Minister’s Maternity Bill - States people not women

[UppityPuppity]

Saw this on Maya’s twitter- Pregnant women who are government ministers to get maternity leave for the first time. Great - long time coming, but the bill states ‘people who become pregnant’ not pregnant women.

mobile.twitter.com/MForstater/status/1357759056790847491

publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0255/200255.pdf

Erasure of women in women only/related legislation must not happen. This will set a precedent.

Not sure what to do.

Is anyone on twitter (I’m not on the cesspit) who could notify the Baroness/Jackie DP/Joanna Cherry...etc or anyone else who might be able to do something so it states pregnant women instead?

This isn’t trivial - language in law matters.

It actually does not say “people who are pregnant”. It uses the word “person” which is being used in a law sense. Most law documents do not use “woman” and “man”. It is always person, or if needed adult and minor.

I have no problems with it because I don’t think it’s because of the trans issue at all. You read enough laws, you’ll see they all are written this way. Look at the upskirting bill for example. It doesn’t say if a man peeks up a woman’s skirt, it’s an offence. It is all “a person commits an offence if...”

It’s just normal legal writing style.

Here link to upskirting bill
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/2/section/1/enacted

@jj1968

This isn’t trivial - language in law matters.

Indeed it does, and if the word woman were used exclusively then that could be used to deny this protection to trans men with a GRC who are legally men.

I disagree. The Equality Act states a woman is a female person, so a female person who is legally male would not be excluded.

However, this isn't necessary because the word person is used frequently in statutory writing and that would work just fine here.

Transmen (one word) are not a legal entity. Trans men (two words) would be better

Neither refers to a legal entity. And trans man is ambiguous as the semantically correct interpretation of this phrase is "male person who identifies as trans".

And even though most people continue to understand the phrase to mean just that, trans rights activists use it to refer to a female person who identifies as trans.

(trans works as an adjective here. It modifies the word for a male person. Ergo, it refers to a male who identifies as trans.)

The trans rights activist construction is doubly illogical in my view. Not just because it gets the semantics and morphology wrong, but also because a man can be either male or female in their opinion. So if you accept that meaning, and without knowing anything about the individual, this construction may refer to a "male man" who is trans or a "female man" who is trans.

Statutory writing requires unambiguous definitions, so it provides them where the meaning could be unclear. It does not define words everyone knows the meaning of. So neither transman nor trans man would be suitable in my view.

Official guidance when drafting legislation is that it should be gender neutral. Admittedly this is to try and undo the skewing towards the default being male for roles that can be done by either sex. E.g when enforcing a regulation the officer used to be referred to as 'him' routinely so 'they' is now preferred. I haven't come cross anything where it is drafted that only affects females where it would make sense to use woman/her etc.

@BaronessWrongCrowd

Transmen (one word) are not a legal entity. Trans men (two words) would be better but even then it might run into problems with people who are non binary etc. It's about the law, not ideology, people covers everyone with no room for manoevere. Women and people who are pregnant would probably do the same job though and I doubt anyone would object to that.

Whilst I find myself agreeing with you on your last sentence (which is an incredibly rare occurrence so I might mark it in my diary), I don't appreciate at snark around the one word two word. It's a fucking space for pity's sake and one which I refuse to use.

No-one asking you to, well I'm not anyway. The point was that transman has no meaning in law. A trans man (with a GRC) is someone who is legally a man who is transgender.

@JellySlice

You may not identify with society's stereotyped expectations of women, you may not identify with femininity, but if you can get pregnant you are a woman. Adult human females are women. If you are an adult human female and don't want to be considered feminine, fine. If you are an adult human female and want to be considered masculine, fine. But you don't get to erase women because you don't want to be called a woman. And you don't get to erase women because you are a male who wants to appropriate the word woman.

Well you may well think that but the law says otherwise. Legal documents have to reflect the law, not your opinions.

Laws can be changed. Reality can't.

A trans man (with a GRC) is someone who is legally a man who is transgender.

Where are you getting that from, jj1968?

@CharlieParley

A trans man (with a GRC) is someone who is legally a man who is transgender.

Where are you getting that from, jj1968?

The Gender Recogniion Act 2004

Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman

And where does it say there we have to, by law, use a space in the word to describe trans identified females who are otherwise known as transmen?

A trans man (with a GRC) is someone who is legally a man who is transgender.

"Trans man" not a coherent/defined legal term. If you wanted to include it in a law, you would have to define it, probably with reference to the gender reassignment characteristic under the Equality Act.

as if they wereliving as a man
they would not get pregnant
That's actually a very good point.

We're discussing the adjective plus noun compound "trans man". You claim this denotes a legal entity with a definition, as opposed to the noun "transman" which you claim does not denote a legal entity.

Your quote does not prove your point, jj1968.

FAOD, neither the GRA nor the EqA feature this compound, or their opposites, "trans woman" or "transwoman". Nor do the Explanatory Notes for either law.

I don't like the pregnant people thing.

I understand in the context of what is going on at the moment that this has wound people up.

However, the protected characteristic of maternity and pregnancy refers to those two states and does not mention women or mothers I don't thing.

And that's been around for a fair old while.

I also agree that if woman or mother is plugged in, currently that feels like it would lead to a fight, and also theoretically it could exclude those who identified otherwise. I have no desire to make like know difficult for female people however they want to dress etc.

They must be able to word this like the protected characteristic eg

Maternity leave is available to MPs who are due to give birth from X date. The pay will be X percent of salary from x date. The mo will need to provide a certificate (can't remember) to HR to confirm the pregnancy and their due date. Etc etc blah blah

Easy. To use either mothers women, or pregnant people. Is unnecessary. And at the moment divisive.

@NiceGerbil
The maternity bill is actually worded that way. There is no use of “pregnant people” in the bill at all, the OP is incorrect. Here is excerpt from the bill:

“Payment of maternity allowance: Ministerial office
1)A person designated as a Minister on Leave under this section is to be paid an allowance in accordance with section 2.

2. The Prime Minister may designate a person as a Minister on Leave if—
   (a) the person appears to the Prime Minister to satisfy either of the
   conditions in subsection (3), and
   (b) the person ceases to hold a ministerial office (“the first ministerial office”) but remains a member of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom by virtue of immediately being appointed to another 10 ministerial office (“the designated ministerial office”) for the purposes
   of being designated under this section.

3. The conditions in this subsection are that—
   (a) the person is pregnant and it is no more than 12 weeks before the
   expected week of childbirth; 15
   (b) the person has given birth to a child within the previous 4 weeks.”

publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0255/200255.pdf

@Gurufloof

as if they wereliving as a man they would not get pregnant That's actually a very good point.

Unless they are homosexual transman, in which case they can... Don’t laugh, one of my DD19s friends is a transman who is sexually attracted to men.

Much as I am outraged by the erasure of the word woman in situations that can only be experienced by a woman, I have to accept that this is the way UK law is written at this time. Eg regarding rape:
Rape
(1)
A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a)
he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b)
B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c)
A does not reasonably believe that B consents.

(From www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/rape)

While it is clear that this refers to the perpetrators being men, and can only refer to men, the word used to refer to them is also 'person'.

No issues for me with the wording. My issue is how much this trans debate has soured all our thinking, so that we are suspicious of everything regarding language around women.

This tells me that there will never be a takeover of women. The more light, the more women are joining up to protect their rights and will, more and more disregard calls from the deranged that those rights should be torn down, in the name of ideology

the word woman were used exclusively then that could be used to deny this protection to trans men with a GRC who are legally men.

The EA defines woman as a female of any age. Females can be given the legal fiction of 'legal male' thanks to the lie of a GRC, but the law still allows their biological sex to be recognised as female, in particular circumstances, hence the SS exceptions which explicitly give the examples of legally excluding a male person from a female only rape survivors group despite him being recognised as 'legally female' with his GRC.

If the law allows for the recognition of biology to supercede the legal fiction of altered legal sex (and clearly it does, explicitly) then a women (female of any age) will still be covered under clauses that reference women even if she has changed her legal sex to be 'legally male'.