Why biological sex was silenced

[BovaryX]

Sex cannot be changed. It is no good the Minister shaking his head. Sex is decided by the chromosomes of a human being. So far as I know, there is no law nor any known medical procedure that can change the sex of a human being. The Bill purports to do so. It is therefore an objectionable farce

TimeLady linked to an article which gives a fascinating insight into the history of the GRA and the lobby’s ideology written by one of its proponents. The deliberate manipulation of language in the GRA was a key aim. The intention was to displace biological sex and relegate it to a subordinate role below gender. To render it irrelevant. It was successful.

The sex/gender distinction is demobilized both literally and legally...Gender now determines sex

Fifteen years later, the implications of this radical policy are explicit. In 2004, denying the existence of biological sex would have been met with derision. This morning, the leader of the Lib Dems disputes its existence a couple of days before she expects people to vote her into power. This lobby believes if it can rigidly control language, it can remodel external reality according to whim. If you can confine biological sex to a dusty attic, performative gender can take centre stage. This demolishes the foundation of women’s rights. It has serious implications for gay rights. There are few politicians with the integrity or gravitas to challenge this agenda. In retrospect, those who objected at the time deserve respect for their critical analysis.

There was also the expectation that not only would it be a small number, but that those who applied for the GRA would have demonstrated significant commitment which would be determined by a panel

a person’s sex or gender has important legal and social consequences and affects the rights of others and so the state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that people who take on a new legal status can establish to the satisfaction of an official that they meet certain criteria

I really can’t stomach reading the link, I hope that’s not a prerequisite for replying on what’s written on the thread.

The UN mostly definitely doesn’t conflate sex and gender when they talk about how female foetuses are aborted at a much higher rate than males. (Zero judgement on individual women choosing abortion, but these stats as a whole are important due to the cultures of misogyny that are behind them. There’s also the reality that more boys are conceived and more boys are likely to have medical abnormalities that would lead to increased rates of abortions for boys, yet still much higher rates of female foetuses are aborted).

I guess if sex is a legally meaningless term then how does anyone argue that they are being discriminated against for being homosexual? Because if there aren’t 2 definable sexes then no one can claim to be attracted only to those of their same sex. Which takes any homophobic attack out of the catagory of hate crime. So someone routinely targeting gay men for violence can do teeny sentences before getting out to target them again and again. While I’d like to point out that those targeting lesbians will be homophobic and misogynistic I generally find pointing out the negative impact on men helps it click on others brains (shouldn’t be that way but it is).

So not only doesn’t gender get rid of sex based protections but it gets rid of sexual identity based protections also.

Going back to Clitherows comment on p.1, as I think it is key:

This means that power relations will be shifted to those people who will be able to most forcefully impose their own inner feelings on others.

And

This is extreme liberalism of the John Stuart Mill variety in which laws should be kept to a minimum and society must order itself according to the outcomes of competing individuals.

This extreme individualim does not apply equally to all individuals in society. The power relations haven’t changed, power still resides primarily with men, whatever they claim about gender feelz.

In all the important senses, relations between genders remains the same as it ever were.

This also highlights that not only are sex and gender different things, so too are gender and gender identity. We just don’t see society, and all the people within it, treat men who claim a female gender identity as if they were women.

It is quite clear that those gender ideologists who want to replace sex, in all contexts, with gender, have no concept of structural analysis of what gender relations actually mean for women in our society.

Under the guise of social justice for oppressed minorities, power inequalities between men and women are further entrenched, and one of the rules of misogyny identified by, I think, tehBewilderness is codified in law:

Men are what men say they are, and women are what men say they are.

The language used may be about freeing individuals, but the practice is about sex-based power inequalities.