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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Liberty's position on GRA consultation

26 replies

Kookabura · 04/07/2018 12:12

Liberty have come out in support of self ID: www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/news/blog/have-your-say-gender-recognition-act-%E2%80%93-and-change-hundreds-thousands-peoples-lives-better

Their statement contains a particularly problematic statement: "If you aren’t trans, updating this Act will barely affect you at all."

I've been a member for years - I will have to leave over this.

OP posts:
OldCrone · 04/07/2018 12:20

I've been a member for years - I will have to leave over this.

Me too.

SarahAr · 04/07/2018 12:31

OP if you are a long time supporter of Liberty and share their values, then perhaps you should reassess your views on trans issues.

MN is a bubble of GC feminists with an axe to grind. They have an ideology to push (trans exclusionary 2nd wave feminism). There is also a lot of ignorance of the law or even worse people who understand the legal issues but deliberately mislead to achieve their own ideological ends. The chances of getting an accurate and unbiased view of the issues is minimal.

Liberty specialises in protecting human rights and is very much a legal organisation. Its statement "If you aren’t trans, updating this Act will barely affect you at all." is likely to have come from rigorous legal analysis of the proposals - not from ideology. It also match my own analysis.

Original poster
Kookabura · 04/07/2018 12:40

SarahAr I am also a lawyer. My view is that Liberty have chosen to take a political position on this, and have failed to conduct any legal analysis of the effect of the GRA consultation on women.

OP posts:
heresyandwitchcraft · 04/07/2018 12:40

I agree with OP. I doubt they've really thought this through and are just getting on the bandwagon. They've not even mentioned the potential clash with sex-based rights, or how this might affect freedom of speech.
In fact, I don't think sex was mentioned once in that statement.

bluelightred · 04/07/2018 12:47

is likely to have come from rigorous legal analysis of the proposals

Well, they give no indication of that rigorous legal analysis in their statement so I wouldn't assume that at all!

I would have hoped Liberty would have had something to say about the erosion of free speech given the attempts to shut down talks by women wanting to discuss the impact of this legal change. Have they? Because if they haven't but have issued a statement like this then that makes it look like a political choice they are making, not a rigorous legal one.

LangCleg · 04/07/2018 12:49

MN is a bubble of GC feminists with an axe to grind.

No, Sarah. Only 18% of Britons are behind self-ID. Even Pink News says so.

MN represents the vast, silent majority of people in this country. You can only test their forbearance and patience with extremist demands for so long before the backlash comes.

Many of us here on MN can see that backlash and do not think it will be pleasant. We would prefer to avoid it if we can.

LangCleg · 04/07/2018 12:51

I do keep saying: there is no point supporting any corporate-sized third sector organisation any more. They are all staffed at the top by posh people who graduated from pomo-addled elite universities.

None of them can see the wood for the trees.

Melamin · 04/07/2018 13:08

is likely to have come from rigorous legal analysis of the proposals

It would be nice to actually see some of these rigorous analyses. So far, anything I have seen has been superficial simplistic fluff.

Acorninspring · 04/07/2018 13:11

Sarahar it seems to be a common misconception that gender critical feminism is transexclusionary. It is not. It excludes males. Therefore it centres the rights of women and transmen.

birdsdestiny · 04/07/2018 13:20

I have heard that theory before, if Liberty says it, if Stonewall says it, If NSPCC says it. They must be right and it is us GC feminists who are wrong.
The trouble is it means nothing to me. I have just been researching the history of Barnardos. As late as the seventies this charity was sending children from deprived backgrounds to Australia where they suffered widescale abuse. They thought it was the right thing to do, the government of the time thought it the right thing to do. It wasn't.

Melamin · 04/07/2018 13:26

It would be nice to see their workings out, and not just the answer.

OldCrone · 04/07/2018 13:31

They've not even mentioned the potential clash with sex-based rights, or how this might affect freedom of speech.
In fact, I don't think sex was mentioned once in that statement.

What they seem to have missed is that sex-based rights and protections are based on sex, the fact that men and women are physically different due to our different reproductive roles. How anyone 'identifies' is completely irrelevant to this.

This is so obvious, I can't understand why so many people seem to be totally unaware of it.

QuarksandLeptons · 04/07/2018 13:33

It isn’t the first time that Liberty has endorsed something that would erode women’s and children’s safety and human rights.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26352378

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10653944/The-right-to-sleep-with-children-was-one-civil-liberty-that-NCCL-supported.html

ToeToToe · 04/07/2018 15:26

I see Amnesty are in there as well - and we all know they couldn't give a single fuck about women either, according to them, men having access to sex is a "human right" Hmm

They can fuck off too.

Imnobody4 · 04/07/2018 16:32

All the major charities have been infected by a kind of libertarian/post modernist group think if you ask me. Eugenics is the last left/right cause this reminds me of.

TransplantsArePlants · 04/07/2018 17:45

ToeToToe

Mind Blown.

WhereDoWeBeginToCovetClarice · 04/07/2018 20:18

quarks and toe

It all seems very familiar doesn't it?

ChickenMe · 04/07/2018 21:50

Bloody hell - those articles!

SarahJane73 · 04/07/2018 22:00

I would have hoped Liberty would have had something to say about the erosion of free speech given the attempts to shut down talks by women wanting to discuss the impact of this legal change. Have they? Because if they haven't but have issued a statement like this then that makes it look like a political choice they are making, not a rigorous legal one.

Quite. I don't know a great deal about Liberty but as a lay person I thought that kind of thing was what they were about. So do they not have any position on women being beaten, threatened and intimidated for trying to meet and discuss their rights? Aren't freedom of assembly and freedom of speech civil liberties?

QuarksandLeptons · 04/07/2018 22:28

WhereDoWeBeginToCovetClarice

Depressingly familiar. We have to fight the same fight every generation. Men’s sexual liberation movements that threaten women and children rise up in different forms each generation. Our mothers fought them. Our grandmothers fought them, our great grandmothers fought them. They didn’t always win but they sometimes did.
It’s always worth fighting for children and women’s rights.

NotMeOhNo · 04/07/2018 22:36

So is Liberty claiming that women's spaces and services created because of female biology were actually created because of ladybrain? So anyone with ladybrain are entitled to use them?

NotMeOhNo · 04/07/2018 22:37

If you aren’t trans, updating this Act will barely affect you at all

(unless you're a woman, but we don't worry about those people...)

IrenetheQuaint · 04/07/2018 22:45

I'm surprised to find myself saying this, but the government's actual consultation document on possible GRA changes is significantly more thoughtful than this ludicrous statement by Liberty. (A point I will make when I email Liberty cancelling my membership.)

Milliepede · 04/07/2018 22:59

All organisations are falling over themselves to be "inclusive". It literally IS PC gone mad.
The article that ToetoToe linked is very true. People are so frightened to be branded "phobic" that they deny the reality before their eyes. This has been apparent in the Asian grooming gangs cases, social workers and police were so terrified of being branded as being racist despite the mountains of evidence before them.