If the GRA act did go through, what would you do?

[CatsGetCOVIDToo]

I told my partner that if the GRA does go through, then I will be changing my passport, birth certificate, etc. I am a biological woman, but if I can choose my gender, then I will choose to be a man or non-binary.

He pointed out that even if this is made easier, it will still be a massive faff. He also pointed out that it may cause me problems if I visit a country where trans people do face discrimination. Thinking about it, he's right; I probably won't actually do any of this.

I'm wondering what other people think about this? Will you change your gender?

What do you mean goes through? The GRA already exists. Do you mean if it was amended & self ID added?

Funnily enough my husband (who kind of see's my point but really thinks I'm concerned about nothing, he doesn't believe self ID will get anywhere and doesn't understand the scale of the problem), asked me this question. I said in jest we'd have to leave the country and settle elsewhere.
In all seriousness asked where I'd like us to move to. I thought he was being facetious but he really meant it. He'd be up for moving to another country! Unfortunately I can't think where we might get away from this that's a realistic prospect for us (we both have jobs that could easily be done in another country) but where would you go???

That should read 'he, in all seriousness.....

If the organisations currently breaching the equality act don't eventually get called to account, then we are in a very worrying situation. It means in effect gender identity will be compulsory even if you do not believe in it and even if your understanding is that gender is a regressive system of oppression rather than an internal feeling. We are almost at this point.

Someone on twitter said in his opinion the social contract has already been breached by the Government.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

I don't know what I'd do. It might be prudent to say one is non binary as a way of increasing protection in law, given that misogyny is not a hate crime and rape is practically legal. If gender atheism is not recognised, non binary is probably a far more accurate description than "cis" woman for most feminists anyway.

Which countries do you imagine being non binary will be an issue in OP?

@Kit19

What do you mean goes through? The GRA already exists. Do you mean if it was amended & self ID added?

Apologies, yes, I meant if the GRA is reformed to include self-id as an easy option.

I’d identify as a man identifying as a woman.

I would identify as either a trans woman (I am female) or agender. I am not sure what my gender is or if I have one, no-one can explain to me how to find out what it is, so I think being unsure of my gender would fall under the trans umbrella, and I am a woman.
Obviously if legal definitions were produced I would adhere to those.

You can already change your passport without a GRC OP...

I am and will remain a woman. Reality will remain reality. The fight for reason, science and women’s rights won’t end.

I don’t think women can win by identifying as Trans, non binary or a two spirit penguin. The patriarchy will still see us for what we are and will use us as they see fit. I suspect that if we try to play them at their own game they will only make us suffer all the more.

I would def consider going non binary. It's meaningless but it means that as a woman you'd have more protection. I could then report any misogyny as hate crime against my non binary identity.

I’ll go non-binary, just to be annoying. It so non-committal, requires zero effort, and gives me an excuse to impose on people.

I don't see any benefit to choosing to "identify" as whatever else. It doesn't improve things for us (we'd still get treated as the women we obviously are), and if anything it would support self-ID, as the sudden jump in people identifying as the opposite sex/non-binary/whatever would surely be claimed as proof that there was huge demand for self-ID and therefore it was a great idea, hurray!

The only way to fight it if it had gone through would be to remain very definitely women, and to keep fighting as such, pointing out the negative impacts as they happened, and hope to eventually be heard (though it would have been extremely difficult to push back against if it had gone through).

Thankfully, as Liz Truss has just announced it ain't happening (see other thread on the announcement ) we should no longer have to fight on that front - though there's still plenty of work to do reaffirming single-sex spaces and supporting the various upcoming court cases!

I'd work to have it repealed or support efforts to challenge it in law. A good compromise would be having gender identity (or lack thereof) as a separate characteristic in law, like religious or political belief, separate from sex and sexual orientation. We already have "gender reassignment" but that in itself is something that is made to override sex and sexual orientation as a legal fiction, rather than being its own thing.
It'd also be a bigger motivation for me to study Mandarin Chinese, in which everyone is "ta" (though written differently for she/he/it) so pronouns aren't the ridiculous minefield they are here, the law and culture is much more based in materialism and virtue signalling wokelords are pejoratively called "baizuo" by the actual left wing. Then work on following their politics and culture rather than America's. If we have to have our culture and politics dictated by any superpower at all, that is, they pose a better challenge to all this neoliberal rubbish imported from the USA.

I started thinking about this the other night. There aren't that many tactics to adopt, but perhaps the best one would be to create a new gender identity based on the sex of the body one has. At least it would then be on the same level as all the other myriad identities and people could argue that this identity, too, should be taken seriously. Currently it is not.

What about agender cis-sexual? "I'm agender so I don't have an internal sense of gender but I do ... I guess I present as femme, and I'm okay with my body, so I consider myself to be an agender cis-sex woman, so I'm not quite trans in the way that people normally envision what is a trans person." www.google.com/amp/s/www.ladyscience.com/podcast/talking-feminist-astrophysics-chanda-prescod-weinstein%3fformat=amp

(Much like most women, I'd have thought: but no harm in advertising that you're on the right side of history.)

Ugh! Can't we just stick to not believing in "gender" (in the current sense of the word, anyway)?

That's a good idea Nepeta. Sadly, everytime we have tried to create a gender, the TRAs have disagreed with us...