Go on, Nadine, you’ve nearly got it

[JellySaurus]

The government has the utmost compassion for people born into a body they don't recognise. But we can't pretend that sex doesn't have a direct impact on a person's athletic performance entire life. Asking women and teenage girls to compete against someone who was biologically born a male is inherently unfair.
^
"I recognise that this is a complex and emotionally charged issue, so I welcome the support of our domestic governing bodies to protect and show compassion to all athletes people. In the interests of integrity, we must bring clarity to protect the future interests sport of women, children and vulnerable people around the world^.

People who believe that they were born into a body they don't recognise have the right to express these beliefs in the same way as people with other beliefs have. Their rights to self-expression are protected, as are their rights not to be discriminated against because of their beliefs.

It is not possible to change sex, and our sex has a direct impact on our lives and on the lives of those around us. Requiring us to pretend otherwise is inherently unfair.

The legal pretence that they can or have changed sex is not compassionate. It is harmful. It creates more problems than it solves (if it solves any problems at all). It removes integrity and reduces clarity.

Go on, Nadine, take the next step: rescind the GRA.

Yes, the 'privacy' clauses also risk threatening various safeguarding checks like DBS etc. I believe the onus is on the person to declare previous names and there's no mechanism to check?

Of course all honest people will declare their previous names. So the only ones we need worry about are those using these systems/loopholes for nefarious purposes. The inevitable bad actors. So, that's fine, then.

How much I wish this was said by almost any other politician than her. But she's saying it, so credit where due,

One of the only issues on which the majority of MN will disagree with the Guardian.

Anyone who has any regard for womens rights at all will disagree with that awful article. Liew really does appear to see women as second class citizens.

it genuinely concerns me that so many people are so empty-headed that they’ll swap around and substitute words from arguments they’ve seen in other contexts and not even consider whether it makes any damn sense.

It's a thing I noticed very early on was particularly common with trans rights activists.

yup. I really cannot bear her

however, on this she's both brave and right

Absolutely I have an agenda: I want the GRA repealed.

I felt womens hour was biased and normally Emma Barnett is OK ish in it

Well since the OP used saintly Nadine to advance her cause here's another supporter. I see this as a marginal issue at best and focusing and spending time on this which is in essence some shouty 'male' assholes who need to grow up a waste of headspace.

In response to a question from a reporter for RT, a state media company, about his views on “problems in Western society,” “cancel culture” and Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s views on gender, which many people consider transphobic, Putin doubled down on long-held views on the correctness of traditional conceptions of gender, and his opposition to rights and inclusion for transgender people.
“If someone thinks that women and men are the same thing, then be my guest. But there is common sense,” he said. “I stick to the traditional approach that a woman is a woman, a man is a man, a mom is a mom, and a dad is a dad.”
He said that in the case of athletes, if a man “declares himself a woman and decides to compete in weightlifting or some other sport, women’s sports would cease to exist altogether.”
“We can’t get away from it,” he said. “We need to look for antidotes that are effective.”

vera99 unfortunately you lost the argument at 11:51 with that bizarre tirade of vitriol. You then became a laughing stock at 16:17 when you compared Nadine to Putin.

@vera99, you surely must be aware that 'Nasty evil person X is for Y, therefore Y must also be nasty and evil' completely fails logically? If Putin and/or Dorries loved puppies, would you suddenly assume puppies were the work of the devil?

“Stop focusing on these irrelevant shouty male assholes. To make the point, I’m going to quote Vladimir Putin in a thread that has absolutely nothing to do with him.”

Does someone need to start pasting quotes from all the rapists, child abusers and serial killers on the TRA side of the argument, from John Money onwards - hell, from Caligula onwards, if they can trans the dead so can we- whenever they do this? Seems like a concerted effort these last few days to do “Bad People agree with you.” Ironic when none of the people they point at are even GC, but the pro-TRA Bad People are legion, especially sex criminals for some mysterious reason.

I see this as a marginal issue at best

You see what as a marginal issue, Vera? You're not really making much sense, I'm afraid.

They just don't understand the difference between sex and gender. Even my own law firm (and many law firms) talk about the gender pay gap. It is not a gender pay gap, it's a sex pay gap (although I can see why they don't call it that!)

Good for Nadine. The GRA won’t be repealed though - there literally is no point in trying and it’s better to focus energy on trying to ensure that single sex spaces are protected. The reason it won’t be is that every single Western nation that’s considered somewhat progressive recognises gender-change provision. This argument should have been had 20-25 years ago, not now. We also have international human rights obligations that demand respect for trans rights.
The only way it could be repealed would be if we had some ultra right wing party in charge, in which case this really would be the least of our problems. But labour, tories or any of the other parties won’t do it until hell freezes over.

The law against blasphemy was repealed about 15y ago.

About 150y ago a Jewish man was repeatedly elected to Parliament, but was never able to take his seat because he refused to swear the Christian oath. Only after the law was changed to allow Jews to swear a Jewish oath on the Jewish Bible was he eventually allowed to become the MP his constituents had elected. The same law allowed other non-Christians to fully participate in the government of their country. That law was successfully passed because a non-believer (not a Jew) swore the Christian oath , despite it being against his beliefs, in order to get into Parliament and campaign for the change in the law.

It's a gender pay gap, because recently there have been a number of highly paid males at a few companies who suddenly self-ID'd as female when the survey was taken. Apparently those firms did quite well on the gender pay gap.

I think it would be a grave mistake to repeal the GRA, because then we are leaving just the Equality Act Provisions in place - and TRA's will use that to say the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (s7) in the 2010 Equality Act actually changes sex, when it plainly doesn't.

We need to remember that the GRC grants legal recognition to some trans people to be recognised as the opposite sex in certain circumstances, and without the GRC, all male trans people are legally male. We need instead to get better at enforcing the provisions of the GRA - the 2 year test, the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, etc, to separate transsexuals from those who treat gender identity as a social persona. Because obviously if something is just the social whim for you, then you shouldn't be having any access to female provisions in law.

I’m not sure what the point was about the blasphemy laws. Blasphemy was seen as impeding free speech and it was the common law that was repealed by statute. The GRA is an Act of Parliament that was passed after we were told that we should by the European Court of Human Rights. Realistically, do you see any of the political parties pledging to completely remove gender recognition in this country?

The Equality Act has its own problems, not least that this mess has demonstrated trying to shoehorn all the protected characteristics in one brief doesn't work. Several now have conflicting needs and trying to represent them as a forced team has become vulnerable to politics, political capture and to a hierarchy. Stonewall has tried very hard to convince the world there is only one characteristic in it, and inclusion only means TQ+, and that an equality impact assessment only looks at TQ+ need. It has also pushed the idea that the other characteristics don't really matter, to the point that sexism, homophobia, ageism and racism is now rife in the politics involved. Disability etc barely gets a look in now - where are the flags, the training days, the awareness days, the days of remembrance, the month of events everywhere? Or even basic following of access regulations?

It needs separating back out into individual briefs and legal protections under different mininsters, who then represent the interests and needs and the detailed understanding of that one brief. And gender and sex need completely separating, much as Dorries said today. Sex based rights cannot be removed or subordinated to gender politics, and third ways to provide new resources needed without removing current resources in place are going to have to be found.

@Artichokeleaves For what it's worth, I do think the Equality Act isn't that bad, the only thing I would have done differently is tighten the language around the "Sex" Characteristic to indicate the difference between biological Sex and Legal Sex, GIVEN the Equality Act was written after the 2004 GRA.

Perhaps I'm a bit more complacent, because I had the misfortune to read the American Equality Act, which makes zero attempt to separate "Gender Identity" from Sex, and is going to have huge and horrible implications for female sport with Biden rewriting Title IX.

I dread to think what the Equality Act would look like if it was written today, because it seems so many institutions are hopelessly captured.

We all have an agenda. Most of us in this thread agree with the OP's agenda, to ensure we remain unashamedly gender critical, so that women are recognised as biological females in language, policy and law.

Labour appears to be doing a very shitty job of that, so far, so I'll take Nadine for the moment, Ta!

And calling someone "scum" is extremely dehumanising and doesn't add anything to your point (that is if you even had one in the first place).

It was in response to ThinkingaboutLangClegosaurus's post, which was deleted while I was typing my response. They had asked whether there were any other laws which required us to behave as though we believed something. I don't remember the exact wording, nor have I any idea what about the post was so awful that it had to be deleted.

Who's the Labour Shadow Minister for Nadine's brief, and why haven't they ever brought this up?

This is what happens when the opposition isn't doing their job. You make people like Nadine look good.

We need instead to get better at enforcing the provisions of the GRA - the 2 year test, the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, etc, to separate transsexuals from those who treat gender identity as a social persona.

And at enforcing the exemptions laid out in the Equality Act.