Guardian Editorial on GRR 'There is room for compromise and generosity in these debates'

[Parisj]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/18/the-guardian-view-on-scotlands-gender-reform-bill-understand-more-condemn-less?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Understand more condemn less. I thought it was an interesting pivot, similar to other media outlets suddenly having to debate these issues.

You may well be right, but I worry it goes further than that. It's not just that you are but how you are which is provided. Not recognised, or recorded, but provided. That's the feeling I get. It's horrible. I realise that I have a deeper issue with the Guardian than simply its position on women's rights.

Women using women-only services should not be exposed to men, truly transgender or not.

I am against the GRR for creating a huge explosion in people who will feel (wrongly) that they are entitled to use opposite-sex spaces and services, but the basic problem is the existence of GRCs at all.

BellaAmorosa · Today 15:29

That's my view and I believe the view of every rational human being who has spent 60 seconds considering it.

I read the thread title, and as so often these days, just thought "Yeah you first, mate".

Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man...

@nilsmousehammer and @SinnerBoy
Agreed. Plus the idea of third spaces. Shot down in flames.

You can't compromise with an ideology the whole point of which is to erase your sex class and make you subservient. While at the same time painting you as the oppressor.

We're going to see more and more pivots because more and more people are peaking and they are realising they backed the wrong horse. Them trying to pretend like they haven't filified women for YEARS fighting this bullshit is not going to down like this.

I will remind every news outlet who did this to us for the rest of my life because i'm that pissed off about it.

I got: we are now willing to acknowledge that self-id might affect the safety, privacy and dignity of women and girls. But we still think their rights are not as important as the right of men to enter any space they fancy, no matter the consequences.

The only possible compromise now is third spaces, and men being made to face the fact that female-only spaces are not for them, not everything can be for them, and that female inclusion and equality of access is equally important as theirs.

There will be a lot of pouting and foot stamping, but excluding large amounts of females from anything at all, and the continued body count of women raped and harmed in the name of men having the option to identify into everything and always be the priority? It won't go away. It will just get worse and worse, the evidence will just build until it bursts.

And the truly awful thing about the GRA is the right to lie to everyone about your sex and have that lie protected in law with the ‘privacy clause’.

A compromise could be, to avoid embarrassment at airports, etc, to have your sex M or F with a symbol next to it, or the letter T, so that people know the truth about who you are, but don’t make a fuss that you are presenting like someone of the opposite sex. Done.

But they want the right to lie to everyone. Gyms, employers, hospitals, everyone. Therefore denying everyone else the right to maintain their own sexed boundaries. It’s so self-centred and wrong.

The Guardian has also got an article on the Tavistock, that the jaded eye and a very quick read really seemed to skimmer the problems. They were mentioned, but kind of in passing.

And this by Shona Robison on the GRRrrrrrrrrr

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/19/westminster-trans-people-scotland-gender-recognition-reform-bill

It’s always the expectation that women “be generous”? Why? Our needs have been completely ignored by The Guardian, Labour, the BBC and on and on.

I think we are way past expecting women’s goodwill. Instead they have shown us exactly how misogynistic institutions are willing to be.

I won’t be an afterthought or a special kind of citizen that’s always supposed to put men’s “special feels” before my rights.

I believe Nicola Sturgeon genuinely believes this is a positive reform. I also believe that she spotted an unmissable political opportunity to manoeuvre Westminster into stopping the law so that she could promote her own agenda and make her party attractive to young voters. Tbh no disparagement - she's a truly impressive political operator. But it's annoying that the Grauniad didn't point that out, as they would have done with almost any other party leader.

I can't even see that Graun editorial as a 'step in the right direction'. The whole tone of it, the reminders of what an awful right-winger KB is, the praise for Sturgeon...

What the hell is the point of GRCs anyway? What do they achieve, and in what way do they make the world a better place?

To be convinced this is a 'positive' reform, or anything 'positive' at all, you have to have a fixed, sex based belief that people born with penises are infinitely more important, valuable and a higher class of human beings than ones born without. And that those born without have a sex based biological duty to suck up less rights and actual bodily harm so that Sturgeon can have lovely feelings about being lovely to men. And of course stroke the men who have the power, the money and further her agendas.

Which makes any claim of belief that people change sex and sex is complicated a flat out lie.

And you'd also have to believe that selective reality and lying is fine. In a slightly sociopathic way, where being bent is righteous if you believe your intentions are good.

The woman is either a rampant misogynist to the point of male supremacism, or she's completely nuts. I'd go with a bit of both frankly. But then she's merely the extreme end of the entire liberal left at the moment.

"The provision of identity lies at the heart of a modern state"

Lies at the heart of totalitarian states. All other states leave it to the people to find their own identities.

What strikes me when I see phrases like this, is that what we are talking about here are personalities, nothing more, nothing less. And why would any state get involved in that?

And if they mean identity documents, we don't need to enshrine self-declaration of sex in law to be able to do that. The state already issues all kinds of identity documents on proof of whatever is relevant. This is the only issue where people demand that the state issue identity documents to all entirely without proof of identity.

At the heart of modern states, however, lie law and order. This demand bodes ill for either (as the European Court of Human Rights agreed in 2017).

@EndlessTea

A compromise could be, to avoid embarrassment at airports, etc, to have your sex M or F with a symbol next to it, or the letter T, so that people know the truth about who you are, but don’t make a fuss that you are presenting like someone of the opposite sex. Done.

I assume you mean instead of a GRC? If so, yes, absolutely. The truth is respected and people with gender dysphoria can differentiate themselves from other members of their sex (which is very important to them) without encroaching on the boundaries of the opposite sex. I believe this cohort would be happy with third spaces, especially the female members who don't have an erotic interest in men's clothes as such.
Protection of a belief in transgenderism would be covered in the EA2010 anyway, so the issue of defining who is "trans" or what "trans" even is disappears and there is no need to introduce the equally indefinable concept of gender identity into law.

@CharlieParley

Well, quite. I read the piece, and the first thing I thought was, the opening sentence is bollocks, for a start.

But I think it needs to be said quickly, with an accompanying hand-waft, for max effect.

Exactly!

It's just weasel words. I'm pretty sure the Guardian "know" who should be compromising and being generous to whom.

"Understand more..."

Mmm. If only there had been a left-leaning newspaper which could have covered the issue honestly and aired the different angles and acknowledged the concerns women were raising...

@teawamutu

Well, I was just going to say, of course, twenty years ago, there would have been. But would that even be true? I read about the Equality Act of 2014, but tbh, it completely passed me by at the time. But since then, well... I feel that I come late to the party, and realise what a shitshow we've ended up with. Gotta hope that sanity will prevail.

The original U.K. GRA is the generous compromise.

(I haven't read the guardian piece, might in the morning.)