Illuminating Twitter thread about the origins of the Gender Recognition Act

[Destinysdaughter]

This is a very long thread from Twitter about the origins of the GRA 2004, including quotes from Hansard, showing the debates at the time. Illuminating and shocking!

“Tweets from 2003: The Gender Recognition Bill

I'm going to tweet out a few of the illuminating comments from the debates that led to the GRA 2004, to save you all ploughing through Hansard.
One of the primary motivations (if not the foremost) for the bill was to avoid legalising same sex marriage. This featured VERY heavily in the discussions.
#GRA2004

It was, in the Govt's eyes, FAR preferable to convert a same sex couple into a heterosexual couple via 'sex change' than it was to make same sex marriage legal”

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1049289194370002945.html

which, if any, of those MPs are still in Parliament today?

Sir Patrick Cormack is in the Lords now, I just googled him.
Lynne Jones (Lab) is no longer in politics; she stood down in 2010.
Andrew Selous (Con) is still an MP.

JellySlice: "It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that no democratic government would even consider passing a law that would force the population to lie and that risked annihilating the rights and protections of over 50% of the population...wouldn't it?"

It wouldn't be 'perfectly reasonable' to make that assumption, because we know that the government has considered it.

It’s infuriating this nodebate was had at the time and the things that have come to pass were handwaved away.

yes, so incredibly disappointing that all the consequences for women were foreseen but the government did it anyway

it's truly ok to just not give a shit about women's privacy, dignity and safety

depressing

Cynicism, howard.

This thread has been referred to quite recently and bears resurrecting I think.

Perhaps contacting all the politicians who expressed reservations about the GRA at the time would be a worthwhile exercise? All the problems they predicted came to pass.
(Those who are still active, obv).

see also the role played by Andrew Landsley:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3396859-Weve-been-lied-to-about-Single-SEX-wards-since-2010

I suspect she assumed that every male-to-female applicant would want a penectomy, and that an applicant who did not want a penectomy would be rejected as being not genuine trans.

It shows at the time it was assumed that those wanting a GRC and the legal fiction it enabled would be transsexual people who desired and had undertaken full SRS, so that the males they were allowing into women's spaces would not be males with penises. And that this was, to them, a serious issue to consider inflicting on women.

It also shows the foundational sexism in the implication that women really are just men without penises. And where's the harm in women having to accommodate those men.

The road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that, plus boiling frogs. If you went through time and showed them the Karen White evidence, the Jess Bradley story, the Aimee Challoner and father story, the court cases being pushed through and the millions of tweets - they'd be utterly horrified. This is never where it was supposed to go.

The road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that, plus boiling frogs. If you went through time and showed them the Karen White evidence, the Jess Bradley story, the Aimee Challoner and father story, the court cases being pushed through and the millions of tweets - they'd be utterly horrified. This is never where it was supposed to go

Important thread with history of trans rights activism prior to the GRA

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007