What would the impact be if gender identity were the protected characteristic?

[rabbitwoman]

We are commonly told that gender identity is a protected characteristic under the Equalities Act, when we all know that it is gender reassignment, but I often ponder if making gender identity the protected characteristic would actually be a better option?

If gender identity was a protected characteristic, then ergo so would not being trans gender and those who do not have a gender identity.

It would then certainly protect GC people from harassment or detriment as well as trans people, wouldn't it?

I am not a, lawyer, but my thinking is that It would be fairly pointless for anyone claiming to be a woman under that PC to demand access to womens spaces because a counterclaim could be made by anyone GC that they are not in fact a woman at all under the same PC? Surely?

A blessing and a curse......

I have just set out these thoughts quickly before going to work but I do wonder if this has any legal legs to it?

cis gender means you're living your life in black and white and are excluded from the rainbow

I don't think you'll get a reasonable debate, because a lot of the desires and outcomes are not reasonable. There is a requirement to access women's spaces and the women in those spaces for validation. Wearing dresses that don't validate their idea that they are women, isn't a thing.

The validation thing is at the heart of it. I dont get the impression validation was the main driver 30 or 40 years ago, but now it seems to be.

If TWAW then by definition TW who love W are lesbians, and by definition a TW should be completely 100% open to sex with other be-penised TW as they are AHF-style lesbians. But it seems that this is often not the case.

Equally, there is absolutely no reason why a lesbian with a penis shouldn't be equally happy to have sex with a straight woman as a lesbian, other than a desire for validation or a desire to gain pleasure from destroying lesbians' sexual boundaries.

One could argue that "lesbian" TW are by definition gluttons for punishment or desirous of conflict... otherwise why would they not shun the disgusting backward transphobic AHF lesbians and stick to sex with pro-trans lesbians with penises?

GI essentially is protected though as one doesn't need to have a GRC/ surgery/ or intend to have any of the above.

I am struggling to understand what a PC of gender identity would even mean. Is it that:

1. Someone who is in possession of a (any) gender identity should not be treated less favourably than someone who isn't?

So, for example, a self-declared ciswoman could not be treated less well than a GC woman. (Isn't that already covered by belief though?)

2. Discrimination between gender identities isn't allowed?

Then a fluxgender person couldn't be treated less favourably than a demiboi and so on.

3. All non-conforming gender identities (I.e. all except "cis") should receive protection equivalent to that for gender reassignment?

That sort of makes sense, I suppose.

4. Or, as seems to be intended, that anyone with a gender identity of "woman" is entitled to provisions made for a completely separate PC?

Well how is that supposed to make any sense?

I think that it is fairly simple.

If GI is a protected characteristic, then no-one who has a GI should be treated differently to someone identical in every way but who does not have a GI.

ie No man should be excluded from male toilets because they have a cat gender or TW GI. No disabled adult human female should be excluded from the disabled toilet facilities because she has blue hair and identifies as non-binary.

TRAs seem to think that the way to protect GI as a characteristic is to accept it as fact and then compare someone with a TW identity to an actual, biological, real woman. But by this logic a woman who claims to be non-binary can be descriminated against compared to a man or a woman, and only needs to be treated equally to all the humans who are not male or female. By this logic a woman who claims to be non-binary has no right to access male or female toilets, and a young teen who is catgender cannot complain if her parents feed her nothing but whiskas.

But by this logic a woman who claims to be non-binary can be descriminated against compared to a man or a woman, and only needs to be treated equally to all the humans who are not male or female. By this logic a woman who claims to be non-binary has no right to access male or female toilets

It would make life a lot easier if we could at least say "XYZ" are people that want to be the opposite sex, and "ABC" are people that feel they have an internal gender identity that relates to cultural masculinity and femininity (whatever labels XYZ and ABC people feel are appropriate) and treat the two groups and their requirements appropriately.

It helps no-one to conflate the two.

"I am struggling to understand what a PC of gender identity would even mean"

It's really hard to know because nobody really understands what GI means. The definitions available aren't very clear. Stonewall say GI is "A person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else (see non-binary below), which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth." This seems clear(ish) until you look up how they are defining gender. Their definition of gender is "often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined and is assumed from the sex assigned at birth."

To me this reads as GI being about how you feel about your own masculinity or femininity. But how can you have an innate sense about something that is culturally determined?

RMW earlier on this thread said that "if you remain with your natal sex and gender identity aligned, or ‘do not have a gender identity’ as some would prefer to say". This seems to suggest that if you think that you don't have a gender identity at all that just means that your natal sex and gender identity are aligned which presumably means the ideologues think you can have a gender identity without even being aware of it. But this also doesn't match the definition of Stonewall who say that GI is "a sense of your own gender". How can GI be a sense of something but also something you are completely unaware of?

If something can't be properly defined (or if it's such a complex concept that ordinary educated people can't understand it) it's always going to be a headache in law. Who really knows what the repercussions will be until we know what definition of it would be written into law.

No-one can change sex. I think Robert Winston was absolutely right! After all, he is an expert.

Their definition of gender is "often expressed in terms of masculinity and femininity, gender is largely culturally determined and is assumed from the sex assigned at birth."

To me this reads as GI being about how you feel about your own masculinity or femininity. But how can you have an innate sense about something that is culturally determined?

And, the glaring the elephant in the room, is that men who identify as women will often align with the masculine stereotypes that are expected of men.

Ignoring women's boundaries, forcing themselves where they're not wanted, not listening to women, and feeling entitled to take things from women that don't belong to them.

Nobody ever lists these masculine and feminine things, do they?