Culture war fears delay trans ruling - Sunday Times

[stumbledin]

Boris Johnson has delayed plans to block people from changing their legal gende and "self idetify" as a different sex because he does not want a "culture war".

Cant find this anywhere on line but Pink News has a report on it.

(Note how even the Times gets in a muddle about sex and gender)

Not sure if this will be readable

I really hope this is just p news bullshiting us age

Is that not the Carrie Symonds story lightly reheated and served in a basket full of holes?

This is the Times reporting it.

Pink News has this story but says it is because of Carrie Symonds.

I posted because this forum has been more than happy to accept that the Times has done a good job of reporting the issue.

If you want the Carrie Symonds version it is the the Daily Mail which is the one Pink News has copied. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8584481/Carrie-Symonds-stopped-fianc-Boris-Johnson-ditching-transgender-reforms-MPs-claim.html

And I started a thread a couple of days ago because it was reported the tories had had a meeting about this on wednesday www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3983336-Conservative-Party-meeting-on-GRA-Wednesday-29-July-2020

Missed out the bit that says Truss did in fact have her Ministerial Statement ready.

Please explain (and excuse my thickheadedness if I've misunderstood), why would Carrie advise him to do this?

Well number 10 has denied the Carrie Symonds story. I also wouldn't be surprised if it's "throw a woman under the bus" time to deflect from the government. What it means is anyone's guess

I wonder what Miss Symonds does think about all this? Maybe she uses this site and isn’t aware of this board? Her Wikipedia entry is interesting.

Thisismytimetoshine - none of the articles explain why, but it could be:

She is very woke, believes the Stonewall campaign that there should be self ID but realises that a lot of women are against it and if the Tories went ahead might lose women's votes

She doesn't have an opinion but reckons that if the Tories did stop self ID there would be an all out campaign by trans activists saying this was a bad a section 28 and Boris / Tory reputation would be damaged at a time it isn't very high

This is why sometimes it feels it might help if there was a campaign to repeal the GRA as it is a legal fiction to say you can change sex, but if that was threatened it might mean that some trans activists think better to keep what we've got than not have anything at all.

Was this in the print version for Sun 2nd? It doesn't seem to be in the online version at all. Not sure how usual that is?

I think there had been some indications previously that Symonds was GC? In which case, I suppose it could be that the reports are not true, or it could be that they are true but she wanted to discourage Johnson from making the announcement for other reasons, such as just to avoid a big row during an already difficult time.

From the Times:
It is understood that further mitigation measures are being worked on that, while still ruling out self-ID, will make transitioning less bureaucratic and also reduce the costs to each individual.

So 'Self-ID' in all but name, then?

Honestly, this shows the futility of feminists basing their campaign on opposing 'Self-ID'. It reduces the argument to how much or how little red tape should be involved in falsifying one's legal sex.

Once governments agree that a person should have the legal right to be treated as a sex which they are not (and almost all Western governments have), then it becomes impossible to defend sex-based rights, or reality itself. 'Self-ID', 'transitioning', these are terms created to disguise a fundamental lie about human beings, and sadly even 'gender- critical' feminists take part in reifying them.

This is why sometimes it feels it might help if there was a campaign to repeal the GRA as it is a legal fiction to say you can change sex

This is the stronger position. It's the only position from which to mount a coherent argument. It could be buttressed with arguing that there are other ways to help trans-identified people to function in society without forcing everyone else to lie about sexual biology.

E.g., more unisex facilities while retaining single-sex provision, laws to protect people against discrimination on the basis of sex-role presentation, special accomodation for trans-identified prisoners within the male estate. There is no need for such a position to be framed as 'anti-trans'. It is ultimately the 'kinder' position too as it has become increasingly clear that the mental health of trans-identified people is not improved by enforcing a society-wide lie that sex is both changeable and irrelevant. Tackle the falsehood at its roots, or these battles will be never ending.

But then they will say that "more unisex facilities while retaining single-sex provision, laws to protect people against discrimination on the basis of sex-role presentation, special accomodation for trans-identified prisoners within the male estate." gives them gender dysphoria,
even though it's obvious they need more specialised services because surely they don't want women speaking for their experience in therapy groups etc.
It's a catch 22 they trap themselves in.

Then comes the comparison to black/white race relations. It's exhausting.

It's exhausting for us and it means that trans people aren't getting the actual help they need and it might stop them getting support from women altogether.

Are there any countries that have full self ID already?

Hmmmm. Cant comment on the avoiding culture war line of the story except to hope it isn't true. A few weeks ago it was all done and dusted and the delay is a timing issue, nothing more. Hopefully nothing has changed.

But on this point:

It is understood that further mitigation measures are being worked on that, while still ruling out self-ID, will make transitioning less bureaucratic and also reduce the costs to each individual.^
^
If they do what they planned these are just cosmetic changes and not self ID through the back door. Basically making it less expensive but still needing the current hurdles involving doctors etc. Based on what I know I felt quite positive. Hopefully all still stands, will find out in September.

A campaign on the GRA should be next (at the very least to make it coherent on what is means by sex and gender as it is so confused).

I go for repealing GRA otherwise confusion will continue. These grey areas allow manipulation and obfuscation, very damaging for women

I see, stumbled, I had misunderstood it as a Pinknews story.

Agree that the GRA needs to be appealed.

This is why sometimes it feels it might help if there was a campaign to repeal the GRA as it is a legal fiction to say you can change sex

What is needed is for everyone to take a step back and think about why the GRA was passed in the first place and whether the reasons it was thought to be needed at the time still apply today.

One reason was to allow two people of the same sex to marry. It is no longer necessary for this purpose.

Another reason was to avoid someone being 'outed' as a transsexual to their employer, with consequences of discrimination and harassment against the transsexual person. There are at least two separate issues involved here. The discrimination and harassment angle is dealt with by the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the Equality Act, so it's not required for that purpose. Whether someone should be permitted to hide and disguise their true sex from other people is a different matter.

Being 'outed' as trans is sometimes framed as being similar to being outed as gay, when it is actually very different. Someone's sexuality is the business of nobody except that person and other consenting adults who choose to have a sexual relationship with them. Someone's sex is important to a much wider group of people. In a work environment this affects basic things like which toilets someone should use. In some areas there is an even greater impact such as in healthcare, where people might choose to have intimate examinations carried out by someone of the same sex. In this scenario, both the employer and the patient should have the right to know the employee's sex.

There are a lot of questions which should be asked about changes to the GRA. It shouldn't be only 'what effect does a legal change of sex have on trans people?' (although I agree with DonkeySkin that it's not necessarily helpful to them), but 'what effect does people being able to legally change their sex have on the rest of society?'

@OldCrone Age seems to be diminishing my ability to read critically, so I need women like you @DonkeySkin et al on this board to get some clarity. Thanks

There are a lot of questions which should be asked about changes to the GRA. It shouldn't be only 'what effect does a legal change of sex have on trans people?' (although I agree with DonkeySkin that it's not necessarily helpful to them), but 'what effect does people being able to legally change their sex have on the rest of society?'

Yes, absolutely, I thought in principle all stakeholders had to be consulted when a matter of something that could be a conflict of interests was proposed. When you attempt to legally change the ontology of “woman” from one of biological sex to one of gender identity, it very much affects the rights and status of those who are impacted by having a female sex. They are de facto attempting to make the parameter around womanhood based on femininity rather than femaleness... to be a woman you need to have a feminine identity and nature, which is the epitome of old school sexism. Women do not consent to having our boundaries redrawn without our consent. Nothing about us without us. Our current “constituency” boundaries are based on the material reality of our location in a sexually dimorphic species and how our reproductive role affects us as individuals and as a class.

I'm not entirely sure how delaying a 'culture war' in the country is going to actually prevent one so I presume it means delaying MPs arguing until parliament is back in session so that the row's impact is diluted.

I agree that the GRA should be repealed as it subverts biology; esp as the reasons for it's existence have gone.

It staggers me that the effects of the GRA on women weren't known, so am assuming that under the radar use of gender has brought us to some of the impacts.

I can remember a good few years ago reading that laws were getting sloppy because politicians were expecting the courts to sort out any flaws. It hasn't happened in this case?

Are there any countries that have full self ID already?

A few. Interestingly they seem mainly to be countries with a poor record on women's rights and/or gay rights and/or with a highly religious population.

Ireland passed a self-ID law in 2015. When I first heard this I understood that their law was worded in such a way that there would be no problems such as male prisoners identifying as women in order to access women's prisons, because everyone would be allocated to a prison based on their biological sex rather than their legal sex.

Not so.

Currently, a pre-operative, pre-hormone therapy, male-to-female transgender prisoner is being held in Limerick women’s prison.

When before the court last July, the prisoner was in possession of a gender recognition certificate.

It is understood that the prisoner was assigned a high level of monitoring after being convicted of ten counts of sexual assault and one count of cruelty against a child.

Robert Purcell is chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee: “The law that was enacted in 2015 did not envisage this situation, and it puts the Prison Service and the courts in a difficult position because, obviously, if somebody is self-declaring that they have to be recognised, then they have to be dealt with on that basis, even though physically, they have not have made the [physical] transformation.

“I don’t think the legislation envisaged the ability of transgender people to be able to self-declare; and it didn’t foresee the problems it would cause if a transgender, self-declared person was held in a mixed prison,” he said.

www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/male-bodied-transgender-inmate-housed-with-women-prisoners/

So they passed a law which meant transgender people could self declare, but they didn't envisage the ability of transgender people to be able to self declare

The constant delays then hope then delays again are doing fuck all for my anxiety

Comment on the delays from the ever sensible James Kirkup in the Spectator.
www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-i-m-glad-boris-and-starmer-are-sitting-out-the-trans-rights-war.

'what effect does people being able to legally change their sex have on the rest of society?'

Yes, we need to consider this - it's a bit unbelievable that nobody appears to have done so in a legal/govt capacity.