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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Leader in The Times re EHRC guidance

8 replies

CythereaGraye · 06/04/2022 07:25

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cc951ac2-b509-11ec-8c29-375fe0cc1f19?shareToken=a8dc69104292a6a991d2fffa4d41feed
The Times nailing its colours to the mast.

OP posts:
334bu · 06/04/2022 07:33

Thank you for share link.

tabbycatstripy · 06/04/2022 07:39

Women’s rights groups regard this “common sense solution” as a victory because it’s exactly what they have been calling for. I dislike this framing where women’s rights and trans rights groups are treated like they’ve been (equally) behaving like toddlers and now the grown ups have stepped in. No. Women’s rights groups have been pointing out that the law allows for a SMALL number of exceptions to the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sex. And it does. So yes, women’s rights groups have won.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 06/04/2022 07:46

I dislike this framing where women’s rights and trans rights groups are treated like they’ve been (equally) behaving like toddlers and now the grown ups have stepped in

It is infuriating to read items like this with the undertones of the men have arrived to sort out this mess.

A support group for victims of sexual assault, for instance, would be justified in excluding trans women because the presence of biological men might traumatise its female members…

The trans rights lobby, which until recently has had momentum on its side, regards this guidance as a defeat. The feminists, who reckon they are successfully pushing back against the advance of trans rights, see it as a victory. But in reality, compromise and common sense have won.

Helen Joyce has repeatedly said this is what would happen and women are going to need to smile and not say what's on our minds because we need to keep our eyes on the prize. All of this is going to take a long time to unpick, if we can at all.

CornedBeef451 · 06/04/2022 07:47

I'm glad this has been published but @tabbycatstripy is right, it makes it sound like feminists have been objecting to Trans people as a whole rather than arguing for exactly what the EHRC have now said is correct.

Also where is says women might FEEL unsafe, the reality is women might not BE safe. It's not about feelings, it's about safeguarding.

tabbycatstripy · 06/04/2022 07:49

And yes, we have been pushing back against the advance of trans rights, not because trans people don’t deserve rights, but because that advance was trampling our rights.

ResisterRex · 06/04/2022 08:03

I complete agree @EmbarrassingHadrosaurus. That piece has definite undertones and I don't think it really captures the women's rights position. All we were asking for was that the law be clarified. And many of us wrote to our MPs about the single sex exceptions. We did not attempt to rewrite the law but to have it respected and enacted.

DomesticatedZombie · 06/04/2022 10:47

Good comment:

'One of the curiosities of this guidance is that it says the law requires a justification to ban transwomen from women’s single sex spaces. But transwomen and women are not of the same sex so why should that be different from allowing any man into a women’s single sex space?

This is because the Act drew no distinction between sex and gender. Gender reassignment and sex are two different categories of protected characteristic in the Equality Act. However, in section 7(1) of the Act, sex and gender are used interchangeably:

“A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.”

The problem with this is that there is of course though no process by which you can actually reassign biological sex (as opposed to gender) whatever you do to you physiology or other attributes because sex is immutable. This is therefore a muddle.

In section 11, sex is said to refer to a man or a woman but they are not defined. They should refer to biological sex yet section 7 says this can be reassigned.

There is therefore a confusion at the heart of the Act.

The recently created women’s rights groups should campaign to have these sections amended and add definitions to avoid further confusion.'

Artichokeleaves · 06/04/2022 11:01

Men are here. Make compromise. Cos it's not like women have been saying this for bloody years or anything.

Drives me mad all this framing of 'women are having a strop because they might feel uncomfortable'

No you absolute bastards. Women have been excluded from needed services, and some of them have been bloody raped. That is what you're busy shoving under the rug.

Every day I think I've reached the pinnacle of realising how much the UK establishment hates women. And then another another one opens their mouth.

Leader in The Times re EHRC guidance
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