The Future of Legal Gender - Should state law withdraw from registering and assigning sex?

[NonnyMouse1337]

There are a number of events being held every Friday by The Future of Legal Gender which seems a spin off project by something called L/G/B/T.

futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/events-and-public-and-policy-engagements/

The next one is Should state law withdraw from registering and assigning sex? The feminist politics of decertification and prefigurative law reform, 11 Nov 2020 at 4pm.

Seems like you join via the Zoom link. Might be of interest.

Abstract
This talk explores decertification as a speculative law reform proposal. In decertification, the state withdraws from registering, assigning, or guaranteeing a person’s sex and gender, giving one shape to the growing momentum towards their informalisation. Reforming how state law
responds to sex/ gender has become a highly controversial issue. In this talk, I explore three questions, drawing from research conducted as part of a feminist ESRC funded project, The Future of Legal Gender. They are:

1. Why might decertification be a good idea?
2. What concerns does it raise; and how might they be addressed?
3. What are the strengths and challenges of prefigurative law reform research, which rehearses and attends to a proposal not yet on the law reform table?

The project seems part of a group / org that goes by the name L/G/B/T or Law/Gender/Body/Texts.
www.lawgenderbodytexts.com/

Other events (register at Eventbrite):

Fri, 13 November 2020
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
‘Ultra-Texts’ Beyond Gender. Multimodality, Intertextuality and Transmediality as Resources to Contest Gendered Binarisms

Fri, 20 November 2020
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
Gender variant bodies : stories of spaces and places

Fri, 27 November 2020
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
Rethinking gender through disability

Fri, 4 December 2020
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
Prefiguring the law

Fri, 11 December 2020
16:00 – 17:00 GMT
Dismantling the false dichotomy between women’s rights and trans' rights

Downside there is while you can ditch the useless more easily, without tenure even fewer academics would be willing to come out as critical of things like trans women in women’s sport, etc, for fear of being cancelled.

Absolutely no chance of them being sacked I’m afraid. They’re considered leading lights in all their respective disciplines!

But also, I was going to say, as these events are open to all, I encourage you to sign up to them and to put these questions to the presenters. Normally, these things are closed and restricted to other academics who either agree or are too scared to disagree with the TRA-mob. Here is a chance for the rest of the public to challenge this stuff!

@RealityNotEssentialism

But also, I was going to say, as these events are open to all, I encourage you to sign up to them and to put these questions to the presenters. Normally, these things are closed and restricted to other academics who either agree or are too scared to disagree with the TRA-mob. Here is a chance for the rest of the public to challenge this stuff!

Absolutely. These issues shouldn't be hidden away from the public. This is a chance to see what is being discussed and to be able to ask questions.

It's on Wednesday

Today at 4pm.

TigerBrite

But state lawdoesn’tassign sex. You’re just born with a sex, it isn’t assigned to you.

Such a sane statement.

It should be pinned to the top of this board.

I saw this project when it was first announced and thought it is one of those theses where one answer is effectively a failed project. If the answer is that there is a good reason for the legal recognition of gender and it should continue, the project has been a waste of time and there are no prizes for the authors. I have seen other legal research projects where one answer would lead to publications and the other answer would not. If you spend years researching a thesis only to conclude that the status quo is actually the best way deal with it, you’d get nowhere academically. That means you are effectively pre-judging the outcome of the research which is the thing you are not supposed to do.

Upton Sinclair said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Very true of academic lawyers.

Thanks NonnyMouse1337! I hope people turn up. It’s taxpayer funds that are spent on these grants so it’s our money that goes towards paying for stuff like this. With this and the pregnant men project (also funded by ESRC to the tune of £1 m), it’s quite worrying what criteria the funding bodies are applying because neither project can be said to truly be in the public interest.

This project ‘imagines’ what would happen if sex was not recorded on birth certificates. Why the hell do they need three quarters of a million quid for that? Most of it is entirely theoretical and has little grounding in reality. I suspect that the majority of the money is used to buy the participants out of having to teach at their institutions for a few years and also pays for them to attend various conferences. I can’t see this having any impact on law reform because it consists largely of one-sided hypothetical pontifications by people who are intent on blurring the real issues and dismissing women’s very real concerns that this proposal will further entrench inequality.

Also, much of the writing from the participants is littered with theoretical jargon and overly flowery language that obscures the real point (if there is one). That people who persistently write like this should be drafting legislation (even if just hypothetical) is baffling.

Hopefully the Covid 19 pandemic reduces the taxpayers money going to these type of people Reality. Silver lining and all that.

Meanwhile, food banks are under pressure to feed the increasing numbers of starving people in the UK. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) more people are becoming unemployed.

Three quarters of a million pounds could feed/house many of them.

PurpleHoodie I totally agree.

The law absolutely does not assign sex, it’s an observed material reality. We have only had compulsory birth registration for a few hundred years yet the reality of biological sex has always existed and so has female oppression.

Birth certificates are just a record of an event. They do not seek to confer some sort of special status on the holder. It is necessary to record sex for statistical reasons, to analyse population trends and measure things like life expectancy.

Even if you stop recording sex, there will still be discrimination. Discrimination comes from oppressive gendered norms being applied to women, which label them as inferior. Discrimination is ultimately rooted in biological sex because if it wasn’t, then gendered expectations would be applied to men and women equally. They’re not. Women, not men, are expected to be nurturing, kind and subservient. Women, not men, are expected to be ‘feminine’ in appearance and demeanour. If you remove reference to sex, you cannot explain why only half the population are expected to act a certain way and the other half are not. People get all this stuff with regard to race but pretend not to understand it when it comes to sex.

Sometimes biological differences are important and must be recognised, although most of the time they are not. Differences in physical strength are of crucial importance in areas like sport and prisons. Safety must and fairness must always trump identity and feelings.

I'm all for the non recognition of "legal gender" as long as sex is still recorded and recognised.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I'm all for the non recognition of "legal gender" as long as sex is still recorded and recognised.

And that’s where you and Professor Cooper would disagree. She is apparently baffled that there are women that have an issue with ‘a feminism that doesn’t centre biological sex’. The thing is that you cannot explain gender without reference to sex. Why is it that these particular norms and standards labelled feminine are only applied to half the population? What feature could that half of the population possibly have in common that means they are held to expectations of femininity? I’m searching my brain for answers but coming up with nothing. Oh actually, maybe it’s because they all like pink and are gentle and kind. That must be it. People can sense their inner essence and therefore expect them to act a certain way.

The law absolutely does not assign sex, it’s an observed material reality. We have only had compulsory birth registration for a few hundred years yet the reality of biological sex has always existed and so has female oppression.

Absolutely, Reality.

Improving the rates of birth registration in developing countries has been identified as beneficial to girls, being counted makes a difference to education and service provision and to measuring success. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were involved in promoting this to NGOs.

Queer theorists with only their lifetime of freedom to indulge intensive personal introspection probably didn't notice.

All evidence suggests Queer theorists don't give a shit about girls (at home, or abroad) Escapeplanning.

@Escapeplanning

Improving the rates of birth registration in developing countries has been identified as beneficial to girls, being counted makes a difference to education and service provision and to measuring success. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were involved in promoting this to NGOs.

Queer theorists with only their lifetime of freedom to indulge intensive personal introspection probably didn't notice.

So true. So many things that have been identified as improving conditions in the developing world (registration, single sex toilets and facilities) are things these people want to tear down. And they have the nerve to tell us to check our privilege.

@TigerBrite

But state law doesn’t assign sex. You’re just born with a sex, it isn’t assigned to you.

This this and this.

Its projects like this that make me think Universities should only run courses that actually have a practical outcome like medicine!

All these people in their academic bubble talking what would just be pub chit chat and then forgotten about building careers on reconfirming their addled beliefs.

And worse still all those who invest in this established concept of how the world should be run, then go along with the nonsense, which if it was just pub chit chat they would ignore, but then they start to implement this intellectual stupidity to prove that their way of ordering the world is right.

Just because someone has become a Professor that doesn't mean they should be taken seriously.

Are people listening to this shite?

Hahaha Mumsnet is mentioned for encouraging people to fill in their survey 😆

@GoGoGone

Are people listening to this shite?

Yes, sadly I am.

I'm going to download all the papers mentioned here after the talk.

journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw

It's just total bollocks isn't it

I can't really describe it any other way

She raises all the problems and then basically says "but maybe if we tell people they aren't real they will go away"

So much waffling and pretending sex is sooo complicated, like we haven't known what it is for millennia.

Not much time being left for questions.... 🙄