Guardian today 'Shifting sands;six legal views on the transgender debate''

[mimivanne]

Balanced piece from the Guardian .

Sorry link wouldn't work

Peter Dunne has had considerable influence. Its worth looking at his biography. He lectures law at Bristol University.

www.bristol.ac.uk/law/people/peter-r-dunne/index.html

in fact Dunne's CV is worth pasting here:

"Peter’s scholarship focuses broadly on human rights, family law and comparative law. He has a particular expertise in gender, sexuality and the law. Peter’s doctoral research considered the relationship between human rights and conditions for obtaining legal gender recognition. He regularly publishes in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Medical Law Review, Social and Legal Studies and the Child and Family Law Quarterly. With Dr Lynsey Black (University College Dublin), Peter is co-editor of Law and Gender in Ireland: Critique and Reform (Hart, 2018). In addition, with Dr Senthorun Raj (Keele University), he is co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom (Palgrave, 2019). Peter's work has a particular focus on the relationship between law and policy, and he has authored or co-authored a number of issue papers on the legal regulation of queer identities (e.g. here, here).

Peter has presented evidence before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and his work has been referenced by numerous public bodies, including the Equality Authority of Ireland (now the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission) and the Hong Kong Inter-Departmental Working Group on Gender Recognition. In 2015, Peter was invited to provide evidence to the UK Parliamentary Inquiry on Transgender Equality (conducted by the House of Commons Select Committee on Women and Equalities). His research was extensively referenced by the Committee in its 2016 Report, Transgender Equality. At present, Peter is engaged in various research projects considering the status and rights of trans young persons in the United Kingdom. In addition, with Dr Marjolein van den Brink (Utrecht) University), he is undertaking EU-funded research, documenting the equality rights of trans and intersex populations across Europe. Peter has received grants from the Society of Legal Scholars, American Society of International Law and PolicyBristol.

Before entering academia, Peter worked as a human rights advocate in the United States and Europe. As a Harvard Kaufman Fellow at OutRight Action International (formerly IGLHRC) in New York City, Peter engaged in human rights documentation and sexuality-based advocacy before the UN human rights treaty bodies. In 2013, Peter was selected as an Arthur C Helton Fellow, and worked as a national and international law advisor to Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI). Peter was subsequently elected to serve on the TENI Board of Directors (2014-2017). He has previously been awarded a number of grants, including the Pride Law Fund and Equality Justice America Fellowship, and has worked with organisations, including GLBTQ Advocates and Defenders, Massachusetts Transgender Legal Advocates and Intersex and Transgender Luxembourg. Peter remains actively involved in LGBTQ reform campaigns, working with organisations, such as the Transgender Equality Legal Initiative. In 2015, Peter co-organized Ireland's first ever trans youth forum. "

Peter Dunne listed as member of TELI:
www.teli.org.uk/our-team/

Yes, quite the overachiever! Extraordinary, the disproportionate effect a small number of individuals can have on policy and legislation. It'd be interesting to examine the lobbying and financing behind it all too.

It is fascinating that the law is so complicated that apparently qualified lawyers (as opposed to our unqualified chum suing Graham Linehan) can't agree on the correct interpretation. What hope is there for the rest of us? Or do we assume that the pro-trans mob like Peter Dunne are being deliberately duplicitous?

Rosa Freedman and Rosemary Auchmuty present a beautiful solution that should please everyone, if we were to take trans rights activists at face value when they say 'It's not about entering women's spaces, the EA allows for single-sex spaces so there's nothing to worry about'.

Let everyone who wants it have a GRC as a validation certificate, but don't let this have anything to do with sex-based rights. As long as the law is crystal clear on the fact that sex exists, cannot be changed and always trumps gender identity wherever conflict arises, they can give out GRCs like sweeties for all I care. I'd still think it was silly, but I could view it as I do religion, you know if it makes them happy, good for them, not hurting anyone. If the principle of my right to swing my fist stops where your nose starts had been properly applied from the start, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Extraordinary, the disproportionate effect a small number of individuals can have on policy and legislation

To be fair that would be true of any sector, especially one that focuses on a specific cohort.

What is a bit of an issue is they are often presented as "disinterested" and neutral observers. But again I don't think that is particular to trans issues.

What is unusual is the way some individuals are sometimes presented as experts or specialists and at other times as representative "man in the street" If you are an expert or specialist you do not have a layman's understanding of the issues.

As said before, it crept in quietly through the back door, was partly as same sex marriage didn't exist, no one cared as they thought it was only a few people and and clearly someone worked very hard to eliminate sex or conflate sex as gender.

And yes, the lobbying and financing would be interesting.

Yes I liked the Rose solution.

I've suddenly had a thought and I haven't worked it through, so apologies if it is offensive or offensively expressed.

I wonder if there is anything to be learnt from how adoption law is managed. The usual way of becoming a parent is biological; however, the law allows for a person to become the parent of another person by other means, for good reasons, in good faith.

However, the "weightiness" of parenthood is such that this can never be a casual process. Parents are privileged with huge responsibility and influence over vulnerable minors. It isn't the case that all biological parents use this privilege perfectly, but nor can it be the case that non biological parents can casually acquire it.

What can be learned from adoption in terms of thinking about how a usually-biological relationship can legally exist in non-biological cases?

One of the obvious immediate points to note is that in this country, although adoptive parents may have very great joy in becoming parents, the law is managed from the POV of best outcomes for children. In the case of transgender law there is no obvious uniquely vulnerable party to be prioritised in the same way

I'm sorry but this has totally lost me. I don't begin to understand it.

Prof Alex Sharpe: ‘Parliament cannot have intended such absurdity’
Reforms making it easier for trans people to have their gender identities legally recognised will have no impact on existing rights of service providers to exclude trans women from women-only spaces. Under the Equality Act, all trans people covered by the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment” are protected against discrimination, subject only to specific sex-based exceptions that permit discrimination in the context of women-only spaces where it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. The government has made clear it does not intend to change these Equality Act provisions.

Those opposing reform of the GRA argue that trans women holding a gender recognition certificate, and who bring a discrimination claim on the basis of gender reassignment, are not covered by the exceptions relating to this protected characteristic because they are, by virtue of the GRA, legally female. Therefore, they argue, expanding the number of people capable of acquiring a GRC will necessarily reduce, if not extinguish, occasions where the sex-based exceptions might be invoked.

The legal correctness of this argument is dubious. Furthermore, if it is correct, it has next to no practical significance because the exceptions are more or less unenforceable outside the prison context, where provision already exists to exclude (cis and trans) women from the female estate where their security profile renders them a danger to other inmates. This is because circumstances where a court might be satisfied exclusion from women-only spaces meets a threshold of proportionality and legitimacy is vanishingly small.

If parliament intended to remove GRC holders from the scope of permitted discrimination, it could have drafted the Equality Act accordingly and in clear terms. Yet there is nothing in the act, its explanatory notes or the parliamentary debates preceding its enactment to suggest the exceptions do not apply to GRC holders. Trans people covered by the protected characteristic of gender reassignment enjoy a set of benefits and detriments under the act. There is no reason to think GRC holders were intended to bear a different relationship to other trans people in the context of this balancing of rights.

Opponents of reform claim that under the Equality Act trans women who do not hold a GRC should legally be considered male when pursuing a discrimination claim. If this is legally correct, which I dispute here, the effect would be to doom practically all trans women’s discrimination claims to failure. Yet they also claim the exceptions do not apply to trans women with a GRC because they are sex-based. If both these claims are correct, the Equality Act exceptions excluding trans women from women-only spaces would be rendered meaningless, as they would apply to no one. Parliament cannot have intended such absurdity.

Finally, the GRA, while stating that a GRC recognises a successful applicant’s gender identity “for all legal purposes”, qualifies the scope of this recognition. Crucially, it does so not only in relation to matters of competitive sport and parental status in the context of existing children, but because recognition is subject to “any other enactment or any subordinate legislation”. In other words, if there is conflict between the GRA and subsequent legislation, as opponents of reform contend, the Equality Act trumps the GRA to the extent of conflict.

Alex Sharpe is a law professor at Keele University and a barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London

YeahCorvid

I think that's a helpful comparison looking at adoption law / transgender issues.
My hackles always rise when I see adults pushing at consent issues for children. Decades of working with children, families and safeguarding shows me that responsible adults / parents are always risk averse in terms of children. Those who are casual about consent or who dismiss the challenges are (in my experience) selfishly irresponsible or potentially harmful to children.

Related discussion has popped up again on Twitter with participants including Richard Garside, Alex Sharpe, and Debbie Hayton:

twitter.com/RichardJGarside/status/1059549172582531073

Stephen Whittle from press for change says:

Gender recognition only provides a limited legal recognition of a person’s acquired gender, primarily for medical privacy, marriage and pension access.

Existing legal changes protect pensions and people can already marry regardless of sex. As the law currently stands, having a GRC makes the hurdle to employing the sex exemptions of the EA almost insurmountably high. How can someone legally trained write such lies?

I think the slippage in what Peter Dunne says is in his use of the phrase ‘legal adults’ - because it implies that becoming an adult is something which is arbitrary, ie the law decides, rather than the fact that the law has been discussed and debated now for nearly 140 years at various points with input from medical profession, social workers, psychiatrists, churches, women’s groups, I could go on. It is not an arbitrary age which has been plucked out of the sky. It is based on a range of principles and an array of evidence aimed mainly at protecting vulnerable people from exploitation.

I have been trying to work out the disparity between the age of consent (16) and the age one can apply for a GRC. Then I realised there is no disparity because one has to live in the to-be-acquired gender (whatever that means) for two years, which means transgender youth can start the clock ticking at 16, when they are legally competent to consent - for all the reasons age of informed consent is 16. So while what Dunne says seems on the surface sensible (young people should be able to apply for a GRC at 16) it is not because the process would begin at 14. And adolescents are not considered competent generally speaking to make lifelong medical decisions or any other substantial decisions before 16.

That is before I get on to the concept of transgender children - why not advocate to just ditch gender-based ideas for both boys and girls? Problem solved. Be yourself, be the best person you can be, and take on the bullies, not medicalise young people’s choices.

'It's not about entering women's spaces, the EA allows for single-sex spaces so there's nothing to worry about'.

In which case, why the refusal of solutions that

a) strengthen up the EA exemptions for single sex spaces and enable services to stand up against TRA onslaughts to overturn single sex policies to be single gender, and

b) permit a number of services and fundings (proportionate to population sizes) to be ring fenced for single sex with other services and fundings going to single gender?

and c) the utter rejection of and disinterest in anything women have to say about their own needs?

This is all about preventing women having any boundaries or ability to separate themselves from self identifying men. That is the bottom line of all this bullshit.