SCOTTISH GRA REFORM ANNOUNCEMENT BROUGHT FORWARD

[Mbwashenzi]

It was going to be announced on the 25th - now moved forward to Thursday. Anyone going to join me in the public gallery at Holyrood??

twitter.com/wornoutmumhack/status/1140953953758261248?s=19

This is not a win. the statutory declaration is still a fucking disaster

but I do think we've earned a minute to sit back and draw breath and think about what we achieved here

I filled in that consultation. It was written in the sure and certain knowledge that self declaration was a done deal. well we changed that

well done you amazing women

Jenny Mara - open door to MSPs for chat?

Answer - yeah totes let's talk

Fantastic that new guidance will be given to schools, so no girls are excluded.

Agreed with BernardBlacksWineIcelolly, grass roots has done this, well done.

It is a pause but undeniably a brush off and much much more work will need done to raise awareness and force the will of the people over the will of the SNP as is.

McAlpine was treated terribly during that.

i dont know whether to laugh or cry. 3 months living as a woman? What constitutes living as a woman? And how will it be policed? How exactly can false declarations be proven? And if by some sheer miracle someone is actually found guilty, 2 years maximum. Which would automatically be halved. Which in reality means probably a suspended sentence given that men can violently and sexually abuse children and men and get away with a suspended sentence. Although I do hope that single sex provisions will be strengthened. But im not convinced.

I'm struck by how many people want to rush the process so that dialogue on social media etc doesn't stop self id going through.

I'm also feeling cautiously optimistic around the EA exemptions - I think Somerville said that they absolutely exist, that trans people (including with a GRC) can be excluded, and that they will look at producing guidance around this?

If someone, anyone would show me a single case of single sex provision being upheld I would be more hopeful. Refuges were mentioned but the man who assaulted a child in supermarket toilets recently was housed in a refuge so sorry no that clearly isn't working. We know prisons/hospitals/changing rooms/toilets/classes are mixed sex and even the women's library refuse to host single sex organised meetings so where is the single sex provision?

Where is the fucking evidence?

LGBTY
Y? Yo-yo, yahoo, yak, yacult???

Youth

LGBT Youth - scottish advisory group started by paedo(jailed), gets loads of money from gvt to advise schools on brain rot, seemingly absent of actual qualifications of any sort. Also get paid loads by schools/charities etc to provide woke cookie courses.

I am not optimistic I am devastated by the total absence of logic, fact or fairness in any of this.

LGBT -Y ?

Yogurt

(It's all a Ya-kult)

I dunno, the three month thing is a carrot to shut up the TRA's "but, look, we're reducing the time you have to wait" - I bet it doesn't make it's way into law.

It's fair enough too, either we have a self declaration because there is no need for medical opinion, or, we do need medical review because there is an overlap between gender confusion and other conditions. And, anyone who is dysphoric is, by definition, having mental health challenges so what Kezia Dugdale meant with "they are not ill" is bemusing.

No one is saying that being trans is a mental illness. But, it is true to say that an awful lot of trans people also struggle with thier mental health. And that needs to be discussed and accounted for when making laws ad providing services.

I actually think I was right with ya-cult?

Let the consultation begin (again). Let's make sure the right people are invited to the table and no-one is veto-ed. Imagine, discussing things properly, in Parliament, openly and without fear of bomb threats or threats of being 'fucked over'? Can't wait!

I really think we should push to stop GRCs being given out-there is NO need for them. People can dress and present as they like, but you can't change sex.

happy I agree. There is no need for it at all. Especially as the single - sex exemptions remain, and especially as gender reassignment is a protected characteristic by self-Id.

As far as I know all legal documents (passport etc) can all have sex marker changed too just by asking. The only thing you can't change is your birth certificate, but that isn't really used for anything other than correctly recording births.

yup Yah cult is right.

And defo repeal the GRA. Record Sex if you must record gender, don't allow recording of gender in the absence of sex. Don't allow mixed sex provision in the absence of single sex. In short provide a third option, for everything - give people choice.

I could cry.

Oh and also this international best practice slogan thing is a straw man I am sick of, they only ever mention two countries and there is loads more countries than that in the world innit?

All this back patting on polite discussion of a toxic debate (poor trans poor trans) then a shut fuck up slam down of McAlpine raising very real facts concerning WOMEN in Scotland. The whole insinuation that all that needs done is to unite the parties and make the public see that they are wrong and unkind is maddening.

Perhaps the Scottish government might wish to reflect on the lobby groups who produced these guidelines in the first place. And whether outsourcing policy to lunatics without any oversight is perhaps a bad move.

To be fair I think that Somerville pretty much said as much, without actually saying so. Announcing that the flawed guidance will be withdrawn while managing to avoid actually calling it flawed was quite a feat …

Also a really positive thing is the data analysis working party - they have really taken on board what the potential (hell, actual) problems are there - and well done Joan McAlpine for asking about crime stats too.

I am not in Scotland so this could be wrong, but, might it be possible that the delay - and, effectively, the complete junking of the previous public consultation they did - mean that the Scottish government knows, for a fact, that they could not get a GRA reform of any kind through Holyrood immediately? Because if so, isn't that pretty massive?

I will stop ranting now.

Full link here for anyone who can bear it. Joan McAlpine around 16:10 in.

www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/ministerial-statement-update-on-scottish-government-review-of-the-2004-gender-recognition-act-june-20-2019

I have just listened. SAS kept mentioning how stressful the current GRC process is, and I kept thinking lets remove the stress by getting rid of the process. I don't think, from comments made this afternoon, that she understands why the legislation was thought to be necessary in 2005. Overall, however, I'm more hopeful than I was as long as the consultation is done properly with the end result that the protections in the Equality Act are properly enforced in Scotland.

For women Scotland and GoonerProf both live tweeted this too. I saw mention that they would get proper evidence on how self Id works in other countries. So we might find out for certain which services are actually segregated by sex not gender in Ireland.

I think it's amazing this has been achieved given how things looked when I started reading about this in (I think) March-ish 2018. The grass roots groups have achieved this. Thank you to them! The official women's sector would have cheered it through with no further scrutiny.

So will there be a draft bill published now? It will be much better to consult on an actual bill.

When they say none of the exemptions in the equality act will be changed, does that include primogeniture exemptions?

Thanks very much to forwomenscotland and everyone who made this possible

Joan who stood up to the bullies

So I can list my hair colour as blonde and my eye colour as blue (with the aid of peroxide and contacts?). If I wear heels I could be 5”11... goody. Is that how this works?