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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Who was on the Women and Equalities Commission in 2003-4?

22 replies

Shedbuilder · 17/06/2020 16:05

Have had a quick google but can't seem to find the names. I realise I don't know who it was and it feels important to have an idea.

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nettie434 · 17/06/2020 16:26

There wasn't one Shedbuilder. It was established after the 2015 General Election.

OvaHere · 17/06/2020 16:27

I don't know. The official page that lists former members only goes back as far as about 2017.

I can't find any references by googling either.

OvaHere · 17/06/2020 16:28

Ah cross post. That was my next question - was there one?

Was there anything similar in 2003?

nettie434 · 17/06/2020 16:40

I don't think so OvaHere (good name Smile).

I could only find this list of former committees.

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/former-committees/#redirect

Couldn't see anything like it. I suspect topics like pensions or health would have been dealt with by the relevant committee. There was a disability committee after the Disability Act but can't see one for other protected characteristics.

stumbledin · 17/06/2020 17:05

I just cant remember the exact name but there used to be a Government deparment for Women. I think when this was closed they then merged women's issues into the Women and Equalities Committee, which is why the post of Womens and Equalities Minister is always an add on to a more important??!!) Ministerial post.

stumbledin · 17/06/2020 17:09

This might help with the timeline en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_Women_and_Equalities

Kit19 · 17/06/2020 17:18

Patricia Hewitt was Minister for Women during that time but I cant find the committee

Shedbuilder · 17/06/2020 17:22

That would explain it, nettie434.

I feel woefully ignorant about the process that led up to the GRA. Knowing this forum someone has covered it in detail.

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nettie434 · 17/06/2020 17:45

Somebody here once posted a link to the Hansard debates on the GRA Shedbuilder. What I did not remember was that the main reason for the GRA was to ensure that there were no same sex marriages. Having a gender recognition certificate meant that a marriage would always be between a man and a woman.

I am not sure there was a select committee dealing with women's issues as the committees are meant to mirror each government department. The Minister for Women had other Cabinet responsibilities but there wasn't a department until they brought in the Government Equalities Office. I'm just going by memory here so may be completely wrong.

Shedbuilder · 17/06/2020 17:52

Thanks, Nettie. We were just talking here at home and realised that although we thought we knew — and we did know, roughly — we didn't know the precise details. And that before one starts trying to unravel this mess, it would be good to know the details of how and why and who got it started.

We've had a glass of wine and we've got ourselves confused... So who was on the committee that was so impressed by people like Alex Drummond that they were persuaded to propose changes to make a GRC easier to obtain?

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OvaHere · 17/06/2020 20:55

Maria Miller (Con) was the main driver of it as far as I remember. She was quite zealous. You don't hear much from her now.

OhHolyJesus · 17/06/2020 21:22

I'll try to dig out the Hansard on this as I'm certain I've had a listen to the audio myself.

Basically no one thought it would be abused, that anyone who wanted a GRC wouldn't be genuine.

TheShoesa · 17/06/2020 21:32

I've just searched for written records and found this, which might help?

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/acts/gender-recognition-act-2004

Crikey, Lord Tebbit didn't mince his words, did he? (this from the first one on the list)

<strong>Baroness O'Cathain</strong>

I am grateful to the Minister, but I would like to know how the law can really give power to a panel of doctors and lawyers to decree that a man is a woman. We are back to the point about gender and sex. As I said on Second Reading, I was greatly encouraged by the Minister's opening speech, when he said that marriage is very important and that it is recognised as the union of members of the opposite sex, male and female. In the debate on Second Reading, we came to the conclusion that, if a man and woman had been married and the man decided that he wanted to be a woman or felt that he was a woman, that marriage would have to be annulled. The couple would have to divorce. How can the law now be given the power to say that people are actually male or female?

As we know, transsexuals have healthy bodies. They are not suffering from an intersex condition, in which there is a physical problem with their reproductive organs. Many transsexuals have married and have had children. A transsexual man is truly a man: he is male.
8GC
He simply wishes to be female. Because of that, he is said to be suffering from gender dysphoria. We will be going through this Bill line by line. The reality is that if a person suffers from gender dysphoria and, just because they want to be a female, says, "I feel like a woman, I want to be a woman, I am a woman", then they will be allowed a gender change without any operation for gender adjustment, or whatever the terminology is—

§
<strong>Lord Tebbit</strong>

Sexual mutilation. 

§
<strong>Baroness O'Cathain</strong>

No, not sexual mutilation; gender reassignment. It is not necessary. No medical intervention has to occur. The person can get a certificate saying he is now female and then go off and get married.

I accept that the medical evidence on the condition is inconclusive. However, there is a huge body of opinion that says that this is a psychological and not a medical condition. Many people are scared about the implications of the Bill. They want to feel that the legislation that comes out of this place is right and does not open the floodgates to some ghastly social and cultural situation.
Annasgirl · 17/06/2020 21:37

Wow, Baroness O’Cathain was prescient wasn’t she?

Annasgirl · 17/06/2020 21:39

It’s a pity she didn’t get an input into the law in her own country - we could have done with a woman standing up for women in 2014/15

Shedbuilder · 17/06/2020 21:50

I'm thought I'd never heard of Baroness O'Cathain — oh, but of course I do, Detta O'Cathain.

Hmmm, she was against civil partnership and she appears to have been pretty homophobic, so maybe we'll forget about her.

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OvaHere · 17/06/2020 23:52

Homophobia was very much at the root of the GRA. If the government of the day could have got their heads around marriage equality then women wouldn't have had to pay such a heavy price.

nettie434 · 18/06/2020 00:04

Shedbuilder, my memory is the same as Ovahere's, that Maria Miller was the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee when it recommended reform.

Interestingly, she later said that the Committee's report was less interested in self ID than in improving access to health care. I don't know if that's rewriting history or not. Theresa May ultimately chose to accept the Committee's recommendation, otherwise the consultation would not have gone ahead.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/trans-rights-reform-lgbt-gender-recognition-conservatives-maria-miller-theresa-may-a8707691.html

FantaOra · 18/06/2020 00:09

Christine Burns and Press for change are the sources for what happened with who in the run up to 2004 legislation. Much of it was done in back rooms so the story goes.

Shedbuilder · 18/06/2020 10:44

If it was all done behind the scenes that's be why there seems to be very little on record.

These were the MPs on the Women and Equalities committee 2017-2019:

Mrs Maria Miller (Chair) (Conservative)
Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour)
Sarah Champion (Labour)
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party)
Philip Davies (Conservative)
Vicky Ford (Conservative)
Eddie Hughes (Conservative)
Stephanie Peacock (Labour)
Jess Phillips (Labour)
Tulip Siddiq (Labour)
Anna Soubry (The Independent Group for Change)

One of them I know and she's a a good Labour-through-and-through woman who ended up as an MP almost by mistake. She's someone who probably doesn't like to think of herself as a feminist because that might scare some of her constituents. She's okay with lesbians (always seems happy to talk at length with me) but can't bring herself to be 'unkind' and take a side in the transgender debate.

My guess is that she will have given this subject very little time because there are many more apparently urgent and important issues in her constituency. I've written to her several times and was shocked about how narrow her knowledge of this subject was. All she knew about was the poor transgender people who just wanted their rights.

As a new MP and member of the Women and Equalities committee I can imagine her being overwhelmed by her new job, new to the idea of transgender and just going along with whoever took the lead on this.

So who turned Maria Miller into a trans ally?

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OvaHere · 18/06/2020 12:20

If Jess Philips is ever able to find a backbone I imagine she would have a lot to say on what went on here. Despite her fence sitting I don't believe for a minute she is totally supportive of much of this nonsense.

Shedbuilder · 18/06/2020 12:33

It wasn't Jess Phillips I was referring to. But yes, if only there'd been a single outspoken woman on there things might have been different.

I presume Sarah Champion was dealing with the fall-out from her observation of the racial element in the Rotheram abuse scandal, for which she lost her job and came under attack. One would have hoped that a woman who saw what was happening on that issue might also have spotted the problem with transgender ideology. But by 2018 she'd been under the cosh and was tweeting pro-trans tweets.

Do we have to have anonymous committees whose members who can take decisions based on the merit of the cases rather than having to worry about the extent of the abuse they and their children will receive if they go against a particularly virulent lobby? Don't see anyone scared of saying no to the WASPI women or the disabled.

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