The risks of repealing rights... debate

[PurpleOva]

OK, so since the debate in the HoP I have been stewing on what the woman said about what rights trans people already have now, and that a lot of the rhetoric from the gender critical seems to seek to repeal those rights.

Then I thought about what it is I want. Which is basically to protect my sex class. This is of course a protected characteristic, so it's already protected right?

Well, no. Ever since the first person was able to change their birth certificate from male to female, it already encroached on those protections. Because that was the beginning of losing the definition of woman as a sex class.

So, is repealing the rights of trans people what I want? Is that what "we" want?

And what are the risks associated with doing that?

And did allowing people to change their legal status and documentation already repeal the rights of having "sex" as a protected characteristic?

How do we square that peg? Are we too far down the road to start repealing rights now?

What 'rights' would be repealed?

Protection from discrimination, harassment, violence, equal access to marriage, protections in law, work related protections, etc etc should be absolute for everyone regardless of race, sex, age, gender expression, sexuality, disability, etc etc.

The mistake of the GRC was to create a legal 'fiction' for a specific group, largely to avoid legalising gay marriage. That equality for marriage has now been established in law in other ways, and is no longer an issue. The EA now also specifically provides protections for trans people.

As far as I understand it, the desire is to repurpose the GRA to confer the legal status of being a woman on any male born person who signs a self declaration (which in practice will mean any male who enters any female space since no one will check this at the door, the person will be assumed to be self declaring by the very act of entering). So legally changing the definition of women to include male born people, removing the protection of single sex spaces for women, removing the right of women to have facilities, spaces or recognised identities apart from men.

The rights being 'repealed' are all womens, not transwomen's. In fact, by stealth, this will create a hierarchy of protected characteristics under which women, religious beliefs, disability and safeguarding all lose if a transwoman is involved.

I have mentioned to my MP that it is also much easier to create law than it is to undo it, once these 'rights' that someone must have full entitlement to the category and resources of a protected social group purely on their subjective feelz instead of the objective, provable reality of belonging to that group, then it will be very easy for those entitlements to be exploited in all directions (hello transdisabled people demanding benefits, carers, hoists, hello transage people demanding access to nursery places and vouches, we already have transrace people taking places set aside for BAME people) and very, very difficult to repeal the mess of law that enabled it all.

This is a very good reason to stop, think, increase 'rights' and the law framework gradually while monitoring impact, and not to rush straight into legal hell with a glow of good intentions.

did allowing people to change their legal status and documentation already repeal the rights of having "sex" as a protected characteristic?

I think that it did, because it mandates belief, which is totally contrary to the right to freedom of belief.

Gender reassignment, like theatre, only works if the viewers agree to suspend their disbelief.

Legalising gender reassignment is basically saying "You must believe this because I believe it". (And legalising self-ID would basically be saying "You must believe this because I say so.")

I may believe that the world was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure, but I cannot oblige you to believe it. And, while I can expect the freedom to practice my religion, I cannot expect you to suffer in order to accommodate me, so it would not be Arklephobic of you to insist that I put my used tissues in the dustbin, rather than press them moistly and reverently into your hands.

The GRA was designed to give rights to a minuscule, well-defined group of transsexuals. Introducing self-id would extend those rights to a large and heterogenous group including cross dressers, opportunists and predators. It is clear that going through with it would repeal the rights of both women and transsexuals. But in what sense would not doing it take away anyone's existing rights?

What we have here are two separate things.

1. There is an increasing population of trans people who do not wish to use the facilities of their sex for varying reasons, are asking for their separate identity to be respected in society, for the different and specific needs associated with that identity to be recognised and met, and for assurance of legal protections and freedom from discrimination regarding their gender expression choices. This group currently includes an increasing population of children whose needs should be properly met.

Those needs absolutely should and can be met, and most law already provides for it. This can be done by providing trans specific accommodation, spaces, gender neutral toilet facilities, shelters, refuges, the idea of making some facilities and services single gender while ring fencing others as single sex. This meets all needs. IF women's needs as a group are equally strongly protected and the EA strengthened up with that ring fencing of single sex provisions alongside new and more varied provisions.

2. The forcing of the agenda that a man is a woman, his male body is female if he says it is, and that all biological women must be forced to accept that the definition of women and any recognition of biological women as a sex class with any separate needs or rights or provisions (or voice as a group) is over. So is homosexuality, and religious freedom is increasingly getting the side eye too.

There is no part of this that is not as dodgy as fuck from start to finish, and fuck that.

These two need clearly separating out in all situations. In the mess of what much of the woman MPs in the HoC said this week, they have 1 & 2 completely muddled up together and 2 is sliding in by stealth with 1 as a human shield.

What knickknack said

The GRA is a pointless and meaningless piece of legislation at this point, GRC holders get nothing extra other than the right to enter womens’ spaces and colonise womanhood. The act itself is no more than a Trojan horse to infiltrate and negate womens’ rights as it currently stands, and surprise surprise, not only is it going to be broadened, but it’s going to be broadened out to the point of rendering sex class meaningless.

The whole things to go imo. Men going in womens’ changing rooms and prisons is not a human right. They have changing rooms and prisons already.They gain all and we lose everything, and as PP said, these laws are harder to unpick and almost always get relaxed further, the GRA being a casing point.

I think the name Gender recognition Act was chosen to be deliberately ambiguous, just right to have a bus driven through it, as is happening.

Either the GRA’s only purpose is to grant access to womens’ single sex spaces, which it is atm, or it’s to excuse violent men who find GNC males intolerable in their spaces. You pick which, but neither explanation benefits women and both are legally unjustifiable.

The risk of repealing or limiting any established right is that it endangers ALL rights

The idea of human rights has since WWII been that they are non-negogiable or reversable. They were set in stone as monoliths which were enduring and supposed to last forever. Where there have been clashes the established wisdom has always been about balancing rights.

What we are now seeing is the potential to set the precedent to repeal rights. This removes the notion that rights are there forever. It replaces them with the (sadly correct) wisdom that rights are merely something which are held up by the politics of the time believing in their value. If their value is undermined and rights can be reversed, it sets in motion the realisation that lobbying can change who has rights and the nature of rights - which plays to those who have money and status (remembering that rights are supposed to protect precisely those who lack money and status).

This is particularly true if where rights clash the wisdom to balance those rights and to identify the most vulnerable individual in each specific case is replaced by the idea of a hierachy of rights based on groups rather than individuals. This exposes the most vulnerable individuals to harm. It effectively removes their rights in practice even if their rights are said to exist in law on paper.

This is all combined with growing economic inequality, and a weakening in the institutions which hold up and protect rights. The capacity to defend rights is being degenerated.

The long and short of it is that removing ANY established right is deeply problematic. It has repecussions. As it stands we have areas where there are unresolved conflicts in rights - which need to be resolved and understood why there is a conflict which needs to be considered - rather than removing the rights of anyone.

That very few people really understand the purpose of rights and why and how they were and are established and how they are maintained, protected and enforced, is all part of the same problem which goes directly back to the 'never forget' mantra of WWII.

We forgot some time ago.

The issue is the conflation between two entirely separate characteristics. Which is deliberate, and borne out of a purposeful intent to use terms that are sex based as if they belonged to the class 'gender'.

None of the other protected characteristics overwrite each other this way.
If someone created a religion entitled 'disabled' or 'gay' or 'pregnant' and claimed the right for their belief to be protected AND FOR IT TO OVERWRITE THE ACTUAL TANGIBLE DEFINITION OF THISE CLASSES this would be denied.

But gender is allowed to identify itself and overwrite the tangible class sex.

This is what must be unpicked. Gender, if it is to be protected, must be entirely separate from sex. It cannot 'become' sex. It cannot use the terms of sex -and have them recognised in law as indistinguishable from the actual sex based reality terms.

Gender will only survive this if it is represented as it's true form: a belief, not universally shared, subjective, intangible, and entirely distinguishable from actual sex.

Female along with religious/philosophical rights were removed in 2004. We don't have a right to refuse to believe what others believe anymore because of trans hate crime.

I haven't read all replies yet, thank you for replying... I was worried this was going to die a death and just sink earlier today!

Just to clarify, it wasn't that I think not going ahead with the GRA would take away rights, or that that is what was being inferred in the HoP. Rather that the arguments against the GRA, about self ID leading to encroaching on women's spaces are arguments that would take away rights, as transwomen already have access to those spaces.

At least that was the argument put forward.

OK going to read the other comments now.

knicknack I see what you mean with your (1) and (2) but the idea of making some facilities and services single gender while ring fencing others as single sex seems untenable, given that gender (identity? presentation?) and sex are always and everywhere being conflated and confused.

The point of single sex facilities is protect the dignity, privacy and safety of women & girls and allow them access to the public realm.

What is the point of single gender facilities?

I guess what I have been stewing on was the irony of what she said. That since 2004, women's rights have been going backwards. But her concern was about trans rights going backwards.

I'm still really foggy about the driving force behind this as a political movement. I understand the Pharma aspect and why they would be pushing to medicalise.

But, given that as a PP said, the 2004 law was driven partly as a way to get around bringing in same sex marriage... I really don't understand the current political drive for the GRA... or why so many women seem so gung ho to get it passed?

Really appreciate your thoughts, gives me more to stew on! :)

Transwomen have never had the right to use womens toilets, they were simply accorded a politeness: we women pretended we hadn't noticed and they believed that they 'passed'.

All that has happened to change that is that the GRA made it legal for a specific set of transwomen to use womens toilets, mainly because no woman ever stood up and said "No!" and forced the law to make a decision on whose rights would be upheld when 2 people with protected characteristic came into conflict.

Now, with the new much more 'inclusive' and aggressive definition of transwoman and the actions of many TRAs women are now saying "No!".

Sadly we are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind the bus and are having to play catch up. That is really hard when a hitherto well respected organisation like Stonewall seems to have lost its collective mind and has been ensuring that the transwoman message has been accepted without much of a demur, so far!

Points to remember:

1. TRAs never remember to include transmen, it is ALL about what transwomen want - and they want to be WOMAN!
2. The new definition of 'trans' is no longer based on anything other than a 'feeling' a whim, more like a fashion than the existing definition used in the GRA! Self ID will enshrine that 'feeling' in law.
3. No rights are being removed, women are just refusing to continue being accommodating. Transwomen would like that to be a crime.

which in practice will mean any male who enters any female space since no one will check this at the door, the person will be assumed to be self declaring by the very act of entering

This is the crucial bit that gets overlooked when it's talked about. No one will ask to see GRCs. At the moment, any male who wanders into a female space can be challenged and escorted out. With an increase in the number of 'women' who have made no effort at all to change their masculine appearance/presentation, and a removal of the expectation that males will attempt to present 'femininely', there will be no way to challenge or remove men from the area.

People have already reported men being challenged who have replied "I identify as a woman" and there it ends. And the law hasn't even been changed yet!

I really don't understand the current political drive for the GRA...

The motivations are a concern for a lot of people. I think in some cases, it's just 'sport'. People have 'picked a side' and are fighting for it and they don't intend to lose. In some cases, it's a misunderstanding of who exactly comes under the umbrella of being 'trans'. In some cases, it is a targetted effort by misogynists who resent the rights women have gained over recent years and who seek to remove/undermine these my any means. In some cases, it is people who would not be granted a GRC under the current system because their intentions etc give those granting GRCs cause for concern. In some cases, it is people who don't really have anything else interesting to say about themselves and so have decided that this is their thing. I'm sure there are more. In some cases, it will be a deliberate attempt to circumvent safeguarding principles.

As for the politicians etc backing it, I think some of them fall into the groups above. I think there is a lack of understanding of who is seeking these changes; I think there is a desire to be seen as progressive and I think there is a fear of the power some of the activists wield.

or why so many women seem so gung ho to get it passed?

This one baffles me too.

Again, I think there is naivite about who is seeking the changes and their reasons for it. I think that there are some women who really do believe in a female 'essence' - there is an AIBU thread at the moment about a 4 year old's birthday party where one of the mums wants football rather than painting to be offered because boys need to be allowed to be boys.

I have a friend who is a firm believer in boy brains and girl brains. When presented with a boy who likes 'girl' things, she explains that by way of his brain being "a little bit of both".

Some people have accepted the stereotypes as fact and truly believe these and so any man who says he is a woman because he likes wearing make up etc must be a woman.

There is also fear.

There is also misogyny - why would any man say he is a woman if he isn't? I mean, the shame of it. He's already suffered enough by not being a 'real man' so we must welcome him into the fold of womanhood.

Some women will defer to men over everything. Again, you only have to read the Relationships boards where women have believed the most improbable excuses for poor behaviour from men.

Some women have huge overwhelming compassion and believe men are hopeless creatures who need rescuing from themselves/society/wily women...

And then there's the female socialisation thing where many women will put their own needs aside in the interests of "just being nice".

What is the point of single gender facilities?

In practice, it would allow male born people to access some facilities and services alongside women, under the 'name' of woman as their self chosen identity without it obliterating women as a sex class/removing all women's access to single sex provision. It would be in practice an obfustication as there is no such thing as a single gender (do you classify it as people with long hair, high heels and lipstick?) but is a compromise that is middle ground - for example making some refuges single gender with the expectation for all users that transwomen will use them alongside women, while others remain single sex where only women users can take places. There are women on the boards here (and Layla moran as another example) who spend a lot of time saying how much they don't care about getting naked with strange men or having intimate medical care by any male who wants to do it, so there are women who would be happy to choose single gender provisions which are in effect mixed sex spaces while excluding men who still identify as men. Sigh. However it would be interesting to then watch the facts and figures of how many women in practice continue to use the single sex provisions and how many women are not willing to take up mixed gender places. I suspect it would very quickly demonstrate that many service users will not use the service unless single sex provision is available to them. This is evidence women urgently need.

So basically it's a temporary compromise in my eyes. It prevents the eradication of single sex spaces, it respects that some women cannot and will not use mixed sex spaces, and it also gives some middle ground to transwomen in meeting needs without letting biological sex and sex protections cease to be a thing. It may also help generate some really crucial and inescapable data for the terminally Woke who fund and provide services.

Incidentally there already has been some noises made about transwomen's access to women's spaces being discriminatory towards men in a legally indefensible way, since once any male born person at any time can change sex without any requirement of diagnosis or even change of appearance there is nothing to distinguish between a transwoman and any other man. The point has been raised that you therefore can't admit some men while excluding others.

The whole situation is one massive legal fuck up in multiple directions, the consequences of which are going to make a Carry On film look like Panorama. It just baffles me our political class really are apparently this naiive, lazy about due diligence and basic reseach, and too thick to see ahead.

But then this is the political class that let Brexit happen. Sometimes I suspect the country would be far better run by the committee of a village playgroup.

Yeah, I think (in hindside) allowing legal sex change was the First step on a slippery Slope to women Losing their protections. I also think, this would have been manageable/not a big deal. Had it remained strictly linked to sex reassignment surgery. However, this strict link was at least in one European country overruled by the European courts, which imo opened pandora‘s Box.
So I am not sure, whether repealing the GRC could equally be overruled?

Incidentally there already has been some noises made about transwomen's access to women's spaces being discriminatory towards men in a legally indefensible way, since once any male born person at any time can change sex without any requirement of diagnosis or even change of appearance there is nothing to distinguish between a transwoman and any other man. The point has been raised that you therefore can't admit some men while excluding others.

I think this situation was utterly predictable and, were I a man, I might be inclined to challenge it on these grounds just for the purpose of highlighting the ridiculousness of hte whole thing.

Because it's the exact same point we have been arguing.

The point has been raised that you therefore can't admit some men while excluding others.

Define 'men'.

Yes, exactly. Once any definitions are made impossible by tying everyone's language in knots, it's impossible to have boundaries of any kind.

Bearing in mind that many of the front line extremist TRAs are anarchists, this is quite intentional. And as I frequently say, with care, consideration for the meaning of my language and word choices, Fuck That.

Stonewall seems to have lost its collective mind and has been ensuring that the transwoman message has been accepted without much of a demur

I wouldn't say Stonewall's lost its mind. I'd say that once gay marriage was achieved, Ruth Hunt et al made a cold, hard decision to ditch any principles they might previously have had & sell out to the TRAs in order to keep themselves in business.

I need more cynicism, Empress That is so obviously what happened

Yes and hasn't Julie Bindel hinted that wasn't always the case at the beginning with Ruth?

Samphire, I used to have a standing order to Stonewall & also volunteered with them occasionally in the old days.

You wouldn't believe how much I loathe them & all they stand for now - along with Diva, which used to be a lesbian mag before it sold out too .

Define 'men'.

I think we all know what men are. Just like we all know what women are.