Definition of man and woman used in the GRA consultation

[Elisheva]

Apologies if this has been discussed already. I emailed the GRA consultation to ask which definitions of man/woman and male/female the government were using. This is the reply:

*The definitions you asked for are not provided [in the document]. However, to provide some context, the term ‘gender’ is is often the term used in the context of the Gender Recognition Act and the gender transition process. Although many people make a distinction between a person’s sex and their gender, this is not a distinction that is often re-produced in day-to-day usage of the terms, nor in the law, which uses the two terms interchangeably.

Indeed, in the text of the current GRA (section 9) it is stated that a person who changes their gender using the process outlined in the Act is also considered to have changed their sex.

Thank you for taking the time to write to the Government Equalities Office*

I’m not sure what to reply. There is so much wrong with this that I’m not sure it’s even worth engaging with.

They are right that for most people sex and gender remain interchangeable as they always used to be. Separating the meanings of sex and gender was originally done by feminists to draw a distinction between biology and performance/stereotypes. That distinction was also capitalised on by the transgender community to help explain their condition, leading to the distinction that we see today. However, that distinction is still only understood by a small proportion of the population; most people when they talk about gender mean sex. It is this lack of understanding of the modern definition that has allowed TRAs to blur the distinction between the two, whilst at the same time using gender in its modern

I do, however, think that they are wrong to say that no distinction is drawn in the GRA; that document is very clear about the modern usage of gender (you can transition from one gender to another, but not from sex to another), hence the need to make it clear that it changes sex for legal purposes.

Surely the confusion of the terms gender and sex are for younger people. I am 45 and I have always been clear on the distinction. I am really surprised, now that I have started filling in application forms again, to find they all ask for gender, not sex. When I was filling in these things 15-20 years ago they always asked for sex.

In my schooldays (60s/70s) gender was a term used in Latin and French lessons and sex in biology. When my children were born in the 80s I knew what sex they were. The conflation of the two is very recent, I don’t know where or why it started, and I’d be very interested to know when it was first used in law. As a legal term surely it’s useless because it’s so poorly defined?

So they deliberately confuse the two, then use that as an excuse not to draw a distinction? So human beings can change sex then? Evidence please?

The thing is I didn’t ask them for their definition of sex and gender, I asked for their definition of male and female. There is a page in the consultation listing the definitions used, but male, female, man and woman aren’t included.

it is stated that a person who changes their gender using the process outlined in the Act is also considered to have changed their sex.

What, they are considered to have undergone some kind of metamorphosis? Please let them mean for legal purposes (which is bad enough). If they mean they are considered to have literally changed their sex, we have truly entered the twilight zone.

If that is true the whole consultation is so meaningless and misleading as to be completely and utterly useless.

Any member of the general public will assume woman means adult human female, in the biological sense.

Elisheva will you go back and point that out and ask them to answer your question?

It's the conflation of the two terms which is allowing biological sex as a category to be erased. The interchangeability is the crux of what's undermining women's rights to self-definition and single sex spaces.

I have replied:
Thank you very much for your reply. My apologies but I haven’t been clear enough with my question: Could you tell me the definition of ‘male’ and the definition of ‘female’ that the government are using during the consultation?

I’m not confident of getting an answer before the consultation closes though.

Good reply op

They define gender as 'socially constructed characteristics' in the terminology section of the consultation. They don't say it is the same as sex only often assumed to be the same.

This contradicts their reply to you stating they are interchangeable.

Just found this thread. OP that reply came from the Government Equalities Office?!

I posted about this case on another thread:

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2018/1530.html

and this is what the High Court Judge said in that case at paragraph 151:

I have no doubt that the Government will have well in mind the range of factors which will be required to be considered in the course of that review, which one trusts are now better understood than they may have been at an earlier point in the history of the Government's consideration of them. In particular, a full understanding by all governmental departments, not just the GEO, will be required as to the clear distinction between the concepts of sex and gender. It will be necessary for the Government to consider to what extent if any, in an age of increasing social and legal awareness and acceptance of the importance of issues relating to diversity and equality, the recording of an individual's sex and/or gender in official and other documentation is justified. The range and nature of the documentation which may be affected will be required to be understood, including whether its purpose is to record historical or current information. It will also be necessary to consider the extent to which other identities both within and beyond the binary concept of gender are to be recognised, and if so, whether they are to be self-determined or are to be objectively evidenced. Undoubtedly this will also require a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the full extent of legislation in which individuals' rights and responsibilities are affected by and may be dependent upon sex and/or gender.

Does the GEO not actually read these things?

There was a great thread on Twitter by @MMMMMMeow that went through the different definitions in the GRA, EA and the consultation document. Total clusterfuck. People have been asking for clear definitions since the consultation opened.

That looks very interesting MrsAird. I'll try and get time to read it properly. That's only from June this year isn't it?

yes, June 2018.

The knots and confusion in which people in this thread, and wider anti-trans rights people, are getting themselves into is just absurd. Both in the way normal members of the public and in law, there is no distinction between sex/female and gender/woman. Trans women are adult human females.

The problem lies from the refusal to accept the very simple and clear terms of cis and trans, which are perfectly good and clear ways of when necessary making distinctions between trans people (may they be women/females or men/males) and and people who were designated at birth to be the gender/sex that they are.

While there are different uses/contexts for each of the terms, with sex being used often more in (as someone said earlier) things like biology and gender being more in the context of people within society, that does not mean that the terms have totally distinct and seperate meanings, this is something that has been invented by anti-trans rights people in order to exclude trans people from being legitimate and the terms being applied to them.

You are probably just all going to ignore me but I come here in good faith to try and put forward the case for why things are as they are

Elisheva I am sure someone has got the quote at hand, but I think the original GRA discusses gender then in a bracketed clause says sex - something like ‘and so the person who has taken on their acquired gender is now the female sex’ or something. With a GRC, the transperson’s legal sex does change - of course, we all know, their biological sex does not - but in law, they are then the opposite sex from their birth sex, with just the few exemptions as laid out in the EA2010. Such a big mess. A legal fiction.

Notveryblissful a couple of quick points. Firstly, no, transwomen are not adult human females. In about eleventy hundred ways. I am sure you can think of some. Secondly, most people on here are not cis. I understand that cis means people believe that their biological sex and their gender match up. Well most of us here reject the whole idea of gender, and all its demands, its constraints, its idiocy. We are not cis. We are women.

Ah ok thanks for clearing that up.

Careful, everyone. There are crumbs in your keyboards that could cause you an eye injury when they fly out.

notveryblissful, please could you define ‘trans’ and explain the difference between somebody who is and isn’t trans.