Some feminists, Emma Thompson amongst them, sign letter decrying trans-exclusionary responses to the GRA

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www.thenational.scot/news/17472564.they-do-not-speak-for-us-feminists-hit-back-at-trans-exclusionary-activists-in-open-letter/

We, the undersigned, are a large and diverse group of women who are committed to ensuring that trans people feel welcome and safe within our society.

Recently there has been a rise in ill-informed articles and commentary, where writers have continually insinuated that trans women are not women. These same pieces misrepresent current legal statutes, equalities policies, and public attitudes in Scotland.

Since 2004 the Gender Recognition Act has realised, in law, the rights of trans women as women and trans men as men. Since 1999, the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations and then the Equality Act (2010) have recognised, in law, the right of the trans community not to be discriminated against on the basis of their gender reassignment. The right of trans people to access gender specific services is an already settled legal matter.

Many national and regional news outlets routinely fail in their pages to recognise this legal reality. Instead, it is our perspective that some writers rely on recycling outdated arguments in an uncomfortable attempt to shoehorn trans identities into much needed conversations about gender-based discrimination and violence.

We believe that national conversations about gender-based discrimination and violence are necessary, however these conversations should not in any way attempt to roll back the rights that trans people already have in Scotland, nor spread misinformation.

In the Scottish Government's recent public consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act (2004) a majority of respondents supported gender self declaration, as well as recognising non-binary people. As a collective of women, we urge that trans-exclusionary writers do not suggest that their narrow and archaic arguments are in any way representative of the women of Scotland. They do not speak for us.

This is not an issue of Freedom of Speech. Both sides have a plethora of platforms to outline their position. However, it is imperative that these platforms should not be used to spread misinformation or misrepresent the law or the facts in this area.

When this conversation is reduce

d to allegations of "shutting down debate" whenever misrepresentation or misinformation is challenged, the result is to purposefully discount the position of many women - like us - who support the trans community. We will be heard.

Trans people have played an integral role in every civil rights movement to date; from LGBT equality to women's causes. Attempts to airbrush trans people from conversations regarding equality and human rights, or to exclude them from advancements for LGBT and women's rights, have happened before. Such efforts may have re-energised, but they are nothing new, and we say as a collective of women: they are not representative of us. We support trans rights.

Outlets and commentators have an ethical responsibility to consider the impact of their reportage, analysis and commentary particularly on the mental health of trans young people. Recently, data from Stonewall Scotland revealed that over half of trans people considered ending their lives last year. Trans people continue to face unlawful discrimination and violence. Routine misinformation and sensationalism is contributing to a cultural climate where this is legitimised. This has to stop.

Journalists, commentators, and publishers have a central role to play in ensuring Scotland is a welcoming and inclusive place for trans people.

The conversation has to change.

Rhiannon Spear, Chair of Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) and Glasgow City Councillor for Greater Pollok

Tiffany Kane, Vice Chair of Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) and Operations Manager at Common Weal

Dame Emma Thompson, Double Academy Award Winner

Laura Waddell, Publisher and Writer

Dr Jennifer Jones, Independent

Rosa Zambonini, Communications Manager to Member of the Scottish Parliament

Cllr Jennifer Layden, SNP Councillor for Calton

Dr Claire Askew, University of Edinburgh

Laura Wylie, Sexual Violence Prevention Worker at the Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (Dundee and Angus),

Sinead Daly, CEO of the Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (Dundee and Angus)

Christina Neuwirth, Writer

Kate Adair, SQIFF

Eve Livingston, Freelance Journalist

Kelly Given, Equalities & Mental Health Advocate

Jennifer Constable, Journalist

Rachel Hamada, Journalist

Leona Jack, Gender Based Violence Practitioner

Angela Haggerty, Journalist

Lynne Davies, Foster Carer

Amanda Stanley, Freelance Podcast Producer

Kaite Welsh, Author & Journalist

Hannah Bardell, MP for Livingston

Miriam Brett, International Finance Project Manager

Sarah Masson, or Co-Artistic Director of Shift, Shift Theatre

Fi and Charlotte Duffy-Scott, Co-Owners, Category Is Books, Glasgow

Claire Biddles, Freelance Writer

Erin Hardee, Schools Outreach Organiser

School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

Dr Pat Cullum BA (Hons) DPhil FRHistS, FHEA, School Co-Ordinator for Student Experience, School of Music, Humanities and Media, University of Huddersfield

Gail Ross MSP, SNP Member of Scottish Parliament for Caithness

Dr Eleanor Janega, Guest Teacher at the LSE

Cllr Kim Long, Green Councillor for Dennistoun

Cllr Eva Murray, Labour Councillor for Garscadden/ Scotstounhill

Cllr Christina Cannon, SNP Councillor for Springburn/Robroyston

Cllr Martha Wardrop, Green Councillor for Hillhead

Bailie Christy Mearns, Green Councillor for Anderston/ City & Yorkhill

Cara Spence, Head of Programmes, LGBT Youth Scotland

Amy Irons, Broadcaster

Hannah Pearson, Queer Feminist Campaigner

Rebecca Crowther, PHD Social Science Researcher

Susan Ross, Police Scotland

Jane Friffin, Head of Partnerships, LGBT Youth Scotland

Michelle Sodo, Head of Operations, LGBT Youth Scotland

Nicola Booth, Head of Youth Work, LGBT Youth Scotland

Bridget Bradley, Teaching Fellow, The University of Edinburgh School of Medical Anthropology

Naomi McAuliffe, Scotland Programme Director, Amnesty International

Gayle Telfer Stevens, Olivier Award Winning Actor

Jen Ang, Lawyer and Director, Just Right Scotland

Lisa Clark, Senior Communications Officer, Children in Scotland

Mhairi McMillan, Solicitor, Logans Solicitors, Cumnock

Margaret Logan, Women’s Aid, Support Worker

Dr Brandi Lee Lough Dennell, Research Associate

Rona Mackay, SNP MSP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden

Hazel Marzetti, PHD Student, University of Glasgow

Pam Currie, EIS FELA President (Personal Capacity)

Fiona Robertson, SNP's National Women's and Equalities Convenor

Katherine O’Donnell, Journalist

Christine Burns MBE, Equality Campaigner and Author

Lucy Spraggan, Musician

Leeze Lawrence, Producer, Editor, Filmmaker & Trans Advocate

Helen Nugent, Journalist and Editor of Northern Soul

Janet Coulson, Actor and Creative Director of Firebrand Theatre

Paris Lees, Writer and Broadcaster

Marlene Zwickler, Agent and Producer

Elena Soper, Feminist and Activist

Mhairi Black MP, Paisley and Renfrewshire South

Dr Lindsay Clark, Post-Doctoral researcher

Jackie Brock, Chief Executive, Children in Scotland

Joanna Murphy, Chair, National Parent Forum for Scotland

Louise Oliver, Actor and producer

Lady Mary Hope, Lady Hope of Craighead

Audrey Barnes, Campaigns & Programmes Coordinator at YWCA Scotland

Jemma Tracey, Senior Participation Officer, Children in Scotland

Laura McGlynn, University of Glasgow

Bailey McCormack, Event Coordinator and Freelance Performer

Emma Rogan, Senior Policy Officer at Children in Scotland

Róisín McKelvey, Feminist PhD Researcher

Janine Ewen, Queer Feminist, Violence Against Women Campaigner

^Here's Dr Brandi the guider as mentioned.

twitter.com/BLLoughDennell/status/1101426090919239680?s=20

"I've never experienced discrimination based on my biological sex, only based on assumptions made about my biological sex (a.k.a. about my gender identity & expression"^

Ok so going along with this logic, a passing transman has a baby and are denied a promotion because of the assumption that they may become pregnant again. This can't be gender based discrimination if the person has a male gender identity and expression, I would classify this as sex based discrimination which apparently doesn't exist. Can it be the case that trans people can experience both gender and sex discrimination but the rest of us can only experience gender discrimination?

What about a trans woman in their 30's who is obviously trans will they experience the same "gender" discrimination a woman in her 30's will or at that point will it come down to sex?

People think that this doesn't matter but in discrimination cases, a comparitor is always needed, when the water over sex and gender is muddied, it becomes really difficult to prove sex discrimination.

People think that this doesn't matter but in discrimination cases, a comparitor is always needed, when the water over sex and gender is muddied, it becomes really difficult to prove sex discrimination.

This a million times. Too many people seem to think that discrimination means "they were nasty to me".

Dr Brandi looks a bit foolish doesn’t she? When someone called her out in the murder of women in Mexico, she just said “my tweet speaks about my own experience”. But of course, the letter she signs goes rather further and implies that women as a class aren’t oppressed because of their sex.

Which is why she jumped on Joan McAlpines tweet in the first place, to proclaim to other women that biological sex discrimination wasn't an actual thing. Twit.

"I've never experienced discrimination based on my biological sex, only based on assumptions made about my biological sex (a.k.a. about my gender identity & expression"

Seems to be oblivious to structural nature of inequality and assume that all discrimination is direct and personal.

I find it absolutely mind blowing. Is it an age thing? Can she not imagine what it was like before women had easy access to birth control? Does she imagine that she is intrinsically different to all the women who had to give up their jobs on marriage before the 1970's?

Of course at birth she decided to wear pink (or not) and people treated her accordingly, no doubt.

Young women say all this stuff to please men. Sad times.

My son understand the difference between sex and gender, and the realities of biology.

This is despite his school on its ‘wisdom’ having lectures by ferret ‘n vile and some person who says they are a woman and lectures about how hard it is for women/gender to get on in business (yeah like you’d know, pal).

He’s a good boy...

Fermat's Theorum - that is so eloquently put. I have screen shotted (?) it so I can refer to it. I can never find the right words but you have done it for me. Thanks.

merrymouse and yes the different situations of women all over the world.

She's never needed an abortion / lives in a country where it is legal and easily obtainable and therefore it's not an issue, let alone a sex based one.

What a load of selfish shite.

FermatsTheorem

What you said. Exactly that.

"I've never experienced discrimination based on my biological sex, only based on assumptions made about my biological sex (a.k.a. about my gender identity & expression"

No, no, no - the assumptions ARE the discrimination.

Women don't discriminate against themselves, based on their 'femininity', for fuck sake. The 'femininity' IS the discrimination/sexism.

Women are...
Women do...
Women always...

160 million females are not missing because of them performing a stereotype.

Hmm - who could possibly be making assumptions that a woman has a particular way of expressing her gender identity? It’s a real puzzle.

Look out for Susan Smith, FWS on Scotland Tonight at 10:40pm on STV - discussing the events of the lasts few days.

I think you can watch it here: player.stv.tv/live

Yes, absolutely - biological sex is the "marker" some men in positions of power use to identify us. They then project their sexist stereotypes - lesser, irrational, overly emotional, hysterical - onto us, and use that as spurious justification for our oppression.

Female foetuses are aborted, girl children subject to infanticide or slow death by "failure to thrive" (aka scarce food resources given to their brothers), subject to FGM, left to die in menstruation huts, forced into child marriage, repeated rape and pregnancy and childbirth before their bodies are sufficiently mature for childbirth to be safe - because of their sex. Not because they subscribe to some nebulous set of beliefs about their inner feminine essence.

Exactly fermats. I am stunned beyond belief that this is even contentious.

This is being discussed on Stv now. Journalist Angela Hegarty saying its all scare mongering, similar to anti gay arguments etc. Apparently scottish womens organisations and services don't see any problems with Transwomen. She is now speaking over the For Women representative who is barely getting a word in.

But the organisations are dependant on grants, what do the service user's think ?
Well actually we know what the service user's think

Very angry with ET. Marie Antoinette indeed. A shame, because she's a fine actor.

My immediate reading of this is a bunch of rich women, who through their power / riches won't be affected by people like Karen White, seek to discount the legitimate concerns of non-rich women.

It's a bit word salady too. And unspecific.

I'd love Emma Thompson or indeed anyone on this list have a sit down chat with one of Karen White's victims.

Apparently scottish womens organisations and services don't see any problems with Transwomen

I would love to hear what the people who ran the womens hostel Katie Dolatowski was housed in would have to say, they seemed to be rehoused very quickly.

Heres what a fellow service user had to say about Katies presence "One resident in the unit for homeless offenders said: “This is a women’s hostel and it’s all women who work here. I feel sick and can’t stop thinking about what she has done.”" (When reading that quote please keep in mind on the scale of oppression this homeless woman who has recently been to prison ranks much lower in the scale of importance than the trans woman who tried to sexually assault multiple girls- so you should probably ignore her actual experience and say TWAW with a smile )

Amazing how utterly determined Angela Haggerty seems to be in considering all of us complete idiots. Here's what she claimed:

government funded women's organisations consulted the women using their services and found no problems

Not only do we know that none of these organisations did Impact Assessments, because they admitted this to grassroots campaigners, we also know from the Fair Play for Women report and a number of brave women - both staff and service users that there are problems and that nobody thought to ask any women whether they were distressed at males in their female-only spaces (but the guidance quoted by Susan Smith from For Women Scotland certainly anticipated that traumatised female victims of male violence would be distressed and suggests denying these women their human rights by educating them out of their distress like you would a racist or homophobe).

tiny numbers of males seeking access

That is true only if we adhere to the provisions in the Equality Act and do not reform the GRA, ie introduce self-id.

(I know, I know, we already have self-id by stealth and actual cases to prove our points, but let me just run through the maths.)

Currently, 3000 males have a GRC. That is indeed a tiny number. Of those 2 were convicted of sexual offences. That's the same offending rate as all other males.

Unfortunately, the organisations Haggerty is defending have unlawfully included all males who remain legally male and therefore have no legal right to demand access to single-sex spaces in their trans inclusion policies. That is therefore the measure we will assume for this calculation: all males who identify as trans.

In 2015 GIRES, a trans rights orgs, submitted evidence to the House of Commons Inquiry into Trans Equality stating that they estimate 1% of the population to be trans.

Despite the 5000 or so young females who've been referred to gender disphoria clinics across the UK, the vast majority of trans people are male.

But let's be generous and assume a 50/50 distribution. That's a minimum then of 325,000 males who identify as trans. If we look at adult males only, assuming 23 million, the number is 230,000.

(That the trans community is far larger than the 4900 or so GRC-holders, is precisely the reason why trans rights orgs are arguing we need legal sex self-id. So they may not be too pleased with this line of argument by AH.)

However, the most recent estimate by GIRES is actually 2% as trans, not one. So that's 1.32 million people, most of whom are male, but let's do the 50/50 split again and stick to adult males, so we're looking at 460,000 adult males.

There may or may not be an overlap with males who have a transvestic paraphilia. That number is estimated at 4 to 5% of men, so that's approximately 920,000 adult male crossdressers who are - as we know - included under the trans umbrella and who must also be allowed access according to Haggerty and Co.

(But I stress that many of these men probably do not identify as trans and the vast majority most likely would not seek to access women's spaces.)

As we know from the data, the number of convicted predatory males among those identifying as trans is the exact same as that of all other males. (Reporting and conviction rates of cases are shockingly low, about 1 in 100, but this doesn't correspond to the number of predators, so I'll ignore that for the calculation.)

So now, instead of 2 out of 3000 convicted predators who had access to women's spaces, we're looking at between 75 times to over 300 times the number of convicted predators and an unknown number who are never caught.

That's rather a large number who may seek to take advantage of the assumed right to access that any male who identifies as trans will gain if self-id is made law.

If you think that number is too high, consider that with 1 in 4 women experiencing sexual violence in their lives, there are either very large numbers of predatory males or a small number of prolific predatory males or a combination of both. Whatever the number, males who identify as trans pose the same risk as all other males. The more of these males are assumed to have a right to access female-only spaces, the more predators will have access. And given the opportunity...

Besides, with the high number of sex offenders in prisons now identifying as trans, we already know that predators will take advantage of self-id.

These are all hypothetical cases, what you're worrying about will never happen

And if it did happen, it would be so rare that we ought not to focus on the issue of predatory males

Sites like transcrime UK and others worldwide show that there are many hundreds of cases of males identifying as trans who have committed serious violent and sexual crimes against women. Including a spate of reported cases in the last few years where it (ie yet another male attacking a female) has happened.

As far as I'm concerned even one raped or molested little girl or woman is one too many, but AH actually stated that predatory males will take advantage whatever we do, which sounded an awful lot like these victims are nothing but collateral damage for trans privilege activists.

And makes me wonder why AH thinks we have any safeguarding for anything at all in place, given that shit happens seems to be the now acceptable response to criticism of trans inclusion policies that put women and girls at risk.

Denied that anyone was seeking to remove sex-based exemptions.

"You're making it sound like there's an attempt to roll back women's rights!" Yes, Angela, that's exactly what we're saying and we can prove it. In fact, Joan McAlpine included evidence (forming only one piece of many) in her Twitter thread.

She also played a lot of trans activist bingo and was generally rude and shouty. I honestly don't know what she thought she was achieving with that, but according to the Twitter reactions, that's apparently what she does. Her behaviour just emphasised how sympathetic, calm and rational Susan Smith was in comparison.

I should also add that there is a serious imbalance in the benefits gained by males identifying as trans and women and girls.

If we maintain sex-based exemptions and apply them properly, the human rights of women and girls to privacy, dignity and safety as well as to fairness are upheld.

The needs of traumatised women and children who are survivors of domestic abuse and male violence can be met, allowing them to recover and rebuild their lives free from the presence of males until such time as they are ready to leave that support behind.

The needs of female victims of male violence can be met to access vital survivor support such as rape counselling or to feel supported in accessing intimate medical care, which can result in severe anxiety in traumatised females. The trauma can be so strong that they'd rather risk foregoing preventative medical care than to relive the trauma if a male who identify as trans trans turns up instead of the female they requested.

And as we know from FOIs in Scotland, contrary to Haggerty' s claims that we're scaremongering and no one is rolling back women's rights, NHS boards have admitted that while you still have the right to request a female practitioner, they cannot prevent a male who identifies as trans from providing your care. Now we know the woman in question can refuse to be seen by such a male, but if a traumatised survivor is strong enough to object or make an issue out of this, is another question.

Excellent posts CharlieParley.

I wish these people would come on mumsnet and answer some questions.

For format lends itself to calm, reasoned discourse.

There may or may not be an overlap with males who have a transvestic paraphilia. That number is estimated at 4 to 5% of men

Can I ask where you got this percentage? It's a useful fact.

That is true only if we adhere to the provisions in the Equality Act and do not reform the GRA, ie introduce self-id.

This is the point that is repeatedly ignored.

I don't know whether it is assumed that prejudice against people who are gender non conforming will always be a constant, or that everybody has such a strong feminine/masculine gender identity that they would find it impossible to claim to identify as the opposite sex? (are non-binary people supposed to be an anomaly?).

Either way, despite great societal changes over the past two decades, it seems to be assumed that trans people will always be a small minority subject to prejudice and that at least half will always be suicidal.

I can't understand the logic that can link the Stonewall trans umbrella, the post modernist idea that sex is just a cultural construct anyway, and the claim that changing the law won't make any difference because there are so few trans people.