends to monitoring the records of senders and recipients as well as the content of messages.’

I would say both areas are potentially relevant.
Privacy-physical- eg maintaining the right to single sex spaces which bringing in legal gender self ID would erase.
Privacy- informational- you could make the case that eg legal self ID breaks the link entirely between sex-based public record keeping and the biological sex of the population, so it would render all public statistics referring to sex unreliable and redundant. There must be equality duties to collect these statistics.

There are also equality impact assessments which would be massively relevant here although the duty to consider these has been downgraded by the government since they were first introduced.

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06591

Chatty: the government should be consulting with GG members instead of GG management, and with WA 'users' instead of WA mamagement, sportswomen and parents of sportswoman rather than sporting organisations. How can it be ensured that this happens.

David Cameron decided that equality impact assessments were no longer required... as part of doing away with unnecessary red tape

David Cameron decided that equality impact assessments were no longer required... as part of doing away with unnecessary red tape

They still exist though and are just given a different name - eg there is usually a section headed 'equality impacts' in consultation documents. They still have to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty.

There are also equality impact assessments which would be massively relevant here although the duty to consider these has been downgraded by the government since they were first introduced.

In what sense? I don't think they have been downgraded, although again it's really just a procedural requirement again unfortunately. There's a Court of Appeal case which confirms that the Government can acknowledge that a policy will totally screw people over and as long as they have thought about this before making the decision then they will be complying with the duty.

Pratchet absolutely agree.
a consultation like this should normally be open to anyone to respond to, so we can start talking now to as many Guides families and volunteers as possible so they know what the issues are with bringing in legal gender self ID.

It sounds like some of the Guides discussion boards/online groups haven’t wanted to allow gender critical discussion so the alternative is I guess word of mouth and using the GG annual general meeting or any formal opportunity that GG members have to raise points in front of each other. With the change in chief executive there may be more of these opportunities.

Then when the consultation opens we have to keep prompting everyone who is worried about this to submit their responses in the limited time that is given (normally 12 weeks). + write to their MP to say they have done this and make their points again.

One more thing if it’s reassuring to anyone who is worried to use their own name when responding to consultation/writing to MPs:

-consultations often have a box that you can tick to say whether or not your happy for your name to be used, or for your response to be quoted, in the reports they write.
-your personal information (like your name and address which you should give every time you write to your MP, so they know you are a constituent) when they are given in correspondence with your MP, remain confidential between you and the MP’s office in any of the circumstances I can think of that would be relevant here.

They have been downgraded in the sense that the equality duty is for general consideration not specifically considered by completing the assessment as originally required.

Thank you Ally and Chatty

I do see that a duty to complete an assessment is not a safeguard of any meaningful outcome but the public sector people I know who have mentioned it said having to sit down and work through an EIA used to highlight issues which doesn’t happen in that step by step way any more.

In all debate, gender critical voices have to 'go high'. Transactivists have got everyone believing the lie that they are victims.

They have been downgraded in the sense that the equality duty is for general consideration not specifically considered by completing the assessment as originally required.

I can see the cause for confusion but honestly in real terms it's just a change in the form of the document that the civil servants use to record the impacts. The duty is still the same - legislation here if you're interested www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/149
And they do have to have some kind of document recording the equality impacts (even if it's not called an Equality Impact Assessment since the edict from Cameron came down) to prove that they have complied with the duty, because otherwise the Government would lose every Public Sector Equality Duty challenge.

And in fact there has been one quite helpful case which has made the duty more difficult for the Government to fulfil. There's a Court of Appeal case where the Government released a ridiculously positive document addressing the equality impacts of a policy and the Court basically said that it wasn't good enough. They do have to acknowledge if people will be screwed over.

What I'd be really interested to see though is a case where women's right to privacy under the Human Rights Act is put up against transwomen's right to privacy. That would be substantive rather procedural. All the cases so far have only considered the rights of transpeople afaik.

Really good points being made by everyone.

I'm going to book an appointment with my MP - I've written several times already and has successively less hostile responses each time. Best to book before consultation is announced or after, tactically, does everyone think?

Amending the GRA is a red herring. We already effectively have self id via the Equality Act.

We need to be concentrating on ensuring that the sex protections in the Equality Act are fit for purpose and can be invoked without putting institutions at risk of vexatious litigation.

Our focus should be on getting women to be vocal about how we need these protections and that any political party that ignores the problems with them will lose votes.

I think we need to provide the government with evidence of what will happen if women feel their safety is compromised.

What about asking Penny Mordaunt to FWR?

We need to be concentrating on ensuring that the sex protections in the Equality Act are fit for purpose and can be invoked without putting institutions at risk of vexatious litigation.

I agree with this.

Allowing self identification and normalising men who say they are women being legally classed as women in virtually every way undermines the whole basis of sex protections. We need to fight it or we will lose those too.

Is this a dual effort:
-stop legal gender self ID and maintain GRC system under the existing GRA. (No to legal change)

• create legal awareness and the social climate where equality act provisions can be exercised freely to protect single sex spaces, services, sports, opportunities, awards etc under the existing legal provision (no to legal change)

?

The equality impact assessment for the Scottish consultation was total shit.