Government says it is too complex to make changes to the GRA to include non binary

[stumbledin]

As set out in the response to the Gender Recognition Act consultation, there are no plans to make changes to the 2004 Act.

Following a considerable amount of consultation with the public and representative organisations, the Government decided that the current provisions within the GRA allow for those that wish to legally change their sex to do so fairly.

The 2018 GRA consultation did not bring forward any proposals to extend the GRA to provide legal recognition to a third, or non-binary, gender. The Government noted that there were complex practical consequences for other areas of the law, service provision and public life if provision were to be made for non-binary gender recognition in the GRA.

In UK law individuals are considered to be the sex that is registered on their birth certificate – either male or female. The GRA provides a means for transgender people to change the sex on their birth certificate, but there is currently no provision for those who do not identify as male or female.

This Government wants everybody in the UK to feel safe and confident to be themselves.

We are committed to tackling all forms of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime, and are working with the Home Office on the cross-Government Hate Crime Action Plan. The Government has asked the Law Commission to review the current hate crime legislation, which includes exploring whether homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime should be considered an aggravated offence. We will also take an assessment of local support for hate crime victims and improve reporting and recording of LGBT hate crimes through supporting additional police training.

Following Parliamentary approval on 8th October 2020, voluntary questions on sexual orientation and gender identity were included in the 2021 Census for England and Wales which took place on Sunday 21 March 2021. Final data on sexual orientation and gender identity from the 2021 Census for England and Wales will likely be available from 2023, with initial Census findings planned for publication in March 2022 (timelines subject to change as work progresses). This will help to provide more robust population size estimates for England and Wales than are currently available.

This Government is committed to supporting all LGBT people, tackling discrimination and improving the lives of all citizens.

Cabinet Office
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This is in response to a petition that I will not link to for fear this thread will get banished to the wastelands of the petition section.

But there is a news story here. uk.news.yahoo.com/non-binary-legal-recognition-too-153914753.html

In my local high street at the weekend, I noticed that only girls' tops had hearts and slogans about 'being kind' on them. Nobody seems to think about giving that message to boys.

Why aren't more people getting angry with men for their lack of kindness, instead of berating women for standing their ground?

Why aren't more people getting angry with men for their lack of kindness, instead of berating women for standing their ground?

For how many millenia have men held the levers of power and the finance to ensure that power? How long have men had the ability to sort out the issue of men being unkind? Why don't they? Because it's far easier to just push the issue out of sight and mind and leave women to bear the brunt of it, the GRA was a perfect example of that in action.

Here is an early version of the 'trans umbrella' from 1994. Note the inclusion of 'crossdresser', 'transvestic fetishist' and 'transvestite'.

(from here: public.oed.com/blog/march-2018-update-release-notes-formal-language-sexuality-gender-identity/ )

The trans rights movement in the UK started with the Beaumont Society - a club for heterosexual cross-dressing men and their wives, set up in 1966. Transsexuals were permitted to join but the main focus until relatively recently was definitely male cross-dressers.

www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/6971183/a-short-beaumont-history-the-beaumont-society

The Beaumont Society was started by Alice Purnell, following an epiphany in a soho sex shop. You can hear all about it in this enlightening interview of Alice by best mate Christine Burns:

soundcloud.com/justplainsense/jps90-alice

Burns went on to set up Press For Change with Stephen Whittle in 1992. In the early 1970's Whittle had co-founded the Manchester Transvestite and Transsexual Support Group, and had also joined Beaumont as the first ftm member.

podcast.plain-sense.co.uk/2008/05/23/an-interview-with-stephen-whittle-obe/

PFC is the organisation that is pretty much solely responsible for the gender recognition act being passed in 2004. They championed the use of the term 'trans' precisely because it made no distinction between 'transsexual' and 'transvestite'.

So I'm sorry if you don't like being lumped in with transvestites and crossdressers BlueLipstick but it's tricky to find a time in history when these groups were not intertwined.

None of this is women's problem in any case.

Screenshots from Christine Burns' book - Pressing Matters Vol. 1. explaining PFC's rationale for using the word 'trans'.

Gosh, somebody's not keen on history.

Isn’t that interesting.

How am I meant to objectively tell the difference between a transsexual and a transvestite or autogynephilic male?

How am I meant to objectively tell the difference between a pre-op transsexual and a post-op transsexual?

How am I meant to objectively tell the difference between a transsexual with a GRC and a transsexual without a GRC?

🤔🤔🤔🤔

I missed your comment Lang but they never are keen on history and can't let it be seen.

@LangClegsInSpace

Gosh, somebody's not keen on history.

Well.. well.. well.... Why are they so eager to cover it up?

@NonnyMouse1337

How am I meant to objectively tell the difference between a transsexual and a transvestite or autogynephilic male?

How am I meant to objectively tell the difference between a pre-op transsexual and a post-op transsexual?

How am I meant to objectively tell the difference between a transsexual with a GRC and a transsexual without a GRC?

🤔🤔🤔🤔

These are more of those questions that are never answered.

LangClegsInSpace is the info and screenshots you posted available anywhere else, like on a blog post? If not, it should be. It was extremely useful to have it all laid out like that.

Well.. well.. well.... Why are they so eager to cover it up?

And how do they justify asking MN to delete the words of Christine Burns, a pioneer in trans rights?

@EmpressWitchDoesntBurn

Well.. well.. well.... Why are they so eager to cover it up?

And how do they justify asking MN to delete the words of Christine Burns, a pioneer in trans rights?

They can't handle the truth maybe?

It is very strange because in their interviews and writing, Chritine Burns, Stephen Whittle and Alice Purnell all seemed to be very proud of their achievements. Yet somehow it's a bad thing to share them. Have they all been cancelled or something?

@BlueLipstickRocks hats off to you for sticking it out on this thread. It can't be easy.

I am deeply concerned about the clash between trans rights and womens' rights that stonewall ET al have set up, and tried to stream roller over. There should be no males in female sports or prisons. Women should always be able to know and choose the sex of their health care providers. Lesbians being told that ladydicks are real and they should embrace them is sickening. The erasure of the word woman enrages me.

But toilets? As long as everyone is behaving appropriately I am not that bothered. However allowing a male into female toilets, any male including post op transexuals , is not my gift to give. Whilst I would happily welcome you in any bog I frequent, many women would not and their consent takes priority.

I can see you too are the victim of the extreme position of Stonewall. In days gone by, transvestites and post op transsexuals were broadly discreetly welcome. But now you will forever be seen as the Trojan horse that will bring anyone who decides they are a woman into our spaces. As someone said up thread, this trust has been broken, and it is hard to see how it will be repaired.

That totally sucks for you and I am sorry you are caught in the crossfire.

I'm not buying this golden time when every women freely, but unspokenly allowed transsexuals but not transvestites or transgender males into our spaces. Maybe in pubs when the individual was known, but in public toilets and changing rooms where girls would likely be alone?

If we all knew which people were ts and which were tv, when did we lose that ability? If TS were generally accepted as women, why do they need the legal secrecy that a grc gives?

I do think theres probably two types of trans males - those who would do anything not to be 'outed' so would avoid sex segregated spaces, and those who don't care. I suspect that's the difference we are experiencing now.

Is it ok to say that a post op transsexual is the same as a cross dressing fetishist?

There are clearly some AGPs who have had full surgery and are considered to be ‘transsexuals’ some have even admitted this. A male whose AGP led to him being diagnosed with dysphoria and undergoing surgery, and say a gay male whose experience of homophobic abuse led to him being diagnosed with dysphoria and undergoing surgery, are both surgically altered males aren’t they, i.e. ‘transsexuals’?

Even if the law was changed and surgery became a requirement for a GRC how we can tell which men have had surgery from those who haven’t just by looking at them? Males whose AGP led to their dysphoria and them undergoing surgery would still be eligible for a GRC under a law which required surgery. Why should women and and girls be forced to provide validation and/or safety for males with dysphoria?

In my view all males need to be kept out of women’s spaces and the definition of woman in law.

@LangClegsInSpace

Screenshots from Christine Burns' book - Pressing Matters Vol. 1. explaining PFC's rationale for using the word 'trans'.

For MNers who can't read screenshots, I've typed this out. I don't know how long it will stay up but I thought it was important enough to do.

Christine Burns wrote:

'Until human rights campaigners like us came along, talking about umbrella concepts, this diverse community had got along with a relatively stable lexicon for many years. There were 'transvestites' and 'transsexuals' - TVs and TS's in the community shorthand - and that was more or less the only language you needed to know for more than a generation since Harry Benjamin had coined the latter term in his book 'The Transsexual Phenomenon' in 1966.

Our successes as a campaign were grounded in progress made for people who fitted the clinical definition of transsexual. At the heart of this was a tacit understanding that people in positions of power might be persuaded to change laws for people with some kind of clinically underwritten status - something they couldn't help being. This is why 'Transsexualism - The Medical Viewpoint' was seen as strategically important and why all the key court cases had rehearsed the developing scientific understanding of a basis for us being born or developing this way. It was also why the government would expect to include a medical definition of 'transsexual' in the forthcoming employment protections they planned to consult upon.

We knew in our hearts at that time that policymakers and judges weren't yet sophisticated enough in their understanding to contemplate rights for people whose difference appeared self-identified or impermanent or maybe even optional. That didn't mean we weren't going to try where possible. There was a valid freedom of expression case to be made for people to be able to present in whatever way they wish. But we were also pragmatists, careful not to frighten the horses at this early stage. (Note, however, that in the Equality Act 2010 - which replaced the Sex Discrimination Act - the requirement for having been medically diagnosed was finally removed).

I cannot recall exactly how we reached a consensus inside Press for Change. It wasn't written down in email correspondence - it arose in telephone or face to face conversations, including the long calls I was now having with Claire McNab on Sunday afternoons before setting off for another hotel. Somehow or other, however, we arrived at a consensus that if we maybe all used the word 'trans' as an umbrella term - and words like 'transsexual' only when we needed to be more specific' then maybe some of that would catch on gradually.

And so that is what we did. From there on, without fanfare, my essays and our web content discreetly began to use this language. Claire took the opportunity during the move of the PFC website to revise the existing content in the same way.

In the weeks and months ahead people would sometimes ask what the word meant or why we were using it. Then we would explain the rationale and suggest why we thought it was important. The change was gradual. In fact it took years for the word to begin sounding familiar and to hear it in other people's language. In 2002 when we were consulting over government press releases to announce the forthcoming Gender Recognition Bill, the officials still weren't convinced that enough people understood the new word to use it. Yet today most people seem to embrace the word naturally - when they are not simply calling themselves men or women.'

Thank you for typing that out EmpressWitchDoesntBurn.

It is good to see it set out so clearly that this was the plan all along.

@BlueLipstickRocks

I find the assumption that women en masse consented to males in our spaces infuriating. No we fucking didn't.

I find the assumption that all women are equally opposed to be infurtiating. Yes, some are. Just as some are accepting.

You have a perfectly valid position - it doesnt mean it should be forced on all women.

I've been reading this thread trying really hard to understand and appreciate your position, but you're really not helping yourself here.

So some women are OK with trans women in the female toilets. Why should their position be forced on the vulnerable or those with religious reasons for not wanting to share with males?

On balance, I personally don't have much of an issue with a post-op trans woman sharing the women's toilets but 1. I fully understand, appreciate and support those who don't (or can't), and 2. How would we police this? Unfortunately the floodgates of self-id have been opened and whilst i sympathise with you that's neither women's fault not their problem.

Is it ok to say that a post op transsexual is the same as a cross dressing fetishist?

Young, old, gay, straight, fetishists, not fetishists, any ethnicity: all male.

That's the criteria here. If any male person, whether a post-op transsexual, fetishist or any other subcategory of male is in a female only space, it is no longer a female only space.

How you want to distinguish between categories of male persons for the purpose of keeping some male persons safer from other male persons in male spaces is an issue for men to work out and campaign for. It's becoming clear that women are getting sick of being expected to be human shields or emotional support humans for vulnerable males.

There was never widespread acceptance of some males in women's spaces. There may have been acquiescence by some women due to fear, politeness or level of passing the went unnoticed but that is not the same as consent. Now it is becoming clearer that any inch will be stretched to a mile, I think women are becoming more comfortable in saying "you know what, I was never okay with this".

I really think that blues idea that surgery should be a requirement to be fully considered a woman for everything is a bad idea.

It's a huge risky operation. Must be incredibly painful and recovery can't be that quick.

No one should be encouraged in any way down that route. Saying that having the surgery is a ticket to something that essentially says yes you're going to be seen and accepted as if you were female for everything, which I imagine is a pretty big deal, is encouragement.

I can't accept that as a separate category for that reason.

And the bogs thing sadly is a bit moot. The social contract, the invisible barrier as it were, has been destroyed. Turning things back will be very difficult.

The reason bogs is raised is to make women who don't want to share with males seem trivial.

For many reasons it's not actually trivial.

Already though. I've been to restaurants where the ladies has been turned mixed sex, realising space for more dining.

Loads of places eg my tube station have changed their signage. It's now the original set of gents which are still gents, the other facilities are all mixed sex.

I don't understand how this helps anyone except for men.

Loads of places eg my tube station have changed their signage. It's now the original set of gents which are still gents, the other facilities are all mixed sex.

NiceGerbil can you complain about that? Train stations are one place I would feel very wary of using mixed-sex facilities, especially at night.