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

Do you think policy should be based on feelings alone? Or should it be evidence-based?

I thought you were arguing FOR this policy, not AGAINST? Isn't the whole trans issues built on feelings alone? Are you actually saying that it's perfectly fine to have a policy based on the feelings of men but not the feelings of women? Cos it sure sound like it.

Robin! I'm amazed you can find the time to join us here. Thanks for squeezing us into your busy schedule of harassing plaintiffs.

@yeahbutnaw

Has there been a statistically significant increase in incidents of violence against women in countries that have Self-ID?

Many thanks for your multiple attempts at derailing @yeahbutnaw. You are keeping this thread on the Active list, and giving us the chance to make more MNetters aware of the implications of the HC judgement.

Could you explain a really fundamental point to me? Why do you think that biological women should have to produce evidence to defend their existing right to single-sex facilities?

Interesting once the stats came out yeahbut vanished.... how strange. 🤔* *

The most important thing to remember is this:

This judgement agrees with the ECtHR judgment in AP, Garçon and Nicot v France
(2017) (App Nos 79885/12, 52471/13 and 52596/13), that a medical diagnosis is a reasonable requirement for a state to impose before granting a legal change of sex because it can legitimately balance other interests against that of transgender individuals.

The court has therefore rejected self-id as an option.

In accordance with shifting terminology in the medical profession however, the court did find that while evidence of a diagnosis can remain a requirement for a GRC, the condition diagnosed should no longer be referred to as a disorder.

There are various ways of achieving this and it depends on what the court finds is the remedy for the current terminology. It may not change much at all, it may change a lot. There is a large amount of overlap between the diagnosis preferred by the applicant (gender incongruence) and the diagnosis that is currently required (gender dysphoria). The main difference is the absence of serious distress which is present in the latter and absent in the former. In practice though, both diagnoses may be seen as as good as the same.

Please also not what the court states in [151] (p.51f.) in rejecting the applicant's claim that being treated differently from a woman in having to prove gender dysphoria before being recognised as a woman by the state is unlawful discrimination (a violation of Article 14 rights under the European Human Rights Convention).

^"I am not persuaded that she is in an
analogous position to her comparator, namely a non-transgender (or cisgender)
woman; and, in any event, would consider the difference in treatment between the
two to be objectively justified – whether one applies the manifestly without
reasonable foundation or the fair balance level of scrutiny – on the basis of the aims
identified in AP, Garçon and Nicot and of the analysis above in relation to the
applicant’s Article 8 claim."^

Or, to put it in other words, the court rejects the TWAW claim for someone without a GRC. (It does not say anything about TWAW after a GRC is granted as that was not the issue to be decided.)

The quote from the judgement again (this time properly in italics):

"I am not persuaded that she is in an analogous position to her comparator, namely a non-transgender (or cisgender) woman; and, in any event, would consider the difference in treatment between the two to be objectively justified – whether one applies the manifestly without reasonable foundation or the fair balance level of scrutiny – on the basis of the aims identified in AP, Garçon and Nicot and of the analysis above in relation to the applicant’s Article 8 claim."

Do you think policy should be based on feelings alone? Or should it be evidence-based?

Apparently the GRA certificate should be changed to a feeling of "incongruence" yeahbutnaw. How do you feel about that feeling being a policy?

Incongruence is a humanistic psychology concept developed by Carl Rogers which suggests that unpleasant feelings can result from a discrepancy between our perceived and ideal self. The perceived self is how an individual views themselves and the ideal self is how an individual wishes they were.

@aliasundercover

Robin! I'm amazed you can find the time to join us here. Thanks for squeezing us into your busy schedule of harassing plaintiffs.

Brava!

Robin is here to tell us words mean things and also that words don't mean things, and that should be celebrated.

Do you think policy should be based on feelings alone? Or should it be evidence-based?

I thought you were arguing FOR this policy, not AGAINST? Isn't the whole trans issues built on feelings alone? Are you actually saying that it's perfectly fine to have a policy based on the feelings of men but not the feelings of women? Cos it sure sound like it.

Oops

Do you think policy should be based on feelings alone? Or should it be evidence-based?

I mean this wins FWR today. The whole reason we're in this massive mess is because we're repeatedly being asked to validate the feelings of people who say they are actually the opposite sex. There is literally zero evidence to support claims that male born people were in fact meant to be female born people, it's just that something got mixed up in the teleportation machine.

CharlieParley - many thanks

My inability to do anything but skim read means it can take me ages to actually get to grips with the substance. And you have done this for me!

@stumbledin

CharlieParley - many thanks

My inability to do anything but skim read means it can take me ages to actually get to grips with the substance. And you have done this for me!

Your welcome! I was going to respond to the other nonsense at first and then saw that there was no explanation of the actual judgement yet. On the face of it, this is a judgement both sides could celebrate or lament. Or celebrate and lament at the same time. But it's easy to overlook the positives for us when we're focusing on the celebrations coming from the trans rights campaigners. What remains to be seen is what concrete changes will result from this in practice.

FFS You're welcome

Having now read the 54 page judgement, (thanks for the direct links, nauticant) I agree CharlieParley with your analysis. Indeed, I am relieved that it is not actually the rip-roaring success activists are claiming.

If this was an attempt to bring in self-ID covertly, a la Dentons, by removing the need for a medical diagnosis, it did not work.

The court finds there should still be a medical diagnosis pre awarding a GRC, a process which has a necessary gatekeeping function and which has benefits for both the patient and wider community.

This from the judgement I thought was perceptive:

Indeed, there is an uneasy tension at the heart of the applicant’s case, namely that, on the one hand, she eschews any ‘medicalisation’ of the process for legal gender recognition but, on the other, contends that any necessary diagnosis (and presumably any consequent gender reassignment or gender confirming treatment) should be paid for on the NHS.

In opposition to what the Old Court opinion piece avers, the historic depathologisation of homosexuality is never going to be replicated for gender dysphoria/incongruence. No one needs any form of medical input to be same sex attracted.

This tension was also noted at the time of the Women and Equalities Committee Report, since one of the contributors to the Committee’s inquiry, the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), noted that removal altogether from the ICD (as occurred with the depathologisation of homosexuality) was not an option, since gender dysphoria frequently requires medical interventions (see paragraph 192 of the Committee’s report).
Inclusion of gender incongruence in the ICD was also designed to ensure transgender people’s access to gender-affirming health care, as well as adequate health insurance coverage for such services. When there is plainly a medical aspect to some elements of gender transition, at least for some transgender individuals, the authorities are entitled to consider that there is some value in maintaining an element of consistency of approach across both processes.
('both processes' referring to the practice of needing 2 diagnostic reports from medical professionals, one of them a gender specialist and then always having a doctor on the gender recognition panel.)

While we're on the subject of the ongoing need for medical scrutiny in this area, I think the evidence from this Oxfordshire study deserves greater attention:

"Reasons for non-referral to a specialist centre included

being deemed not ready for transitioning (either determined by the individual or because the person was not currently living in the desired gender role),

being homosexual but not having gender identity disorder,

having an autism-spectrum disorder with a significant degree of impairment such that the real-life experience criterion was not met,

and seeking gender reassignment to facilitate or normalise paedophilia. This latter small group described gender reassignment as a means by which to increase their intimate contact with children, which they viewed to be more socially acceptable in a female role."

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-psychiatrist/article/gender-reassignment-5-years-of-referrals-in-oxfordshire/6B5F217162ABD9B3189F2EB82787034E

Interestingly the article links to this largely unrelated one, about Northern Irish police training:

www.newsletter.co.uk/news/crime/director-group-hired-train-psni-dubbed-police-racist-oppressor-pigs-who-deserve-wall-2977743

"There were 134 reports of sexual assault in changing rooms over the two year period 2017 to 2018. Of these, 120 took place in gender-neutral changing rooms compared to just 14 in single-sex changing areas. A further 46 sexual assault allegations were made about attacks in other areas such as in the pool, in a sports hall or corridors. These are not included in the percentages.|"

fairplayforwomen.com/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger/

"Incongruence is a humanistic psychology concept developed by Carl Rogers which suggests that unpleasant feelings can result from a discrepancy between our perceived and ideal self. The perceived self is how an individual views themselves and the ideal self is how an individual wishes they were."

The ICD-11 wording was changed from gender 'dysphoria' to 'incongruence' and moved out of the mental health section under pressure from WPATH but kept in as a 'sexual health' diagnosis for billable insurance funding purposes. Transvestic fetishism, however, remains a mental health disorder with other paraphilias.

'Incongruence' is a term already in use by psychiatrists. It already has a specific meaning which is somewhat different to the lay one or even to the Rogers' concept. As the judge's report indicates, psychiatrists are still the most likely people to be signing the first part of a GRC application.

'Mood incongruence', for example, is a term used to describe a serious symptom of bipolar disorder. It is a psychotic feature of the disorder wherein the person's belief or action, whether by hallucination or delusion, does not match with their mood.

So what might the court insisting on using the term 'gender incongruence' rather than 'gender dysphoria' mean medically to a psychiatrist? Dr Brady, the LGBT+ advisor, is not a psychiatrist but a Sexual Health and HIV consultant hence his equivocation in his evidence.

Encouraging the straight swap from 'dysphoria' to 'incongruence' may not, after all, be the promised land of de-stigmatising the condition.

Anewcreation "In opposition to what the Old Court opinion piece avers..." sorry I've missed this. I think I went through this (rather derailed) thread properly but didn't see this. Is it linked here?

@Manderleyagain

Anewcreation "In opposition to what the Old Court opinion piece avers..." sorry I've missed this. I think I went through this (rather derailed) thread properly but didn't see this. Is it linked here?

It was posted near the beginning of the thread. I missed it too, so just had to go back to find it.

oldsquare.co.uk/recognition-by-the-northern-ireland-high-court-of-a-shift-in-gender-recognition-robin-moira-white/

There was a link to the judgment in the same post.

www.judiciaryni.uk/sites/judiciary/files/decisions/SCO11509Final%20-%20Approved.pdf

Two things struck me reading CharleyParley’s post:

There are various ways of achieving this and it depends on what the court finds is the remedy for the current terminology. It may not change much at all, it may change a lot. There is a large amount of overlap between the diagnosis preferred by the applicant (gender incongruence) and the diagnosis that is currently required (gender dysphoria). The main difference is the absence of serious distress which is present in the latter and absent in the former. In practice though, both diagnoses may be seen as as good as the same.

Given that the entire point of allowing these men into women’s spaces is that using men’s spaces would cause distress, then if the requirement for distress is removed, then the need for a GRC is surely removed? Why would men get to use women’s spaces if they are not distressed by the alternative?

This is, of course, the prime reason for the assertion that men are women. It’s a deliberate ploy to move away from “These men are distressed and need our help” to “these men are women and must have women’s rights”.

Oddly enough, my immediate reaction on seeing this thread was that if activists push harder and harder to get self-ID in by the back door, I hope the government’s reaction would be similar to mine: which is that the loopholes they are trying to expand should be closed altogether. This must reach a point when even the government says “enough”.

”I am not persuaded that she is in an analogous position to her comparator, namely a non-transgender (or cisgender) woman; and, in any event, would consider the difference in treatment between the two to be objectively justified – whether one applies the manifestly without reasonable foundation or the fair balance level of scrutiny – on the basis of the aims identified in AP, Garçon and Nicot and of the analysis above in relation to the applicant’s Article 8 claim."

This is worrying as previous case law stated the comparator as being another person the same sex. It may be, of course, that in this case the comparator is different for some technical reason, but this kind of problem will only increase if the assertions of the falsehood that these men are women continues to go unchallenged in legal circles.

This is worrying as previous case law stated the comparator as being another person the same sex. It may be, of course, that in this case the comparator is different for some technical reason, but this kind of problem will only increase if the assertions of the falsehood that these men are women continues to go unchallenged in legal circles.

Finding the right comparator can be very difficult. It depends on the particulars of a discrimination case AnyOldPrion and it is not a given that the right comparator must be a person of the same sex.

The comparator is also chosen by the applicant, not by the judge. Much more importantly however, the judge here does not accept the applicant's argument of having been unlawfully discriminated against when compared to a woman.

Because the judge here rejects the claim that the applicant and a woman are the same.

Thanks for that oldcrone.
From the old chambers blog, it doesn't sound like the judge intended to take discomfort or distress out of the equation:

Scoffield J quoted with approval the following passage by Thirlwell J in Carpenter (para 5):

“Gender dysphoria occurs when a person experiences discomfort or distress as a result of the mismatch between his or her biological sex and the gender with which they identify. Until recently in was considered a psychiatric disorder. The current approach has moved away from characterising it as a disorder and towards a description of its characteristics.”

Anyoldprion
This is worrying as previous case law stated the comparator as being another person the same sex
I see what you mean in that the starting point here is that the comparator is a woman (the claimant is comparing herself to a woman), but the judge is saying that the claimant is not analogous to a person of the opposite sex and isn't persuaded by that argument.

Just another rather obvious point, which is the reason the story caught my eye was of course Stonewall crowing something was a victory because it supported their view point.

Which has happened in other cases.

But the media is so sloppy, I dont doubt that other new outlets will use the title of this article to then provide evidence that the law has changed.

Stonewall are really good at getting out quick misleading press statements.

And unfortunately too many in the press just reproduce as trua and dont bother to actual facts.

They should employ FWR as you can be sure that someone on here will make a proper investigation!