New Tory MPs demand reform to GRA

[TheFleegleHasLanded]

Sorry, no share token. Guess this is about the Conservative Home article from yesterday?

“Conservative MPs who won seats in Labour’s northern heartlands last year have broken ranks to urge Boris Johnson to press ahead with plans to make it easier for people to change their gender, warning of a “new Section 28 moment”.”

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/new-tory-mps-demand-reform-to-gender-recognition-act-gzrxd8dh5

FFS do MPs ever talk to ordinary people ?

I’m

I'd painfully been considering jumping ship to the Tories but not now if this is how they are going.

It's becoming more obvious that a new political party needs to be formed. None of the parties actually reflect the views of the majority of the people of this country.

Why on earth do they think the northern heartlands turned away from Labour?

Surely Labour's obsession with identity politics was a big part of the problem!

FFS do MPs ever talk to ordinary people ?

Apparently not. I guess this could be the real reason why the announcement has been delayed, though - Boris (or Cummings) is worried about a backlash from his own MPs. If so, he's an idiot. You only need to look at comments beneath any article on the Times or Mail to see what majority opinion is on this.

I’m in Staffordshire near Stoke. I wrote to our MP and she sent a letter back this week. She said she’s committed to fighting for the rights of women and girls but didn’t specify the rights in the equality act itself which is what I mentioned in my long email. It was promising but not specific, she said nothing about trans being the most vulnerable or any shit like that. I’m writing back to say I’d like a specific assurance she’s committed to preserving the rights we have in the equality act and is against self ID, something she did not specifically say. Other members of my household will also write to her. I fear they are being bombarded with trans activists letters, I guess much like the consultation process itself.

So please write letters and emails! Don’t think yours doesn’t matter!! Write to your MP, the conservatives, Boris, Starmer, everyone.

Wasn’t Boris married to a lawyer? Wouldn’t he be aware of the court cases etc and legal implications of self ID?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-tory-mps-demand-reform-to-gender-recognition-act-gzrxd8dh5

Hope that works. Let me know if it doesn't.

I wouldn't get into too much of a sweat. They had an article on the conservative website yesterday and lots of very critical comments. I think the Conservatives have a very good idea about their northern constituencies. Those MP's are mc and mc is not who the conservatives are looking at for votes in the North

Mind you, I know sod all about Conservatism so I'll get my coat

And yet, they also won’t listen to the gay and lesbian commentators such as Douglas Murray saying that it is nothing like Section 28.

Conservative official website? There’s a ‘journalist’ who has some kind of conservative blog and writes for conservative home sometimes, is that what it’s called? Tom Harwood, he’s very misogynistic and supports fully self ID. He never gets support from his followers when he tweets about it, so I really don’t think the conservatives are unaware their voters don’t want self ID.

I can say 100% the north does not support self ID. They need to focus on what matters up here. It’s not fucking pronouns.

Share token here:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a9e0d3fe-e8a5-11ea-9b25-18353d361fa2?shareToken=5de76188c37a0a0d2753ef61fe491875

And The Times is running an excellent Douglas Murray piece in the comment pages today, covering the anti science claims of the trans movement and its collision with gay and women’s rights:

Trans people are real — but so is biology

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b3baa31a-e87c-11ea-9b25-18353d361fa2?shareToken=cba43adb51c88c40cd5cd45a61cd17e4

In some ways, I am glad this has come up. The Conservatives have been very quiet on this issue, hoping to dodge the debate currently tying up labour and Lib Dems.

Let's get some sunlight into the party. Especially with several court cases planned around the issue.

Here are the MPs who authored/signed the article on Conservative Home. Please, if you are a constituent, write to them. They have clearly been lobbied hard and we need to push back.

Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East)
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton)
Jamie Wallis MP (Bridgend),
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham Northfield),
James Sunderland (Bracknell),
Paul Holmes (Eastleigh),
Richard Holden (North-West Durham),
Elliot Cockburn (Carshalton and Wallingford)
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North).

Many of the comments show a good understanding of the issues:

“You have this very wrong.

I completely agree that people should live their lives as they choose, but you have picked a side-issue.

The main issues, which you have not addressed, are:

Firstly, the pressure on children and teenagers to transition when the vast majority to desist. Transitioning a child who subsequently desists can cause physical and psychological harm, and yet tax-payers money supports organisations pushing for this (Mermaids, Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence). Yes let's fund more support, but it must be support about allowing them to grow up naturally. Only for a small proportion will the gender dysphoria prove persistent.

Secondly, you have ignored the increasing conflict between women defending their hard-won rights and spaces from biological males who seek to appropriate them. By all means people should live their lives as they choose, but when two segments of the population are in dispute, and one claims anothers rights (women's prisons, refuges, bathrooms, changing rooms, sports, wards etc) then the state has to intervene and you have to choose. Which side do you choose? Women defending their rights and spaces or the biological males who seek to appropriate them?

The GRA is irrelevant. There is a strong correlation between those who hold a GRC and those who have had 'bottom-surgery'. For the many trans-women who do want access to women's rights and spaces they are seeking validation. They want us all to deny reality and to say that they are really women despite the fact that a majority of them keep intact male genitalia. The GRC is irrelevent to them. No, the GRA is a legal fiction which allows Stonewall and others to deliberately misinterpret what the EA actually says. The GRA should be repealed.”

www.conservativehome.com/platform/2020/08/nicola-richards-and-alicia-kearns-why-it-makes-sense-for-us-to-reform-the-gender-recognition-act-gra.html#idc-cover

Alicia Kearns is my MP. I've written to her twice. The first time I got a 'these are oppressed and vulnerable people' blah blah,no threat to the rights of women'. Talk about patronising! I wrote back,listing the threats to women and asking which women's and children's safeguarding groups she'd met with. Nothing. It's like blogging a dead horse there.😔

Somewhat OT but I'd hardly say that list looks like 'northern heartlands' - apart from the Durham one they're all southern or midlands aren't they?

One of the MPs who signed this has used actual transphobic language in the past (not to mention the misogyny he combined it with, in this case):

www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/politics/mp-milton-keynes-apologises-saying-baroness-resembled-tranny-hangover-2867810

Anyone starting to see a pattern here?

Yeah not really northern heartlands. My grandfather was from Durham. They’re really not interested in this shit up there. Their MP has read it very wrong

One of the MPs who signed this has used actual transphobic language in the past (not to mention the misogyny he combined it with, in this case):

Now, that IS a surprise.

^ what ABC said. The court cases are vital. Writing to our MPs is vital. They are the ones who can remake the law.

And actually this culture war I think won’t be solved until the GRA is repealed. Because of the problems with the outdated GRA interacting with the Equality Act and such widespread regulatory capture.

Because of the GRA providing a fictitious legal status for (what has become) a solely validating purpose, and because this legal fiction clashes with the rights of women to single sex spaces, opportunities and so on. And because the GRC was drafted to provide secrecy such that either holding or not holding a GRC can’t be asked about. So GRA effectively creates self ID in practical effect.

Plus the naive way GRA was drafted (written to benefit late transitioners) means that anyone who gets a GRC is then stuck with it for life because you can’t even undo your own GRC status as the GRC holder. As Keira Bell has said.

That’s a breach of anyone’s rights if they are stuck with an unwanted fictional legal sex and can’t change it back. WTF?

All of this needs urgent Parliamentary attention. Any government kicking reform into the long grass (because it’s been made into too much of a hot potato by TRAs and admitting regulatory capture is too painful for the government) is just shrugging off a crucial discussion for the future.

The future is always uncertain. Nobody can know if future governments will be more or less misogynistic than this one is. So it might be much worse for women not to be addressing it now.

And the associated problems of regulatory capture and the abandonment of evidence-based, consent-based ethical medicine when it comes to children distressed about gender issues, are also crucial for the government of the day to address.

We have predominantly female healthy young kids being funnelled into invasive permanent treatment, becoming lifelong medical patients and their right to an open future being taken away by NHS GIDs working in silos without routine follow up of outcomes and private doctors with their eye on their bottom line and no overview of the patients wider issues.

And the politics at the root of this dogma is misogyny and homophobia. Gender stereotypes are a trap for all of us. We need to get rid of them. Everyone should be able to live however they want, so long as they are not harming others.

Keeping the parliamentary reforms on ice is just another form of #nodebate. We need national, adult discussion of impacts in the interests of women and children and same-sex attracted people, as well as in the interests of adults who identify as trans and detransitioned adults.

@BaronessWrongCrowd

It's becoming more obvious that a new political party needs to be formed. None of the parties actually reflect the views of the majority of the people of this country.

The SDP have a rational policy on this. I was surprised as I didn’t even know they still existed. They do. Worth a look maybe?

One of the MPs who signed this has used actual transphobic language in the past (not to mention the misogyny he combined it with, in this case):

Wow.

John Cope, deputy chairman of the LGBT+ Conservatives group, said the MPs’ criticism proved that “the new intake is modernising, moderate and very liberal”. He said that up to 50 MPs could support the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.
Modernising, good grief, I don't call cementing sex stereotypes and undermining women's rights progressive in the least.

Something very odd is going on with the moderation of the comments on the Times article on this. So many deletions of perfectly reasonable comments. Mine haven’t even appeared at all.