People are being mean to Caroline Nokes when she's just trying to be kind

[RoyalCorgi]

That's the gist, but if you feel so minded you can read it in full:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/23/why-am-i-being-abused-for-trying-to-improve-gender-recognition-process

My problem is that CN is my MP.
So next election it will be her or a Lib Dem (no other party has a hope).

If, as Caroline says, she is receiving a great deal of pushback in her inbox regarding this - I disagree with any abuse being used but am cynical regarding her claims of this - then that completely throws out the notion that the public support this ideology.

@TeenMinusTests

My problem is that CN is my MP. So next election it will be her or a Lib Dem (no other party has a hope).

It's an opportunity, if you're up for writing letters, sending press cuttings etc.

@VestofAbsurdity

If, as Caroline says, she is receiving a great deal of pushback in her inbox regarding this - I disagree with any abuse being used but am cynical regarding her claims of this - then that completely throws out the notion that the public support this ideology.

Absolutely.

Plus it is helpful for it to be understood in govt that women are not the easier and less scary group to upset, and that the pushback is likely to be as strong as they are afraid of from the TQ political lobby.

And for all politicians, especially Labour et al, to realise that solutions involving women shutting up, putting up and sucking up are never going to be accepted. The only way to make this work is to find third ways and that will involve accepting that the wished for utopia of the erasure of sex based rights and spaces is permanently off the table.

solutions involving women shutting up, putting up and sucking up are never going to be accepted

Hear, hear.

@InspiralCoalescenceRingdown

Would this be the same Caroline Nokes MP as the one that voted against gay marriage?

Yes, and then she got PinkStoned, and is very much trying to be all things to all men, so to speak. (But not women.)

www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/01/28/tory-mp-caroline-nokes-same-sex-marriage-parliament-women-equalities-committee/

It was such a poorly written article…
as though she’s just discovered that women can wear trousers now.. or cut their hair…

And before you know it vulnerable prisoners are sharing a cell with Claire Goodier.

What would Elizabeth Fry say?

And for all politicians, especially Labour et al, to realise that solutions involving women shutting up, putting up and sucking up are never going to be accepted.

100%

My problem is that CN is my MP.
She was mine too. I've never met her but I know her dad. I am not sure that it's true that the Lib Dems are the only alternative- the last candidate they put up was awful.

@ErrolTheDragon

You might want to quietly read some of the transwidows support threads, and realise there's absolutely nothing 'easy, quick, cheap and cheerful' about the situation they find themselves in.

I have. My tone was meant to be wryly cynical. It failed.

Good! Sorry, it's sometimes hard to tell, and there's unfortunately been so much disinformation around what that actually means.

Oh Gosh. CN, eh. I remember him/her/furry in front of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, with Sylvia Hermon like a boss during questioning. It was really remarkable. The excuse CN gave for not reading/being familiar with the Good Friday Agreement was that he/she/furry was giving birth at the time it. I think that means that if you don't get a chance to read something when it is being written/signed then nobody can be expected to do it after the event.
Like Rabb saying it wasn't a 'cracking read' (think only 29 pages) and she/he could dip in here and there.

Awful. Just awful. I think CN is real shirker with a brass neck, imo. It would probably be the same wherever CN was placed, imo. And it obviously is as is apparent with this issue. Whatever is easy to catch and on the surface and will brazen out to gloss over the lack of effort. Lazy or incompetent is anyone's guess. Maybe both.

Here's an extract from a BBC report. It was in 2018.

"Mrs Nokes was criticised when she admitted she had never read the whole of the Good Friday Agreement during an appearance before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster in April.
She said she was "probably giving birth" when the agreement was first published.
"Given that you yourself haven't actually read the agreement, what level of awareness could we expect from other officials in your team?," asked North Down independent MP Lady Sylvia Hermon.
"Enormous," the minister replied.
The shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Tony Lloyd described her appearance as a "car crash"."

Caroline Nokes doesn't see the several contradictions in her own report and thinking:

She thinks it's too much of an imposition that a panel can decide whether someone is feminine or masculine enough but not that a man can decide and declare that he is a woman and she would make it easier for him to do so.

She thinks it doesn't involve illness to want trans status but that it should be given some sort of facility and priority in the national health service.

She thinks it is an administrative matter, since it isn't an illness (and presumably she knows that you can't change your actual sex) but that it shouldn't require administrative procedures because they are too onerous to expect a person to undertake, even though it is the person who wants to make this administrative change.

She says her administrative trans change can proceed without affecting women's rights and spaces in refuges, hospitals, prisons etc, without considering how this would happen, despite her easier administrative process that would certify the trans change to any man who wanted it and make it wide open to men to claim rights and to colonise those very spaces.

I never understand what living in your gender is

N one does. It’s just made up words

If it’s not a medical thing why is NHS involved ?🤷‍♀️

@littlbrowndog

I never understand what living in your gender is

N one does. It’s just made up words

If it’s not a medical thing why is NHS involved ?🤷‍♀️

Darned if I know. It's the usual magical thinking replacing logic and biology.

@JustSpeculation

...But then there's stuff on the "spousal consent" which suggest that marriages should simply be annulled. That could be an easy, quick, cheap and cheerful method of divorce. Marriage is a contract. How would liability work under this?

The current position is that either party can use an interim GRC as grounds for annulment, so annulment as an option is not a new innovation.

Cailleach, oof. From what I know of CN's career, CN has not covered CNself in glory.

CN has never actually worked anywhere else and it shows, I think.

Absolute tripe, from CN, there. Displaying either an incredibe degree of dishonesty, or a worryingly low IQ. Her own argument doesn't stack up against itself, but that is par for the course with Gender Identity Theorists (GITs). What a. Absolute shower we have ruling us

Poor old Caroline Noakes, all she ever wanted to do was make life easier for agp men, and somehow she found herself chair of the Women & Equalities Committee in the process!

@TinselAngel

The current position is that either party can use an interim GRC as grounds for annulment, so annulment as an option is not a new innovation.

I didn't know that. The wording suggested to me this was a new arrangement, but I had only read the recommendations, not the full thing. I don't know enough about the implications to have a considered view on this, but it strikes me as risky for the power to annul to be given to the GRC awarding authority - there are wider issues here than simply the transition, and the authority would scarcely be in a position to deliver an impartial judgement considering the interests of both parties. It would just be routine procedure. On the other hand, forcing things to court would probably be more expensive and time consuming, which could disadvantage both parties. On the third hand, how does the "annulled" spouse get her (I assume that in 99%+ of cases it will be a "her") rights from the family court after the annulment has happened, and who pays?

This report seems to me to only consider the interests and convenience of the transitioning spouse in any detail. There doesn't seem to be any appreciation of the piles of crap being dumped on the non-transitioning spouse, who had a legal agreement. The witness who said that the non-transitioning spouse's role was limited to "being informed of a change in their legal contract" showed a callousness which made my blood boil. I have a family member who's been through the family court. It involved years (literally) of pain for them, as the other party was non-cooperative to a high degree.

This is not an issue I'm involved in, but it's one I want to understand, so if I've made any mistakes here, I'd be grateful if someone could show me where.

www.spiked-online.com/2021/12/22/caroline-nokes-and-the-make-believe-of-gender-self-id/

Jo Bartosch in Spiked.

What hope do our children have of understanding the wider implications of a #bekind approach to these issues when our paid elected representative with a wealth of expert informed knowledge on tap fails so dismally to see the gaps and unreconciled contradictions?

I don't think she really understands what she is proposing.

She wants to remove the requirement to have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and to "live in the acquired gender" for two years, and instead all someone will have to do to get a GRC is make a simple statutory declaration.

She goes on to say:
First and foremost, even with our proposed reforms, the process for an individual to have their acquired gender legally recognised is a drawn-out process, with numerous stages to go through. Waiting lists are incredibly long for NHS consultations, and I can think of my own constituents who have waited years for just a referral to one of the very few clinics, before having given up and paid for private treatment they could ill afford. The suggestion that someone could change legal sex on a whim is quite patently nonsense; the process takes years.

Why should it take years to make a statutory declaration? Is she under the impression that people wanting a GRC will have to have some medical treatment first?

What 'process' is she referring to? She's talking about removing any trace of a 'process' in favour of self ID, then saying that the 'process' (which is no longer required) will take years.

[quote JustSpeculation]@TinselAngel

The current position is that either party can use an interim GRC as grounds for annulment, so annulment as an option is not a new innovation.

I didn't know that. The wording suggested to me this was a new arrangement, but I had only read the recommendations, not the full thing. I don't know enough about the implications to have a considered view on this, but it strikes me as risky for the power to annul to be given to the GRC awarding authority - there are wider issues here than simply the transition, and the authority would scarcely be in a position to deliver an impartial judgement considering the interests of both parties. It would just be routine procedure. On the other hand, forcing things to court would probably be more expensive and time consuming, which could disadvantage both parties. On the third hand, how does the "annulled" spouse get her (I assume that in 99%+ of cases it will be a "her") rights from the family court after the annulment has happened, and who pays?

This report seems to me to only consider the interests and convenience of the transitioning spouse in any detail. There doesn't seem to be any appreciation of the piles of crap being dumped on the non-transitioning spouse, who had a legal agreement. The witness who said that the non-transitioning spouse's role was limited to "being informed of a change in their legal contract" showed a callousness which made my blood boil. I have a family member who's been through the family court. It involved years (literally) of pain for them, as the other party was non-cooperative to a high degree.

This is not an issue I'm involved in, but it's one I want to understand, so if I've made any mistakes here, I'd be grateful if someone could show me where.[/quote]
I agree with what you're saying. Believe it or not. We're actually being given a bit more consideration in this report than previously.

A summary of the current law in in the TWV website:

www.transwidowsvoices.org/spousal-exit-clause

I'd welcome informed opinions about how two different bodies dealing with the annulment and the financial settlement would work in practice because I can't imagine how it would.