Repeal the Gender Recognition Act 2004

[pinchpoint]

There is a new government petition about this, which you can easily google and sign.

The gist is that opposing "self-ID" or clarifying that sex means sex isn't going to be enough to restore women's rights & child safeguarding, because the GRA has always been self-ID, and was designed so that 'gender' in law always trumps sex in practice.

Interested in your thoughts.

So much this! YES!

YES. So much this.

Thank you @ArabellaScott

I'm rather baffled and aggrieved that some are rather slow-on-the-uptake WRT to these bald facts!

Women do not have sex-based rights or single-sex spaces, despite laws suggesting that we should.

If the problem is indeed #NoToSelfID then the solution is to #RepealTheGRA because it's the self-ID act, and has been since it was passed.

I see what you mean and I’m reconsidering my position on the clothing aspect.

My whole life I have wondered why do most people find it so much worse when a man attempts to disguise himself in women’s clothes or wears or does anything “womanish” than women dressing in men’s clothes or attempting things considered “manly”. Now I’m wondering if it might be that the bitter experience of history has taught us that when men dress as women the majority of the time it is for very dubious reasons such as cowardice, not wanting to stand alongside other men to defend the community, or fetish, posing a danger to women and children. Maybe the social mores which made a man cross dressing as a woman were there for good reasons and are yet another example of a societal norm which it would be far better if we defended from deconstruction by queer theory.

Ukraine gives us a current example of a country being invaded and as in many other conflicts that when men feel a sense of duty to fight for home and family, risking life and limb while sending women and children to safety that they might not have very positive feelings towards healthy young men who claim to be women and flee instead of swelling the ranks of the defence forces.

The teacher in Canada flouting all health and safety rules as well enjoying his sexual fetish in front of children in his workplace is an obvious example of the other reason we may want to continue to support the taboo on men presenting themselves as women in public life.

When women dress in “men’s” clothing their motives are generally either neutral such as practicality or honourable such as wanting to fight alongside the men and help defend their country.

On the other hand it highlights for me how blind we are to just how sexualised clothing for women and girls is. Especially for girls. I was really struck by this when I saw some of the little boys dressed in “girl’s” clothing and it seemed like blatant sexualisation but then how is it we allow shops to sell these items for girls? It is less noticeable because we have become used to seeing girls dressed this way.

Anyway definitely gives me food for thought.

Is there any other sphere in life where we are able to retrospectively falsify a document of fact based on nothing more than an undefinable and unverifiable feeling, and a need for validation, and are then given opportunity to conceal that we have done so? Who does this legal fiction serve and how does this serve them? It may benefit an individual for good or bad reasons (eg validating their self identitiy, or allowing them to conceal information) but does it benefit society as a whole? What is it for? - because it seems to get used as a bludgeon to make demands that all must accept the individuals chosen identity over their reality. Is it a positive that we socially validate these identites?

Reissued birth certificates for those adopted add factual information to the childs history, they do not remove or replace the records of the biological mother and father but add on information of the people taking legal, financial and parental responsibility for the child. In the incredibly rare occasions where a child is born with a DSD and initially misidentified /recorded wrongly it is clearly noted as a correction based on new information, the original record would still be accessible (due to advances in medicine this situation is vanishingly rare now)

I dont think there should be any situation where we should be able to alter records such as these. People should be protected under law against mistreatment and prejudice for how they express their gender, and live their life (within societally agreed boundaries) but the falsification of records and the rewriting of history should be stopped, and those with GRC grandfathered out of the system.

@pinchpoint I completely agree about not effectively falsifying birth certificates. With same sex civil partnerships and marriage the original need that led to that element of the GRA is removed.

I am being pragmatic as I just cannot see the GRA being repealed to just leave the EA. I think there is a need to legislate on a whole range of issues, as I said in my post such as DBS checks, data collection, definitions etc. If not in a revised GRA then in the EA or other legislation.

Thank you for such a thoughtful reply @PomegranateOfPersephone

Everything you say here is true. Your phrase "the bitter experience of history has taught us that when men dress as women the majority of the time it is for very dubious reasons" is absolutely spot on!

This, also, could not have been put better: "Maybe the social mores which [stopped?] a man cross dressing as a woman were there for good reasons and are yet another example of a societal norm which it would be far better if we defended from deconstruction by queer theory."

I've been pondering Chesterton's Fence in relation to the now-defunct norm that men don't dress up in women's clothing in the workplace (unless their workplace is a stage). Men are doing this is kids' schools, with impunity. It can't be right. And of course women wearing men's clothing for comfort, durability & to deter sexual attention just doesn't operate in the same way - it doesn't vitiate safeguards.

The issue of girls clothing being sexualised is a really intractable one. I find it impossible, in practice in my own family, to draw a line between resisting sexualisation, and kind of stigmatising things that are for girls IYKWIM? I don't want, for myself or my daughter, a pretty dress to become taboo when wearing one can be one of life's pleasures.

Bio sex and the cultural practices described by social constructivists as "gender" do blur, and I suspect it's impossible to "abolish gender" without ending up accidentally trying to erase sex - exactly what we are seeing with gender identity ideology!

One thing I am sure of, though, is that I don't want men doing fetish at work or around kids. That's just basic safeguarding, and nothing to do with feminism per se.

Thanks for this, @Gelatoaficionado

"Is there any other sphere in life where we are able to retrospectively falsify a document of fact based on nothing more than an undefinable and unverifiable feeling, and a need for validation, and are then given opportunity to conceal that we have done so?"

Nope. It's an aberration. A glitch in the matrix.

"I dont think there should be any situation where we should be able to alter records such as [birth certificates]...the falsification of records and the rewriting of history should be stopped, and those with GRC grandfathered out of the system."

Yep. 100%.

"People should be protected under law against mistreatment and prejudice for how they express their gender, and live their life (within societally agreed boundaries)"

There are clearly quite a few people who now believe in the ideology of transgenderism, or gender identity, or Moneyism. I may not agree that "born in the wrong body" beliefs and associated cultural practices are particularly coherent - and they don't even seem to benefit the believers - but I'd be happy for these people to enjoy discrimination protection under Freedom of Belief, so they don't lose their job or home without recourse for holding those beliefs.

I did see a television programme around the time of the original GRA - it mentioned primarily 'intersex' children, transsexuals who had had operations years ago, and children born in the wrong body. It never mentioned the intense secrecy built into the GRA. I think I was unusual to have taken as much notice of that programme as I did.

Recently figures of 120,000 have been claimed for people waiting for 'transgender treatment' which is a long way above the 5K total envisaged by the GRA.

Signed it. Thank you

Yes, repeal the GRA.

What is it for, in 2022?

So sinister @Melroses that the strategy was to impose transgenderism ("born in the wrong body") onto children, from the start. Unsurprising, when it was the notorious sexologist John Money who coined the phrase "gender identity," taking a concept from grammar and imposing it onto human beings.

Wonder whether that programme is knocking about online?

120,000 queuing for Moneyist medical experiments, eh? The marketing strategy has certainly grown that industry...

Wonder whether that programme is knocking about online?

I keep looking - I can remember is that it featured a little 'intersex' girl (maybe it was a boy?) who was supposed to be waiting until she was old enough to decide what sex she was, going round the make-up counters with her friends, narrated by Robert Winstone, and on probably BBC2. It was about the law changing so that you did not have to go to court to get your birth certificate changed so it must have been 2004/5 ish. One day I will find it 🙏

I’m pretty sure I never heard of the GRA in 2004, and I try to keep up with news on women’s rights. The invasion of Iraq was on everyone’s minds. Good time to sneak a shoddy bill through Parliament.

I’m pretty sure I never heard of the GRA in 2004, and I try to keep up with news on women’s rights. The invasion of Iraq was on everyone’s minds. Good time to sneak a shoddy bill through Parliament.

This.

Ah well I can almost see it without seeing it - that trans activist narrative using people with DSDs to justify all sort of sex role stereotyping nonsense has been going a long time. People with DSDs used to open women's sports to men; surgery on infants with DSDs used to justify operating on kids with no genetic abnormalities; the existence of a tiny subset of a tiny number of people with DSDs used to justify relaxing the rule that no men should be in women's spaces...Its their strategy.

Totally - Dentons document revealed the strategy has always been to sneak reforms through without public consultation, as anyone made aware that the GRA 2004 was fundamentally about messing up the birth certificate system, giving fake ones to fetishists, and politically erasing sex, would have said "hell no."

Setting a google search for the GRA with dates set for the year 2004 only threw up very, very little. Of course, there was less internet in 2004. But I couldn't find a single news article, which seems slightly odd?

There's this:

www.christian.org.uk/theology/apologetics/other/gender-recognition-act/

Hmmm.

Isn't that weird...A law with implications for everyone in the nation (erasing sex in favour of "gender" in the mind), but no discussion, no debate, no think pieces, no politicians talking about the benefits. Shady!

I heard about it on radio 4 at that time(2003/4), expressed my concerns about it to my other half who said “be kind! It doesn’t affect you! It’s a tiny number of people who are suffering unimaginably!” and I wondered if I might really be an awful person but however I thought about I couldn’t shake of my concerns around falsifying legal documents and the impact that the concept of a man “becoming a woman” was really sexist and terrible for women. I had recently given birth and wasn’t online at the time, had virtually no access to the internet really. I was busy then with small children for the next few years. Now look where we are!

The same piece on radio 4 years ago was the first I ever heard of non binary too.

You had good strong dependable intellect & instincts @PomegranateOfPersephone It's such an obvious safeguarding loophole that any man can just change the sex on his birth certificate, presto. It's an exception to the rule that it's a criminal offence to falsify a birth certificate. Men who avail of this administrative process (you don't have to change your body, and that's been the case since the GRA was passed) enjoy levels of state secrecy not granted to people in witness protection programs. Employees risk criminalisation for divulging the existence of a gender recognition certificate/fake birth cert. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/gender-recognition-act-could-criminalise-innocent-staff/5068055.article

And what demographic does this smoke-filled hall of mirrors benefit?

The act affects many more women and girls than transpeople yet women's groups were not consulted and their opinion was not sought.
Pandering to woke stonewall policies at any expense.