If men’s sex based rights (i.e. peerages, money, power and position) are protected by the GRA why can’t women’s be?

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I’ve been a regular lurker around this board since the BMA decided that “expectant mother” was an offensive term.

Penny Mordaunt’s recent obfuscation in response to Mumsnetters genuine concerns about the GRA has raised some questions in my mind that I hoped you might be able to answer. I did do a site search on peerages and the GRA but couldn’t find a recent thread on the topic and didn’t want to resurrect a zombie one.

The GRA is very clear, transmen cannot inherit peerages. It is spelled out in this paragraph from the act
“16) Peerages etc.
The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this Act— (a) does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour, and (b) does not affect the devolution of any property limited (expressly or not) by a will or other instrument to devolve (as nearly as the law permits) along with any peerage or dignity or title of honour unless an intention that it should do so is expressed in the will or other instrument.”

Questions:

1. This is quite blatant discrimination against transmen why are there no outraged twitter storms about it? Penny Mordaunt stated that she believes transwomen are women. Does she also believe that transmen are men because the GRA is telling us that not all transmen are men. There is a subset that are not man enough to inherit peerages. How is this possible? All transwomen are women but not all transmen are men?
2. We are told that the UK lags behind other countries such as Canada, Ireland and Malta in self-ID and this is why the GRA should be reformed. If it is so important to keep up with other countries how can the government support such an anachronistic and discriminatory exemption within the act? If reform of the GRA is necessary surely the government should take the opportunity to remove this clause. Will it do so? Has the subject come up in the recent consultation on the Act?

A quick google shows me that the Duke of Westminster inherited his title and 9 billion pounds in 2016. He has two older sisters. Earl Spencer inherited his title in 1992 he had three older sisters.

3. I wonder if the fact that peerages are ring fenced from transmen suggests someone suspected the prospect of a large inheritance might tempt someone who was not genuinely trans to self ID for personal gain? But we are constantly told that no man is going to self ID as female just to gain access to female spaces. Why the difference? Why are transmen more suspect than transwomen?
4. If the government insists that protection of hereditary peerages must remain in the act then surely they can put in place equal exemptions to maintain female sex based protections i.e. it can’t only be possible to protect things that matter to men?

Does anyone know if these questions have been answered by the government and if so where and what was said?

Thanks

I knew about this inconsistency in the original GRA but have not seen it presented in a questioned phrased this way so thank you for giving me food for thought. I have an appointment with my MP in a few weeks and will be sure to include this in our conversation.

Well I was offered an appointment and was told to email back with some details about what I wanted to discuss and then they would confirm the appointment and tell me the surgery was being held. I've yet to hear back after a very prompt response to my initial request for a meeting!

Lily and co will be happy to spin you a lot of bull about transmen having male privilege and therefore being justifiably the last in the trans pecking order. Behind the ones with penises. So I shouldn't bother. They are ingrained that penises matter and vaginas don't, they just have a whole lot of gas lighting to convince themselves that it's ok instead of medieval and gobsmackingly sexist and male supremacist.

Note too that the explosion in child ROGD is female, the male population has stayed more or less stable. It's not this huge crowd of vulnerable young girls seeking rights. Or people considering their rights. It's adult males, many with wives and children in their wake, wanting to be women and dominate and control women. and who say having gender dysphoria is not part of being trans and using terms such as lady dick. While advocating sterilisation and surgery for children.

Of course no one with a brain could miss this, so it's the teflon coating of money, power and male privilege enabling this.

Surely it could be any one of the earl's four daughters who decides to transition? It wouldn't have to be the eldest. Hence all those aristo families that have DD1 DD2 DD3 DD4 DD5 and eventually exhaustedly a DS - like Princess Diana's elder sister sister sister sister and younger brother. Any boy of any age trumps all the girls.

So the earl's daughters could draw straws. And then the "lucky" (?) one transitions - as a legal fiction (another thread I just started). It wouldn't require any change of her, would it? Assuming she's straight, she could still marry her boyfriend.

This reminds me of Albanian sworn virgins, though without the virginity bit. Or the Afghan families under the Taliban, who dressed a little daughter as a boy, to navigate the streets with less harassment. The family needs someone to take on the social role of a son. Hey presto and tallyho!

Yes. All of this!

AND in fact the Equality Act DOES allow transwomen (even with a GRC) to be excluded from women's single sex services, associations, charities etc..... for exactly the same reason, because the GRA is not absolute.

It is just that organisations are ignoring this, and the government and the EHRC are encouraging them.

Thank you for all your replies. I wish I had been sufficiently up to speed to put these questions to Penny Mordaunt. Unfortunately, it was only while reading her weaselly responses that this occurred to me. Her answers were basically a slightly sugar-coated, “Sit down, shut up, Transwomen are Women and we do not care how this affects the health and wellbeing of those borne with female reproductive systems". I was sat there with my jaw on the floor thinking, “No one in power gives a toss about how females are impacted by the GRA”. Next thought was, “They would care if men were impacted in the same way”. The Crown was playing in the background and I had what I thought was a revelatory moment, “Peerages! Surely this means that daughters can inherit, all they need to do is change their birth certificates and they can be trooping into the House of Lords”.

A quick google showed me I was way behind the curve, someone had anticipated this problem and enshrined a protection within the act. I was astounded. I couldn’t believe that they could anticipate potential problems for a small group of men but did not care enough to think about potential problems for all women.

I hadn’t even begun to think about the priesthood. Thanks InionEile for highlighting that. So more than one exemption exists within the GRA to protect male sex based rights.

With regards to the government this means:

1. If there are exemptions within the GRA then the government acknowledges that humans cannot change sex.
2. All the exemptions protect or benefit men. We need to ask why? Did no one drafting this act care or think about women? (Well, obviously this is a rhetorical question, of course they didn’t).
3. The precedent for exemptions is set. We need to push for equal consideration to be given to exemptions for female priorities.

With regards to Trans rights activists this means:

1. Transwomen are women but transmen are not men. This is accepted. There are no campaigns against the embedding of such a discriminatory exemption within the act. This indifference cannot be explained by any arguments about penis privilege that Lily and co may have. The act is quite clear that transmen are only men up to a point. When it comes to inheritance they do not have male privilege, they do not have penises, they are not men and strikingly transactivists do not care.
2. This lack of care illustrates that transactivism is not about trans rights. As Knickknack says above this is all about power. This is about those borne with male reproductive systems demanding access to those borne with female reproductive systems. The brutal aggression with which this campaign is being fought is entirely male. The anger and insults arise from archetypal male outrage when someone borne female has the temerity to say, “NO,” to someone borne male.

As a slight aside about the priest thing, Catholic priests are required to be celibate. But when some Anglican priests decided they could stand the Church of England ordaining women, they were welcomed into the Catholic Church as priests even though they were married with children! Talk about double standards. If it benefits men, rules can be bent or broken completely. Makes me so cross

*couldn't stand

the Equality Act DOES allow transwomen (even with a GRC) to be excluded from women's single sex services, associations, charities etc..... for exactly the same reason, because the GRA is not absolute.

However when women are allowed single sex protected spaces for high need reasons - it says that women are different to TW. This is no longer acceptable to TW, who don't care what happens to women in the process, anything that provides a boundary to being a full member of the club must be destroyed. Its all about them, it is constantly demonstrated that they couldn't give a fuck about women or women's needs or women's issues.

Validation. Datun had this nailed years ago.

This is why Mordaunt is weaselling about 'we will protect single sex spaces' (so shhh, shhh, everyone sit down it's fine) while making it clear that men can be whatever sex they want to be. Mordaunt twisted herself in knots to avoid having to say there is any difference between a man who identifies and a born woman, or that there is an identifiable group of half the population with a separate name and identity, or that there is any loss or downside for women to have to include men as women.

The dictionary does not have enough words to adequately describe my disgust for that individual.

The AWAs took to Twitter after Mordaunt's debacle to gleefully point out that they'd been telling us that there was no longer any such thing as a single sex space, and that self ID already existed.

They were right. We were extremely stupid to believe that our elected representatives were people who told the truth.

The one consolation is that at present the law hasn't changed and whenever this gets to the courts it is stopped. Because all this is AHEAD of the law. We need to get as much into court as possible, not least to continually get into the public eye that this is happening, it's not legal, and to not allow those laws to be changed without a damn great huge, noisy, almighty, deafening, all singing, all dancing FUSS. All over the press. The kind Whittle dreaded happening.

I want MPs to have to look voters in the eye and say yep, I believe you should have no right to be homosexual if you're female. I believe you should get over your sexuality and your trauma if it excludes men who wish to have sex with you. I believe you are worth less than someone born with a penis. I believe you should put aside your culture and faith. I believe your disability is no reason to allow you privacy and dignity if it gets in a man's way. I believe female children should not have boundaries around undressing, toileting or bodily privacy if it upset a male who does not like those boundaries. I believe you should accept that sexual voyeurism, harassment, assault and being used as an unwilling participant in male sexual fantasies is a fair price society should ask of you, and you should gladly embrace this oppression, danger and misery to serve the happiness of people born with penises. Who don't care how this affects you. I believe in all this for you. So vote for me.

Well put, knicknack. This is a very useful list of questions to take along to your next eye-to-eye meeting with your MP. I will certainly do that myself.

Knicknack I so love that last paragraph I may have to steal it.
I'm more angry than depressed, though I have cried big proper snotty tears at various times about it all. I can't stand injustice and this is such a huge kick in the teeth for women and children.
I will spend the rest of my life fighting this if need be. I am prepared to be arrested.
Unusually, it seems, I quite enjoy twitter. My female socialisation went a bit wrong and I found that my ability to be snippy helped me to get people to back off if I needed them to, so I am quite good at it now. I also don't care about being liked.
This has affected every part of my life though. I really don't care much for men anymore and have much less tolerance for them. (GC men excepted.) It also takes up most of my time - I'm semi retired and thought I would be doing other things now. It does mean I have less to lose than other women so feel like I must step up.
Everyone needs a break. Sometimes I worry that no one else will spot something or say something - but they will. As someone else said - this is a relay.

If a younger brother with elder sisters transitions, mtf, then would he still inherit as a transwoman in preference to his sisters?

Interesting Timelady

I wonder about non binary. If a woman had some manish thoughts and maybe manish sex (goes on top). Then surely they could count as non binary like Sam Smith!
I'd definitely admit to manish thoughts in order to inherit.

For 7 billion pounds I could be the very model of modern manly man.

I want MPs to have to look voters in the eye and say yep, I believe you should have no right to be homosexual if you're female. I believe you should get over your sexuality and your trauma if it excludes men who wish to have sex with you. I believe you are worth less than someone born with a penis. I believe you should put aside your culture and faith. I believe your disability is no reason to allow you privacy and dignity if it gets in a man's way. I believe female children should not have boundaries around undressing, toileting or bodily privacy if it upset a male who does not like those boundaries. I believe you should accept that sexual voyeurism, harassment, assault and being used as an unwilling participant in male sexual fantasies is a fair price society should ask of you, and you should gladly embrace this oppression, danger and misery to serve the happiness of people born with penises. Who don't care how this affects you. I believe in all this for you. So vote for me.

I think this should be turned into a mock election poster that we could send to our MPs, with the headline Is This You?

Oops - wrong thread. Never mind.

From the extract of the GRA in the OP

16 Peerages etc.
The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this
Act—
(a) does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour

so yes, the Duke's new 'daughter' would still inherit ahead of his older sisters.

Outrageous. How can anyone in parliament say that TWAW with a straight face after passing legislation like that?

so yes, the Duke's new 'daughter' would still inherit ahead of his older sisters.

It's actually worse than that. A hereditary peerage can only pass to a male relative. So the real daughters could never inherit, even if they had no brother - it would go to another male relative instead.

It's about 'legitimate expectations.' (Are women entitled to have those?)
Exchange between Richard Younger-Ross and David Lammy in the GRA bill committee in 2004:

R Y-R: I promise that I shall be brief. I am concerned that one aspect of clause 16 has not been covered and that discrimination is being allowed to continue for a certain sector of society. I say that not because of any particular regard to protect the rights of the aristocracy, but from the belief that the aristocracy are considered, by some sections of society, as being above society, and that rules that apply to them are then applied below, although I do not accept that position of above and below. Clause 16 reads:
''The fact that a person's gender has become the acquired gender under this Act . . . does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour''.
Therefore, could the Minister confirm that if a male who was in line of succession for a title transgendered to a female, that person would still assume the title? Similarly, if the first-born was female and became male, would they still not assume the title? It strikes me that there is a subtle exemption that runs counter to the purposes of the Bill. If the Bill is intended to allow for no discrimination, should the Government not tackle that?

DL: I should perhaps begin by saying to the hon. Gentleman, well spotted. The matter was debated at length in another place and the answer to his question is yes. The clause mirrors the exception made in the Adoption and Children Act 2002. It recognises the unique nature of peerages, dignity and titles of honour in that they descend according to birth. The terms of descent cannot be changed and the expectations of the persons entitled by birth may be defeated if the acquired gender of a sibling were to count in the way that the hon. Gentleman outlined. He will understand that the community of people with peerages and dignities in this country is small, as is the transsexual community, so I do not expect that this exception, which he dislikes, will frequently occur.

www.theyworkforyou.com/pbc/2003-04/Gender_Recognition_Bill/06-0_2004-03-16a.5.0

If I were the eldest child of an earl, and had a younger brother I didn't get along with, I would so declare myself male and bring a case to court, just to test the law. First I'd take the Zuby/Pip Bunce route, and then I'd go full GRC if need be.

This depends on being A. Fabulously wealthy (some aristos are, some aren't) and B. Willing to piss off or split the whole family.

So as women we are told to suck it up and accept self ID because this is what a modern democracy does? We should not however expect to be able to self ID into any male held titles because that is antiquated system of privilege which existed before democracy and must therefore be upheld?

Also, it doesn’t matter how small the community of people with peerages is clause 16 enshrines within the GRA the fact that not all transmen are men. The hypocrisy in our politicians is staggering. Trans women are women because who the hell cares how that affects females. Transmen are not men because that might affect a teeny tiny proportion of the male ruling classes.

Maybe someone on Twitter should remind David Lammy of that anomaly. Let's pin the bastards who passed this bill down.

Also, it doesn’t matter how small the community of people with peerages is clause 16 enshrines within the GRA the fact that not all transmen are men.

It also enshrines within the GRA that not all transwomen are women. Because a male who transitioned would still be able to inherit a title which cannot go to a woman.

Wouldn't that be mind-blowing, OldCrone. Imagine a sincere MTF who does a full medical and surgical and legal GRC transition aged 25, not TRA, just wants to live a quiet life. Then A. grandfather earl, B. eldest uncle next in line to the earldom, C. father further down the pecking order, D. all male cousins and heirs apparent and presumptive die in a freak ballooning accident or one by one like in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Michael-now-Michelle inherits the earldom. Never expected to, never wanted to. Never expected nor wanted to be in the public eye, sitting in the House of Lords, inheriting the titles. But the law says the GRC offers no way out. Is that correct? There's a short story in there for someone to write.