Letter to Scottish Parliament from Scottish Trans Equality Network

[HeyHeyThey]

Alerted to this when looking at publicity for a Scottish Secondary School being awarded its Bronze LGBT Charter and being congratulated for it in Scottish Parliament last week. Retweet of Scottish Trans tweet and letter below by Beth Goodyear. I believe she is something to do with the Charter Award process.

^Trans equality does not equal women's inequality! Read
@ScottishTrans's open letter to understand why.^

www.parliament.scot/S5_Equal_Opps/Inquiries/LetterfromEqualityNetwork.pdf

It's not a long letter but these are the crunch paragraphs for me and I just want people's thoughts. Is this actually right? Does a trans person's 'Lived Sex' come under the Sex Protected Characteristic of the Equality Act?

(I wanted to italicise it all but you have to do each word individually?! So I just italicised beginning and end of quoted sections)

In summary therefore, it is incorrect to state that the sex protected characteristic in the Equality Act only protects on grounds of biological sex. It does provide that protection of course, as it should, but it also protects trans women and men from discrimination or harassment that happens because of their lived sex, whether or not they have a gender recognition certificate.

It is therefore not incompatible with the Equality Act, and in no way undermines the protections that the Act provides non-trans women, to treat trans people in their lived sex.

Nor does such treatment adversely affect women’s access to single-sex spaces. Single-sex services in Scotland generally treat trans women as their lived sex. They do that sensitively to the needs of all involved, and it works well. If the Committee wishes to know more about this, we urge you to speak with organisations such as Rape Crisis Scotland or Scottish Women’s Aid for example.

I would like to be able to counter this belief accurately and calmly if indeed it is the case that what they are claiming is not correct.

God knows what "lived sex means". It doesn't appear in the Equality Act or the Gender Recognition Act. I think it's just a fancy new way of saying gender, particularly with the purpose of conflating sex and gender and attempting to shoehorn gender identity into the Equality Act.

It is easy to get tied up in knots thinking about comparators. But say for example a TW (no GRC) was paid less than a man doing the same job they wouldn't have a sex discrimination claim, but they might have a gender reassignment discrimination claim if the lower pay was due to their being trans. In this example the comparator for sex discrimination is a woman, whereas the comparator for gender reassignment discrimination is someone who hasn't transitioned.

A TW with GRC being paid less than a man would potentially be able to claim sex discrimination because the GRC makes them legally a woman. They would also have a potential gender reassignment discrimination claim. Here the comparator for sex discrimination is a man.

I've had a look at Betsy's link to the Scottish committee discussion. Even the people who use the term 'lived sex' don't seem to know or even to agree what it is.

Tim Hopkins thinks it's just about what pronouns people use to refer to you, and Vic Valentine says it's about making it clear to other people "that the assumptions that they might make about you do not line up with your identity. You want people to see that it is meaningful to you that you feel differently about your gender and how you live your life."

I think we need a better definition of what 'lived sex' is if we're going to start making laws around this term.

They do seem to agree that it's all about other people's attitudes and reactions to the trans person though. Surely a 'lived sex' should be something that the person living that sex should be doing, not what is done to them by other people. But I think if they described what someone did to change their 'lived sex' it would be all about stereotypes, and they were both quite insistent that it was nothing to do with stereotypes.

Gosh, 'lived sex' sounds a lot like 'sex', doesn't it? Or 'biological sex'. If you're not paying attention.

People are getting wise to 'gender' meaning fuckall, so lo and behold a new term is invented.

More obfuscation. Not much clarity and open-ness, from the STA, is there? I wonder why not.

We don’t need a definition of “lived sex”. We need to point out loudly every time that this is more made-up bollocks to try to manipulate the law. No different from demanding that some men are called women.

There are 2 relevant protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 here: sex and gender reassignment.

• Everyone will have the protected characteristic of sex which will be either male or female; and
• Trans people who intend to permanently change gender will have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Non-binary people, gender-fluid people and transvestites will not have this protected characteristic.

The small percentage of trans people who obtain a GRC will be regarded in law (subject to a few exceptions) as the opposite sex/gender to their biological sex. So a transwoman with a GRC is female for the purposes of the Equality Act whereas a transwoman without a GRC is male for the purposes of the Equality Act.

A transwoman without a GRC will nevertheless have protection if they are perceived as being female and discriminated against on that basis (eg as pp have suggested they will be protected if they are rejected for a job due to the employer's mistaken belief that they may become pregnant and take maternity leave). The term "lived sex" is not used.

A separate point of interest is that if a transwoman without a GRC wants to sue for gender reassignment discrimination, the court would compare the way the transwoman has been treated with how a man who is not trans would be treated, rather than how a woman who is not trans would be treated (see Green v SoSJ www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2013/3491.html).

Turning to the letter, I'm not entirely familiar with the background to the letter, but isn't it just the normal TWAW gotcha? ie when we complain that some organisation has done something which screws over women in order to benefit a small number of transwomen, there are certain "woke" individuals and TRAs who will say "Well you can't say that this is bad for women because transwomen are women and it is what they want."

From the link to the committee discussion, 'lived sex' means 'gender identity', i.e. when Vic Valentine describes the sense of who you are and how people treat you as if that's not who you are, it sounds like exactly the same thing for all practical purposes. And it's fluid or inexplicable if you're non-binary, and it can change over time, unlike biological sex. It's gender identity. 'Lived sex' just sounds 'better'.

Annoying that the discussion went off in another direction just as they were wrestling about the nitty gritty of how to actually make sure that someone who wanted a female for specific jobs such as intimate care could be sure of having one. They were working really hard to evade that one.

And the discussion about how to plan if gender identity can change, and the comment that employment can change too - well; it's important to know, for example, how many people used to be employed in asbestos-exposed industries, because you can then estimate future levels of mesothelioma. Also it wouldn't generally be regarded as an insult for the state to know that a person had once had different employment from their current job. Census data on individuals is private and does not intrude on privacy; the idea is to have population-level data that indicates, e.g. how many people go through gender reassignment and in which direction.

We don’t need a definition of “lived sex”.

What we need is for the people using this to define it. Because they can't. It just comes back to a load of waffle about 'feelings' and pronouns and stereotypes.

There's no point in keeping on explaining things rationally to people who are coming out with this stuff. But if they're arguing that laws have to be made around stuff like 'gender identity' and 'lived sex' they have to explain what those terms mean in a way that everyone can understand. Because laws can't be made around terms that have no definition.

'Single-sex services in Scotland generally treat trans women as their lived sex. They do that sensitively to the needs of all involved, and it works well'

Only the first part of this is true, and the fact that it's true is the reason why the second and third parts are not.

Women need our own spaces. Forcing us to accept men into them is not sensitive and does not work at all, never mind "well".

'Single-sex services in Scotland generally treat trans women as their lived sex. They do that sensitively to the needs of all involved, and it works well'

Neither part of that is true.

Take housing for victims of domestic violence for instance. Only half of the available spaces in Scotland are in shared accommodation. The other half are individual spaces. This has advantages and disadvantages, but for the purposes of this discussion it means that men claiming womanhood cannot share with women in this type of provision.

The other half of the spaces are in shared accommodation, but most of the women working in this sector acknowledge that 99% of the women they look after have a fear of men, regardless of their self-identificatication.

These women continue to offer trauma-based care, in single-sex settings. It's not all of them, but a large number.

Unfortunately, they cannot advertise this fact without coming under attack. This allows trans privilege activists to claim that men claiming womanhood are now generally included in single-sex services across Scotland, because sector organisations cannot openly disagree without fear of repercussions.

Those providing other services, such as counselling, also continue to offer single-sex services. Once again however, this cannot be advertised.

Vulnerable women are now contacting grassroots women's rights groups because they fear that asking for a single-sex service may get them kicked off the often very long waiting lists. So these groups then act as intermediaries and typically find out that yes, single-sex services are provided for those who need them.

In other words, with the exception of very few Scottish service providers, who have made public their contempt for and condemnation of women who ask for a female-only service, the vast majority continue to provide single-sex services.

The problem is that not all women in need reach out first, and an unknown number are self-excluding either as a consequence of these hostile social media statements or of stated trans-inclusion policies (we have anecdotal evidence, but not enough data on that).

So the above statement is wrong in once again misrepresenting the facts.

Yes, our violence against women's sector organisations are trans inclusive because their funding conditions require it, but that does not mean that men claiming womanhood are included in female-only provisions. Generally it means these organisations are making extra services available to such men.

And we also know that those organisations choosing to include men claiming womanhood in women's spaces and services are not doing so sensitive to the needs of all involved.

That's of course entirely impossible given that when 99% of women need male-free provisions to recover, no service can meet their needs, let alone do so sensitively, if it includes men claiming womanhood in women-only settings.

There is a reason why every single Scottish grassroots group that I know of either includes women's sector workers as members or co-founders. Because these women know self-id is already causing issues. And they don't want it becoming enshrined in law.

I'm relieved to know that the women's sector is working around the stupidity of what trans activists are demanding but angry that they have to! How many women won't get the help they need because they can't face the possibility of being placed in accommodation with a man?

I can't express how it makes me feel that people would target, pressurise or threaten either women escaping abuse/dv or those trying to support them.

You're talking about women in one of the most vulnerable positions of their life, both physically and mentally, and accusing them of bigotry by saying they have to accept a male body in their space. It's sickening. Cruel, manipulative and sickening.

Surely there should be specialist provision for trans people in need of refuge/escaping dv?

I'm relieved to know that the women's sector is working around the stupidity of what trans activists are demanding but angry that they have to!

Absolutely this. But what is worse is that new laws are being pushed, based upon the coerced lie that everything is fine and dandy, when it really isn’t.