Women & Equalities Commitee live today at 2.30

[ArabellaScott]

'The Women & Equalities Committee will hear from witnesses tomorrow 9/12 on Reform of The GRA at 2.30 pm. Witnesses include @Docstockk
@ProfAliceS
@GoonerProf
& Prof. Stephen Whittle, Alex Sharpe.'

(from Allison Bailey's twitter feed)

www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/dfc9f53e-2ac4-4c30-8712-e3df47938fd7

I thought Rosa was excellent when she said (paraphrasing), ‘as I am here in a professional capacity, I assume you are asking about the legal position and not my personal opinion’

It’s somewhere around here:

parliamentlive.tv/event/index/dfc9f53e-2ac4-4c30-8712-e3df47938fd7?in=16:37:30

I wish Hines wasn't too thick to realise that it doesn't matter how many wonderful women are delighted to get their kit off in front of any male person that happens to be present.

Some aren't .

Many are from vulnerable groups you utter muppet

What happens to those women? We just exclude them from all services? We have a female population in the UK who have been excluded from and deprived of services despite being tax payers and this is some sort of 'progress?' We have a country full of female single sex provisions which aren't inclusive of all females? Or be honest: you see any woman who won't use her body to validate someone's gender identity as deserving of punishment and exclusion.

There is not enough glue on the planet for me to be able to get my head around people who actually manage to somehow be ok with this.

Consent is not decided by democratic vote.

No means no and a single no is a total veto.

Someone should tell Hines.

Peter Gibson is my mp. I've just emailed him. Thoroughly disappointed in him

they were amazing and cool under pressure - considering how high the stakes are.

I did notice at one point Steven Whittle I think said that gender can be fluid and changeable which directly contradicts the general argument that it is innate (ie. that you were born with). I think he was arguing for flexibity in the self-id system? (can't face watching it again atm)

The general narrative is that gender identity is something that transgender people can't help and are born with but then how can it then become fluid and changeable throughout a person's life. How would a person know that it has changed and what is the likelihood of it changing back to match their birth sex? What are the other options for it to change to?

Some gender fluid people experience change on almost a daily basis - what makes them different to the people that experience a very fixed and permanent identity? Surely their needs are very different in many aspects.

Each time I hear someone try and explain it, it throws up even more questions that never get answered.

Wow, Sally really likes women doesn't she?

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1336994528599818251?s=21

Sally who maintained all gc women just needed a good seeing to? And she's now telling us to go and cook and knit.

Lovely.

Plant and Michelle, very good points, yes. Consent is not decided by a majority. It also isn't something one can be or should be bullied or pressured or forced-teamed into giving.

asking ‘cis women’ to retweet if they had no issue sharing spaces with males

Well great, they can go and be human shields for males in the male toilets then, if they're sooo not bothered, and leave the rest of us who do have an issue with it in fucking peace

Seriously, why should women with PTSD, abused women, religious women, etc be forced to share with males against their will just because some 'not like all the others girlz me' women on Twitter are desperate for male approval? And these people pretend they're feminists, lol.

I didn't manage to watch yesterday, but Nicola Richards is my MP so now I'm going to watch the whole thing and write to her. That UnHerd article by Mary Harrington highlighted for me why so many younger women (Nicola is 26) are unable to understand that you can't just be who you say you are. unherd.com/2020/12/for-me-self-identification-was-a-con/

I watched this last night.

What struck me was how the actual women giving evidence showed huge understanding of the difficulties faced by transpeople. Professor Freedman, particularly was a sterling advocate for appropriate healthcare. She demonstrated she had actually listened to Prof. Whittle and his difficulties in getting the health care he needed.

All three of the Professorial witnesses (Freedman, Stock, and Sullivan) focused on transpeople and their rights. They centred their discussions on the current issue of ensuring that transpeople have the standard human rights guaranteed in the Equalities Act, but realistically.

They also gave just utterly brilliant answers to the weasel question "Do you believe transwomen are women?" Prof. Freedman's answer, untangling the potential snarls in interpretations caught between the GRA2004 and the EA 2010, was utterly brilliant. And totally legal - interestingly, she expressed a view totally within the law that I would be cautious about expressing here, and - like other academics who post in FWR - I would now very very rarely be drawn on in real life. So I must replay that section and write it down, in case I ever am challenged.

But did the first 3 witnesses show a similar knowledge, awareness, and concern for women?

Did they heck.

Quite the reverse, especially Alex, who also started hectoring towards the end. Reminded me of Charlotte Clymer: I can't put my finger on why.

@ArabellaScott

I'm curious how this committee was formed - will they have volunteered? How come they are all TWAW (as far as I can see) and apparently actively hostile to women's views?

Select Committee membership reflects the balance of political parties in the House of Commons. MPs across the whole House elect the Select Committee chairs. Then the individual parties elect their own party members of the committee, e.g. a Conservative committee member will have been elected by all the other Conservative MPs.

Thanks, Abitofalark.

Just finished watching it. They were fantastic! Their answers to the "are tw women" question is something that I would want on a poster. They were so eloquent- well done!

(Though feeling a bit gutted that the MP asking prof Freedman to repeatedly explain her statements about male's risks to females seemed to be being deliberately belligerent)

Will Parliament provide a transcript of the answers does anyone know?

A transcript usually follows, but no sign of it as yet.

Rosa, Kathleen and Alice were fantastic. The last few questions from the Committee suggested they had their fingers in their ears though 🙄

I was discussing this with a friend over the weekend and she has reason to suspect that Stonewall or its proxies encouraged some of the MPs to ask those leading and provocative questions because they could see how rational and reasonable the Professors were looking. My friend suspects that's why the 'Do you believe TWAW?' question was asked and why one of the MPs made such a fool of herself over the statistics. Those were attempts to unsettle the Profs because they were so good.

Whittle et al were kicking themselves because they'd managed between them to state that a) gender identity is innate and unchangeable and b) gender identity is fluid and so it's unfair to require anyone to have to sign a declaration committing them for life. They did enormous damage to their credibility with that one.

Thanks

From FPFW:

If the latest inquiry into Gender Recognition Act (GRA) reform by the Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC)C)_ is to be productive and worthwhile, it needs to be conducted in a genuine spirit of inquiry and neutrality. Our analysis of the questions asked in the first two hours of oral evidence suggests there is still work to do.^

fairplayforwomen.com/wesc-gra-inquiry/

[quote HecatesCatsInXmasHats]From FPFW:

If the latest inquiry into Gender Recognition Act (GRA) reform by the Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC)C)_ is to be productive and worthwhile, it needs to be conducted in a genuine spirit of inquiry and neutrality. Our analysis of the questions asked in the first two hours of oral evidence suggests there is still work to do.^

fairplayforwomen.com/wesc-gra-inquiry/[/quote]
Thank you for this! Interesting

committees.parliament.uk/event/2998/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/

The transcripts are up.

Thanks, Hecate./ And for the transcripts.

I thought the bias was outrageous.

From the transcript:

'Kate Osborne: What steps do you think the Government should have
taken to mitigate the harm that is clearly being caused as a result of
opening this consultation?

Professor Sullivan: Can I just question the premise of that? We live in a democracy, and debate and consultation are not harmful. We hear a lot of hyperbolic language about this, calling debate literal violence and so on. Conversation is really important in a democracy. We need
conversation. It is not harmful.

In terms of what the Government could do, we need politicians across the political spectrum to stand up for women’s civil liberties. For example, when a woman MP like Rosie Duffield is monstered simply for suggesting we should be able to use the word “woman” rather than “cervix-haver”, I think most people would find that absurd. There is still time for parliamentarians to speak out and to try to help create a more normal environment in which women would feel less at risk in speaking up.'

I am so impressed with how these three witnesses handled some really dire questions. Chapeaux!

Can the extract answering the q about TWAW be shown here, please? I'm keen to see that!

@picklemewalnuts

Can the extract answering the q about TWAW be shown here, please? I'm keen to see that!

Peter Gibson Thank you for clarifying that no advantage was given to them. Could you each confirm for me your view as to whether a trans woman is a woman and whether a trans man is a man, please?

Professor Freedman
I will go down the law route because that is my expertise, and I think you would rather have my expertise than my personal opinion. In law, it says that a man is someone who is born male with biology in terms of chromosomes, gonads and genitalia, and a woman is someone who is born female with the same biological factors. Now, there is the legal fiction where a trans woman or a trans man may gain a gender recognition certificate that changes their legal sex but does not change their actual sex. Currently, in law, a trans woman is a trans woman unless she holds a GRC, in which case she is male, she is a trans woman, but, legally, she would be recognised as a woman for many but not all purposes.
That sounds complicated because the law is currently in a bit of a mess and that is why we need to change and streamline it. My opinion, therefore, changes depending on whether someone holds a GRC, but I stick in line with what the law currently says, which is that your sex is determined by biology.

Dr Stock
I think that we have two sexes, males and females. We have the human versions, the human males and females, and we have the adult and younger versions, adult and younger human males and females. We need a category to describe the adult human male and the adult human female because it aids communication about a vast range of things, given that we are a sexually dimorphic species that reproduces via heterosexuality. In other words, woman is adult human female and man is adult human male. That is the best understanding of those categories.

Professor Sullivan
I have been very clear. There is a distinction between sex and gender identity. Both of them are quite properly protected characteristics and we need to see them as distinct. The slogan “trans women are women” has been really unhelpful. Grown-up, mature adults do not talk in slogans. We need to think about the fact that there might be contexts where we want to treat trans women as though they were women and trans men as though they were men. In other contexts, that may not be appropriate. For example, if we think about sporting categories, changing rooms or data collection, all sorts of different issues may come up and we need to have a sensible conversation about those different contexts.

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Copy and paste from the downloadable PDF available here: committees.parliament.uk/event/2998/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/