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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Government response to the petition...

255 replies

LazyTuesdayAfternoon · 05/06/2018 16:30

I don't know if there's a thread about this already, sorry if I've missed it.

What do people make of the response?

It seems quite proportionate to me but, as always, I guess the devil will be in the detail...

OP posts:
Thread gallery
11
MandSBrokeTheLaw · 05/06/2018 18:27

One thing is for sure, once upon a time I would have stood with Trans people to fight for their own spaces - no more!

I would have helped them too, not now, they can fight very well as they showed us, for themselves.

IfyouseeRitaMoreno · 05/06/2018 18:28

Think about it, when legal sex is not based on someone’s actual sex then the legal concept of sex based rights (that underpin the whole of women’s rights) becomes a nonsense. If we allow a birth certificate to become legal fiction, sex based rights and sexism becomes undefinable.

This seems to be the loop hole. Single sex means nothing if it’s based on identity and not biology.

Wanderabout · 05/06/2018 18:31

I am concerned about what may happen if Corbyn gets in as his views are very different. Sad to say, I'm a leftie and desperately disappointed in my Party of choice!

There is no way Corbyn is going to win an election sticking by the nutty 'transwomen are women and I just look at the person in front of me' line. There's too much awareness of the issues with that now, and with cases like the risk of self-iding sex offenders and all the great manfriday stuff more people are understanding what this would actually mean.

Labour are going to have to have a serious rethink on their line on women's obvious questions and concerns, or they are going to look like dangerous loons. The polling data shows the vast majority of voters are against self-ID. They need a sensible line on this or they are unelectable.

Ereshkigal · 05/06/2018 18:31

The whole stupid law is a nonsense.

KittyPerry77 · 05/06/2018 18:32

DoctorW Thanks for setting things out so eloquently. So are you saying we need to try to repeal the law that issues birth certs and passports in the acquired gender? That's never going to happen is it? So what's to be done then?

Ereshkigal · 05/06/2018 18:33

You don't need the GRA to get a passport in the wrong sex, astoundingly.

R0wantrees · 05/06/2018 18:34

Labour are going to have to have a serious rethink on their line on women's obvious questions and concerns, or they are going to look like dangerous loons. The polling data shows the vast majority of voters are against self-ID. They need a sensible line on this or they are unelectable.

Its a cross party issue.

GibbertyFlibbert · 05/06/2018 18:36

"Its a cross party issue."

It's certainly possible it will go to a free vote.

KittyPerry77 · 05/06/2018 18:39

You don't need the GRA to get a passport in the wrong sex, astoundingly.

How big a security risk at airports is that? Would it not be very easy to have Sex options of M/F/mtF/ftM on passports?

GibbertyFlibbert · 05/06/2018 18:39

This sounds rather threatening. Have I misunderstood?"

Not threatening at all. Just a prediction that if femists end up turning spaces into unisex spaces they will not be popular with most women.

thebewilderness · 05/06/2018 18:40

In my earlier comment I meant DL and passport not Birth cert.
Sorry for any confusion.

GibbertyFlibbert · 05/06/2018 18:46

"How big a security risk at airports is that? Would it not be very easy to have Sex options of M/F/mtF/ftM on passports?"

In what way is it a security risk?

MtF and FtM are not sexes.

RatRolyPoly · 05/06/2018 18:48

That response is something I could have written myself.

In fact I think it basically is what I've written on many a thread.

Take the fight for proper implementation of the Equality Act to the public and private institutions as relevant. It's got nothing to do with the trans community and poor implementation/poor safeguarding of women by service providers is not reason enough to moot self-ID.

thebewilderness · 05/06/2018 18:49

"If you’ve changed your gender, send DVLA one of the following:

a deed poll
a statutory declaration
your gender recognition certificate"

Name changes can be effected the same way.
A deed pole is not a contract because it only involves the intent of one person.

BarrackerBarmer · 05/06/2018 18:50

Or, to look at it from the other side of the coin:

The rights of the entire female population of the UK - 33 million - to be

  1. recognised in law as biologically female
  2. acknowledged as fundamentally, permanently and irrevocably different from males
  3. afforded the right to spaces in the absence of all males
  4. acknowledged as the biological group for which all such rights were designated

those rights - the entirety of ALL rights for ALL females- now reside in a tiny little exemption clause buried within a piece of legislation called the Equality Act 2010 which must be
a. invoked on a case by case basis (and yet currently is not)
b. justified to men in each of those cases.

That clause, that little exemption that says FEMALES have rights that apply to us and to us alone, is the ONLY part of the law where our actual rights remain.

The rest of our laws that reference 'women' that we assume apply to females, don't. They apply to anyone male or female who claims the word woman. Whether the process for men to claim they are women is onerous or not, is just housekeeping. Rights referencing 'women' thus are not female rights at all. They recognise nothing, they protect nothing. They are worthless and meaningless. That's the sleight of hand that comes from altering the meaning of words that we absent-mindedly wrote into law without a proper definition, because we never imagined that there ever could be any such perversion of their obvious meaning. You write a law for females, you use the word woman, but then you make it so that men can become women. And presto. There is now no such thing as a female, no recognition of them nor rights for them as a group.

That 'exemption clause' is the only place of recognition of and rights for females remaining anywhere.

It is the only part of all of our laws that allows us to distinguish ourselves from the opposite sex. And we are hardly allowed to use it.

So I'm not feeling especially secure right now, even with that lovely governmental reassurance , when they say that there's a tiny part of the law remaining that is literally an EXCEPTION to the rule of men getting to overrule me about who I am and who I am allowed to be.

Our rights have already gone. The exemption is a relic that need not be abolished formally, because in practise it is nigh on impossible to invoke it successfully.

We barely exist now so far as the law is concerned.

R0wantrees · 05/06/2018 18:53

Re DVLA changing sex/gender, #ManFriday:
(extract)
"This was really important. I had no wish to lie on an official form. I was not changing my sex, I was self-identifying a gender identity. I really felt affinity with masculine stereotypes when I signed the form.

So, for the price of a second class stamp I waited to see what DVLA would do…

Roll forward three weeks and my new driving licence arrived! Really…no…they wouldn’t…surely not? Check the seventh character, and it’s zero! I’m officially male – with the same feminine first name, and the title Ms."

manfridayuk.org/2018/04/20/self-id-and-driving-licences/

Ereshkigal · 05/06/2018 18:56

Just a prediction that if femists end up turning spaces into unisex spaces they will not be popular with most women.

We're not asking for unisex spaces. So you know what you can do with the predictable emotional blackmail.

GibbertyFlibbert · 05/06/2018 18:58

Once again, please desist from the use of the term TIM. It is abusive and should not be used

Ereshkigal · 05/06/2018 18:59

Take the fight for proper implementation of the Equality Act to the public and private institutions as relevant.

Yes we will do Rat thanks. We will remind them, and the media, and the public of their obligations to women and girls. Possibly with some class action and judicial review. It has everything to do with the misogynistic demands of trans advocacy groups and we will work to make that very clear.

thebewilderness · 05/06/2018 19:00

Feminists are not responsible for the GRA or the EA that are prompting business and organizations as well as government agencies to go unisex.
Transgender advocates and MPs did that.
If you count noses I do not think you will find many Feminists in either of those groups.
1st rule of misogyny coming from you is no surprise.

spontaneousgiventime · 05/06/2018 19:01

GibbertyFlibbert I've said this 1001 times before but I'll say it again, just for you. I will NOT be party to a legal fiction. A man is an adult male, a TIM is a trans identified male. Therefore I am telling the truth when I call a man who presents as woman as a TIM and I will continue to do so.

thebewilderness · 05/06/2018 19:02

GibbertyFlibbert

If they are not TIMs they are men committing a crime.

Ereshkigal · 05/06/2018 19:02

Don't you presume to tell women what to think or make us walk on eggshells and voice Orwellian lies against our will. Male people were born and will die male. You are being abusive to women.

Ereshkigal · 05/06/2018 19:05

I am so angry that idiotic politicians in 2004 have put women in this position where we have to concede to abusive male power trips.

Terfulike · 05/06/2018 19:08

TIM. It is abusive and should not be used

It is wholly appropriate, and, as Barack so eloquently wrote

Our rights have already gone.

So Ill exercise my right to call a TIM a TIM