Joint note from 9 organisations on Scottish Gov's gender reforms

[MagnoliaTaint]

'the Bill carries a high risk of becoming another piece of bad law, with unintended consequences which will be most damaging to women and to young people at their most vulnerable.'

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2022/05/30/joint-note-on-scottish-government-handling-of-gender-recognition-reform/

co-signed by Bayswater Support Group, Fair Play For Women, For Women Scotland, LGB Alliance, Sole Sisters, Woman’s Place UK, Women and Girls in Scotland, Women Speak Scotland and [Murray Blackburn Mackenzie]

The defensive woman with long hair and glasses? Don't recognise her. Sounds Aberdonian.

Kate Coleman being awesome right now about how we're all pretending not to tell the difference between a woman and a bloke with a beard.

i thought just the same. One speaker pulled her up on it but not in strong enough terms in my view. I would have said it was offensive to me to call me cis.

I like to think I'd have done the same, I thought LHB was sort of overly polite about it.

Have just listened to the rest of the meeting. Excellent discussion. Whether it will be really listened to is another matter. Lead a horse to water etc ................

Rachael Hamilton - new to the committee - seems to be interested and asking good questions. Heartening. Does anyone know her title/position within the Committee?

Well THAT was a load of waffling around the protected characteristic of religion that didn't answer the question, and by way of a spurious strawman of "my mother only wanting to see a Chinese doctor" into the bargain. Disgraceful!

And the Amnesty International woman conflates the religious pc with a racist not wanting to see a non-white doctor! FFS!

The man from the LGB alliance made the excellent that all adults are checked before going into schools not on the basis that all visitors are predatory adults but to try and prevent the very small % of predatory adults who wants access to children with no oversight. he then compared self id to just opening up schools to access to anyone with no checks.

With bloody schools doing drag story time that's basically what has happened already 🤨

www.scottishlegal.com/articles/employment-tribunal-finds-woman-suffering-from-anxiety-unfairly-dismissed-from-rape-crisis-scotland

Sandy Brindley

Now it's the turn of the yes-people to headpat the government and reassure them that there are no problems at all and it's all going to be just peachy and fine and wonderful and progressive.

Should be a short session, at least.

I'm glad I can't listen to this later bullshit stuff.

We don't need to wait for the Cass Review because "there's a huge body of international research out there already" - yeah, right !

Did they really say that? What research, WPath's? Are they including eunuchs in the trans umbrella?

Listening a couple of hours behind, and it's fascinating. Especially the total secrecy about who has a GRC. Secrecy is assumed and required even without a GRC, and with a GRC it's the same level of secrecy as witness protection. No wonder it took months to get the NHS (in England) to admit there was even a male in a women's ward after a woman patient got raped. Didn't think much of the LGBA bloke but the women are shit-hot.

Just starting the pro-GRA side.

Apparently Rape Crisis have been trans-inclusive on the basis of self-ID for 15 years and they've had no experience or reports of anyone abusing that system. It's just all the recent publicity in the last few weeks that has created a problem, tut tut. Well it wouldn't have occurred to me to worry about it because I thought "women only" still meant "women only" and I thought Rape Crisis single-sex services were protected as single-sex under the Equalities Act. It's only in the last couple of days I've realised that it doesn't mean that at all, and they're not protected.

Q. We heard earlier in the session that some women were opting out of attending single sex spaces and services for women like rape crisis centres. Is this something that you are aware of? Have you heard about it? What would your response be?

Sandy Brindley: Yes, we've been trans inclusive in our services for 15 years. This has only been an issue that has come up very very recently really I think triggered by a lot of the debate around this bill. So what I would say is the numbers of survivors and women using our services really increases every single week. There definitely has been no reduction in demand on our services but I would say that if anyone has any concerns at all about accessing our services please get in contact with their local service because we will do everythign we can to talk through any concerns you have because what we want to make sure is that anyone who needs our services feels comfortable and able to use them.

Some of us would say that the debate around the GRA, not to mention Allison Baillie and others, has shed the light of publicity on what's been quietly going on for years that up til now I had no clue about. I did not realise what a mess the original GRA is in, or how much women's services have been quietly undermined. Always good to have light shed in the murky corners.

Interesting question from the Indian panel member about the right to women (female) doctors. It was good to hear Jen Ang from JustRight Scotland (no I didn't know who they are!) admit that there is a conflict of rights, though she only admitted it for religious minorities and not for all women or even for all raped women. And fascinating to learn that tough shit, if a doctor has a GRC then they don't legally have to tell anyone what sex they are. So much for sex-based rights and women-only services.

And there it comes again - wanting an actual female doctor is analogous to being racist. And it's ideological, even after you've been raped you've just got the wrong ideology and you shouldn't mind.

Anyway - at 12.21 Sandy Brindley has invited anyone who has concerns about using the Rape Crisis service to contact their local centre and tell them. I might just do that. I don't want to call and find out there is no women-only service after I've been raped.

There was a thing said about the lowered age, apparently a lot of data suggesting 16 year olds are old enough to 'self-determine' or something along those lines and should be supported to.

I mean I wouldn't have put the 16 year old me in charge of a shopping list. Who are these wise teenagers?

Yup, the remark from an earlier hearing at the committee about 16-year-olds not being old enough to get a tattoo but old enough to go down the GRA route to (un)happiness was brought up but for some reason ignored.

This is ridiculous in light of the fact that not so long ago there was some kind of law/criminal justice report saying that our brains aren't fully formed until 25 years old - in particular the part that deals with consequences of actions - and this should be taken into account when young people commit crimes... but at the same time deciding to have life changing/limiting medical interventions is just A-OK...ffs

The woman with the glasses is Karen Adam. Not the brightest bulb and Josh Mennie, her staffer, is all over Twitter being abusive about the witnesses being "English".

The pair of them seem in competition for the Political equivalent of a Darwin award.

Article in the Times:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/583b139a-e12b-11ec-baab-53d14c642149?shareToken=75f904fe679a3250cd19a6d428c11912

It was sobering watching this as seemingly many women in high positions are pushing for the reform, even as recent information is coming out that the true impact on women wasn't properly taken into account in the first place. What is wrong with all these women?

Extremely frustrating as we know it'll have ramifications for the UK. I hate to say this but independent Scotland anyone?

And the Amnesty International woman conflates the religious pc with a racist not wanting to see a non-white doctor! FFS!

As if they have any moral high ground on that sort of comparison - they want discrimination by gender, so a "transwoman" can refuse to go in with "men", and be put in with "women".

They're not advocating "mixed-gender" scenarios to end "gender discrimination".

Yes - we are advocating for discrimination by sex in some scenarios and we justify that by actual sex differences. We think that's acceptable because the benefits outweigh the costs, because sex is real, objective, easily detectable, and it has huge effect.

Whereas discrimination by gender - what they advocate - should be as unacceptable as racism, religious discrimination etc, because there's no valid reason to treat people of different genders differently. Because there's no inherent difference between people of different genders (assuming their sex is the same).

(As the EA2010 effectively acknowledges - there are lots of sex-based exemptions to permit sex discrimination where legitimate. There are no gender-reassignment-based exemptions to permit gender-reassignment discrimination).

His Twitter seems to have vanished.

@NecessaryScene from listening today the legal position in the UK is worse than that now. Even under EA2020 and going all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights, trans rights to privacy legally trump women's rights to protection and autonomy.

Trouble is, privacy to the point of total secrecy about gender transition is seen as a key human right. And breaking that secrecy to require transwomen to reveal they are physically male with a GRC is direct discrimination. Sex is also a protected characteristic under EA2020 but if women don't use services such as Rape Crisis or refuges because they are not women-only then that is only indirect discrimination. And direct discrimination trumps indirect discrimination.

In the same way, women do not have the right to insist on a female doctor for an intimate examination or even to know they are examined by a male doctor unless the doctor voluntarily admits they are male. A transwoman doctor who has a GRC can legally claim to be a woman and does not have to reveal that they are male or that they have a GRC. It's not a crime for a transwoman doctor to go ahead and examine a patient who says she only wants to be examined by someone female.

And no-one else has the right to reveal that either, so even if someone knows or suspects that a transwoman is male they can't legally say so. Yhey're guilty of discrimation for doing it. Unless I have badly misunderstood that is the law with the current GRC, and it's supported by bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights.

Which is worrying for @IamSarah's rape crisis case in Sussex.

Or to put it another way, we've been all done up like a kipper!