Would you back self ID if...

[daimbars]

Once a trans women got their GRC they had to wait a period of time (say 5 years) before they were able to have the same rights as all women? For example they would only be able to apply for a job as a women’s officer, appear on a female only panel or to compete in women’s sport after five years of lived experience as a woman?

Someone I know is meeting with her MP to discuss how to propose this legislation. She thinks it will address possible repercussions from self ID and stop it being abused. I thought it was an interesting idea I could get behind.

@Kettlepotblackagain

This link and screen shot may help. The answer is yes, there are exceptions in the Equality Act that state trans women with a GRC still don't have the same rights as all women in some circumstances.

www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/gender-reassignment-discrimination#lawful

But that's what I thought already.

I just interpreted a post earlier as they also had protection of sex with a GRC, which I was unaware of. This surprised me as I thought that was what they were fighting for.

fairplayforwomen.com/legal-basics/

Under UK equality law a women is defined as a ‘female of any age’’^ and the overwhelming majority of women are legally female by virtue of birth. However, a small number of male-born people (a couple of thousand) are also technically defined as women having legally changed their sex classification to female by using the legal powers of the Gender Recognition Act 20044^. There is also a third group of people, also male-born, who self-identity as women. Self-identification currently confers no legal status and these people remain legally male and therefore men by definition.

From FPFW link.

That link is very helpful. Thank you.

That makes sense. So legal sex is female. But even then there are exceptions...

So actually we are not necessarily arguing that gender reassignment is currently trumping sex in priorities for discrimination, we are saying legal female versus female is the problem. But of course that overlaps with gender anyway...

Legally they aren't a woman.

Legally they have the right to be treated as if they were a woman.

@peakpants how could any system work on looks?

@homefromthehills 'Regardless of what you think of me as a transsexual this is one place where our interests coincidence. We need to press jointly for the right things that are achievable.'

I have long felt transsexual women and women have a common cause. This horrible situation has made me feel very uncharitable. You have reminded me that we need to work together.

Ok, so it may still be possible to exclude men identifying as women, even with a grc, as it is now, and as it will be with self id. This will quite likely continue to be applied to some prisoners, and could theoretically be applied in womens refuges. But it remains to be seen, whether any refuges will have the nerve to apply this possibility.

It is not possible to exclude males legally having the status of females from all women short lists, or e.g. scholarships earmarked for women, women in stem programmes, women quotas etc. Only people with a GRC can currently be included as women in those situations (except for in the labour party, as they have declared themselves above the law), but with self-id, this will change drastically. That does not seem good enough, at all, to me, and I will continue to be against self-id.
I do think though, that it would be appropriate to create refuges for trans people, including self-id’ed, unless trans people have reasons to exclude self-id from there. I also think trans-only shortlists for political representation, in proportion to the proportion of the population identifying as trans, would be appropriate. I realise these are not options being fielded in the debates politically, but they should be.

How else would it work Italian? Really? If you manage to fool everyone that you are a woman, nobody will be any the wiser and nobody will pull you up on it. If you don’t look like a woman, people are likely to ask questions. There is literally no other way of doing it. Whenever I use female spaces, I have never ever been asked to prove that I am a biological woman (which of course I am). If I was born male but looked the same as I do now, I also would never get questioned. If however I was born male and transitioned but still looked male, people might challenge me and I might get asked if I am a trans woman and that might get me excluded from eg a DV shelter.

I would be interested in how else you would imagine it would work. Short of having tattoos with our birth sex visible to everyone, people just go on how someone appears. Realistically relatively few people are genuinely confused for the opposite sex.

I agree...
'Should be possible to broaden that access to, for example, refuges or sporting bodies in doubt over anyone asking for entry.'

And

'If the GRA is opened up to anyone self IDing into it then I would not be anywhere near so confident.'

@peakpants they want self Id because they want to be legally recognised as women. Once they have that, for very little effort, what will they do? Can anyone be sure they will not use their legal status as women to insist they are exactly the same as natal women?

There are moves to update the Equalities Act. I went to a meeting about it today. There is a thread on it here. Can anyone be sure what that will mean for females?

I don't trust anyone who wants to encourage self id. It will not help females.

For example they would only be able to apply for a job as a women’s officer, appear on a female only panel or to compete in women’s sport after five years of lived experience as a woman?

This is right from your very first post but I think it's so important to pick up on. With no disrespect to those with severe gender dysphoria, no amount of being trans or wearing dresses gives you lived experience as a woman. It's not possible.

Lived experience as a woman means possessing female biology. It might mean having an abortion or period pains or going on maternity leave or going through the menopause. For me in the next year it will mean going through 2 surgeries to help a medical condition only females get. It will mean having a degree of concern if I sleep with someone that I might get pregant. It will mean chatting with my doctor about whether I can stay on the pill - if I have to stop that will have hugely negative impacts on me because I get awful periods without it.

That isn't comparable to someone with male biology growing their hair long, painting their nails, say, or going by a female name, however hard their dysphoria is to live with.

The exception in the law for sex specific spaces is probably the reason the transgender advocates have supplied the councils with documents that purport to list the protected characteristics under the EA that actually substitute gender for sex and sometimes simply delete sex as a protected characteristic entirely.

@Peakpanys are you just talking about toilets? I am not talking about just toilets. I am talking about refuges, hospitals, prisons etc. In those situations one can know people's legal sex because it is recorded at birth.

Only if you allow any person to identify as a female, if they wish to, do you lose the ability to actually know who is female or not!

This is why self id is bad for females.

We cannot necessarily control who uses public loos but we can control who is on the girls' team, who is in the girls' locker room, who is on the women's sports team, who is in the bed next to my 80 year old mum or the shower next to my teenage dd.

Legal definitions matter beyond toilet usage!

Some of them are claiming already that they are the same as biological women, including ones without a GRC like Jane Fae.

I don’t ‘support’ self-ID. I realise that it’s going to come into force though. Anyone watching that video on the Penny Mordaunt thread realises that it will and that most politicians will not oppose it. She honestly cannot even see that there are two sides to the debate. I don’t think it is great for women, no, but I think a lot of the issues raised here are already happening and I wonder how much effect self-ID will really have, given that so many places and institutions effectively already allow self-ID, rendering the requirement to apply for a certificate a bit redundant. Maybe I will be proved wrong, I don’t know.

I don’t know what to say but it definitely seems like despite all the effort in campaigning that the women and equalities minister doesn’t even think there is an issue. And I can’t help but wonder if that was due to the way the debate was framed- by spending a lot of time debating whether being trans was even possible or whether trans women were real women rather than saying ‘fine, but we will keep these spaces’. I am also conscious of the fact that there was none of this vitriol against Christians and other reliegious groups who got an opt-out when same sex marriage came in. If you frame your opt-outs neutrally, it’s harder for people to attack them.

*@Peakpanys are you just talking about toilets? I am not talking about just toilets. I am talking about refuges, hospitals, prisons etc. In those situations one can know people's legal sex because it is recorded at birth.

Only if you allow any person to identify as a female, if they wish to, do you lose the ability to actually know who is female or not!

This is why self id is bad for females.

We cannot necessarily control who uses public loos but we can control who is on the girls' team, who is in the girls' locker room, who is on the women's sports team, who is in the bed next to my 80 year old mum or the shower next to my teenage dd.

Legal definitions matter beyond toilet usage!*m

Yes, this appears to be a common argument - that 'trans people have been using female spaces for years with no problem' but again, let's get this straight what this actually means. Mainly toilets and changing rooms in shops I expect.

Whoops it didn't bold Italians post, sorry

But Kettle how would a DV refuge know my birth sex? You can get ID saying female even if you don’t have a GRC. If they look at my ID and I look female they won’t ask any more questions. If they look at my ID which says female but I look male, they might tell me that they are sorry but they don’t actually admit trans women and that this is permitted under the Equality Act. But if I looked genuinely female, they wouldn’t ask any of that stuff because they would assume I was born female.

Yes, it’s hardly a great system but what else can you do short of requiring a medical exam before you enter a refuge? In reality, there are very few male to female trans people who would pass completely as female.

Oh sorry Kettle I didn’t realise you were quoting.

Women have had no problem with calling the police and the managers to evict men from women's toilets and dressing rooms and showers for many many years. Evicting does not mean sharing. Voyeurs, cross dressers, wankers, women have reported the lot over the years.
Now they will be afraid to.

Out here in the boonies where I live I was at the lake with the grandchildren when I was stopped from using the ladies loo.
There's a man in there and the police are on their way I was told.

To be fair, while I would have no issue with trying to get a man dressed as a man removed now from a toilet (if safe to do so), I am really not sure I (and others) would feel comfortable doing so if the person in question was clearly transgender, eg dressed as a woman, wearing makeup etc. Would others on this thread do that? Because the woman in question could have a GRC for all I know and I just would not feel comfortable doing that.

Even if self ID came in, if someone who did not look trans in any way was lurking around in the loos, I don’t know if I would react differently. I would probably say ‘this is the ladies you know’. If they looked trans I probably wouldn’t, just as I wouldn’t now.

Be interesting what people would do now if they saw a trans person in the toilet.

The MRAs have arrived to assist their bros in harassing women and Feminists.