Also is it now the case that anyone, anywhere, can just wake up one day and decide to call themselves a woman ? does this mean they will be able to go into female only places like women's hospitals, girls changing rooms and such?
That’s what all the fuss is about. There’s a proposed change to he law that would allow people to ‘self ID’ - and if that goes through, then yes. Men will just be able to do that.
And you won’t be able to challenge it, because that will be a hate crime.
This is why an awful lot of women are trying to get this in the news - right now the groups pushing for this are trying to get it in quietly under the Radar. They want all mention of sex replaced with gender, which means nothing and will erode the sex based protections in he equality act.
It will also impact heavily on child safeguarding - for example a male bodied teen could share sleeping and Washington g facilities with girls and their parents would not be informed. A girl who objected would be ‘re educated.’
Here is a good introduction: sages.org.uk/publications/sages-factsheet.html