Welsh Government: Transgender people are people who are born as one sex but are the other sex

[OldCrone]

This is from the new LGBTQ+ Action Plan for Wales: easy read version

Transgender people are people who are born as one sex but are the other sex. For example, a person who looks like a man on the outside may be a woman on the inside

This is one of the documents for the current consultation about the new LGBTQ+ Action Plan.

I decided to look at the easy read version and the young people's version since the standard version didn't seem to have any kind of glossary about the terms used. The easy read version does, but some of the definitions, like this one, don't make sense. The young people's version, like the standard version, has no glossary.

In a consultation about LGBTQ+ people, the Welsh Government appears to be unable to define clearly what terms like 'transgender', 'gender identity' and 'non-binary' actually mean.

Entertaining though this metaphysical speculation may be for those with a lot of time on their hands, the fact remains that Welsh Government is using some quasi-religious pseudoscience as a basis for policy and possibly for legislation. People have always come up with interesting ideas and belief systems to help them cope with the difficulties they have in coping with the realities of their lives and complex feelings and insecurities.

I don't think anyone indulging in abstract, spiritual meanderings here has actually read the action plan, because most of your posts don't reflect the detail or what it means in practical terms. People are free to express themselves as they wish, provided it doesn't have a negative impact on others and they accept that others are equally entitled to keep their feet on the ground and not expect a supposedly democratically elected government to abandon all critical thought and judgement.

Entertaining though this metaphysical speculation may be for those with a lot of time on their hands, the fact remains that Welsh Government is using some quasi-religious pseudoscience as a basis for policy and possibly for legislation.

Thanks for getting this thread back on track. Welsh Government is targeting children and vulnerable adults with their pseudoscience. The aim seems to be to convince such people that they can never know what sex someone is and that people can change sex.

They seem to assume that most people (including most children) know what terms such as 'transgender', 'non-binary' and 'gender identity' mean, so a glossary is only provided in the easy read version, which contains the definition in the title of this thread as well as the equally baffling definition for non-binary: "Non-Binary is when you do not feel that you are simply male or female."

The Welsh Government seem to simultaneously believe that children know so little about what LGBT means that they need lessons in school about it, but so much that none of the terms used in the young people's version of the action plan require any explanation.

The earlier Transgender Action Plan contained a glossary of terms. The new LGBTQ+ Action Plan doesn't. I wonder why that is? How can you make policy when you can't define your terms?

Who feels that they are simply male or female? I am not at all certain what that might mean and I am female. If I wish to start a construction business,, should I transition should such a wish not be what female people feel?

It is pretty ghastly when a whole social movement is built on unverifiable inner concepts.

The WAG have truly lost the plot haven't they 🤦🏻‍♀️..

Honestly reads like they've smoked a large amount of crack and come up with this policy 🙄

I'd normally be all over this thread but I've been sitting in a dark corner weeping silently.

In the LGBTQ+ Foreword, our First Minister has written: "Support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning people (LGBTQ+) (with the + representing other identities including non-binary) is at the heart of this commitment." He's a Professor, an ex-social worker. Total loss of critical faculties.

He, Jane Hutt (Social Justice Minister - hollow laugh), and Jeremy Miles who is likely to do serious damage as Education Minister) have all publicly stated that 'trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary people are valid'.

And they are pushing for legislative powers to bring in self-ID. It's genuinely terrifying.

@Ides

I think this is really about recognising basic human rights for transwomen - that they're people, rather than just collections of psychological problems; oddities, weirdos to be reviled, etc, etc. The policy's not going to bring civilisation down.

I have a friend who's a transwoman. She was treated so absymally in her home country that she fled, eventually ending up on the streets in London, begging. Even there, she was regularly abused by men and women alike.

I don't pretend to know what it feels like, to feel that one's body doesn't match one's gender. I have no idea. All I know is that it must be absolutely awful. That's why I'm on the side of making life a little easier for such people. It seems to me that according them basic human rights is the least we can do. YMMV.

I'd agree with this other than the way it was done with all the 'nodebate' business and how far they push it such as with the Edinburgh rape crisis centre CEO - it's then no longer about basic human rights for transwomen. I mean denying raped females their legal right to ask for someone of the same sex to examine them and calling them bigots and to 'reframe their trauma'. It's just inhumane.

My hope is that we'll have some sensible voices in parliament who can tread the difficult path of putting in fixed boundaries so that the allowed exceptions in the equalities act are used and enforced. It should be that we can protect transwomen in every way possible but without putting vulnerable women in an impossible situation.

My daughter's friend is a transboy and has always been that way so I can see when dysphoria occurs it is intensely real and my fear is that where boundaries are being overstepped that the backlash will negatively effect trans people like them and make their lives harder than they already are.

I'm even more confused now. So, Oldbadger, you say the main document says the + stands for other identities. The young people's version says that it represents 'additional sexualities' (mind boggles at what those could be but based on the illustration that might include wearing cycling helmets). I've got children to look after and a load of other womaning I can't identify out of to do today; now I'm going to have to do some basic cross-checking of Welsh Govt documents because it's really bugging me. Identities and sexualities are not the same thing. There's a material difference, just as there is between Questioning and Queer, which they've bundled in together. Nefoedd wen!!!

Who writes this stuff for them? And isn't it the civil servants' job to make sure that everything matches up, doesn't mislead (possibly even the forbidden g-word) vulnerable people and children, and makes sense before Jane Hutt or whoever signs them off to be released into the wild? Really losing patience.

@EnfysPreseli

I'm even more confused now. So, Oldbadger, you say the main document says the + stands for other identities. The young people's version says that it represents 'additional sexualities' (mind boggles at what those could be but based on the illustration that might include wearing cycling helmets). I've got children to look after and a load of other womaning I can't identify out of to do today; now I'm going to have to do some basic cross-checking of Welsh Govt documents because it's really bugging me. Identities and sexualities are not the same thing. There's a material difference, just as there is between Questioning and Queer, which they've bundled in together. Nefoedd wen!!!

Who writes this stuff for them? And isn't it the civil servants' job to make sure that everything matches up, doesn't mislead (possibly even the forbidden g-word) vulnerable people and children, and makes sense before Jane Hutt or whoever signs them off to be released into the wild? Really losing patience.

Yes (re your point about civil servants) but some things are open to interpretation (e.g. consultation responses) so policy will look different depending on who is leading on it.

Having said that, standard dictionary definitions should not be open to interpretation.

My point was that the definitions and explanations aren't consistent in different documents relating to the same consultation. They may be open to slightly different interpretations, but they should at least be consistent in one WG department and definitely within an individual consultation exercise. The questions asked are different too. It's all really slapdash even before you think about the way stating beliefs as facts is leading participants to the 'right' conclusions. Amateurish or incompetent?

You and me both EnfysPreseli ... the whole exercise is shockingly amateur. No evidence base, pitifully few references, no link to the Stonewall-led online consultation, totally bizarre (and inconsistent) definitions.

And all based on a set of incoherent and frankly lunatic beliefs that the vast majority of the population do not agree with.

There's a possible explanation - though one that raises other concerns. An 'Independent Expert Panel' wrote the report on which this Action Plan is based. The overwhelming majority are vitriolic in their dislike of 'gender critical' women and implacable in their belief in gender ideology. There is little (no?) expertise on the panel in relation to policy or legislation or human rights. So they are amateurs in that regard.

WG have simply accepted their recommendations, without challenge.

@EnfysPreseli

My point was that the definitions and explanations aren't consistent in different documents relating to the same consultation. They may be open to slightly different interpretations, but they should at least be consistent in one WG department and definitely within an individual consultation exercise. The questions asked are different too. It's all really slapdash even before you think about the way stating beliefs as facts is leading participants to the 'right' conclusions. Amateurish or incompetent?

I know, I wasn't disagreeing with you.

I think it's ignorance.

@TheWeeDonkey

No I get it, I'm short and fat on the outside but I'm tall and slim on the inside.

Won't anyone validate my true identity? 😭

Oh good I've found my ID community!

As for Wales, toss up between Scotland and them for Canada twinning.

I despair.

Any scope for a judicial review?

I know it strikes fear among those I work with, but I have no feel for WG.

I wish Orangejuicer. No idea what else will give them pause for thought but a JR is complicated, expensive and not easy to 'win'. Any public lawyers out there who might have a view?

I’ve filled in the consultation.

LGB get short shrift in the Plan. Seems to be all about the T and the +.
Colour me astonished.

"I agree with that, but what if it does harm me, or someone else?"

The person by far who's most likely to be harmed is the person who's wrongly going through the process him or herself, of course.

"I think it is very harmful to teach children that they have a 'gender identity' (something which is impossible to define), and if it doesn't 'match' their sex (how is it meant to match their sex, exactly, this thing which defies definition?) they need to have lifelong medication and probably surgical treatment as well."

We're hamstrung, really, in trying to define gender identity because it's so subjective. It's all about how the person feels. If only it were so easy as looking at genitalia, or even testing hormone levels or brain activity.

There but for the grace of God go I, I always end up thinking. My TW friend has had a diabolically awful life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I wouldn't wish the heartache surrounding it on the parents of any child who claims to be 'the wrong sex', either.

Jesus wept.

We're hamstrung, really, in trying to define gender identity because it's so subjective. It's all about how the person feels.

Not a good basis for making laws or policies then.

"Not a good basis for making laws or policies then."

No, I should say not. It's inherently difficult. But I get the sense that they're working on a very, very base-level sense of human rights, here. They're consciously working against the majority view (expressed explicitly or not) that trans people are so much 'other' - weird, odd, screwy, perhaps even contemptibly so - that none of the rest of us need care about them as humans.

Sheesh. I remember watching 'The Naked Civil Servant' decades ago, and thinking, 'what must it feel like, to go out walking in fear of being beaten up, just because you're gay?' (Quentin Crisp is walking in the park, and gets attacked by some skinheads. As it happens, he says something to the effect of 'Oh, right, this again' - it's such an ordinary experience for him.) I think we're mostly past that, now, re gay people, I think. But we're not, re transgender people.

We do have to have some statutary, formal recognition of transpeople in place, I think, as people of the same value as any other humans. I'm only talking about very basic principles, like that. Just enough of them such that they can get by, to some minimally comfortable and safe level, without their lives being made any harder and more miserable than they need be.

@Olderbadger1

LGB get short shrift in the Plan. Seems to be all about the T and the +. Colour me astonished.

No guessing who had the loudest voices in that consultation, then.

Trans people should not gain human rights (fluffy term in this context, I've noticed) at the expense of people who have, historically and even recently, have had to fight for theirs.

But I get the sense that they're working on a very, very base-level sense of human rights, here. They're consciously working against the majority view (expressed explicitly or not) that trans people are so much 'other' - weird, odd, screwy, perhaps even contemptibly so - that none of the rest of us need care about them as humans.

I don't think that's a majority view. It sounds like a very extreme view probably only held by a tiny number of people. What makes you think that the Welsh Government believe that this is the majority view?

We do have to have some statutary, formal recognition of transpeople in place, I think, as people of the same value as any other humans. I'm only talking about very basic principles, like that. Just enough of them such that they can get by, to some minimally comfortable and safe level, without their lives being made any harder and more miserable than they need be.

In the UK trans people have the same human rights as everyone else. If you're talking about their rights in other countries, you're on the wrong thread.

For example, a person who looks like a man on the outside may be a woman on the inside

And a person who looks like a women on the outside may be a man on the inside (and/or underneath)

I think they have gone so far round the circle they came back on themselves and didnt even realise.

We're hamstrung, really, in trying to define gender identity because it's so subjective. It's all about how the person feels. If only it were so easy as looking at genitalia, or even testing hormone levels or brain activity.

The problem with 'gender identity' is that nobody can explain what everyone with the same 'gender identity' has in common. What do all women and transwomen have in common with each other that they do not also have in common with any men or transmen? The question is unanswerable. It can't even begin to be answered.

I don't know if I have a gender identity. I'm happy enough accepting the label as 'woman' based on my physiology but I have no idea if I would be unhappy accepting the label as 'man', had I been born with male genitalia and raised as a boy.

So what is the point of segregating people by 'gender identity' if it is so ephemeral? Why should a rape victim have to accept an examination by someone who purportedly shares her 'gender identity', even though that person is 6'1" with male physiology? Why must I share a communal gym changing room with a male-bodied person who I don't know but who 'feels like a woman'?

I get that people have lovely transwomen friends, but I don't know them. In all honesty, I have known some rather odd mtf transitioners (who looked and acted very much like men in frilly tops). I wouldn't have felt any more comfortable sharing a female-only space with these particular mtf transitioners than I would with a man I who made me feel slightly uncomfortable.