A Belfast court judgment has been hailed by as a “landmark” moment in UK transgender rights by influential campaign group Stonewall.

[stumbledin]

However, a prominent critic of transgender activism has said it looks like a way of introducing a contentious change in the law “through the back door” – rather than via a political route.

www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/belfast-court-trans-judgment-a-major-change-to-the-system-3240452

It is mentioned here: www.womenarehuman.com/are-women-really-committing-more-sex-offences-now/

They seem to have collected there some of the data what'sitsname upthread wanted.

(Not MapGirl, the other one.)

The numbers of men currently claiming to be women and insisting on using women’s facilities remains relatively small.

Therefore any changes will also be relatively small.

Achieving statistical evidence would be difficult enough with such low numbers, and that’s without including the deliberate introduction of policies designed specifically to obscure any changes, such as falsely recording male on female assault as female on female.

The suggestion that women should simply put up and shut up when men have been moved into their spaces with no consideration for the effects on women’s rights, let alone asking for consent, is about as entitled as it gets.

The burden of proof should have been on doctors to prove men who claim they are women offend at similar rates to women BEFORE any man was ever encouraged to believe it was his right to enter women’s spaces.

And of course, when the doctors finally thought to look (a woman doctor, incidentally, unlike all the men who started this) they found the opposite: that men offend as men, no matter how much they claim to feel womanly.

Women are allowed to say no to men annexing womanhood.

Not all countries that have self-id allow TW in all women-only spaces. Denmark e.g. doesn’t.

So if incidents of assaults on women in changing rooms have not gone up since introduction of self-id, this demonstrates precisely nothing.

Self-id does not have to mean men are allowed to identify into any and all places they want to be.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

Many of us are used to dealing with toddlers.....

[merail] Did we all see the news item about the chap who hijacked a school bus with kindergarten students (US) and ended up demanding to get put off the bus way before his destination because he pretty much crumbled under the onslaught of kindergarten questions?

“The kids were the ones that actually got the gentleman off of the bus and they pretty much had my back as much as my concerns were with them,” Corbin explained. “At the end when they started questioning him, it seemed to have frustrated him because his main objective were to get to the next town, but I think we were only on the road about four miles and he just got frustrated with the questions and just told me to stop the bus and get off. All y’all get off now.”

www.wsbtv.com/news/local/sc-school-bus-driver-says-kindergartners-curiosity-helped-stop-armed-hijacking/L3MPZMLCFNHSJGBGHR5QAQN43M/

[/merail]

I hadn't seen that; brilliant!

To be honest, of course the GRA isn't compatible with human rights in the UK because it's bollocks, with conflicts of rights and confusion sewn right through the damn thing, and maybe this is a glorious opportunity to repeal it and start to unravel the damage and harm.

You don't need to know the gender or sex of the perpetrators to know if there's been a statistically significant increase in the rate of violence against women in countries that have self-ID policies.

Criminology doesn't work like this. Particularly in cases of violence against women, which are often not reported to the cops.

I'll give you a simple example to explain it. Suppose crimes of indecent exposure turn out to have declined since self-ID was introduced in some country (no idea if this is true anywhere.) Does this mean exhibitionism has decreased, or that exhibitionists are now getting their kicks flashing their dicks women's changing rooms and women can't report them thanks to self-ID laws? Are women going to be happy to report an assault by trans women to a police station draped in rainbow flags where they send out officers to "check your thinking" if a trans person reports being offended by you?

Where an increase in crimes against women is accompanied or caused by the authorities demonstrating that they don't give a shit about crimes against women, do you really think that is going to show up in the statistics? What do you suppose the statistics on reports of domestic violence look like in Russia, since it was decriminalised? Do you think statistics on hospital admissions would show the same trend?

Interesting you ask for stat @yeahbutnaw.
It is not possible to show whether self id has had any impact on on VAWG for 2 reasons

1. Violence against women and girls is so horrifically prevalent that any impact of Self ID would have to be huge to register. 400,000 women and girls sexually assaulted in England and Wales, and 85,000 victims of rape. 1% increase due to males being allowed entry into female spaces would need nearly an additional 5000 incidents to even register as an overall increase. Stats aren't the only thing that matter - what about the nearly half a million women who are assaulted by a man every year, and who can no longer enter bathrooms and changing rooms on the assumption that no males will be present.
2. Crimes by transwomen may be recorded as crimes by women, so we don't know the sex of victims or perpertrators - so it is not possible to answer your question anyways

A much more interesting question is - does recording the crimes of TW as crimes by females impact on overall crime stats for women as a group. I don't know if you missed this yesterday

"The BBC asked 45 regional police forces in the UK for data on reported cases of female perpetrators’ child sex abuse from 2015 to 2019. The data received indicated that there was an increase of 84 per cent. Data corruption means that we cannot tell whether this large increase is due to an increase in female offenders or those identifying as women"

As sex and gender have not been accurately recorded, it is not possible to draw safe conclusions from that data on what has caused this dramatic increase. There are several possible conclusions, and indeed all may contribute .

1. Women are committing more sex crimes
2. Reporting of sexual crimes committed by women has increased or
3. Sex crimes committed by transwomen are being recorded as crimes by women and transwomen are more likely to commit sex crimes than women

The only way to understand what is driving this increase is to record sex and gender separately and accurately.

This may not be possible to collect accurate sex and gender data retrospectively so looking at other factors that correlate may help shed light on this dramatic change
For example - are the number of women increasing (presumably not); have there been any societal shifts that would lead to women committing more sex crimes; has reporting been made easier in any way; have the number of people identifying as TW increased over this period (I am not aware of any UK stats that cover a similar time period); is the % of male sex offenders identifying as TW higher than the % of TW in the general male population (again I am not aware of any stats that address this)

Males are excluded from female spaces because, as a class, they present a real and present danger to women. We know that because of our daily experience and the horrific stats above. No man I know objects to this, even if they have never so much as raised their voice to a woman, because they realise they are part of a group that poses a threat to women and they must act accordingly.

If any particular group of males want access to female spaces, the bare minimum should be cast iron data that demonstrates that this group poses no risk - that they do not demonstrate male patterns of violence against women and girls.

Data matters, and conflating sex and gender in official records is doing no one any favours.

Just realised how massively derailed this thread got! What are the implications of this court judgement? Are they effectively introducing GRA reform by the back door and if so what can be done to fight it?

That's what I want to know. It shouldn't be the case that if democratically elected legislators in Westminster consider the (copious amounts of) evidence and then rule out self-ID that a court can overturn it on the basis of one judge's opinion on the case of one individual. Reams of evidence and case studies were submitted. This is very dodge and typically Stonewall - did they fund the claimant's legal action?

I understand legal precedent and am making an assumption that this is a very deliberate move by Stonewall(?) - talk about over-reach. Everything about it - the fact they went for a Belfast case which would get minimal coverage until the outcome smacks of Denton's stealth plan.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Do you think policy should be based on feelings alone? OMG but that made me truly laugh out loud - I woke the dog

Are you sure you wanted to say that out loud yeahbutnaw ?

Indeed.

A bit like if access to facilitities designated for a certain sex should be be based on feelings instead of the sex the body is?

*Well you've excluded yourself in this situation, right?

You weren't excluded or forced to do anything. You chose to remove yourself.*

You could equally argue that trans people who don’t feel they can access sex segregated toilets are restricting themselves.

As far as I know there is no clear data showing that trans people are at greater risk of violent attack, but I do at-least have enough empathy to believe that it’s also a problem when people restrict their lives because of fear.

It’s ridiculous to argue that many women don’t have a good reason to fear men, and it’s also clear that many crimes are unreported because women choose not to engage with the legal system.

This thread is about the judgement in NI. Why are these pointless digressions being humoured?

One of the reason's I posted this is lately I have been saying (on here and IRL) that demonstrating, lobbying and petitions dont seem to get anywhere and that more and more women are going to have to rely on legal cases to set precedents. eg Kiera Bell.

But obviously that cuts the other way.

But thinking that through what does that then mean. That courts give rulings that dont match the law and MPs shrug their shoulders and say lets not bother setting laws. Or they meekly go we were wrong.

What if there is a court case about trans woman appointed to post despite being advertised as exempt under the EA. Does that mean the law (in practice) is changed.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

And Debbie Hayton steps in to bat it back at them, again!

And her point is utter rubbish - as usual.

Moving on from that nice demonstration of a razor-sharp legal mind at work, what are the implications of this ruling and do we need to take action?

The narrow effect is that now, clearly, a diagnosis of ‘gender incongruence’ will be as effective as a diagnosis of ‘gender dysporia’ in founding an application for a GRC. I believe the Gender Recognition Panel should issue a practice direction, and the GRA should be amended by secondary legislation at an early opportunity.

Really?

It is just a different word though isn't it. Non of this means men are actually women. It makes zero difference to that. You can play around with words until the female cattle come home and it has no effect on that.

@Cleanandpress

The narrow effect is that now, clearly, a diagnosis of ‘gender incongruence’ will be as effective as a diagnosis of ‘gender dysporia’ in founding an application for a GRC. I believe the Gender Recognition Panel should issue a practice direction, and the GRA should be amended by secondary legislation at an early opportunity.

Really?

It is just a different word though isn't it. Non of this means men are actually women. It makes zero difference to that. You can play around with words until the female cattle come home and it has no effect on that.

Well yes quite!

The GRA should be repealed and the GRC scrapped, along with self ID policies. Problem solved....except that men of all identities will continue to harass, assault ,rape and kill women

Well we know that's what men do, that's why they shouldn't be given a free pass to access previously unavailable female spaces.

@VickyEadieofThigh

Removing the need for the conditions as stated does make it absolutely easy for any male to enter women's facilities, etc and declare himself a woman. Nobody can question this.

That the activists (along with judges and a wide range of other people) cannot understand our concerns about this speaks volumes for their contempt for women.

I don't think it is always about contempt.

I think a lot of people, more than I ever thought when I was younger, are completely lacking in imagination, or the ability to look into the future and anticipate consequences, especially unintended ones, or in situations different from their own.

It also makes them vulnerable to people who have ulterior motives.

Are you sure you wanted to say that out loud yeahbutnaw ?

That's a DARVO. Deliberately.

This is being argued on the terms of people who have no consideration or empathy for women and girls. They aren't going to start doing so. "If you're not going to be raped, why would you have an issue" is their mentality. And even if a few women are, it's a price that has to be paid to make a few males feel valid. Because to them, women don't matter.

No. Women and girls have boundaries. We have a right to those boundaries. The bar has to be set higher for women than a statistical unlikeliness of rape or sexual assault. Women's privacy, dignity, feelings, concerns, comfort, freedom from sexual harassment all matter too.

It's wrong to teach our girls that they don't have a right to express discomfort. That their consent doesn't matter.

Women say no. All polling where the questions have been asked honestly shows that women don't want males in female spaces unless they have full sex reassignment surgery. So the answer is that we won't gain anything from reasoning with unreasonable people. We will keep doing what we are doing, raising awareness, and making our voices heard.