Hansard Record Transgender debate

[ThinEndoftheWedge]

Does anyone have a link for the Hansard debate in parliament (possibly just the Lords) re the EA 10. There was a Lord (male I think) who either wanted or provided clarification that with changes to an individual’s legal sex - that there would be no compulsion for the rest of us, for example, in speech, pronouns, male inclusion in women’s sport etc - effectively reassuring that all the things that are happening, wouldn’t happen.

Prob Lord Tebbit:

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I think that I would be able to follow him even more closely were he to say how he defines "sex" and "gender". It seems to me that he is using the words in a rather muddled fashion

The 2nd and 3rd links are for the HL discussions...

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

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2004/jan/29/gender-recognition-bill-hl#S5LV0656P0_20040129_HOL_283

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2004/feb/03/gender-recognition-bill-hl#S5LV0656P0_20040203_HOL_264

hansard.parliament.uk/search/Debates?startDate=2008-01-01&endDate=2009-12-31&searchTerm=equality&house=Lords&partial=False

You can filter by which house and dates and subject. (I just did a search for 'equality' from 1st Jan 2009 to 31st Dec 2009 linked above which returned 6 debates but you might need to go a bit earlier or later than that and you'll need to put aside a fair bit of time to go through them)

I know that isn't what you were asking for , but hopefully narrows things down a bit until someone better organised than me can give you a direct link

Excellent thread with pertinent points from HairyLeggdHarpy

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049289194370002945?s=20

Crossed posts Signalbox. I was WAY out in my date range!

Many thanks. You are incredible!

Fascinating. Lord Tebbit totally nailed it pointing out the hopeless confusion between sex and gender in the bill and then Lord Filkin (?) trying to say that gender is partly biological because of Lady brains. Robust evidence? None.

It is fascinating isn't it? Lord Tebbit was obviously very aware that the conflation of "sex" and "gender" was going to be problematic for the future. He must be a very astute person I think:

My Lords, I do not know what is the inability which causes the noble Lord not to understand, not to be aware of or to ignore the fact that I have tabled amendments to precisely define the difference between sex and gender. The noble Lord will have heard the exchange I had with the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, on the subject. How can the noble Lord then say that I seem to believe that they mean the same thing?

And the answers that Lord Tebbit gets when he asks for definitions are vague and slippery as if definitions are of no consequence...

We consider the arguments about the meaning of the words "sex" and "gender" to be beside the point. There is no stark dichotomy between the meaning of the words. Language, as I said, is fluid. Our sense of the words "sex" and "gender" has changed over time and no doubt will do so in the future. While the meaning of the word "sex" is not the same as that of "gender", the word "sex" is increasingly in use in ways that go beyond a narrow biological definition