31 Jan 15:15 Women & Equalities Committee - Scottish GRR Bill

[GreenUp]

Tomorrow 31st Jan at 15:15 the UK Government's Women and Equalities Committee are holding an evidence gathering session in relation to the Scottish GRR Bill. We can watch on Parliament TV live.

The witnesses are:
Naomi Cunningham Barrister and member of legal feminist
Dr Michael Foran, Public Law lecturer at Glasgow University.
Lord Charlie Falconer Barrister
Robin White Barrister

committees.parliament.uk/event/17258/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/

Another thing. The only way you can verify a person’s sex 100%, apart from by looking down their pants, or getting them to do a chromosome test, (prior to 2004) has been to look at their ID documents.

If you are setting up some sort of service or membership, for women, and you invoke the single sex exemption - because it’s aim is proportional and legitimate to discriminate.

What if someone male applies to your service and membership, who has a GRC?

Their identity documents, even their birth certificate will have been falsified, there is no way you are allowed to check to know it they are false, because it would unlawfully breech their privacy, if anyone disclosed their actual sex to you.

What could that service or membership do to keep that male person, that man, out of their legitimate/proportional single sex service?

How would it work?

Should proportional/legitimate single sex services and membership orgs have additional legal powers to demand to have a person’s sex verified via DBS or something?

Should they have powers to conduct a medical examination to know what is in their pants isn’t an in tact or inverted penis?

Should they have powers to do a chromosome test?

How can you exclude a person of the opposite sex, with a GRC, from a single sex service, without these additional powers?

Can someone please explain?

Absolutely, @Boiledbeetle . Listening to those self-important men discussing how many of them are just going to waltz into OUR spaces, is something straight out of Gilead 😡

About those DBS checks....

'The DBS grants enhanced privacy rights to those who change their gender when changing their identity. These are exceptional rights that are only granted to individuals in this group. The result is that identify verification is compromised, meaning there is no guarantee that the information returned during the check and displayed on the certificate will be accurate or complete'.

(KPSS report, September 2022)

Do you think after all the bleating about the difficulty of getting a GRC, some people just can’t be bothered to get it?

If we have de facto self-ID already, then there is the "why would I bother". But there's also the possibility that some people wouldn't qualify if they applied for a GRC. So if you don't or don't think you will but it's your wish, de facto self-ID must seem a good option.

Yes, there really isn’t a need for it now that you have gay marriage.

You don’t need it to change your passport or drivers licence. How often do you need to show you birth certificate for anything? Almost never.

I think the only advantage to having one now is the privacy clause - for people who really have something to hide.

About those DBS checks....

'The DBS grants enhanced privacy rights to those who change their gender when changing their identity. These are exceptional rights that are only granted to individuals in this group. The result is that identify verification is compromised, meaning there is no guarantee that the information returned during the check and displayed on the certificate will be accurate or complete'.

(KPSS report, September 2022)

I seem to remember a thread from a Mumsnetter who was trying to get to the bottom of this a few years back. IIRC the answer was pretty much 'we rely on people to be honest about their former names / identity when they apply for a DBS certificate'

Seems fair to me - what could possibly go wrong?

They either couldn't or wouldn't see the two incredulous (and incredible) women behind them! It's not about the men it's about the women and girls.

i know.

I would really love to interrogate the activism and lobbying around the Sexual Offenses Act 2003, which was so integral to the formation of Scottish trans activism according to James Morton. Who were the players, etc.

Been doing some searching, here's the thread I was thinking of

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3690840-Reply-from-Home-Office-re-DBS-and-GRC#90058244

Interesting to see that the idea of the DBS started in 2002 as part of the DfE.

In May 2002, the Department for Education began maintaining a list of individuals who are not suitable to work with children. This list was originally named List 99, later named the ISA Children's Barred List (maintained by the Independent Safeguarding Authority) and finally, the DBS Children's Barred List (maintained by the Disclosure and Barring Service.[13]

Under the Care Standards Act (2000), the Department for Health introduced an adult version of List 99 named 'POVA first' on 26 July 2004,[14] this was later renamed 'ISA Adult First' and finally; 'DBS Adult First'. The Adult first and List 99 services allow registered bodies (when eligible) to check whether an applicant appears on the DBS Adults' or Children's Barred List through the online checking system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclosure_and_Barring_Service

That’s a year before the Sexual Offences ACT

Which was a year before the GRA

Here's a link to the KPSS report -

kpssinfo.org/reports/

It’s like it the privacy clause was written to get around ‘List 99’.

I've just started re-reading the thread I posted above.
I was a bit surprised to see barrister of the hour RMW on there after only 12 posts!!

Yikes

Sal ? uses facial recognition technology for her app giggle.

Those of use without this technology can use eyeballs which can also see things.

Once again a poster starts from the basis that transwomen will lie and cheat their way into women’s spaces so we need a fool-proof way to guard against that. Isn’t rather transphobic to make out transwomen are predatory in this way? Surely if they know they are single sex spaces for women that they are not allowed in then they would respect that and stay out? Wouldn’t they?

Men can be predatory torwards women, way to frequently.

Men cannot be women.

Therefore any man saying that are a woman is lying.

So why would I trust them? It's not like I trust any other group of men. What's so different about this group that i should assume they are truthful and harmless?

What I have never understood is that if TWAW they should know that they need to 'be kind' and to budge up if men tell them to. I amnot seeing a lot of that.

(Disclaimer, there have been some TW who got womens concerns from the start. We hear less of Fionne Orlander or RoseofDawn and others now, but credit to them for calling out some worst behaviours of some TW way back when self ID started kicking off.)

Trans law is a ‘magic key’ for predators

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0e198896-a1ba-11ed-befb-a61c39e55892?shareToken=797b8375b2266231eb66c322ec2dabe5

"Cunningham said: “The mental picture when that legislation was passed was of someone who would not cause any upset in a women-only changing room, toilet, ward or prison, because everyone would just accept he was a woman. Events of the last few days should have made it vivid to everybody that that is not the cohort we are dealing with now. The trans umbrella is now taken to include people . . . who cross-dress for erotic purposes.”

Bryson enrolled in a beauty course at Ayrshire College’s Kilwinning Campus while awaiting trial. Cunningham said a GRC would make it more difficult for course providers to stop Bryson taking part in intimate beauty treatments such as applying fake tan. She said: “He would have this magic certificate that says he is woman . . . Nobody is allowed to mention that he is really a man.”

Lord Falconer, who served as justice secretary under Tony Blair, dismissed Cunningham’s claim that a GRC was “a key” to women’s spaces, but called on Holyrood and Westminster to agree a gender law that protected such spaces."

On the thread linked above RMW says

There is no loophole. Trans individuals are checked to the same standards as anyone else. But the certificate does not reveal previous identity to the recipient organisation if the individual does not want it revealed. Perhaps all those expressing (misguided) outrage might want to put down their megaphones and examine their reasons for jumping to the conclusions they have?

The whole country are examining those reasons right now.

Schools now do enhanced searches on Google which rely on previous names given voluntarily.

If neither is in dbs or application, there's a definite loophole.

And if prison stats are to be believed 'trans identifying males'; (which could be people with dysphoria or male predators abusing the system) are convicted of and imprisoned x5 more than men.

And if Scotland has its way, grcs issued with zero gatekeeping. Medical diagnosis etc.

Too fucking right we are examining this.

I started teaching in 2002 just after the Soham murders. I've seen all these checks and laws come in as a direct result of major safeguarding failures; Soham kick started a lot if it form my memory - formal safeguarding training where scenarios and examples were given.

We were taught to be suspicious and collect niggles. We had triplicate books, now it's online apps. Information is kept for 100 years due to historical csa cases. No sacred castes, including teachers and heads.

By Murdo Fraser MSP (Tory). Ouch...

www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/gender-recognition-reform-bill-may-be-nicola-sturgeons-poll-tax-moment-murdo-fraser-4007802

but called on Holyrood and Westminster to agree a gender law that protected such spaces."

I’d like to see a discussion around how this could actually be achieved in reality. HOW do service providers keep ALL men out including TW whilst being certain they are not breaking the law. It should be straight forward to do and routinely used. If a change to the equality act is required this should be done BEFORE reform of the GRA is done.