EA petition EHRC are in favour of reviewing the definition of sex

[ChazsBrilliantAttitude]

Sex Matters update

The petition worked. The full letter from the EHRC is worth reading.

Melroses Jesus, what have I just read?! that Vulvamort twitter thread deserves it’s own thread. The vile dishonesty of Andrew Lansley, the first Tory health sec in the coalition, specifically lying to the public while knowingly putting women at risk on NHS wards. WTF?

I hope that that poor woman who was raped on a hospital ward and was then gaslit that ‘no men were present’ recently, can seek some kind of legal redress for this policy against the government. That’s a terrible new low that Lansley stooped to in 2010.

There will probably be a thread on it here from around the time it was written.

Bienemajas · Yesterday 15:50
I Wonder why parents talk about 'gender' reveals rather than 'sex' reveals?

Because they picked it up from America who thought of ‘Gender Reveals’. Americans are particularly inclined to using euphemisms in speech.

In English “sex” was used to mean male and female. “Gender” was a grammatical term used for describing aspects of language as male, female, or neutral.

”Having sex” is a relatively new description. There used to be various slang words not usually spoken, otherwise people would refer to ‘making love’, ‘intercourse’, ‘sleeping with somebody’, copulating (a bit anatomical), ‘mating’ ( more old-fashioned).

Melroses · Yesterday 17:01
https://medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-1e8f4e6363a6

It was Andrew Lansley that signed off the single sex/gender mash up

Thank you for that. I am speechless at the outrage of that intentional lying to the public of saying ‘Single sex’ wards when they perfectly consciously, intentionally, meant single gender (mixed sex) wards.

They forced the NHS’s hand in this full scale intentional deception of the public.

It should be illegal for any government to intentionally deceive in that way.

(Andrew Lansley was Conservative. He was apparently restoring the sanity and dignity of same-sex wards which was good. But then used this sleight of hand.)

"In English “sex” was used to mean male and female. “Gender” was a grammatical term used for describing aspects of language as male, female, or neutral."

It's 'masculine', 'feminine' and 'neuter'. So the first two are different from the words for biological sex, 'male' and 'female', underlining the separation between biology and grammar.

Don't get me started on the genderists' culturally imperialistic demands with regard to grammatically gendered languages. Which is almost all those of Europe for a start, including minority languages like the Celtic languages and Ladin - so much for decolonisation, eh?

I reckon Akshata is GC

Well done everyone, both lobbying and those in Government etc who have been receptive and willing to listen.

Thank you.

"I reckon Akshata is GC"

You may well be right. We hear a lot about how rich her family is. But not how that wealth happened. Wiki is your guide but my understanding is that her mother studied IT but was rejected from the Indian equivalent of BT because she was a woman. The mum wrote to someone senior arguing that it was wrong to reject a well qualified applicant on the basis of sex. She got the job, met her husband and together they started the firm which then won lots of work as Western firms started outsourcing IT to India. Hence the "Bill Gates" of India

Various stories of the mum remaining unaffected by wealth. Akshata met Rishi at Stanford so presumably able to argue her beliefs.

There are a lot of quote tweets in response to Nancy Kelley. This one is great:

twitter.com/blythegetscross/status/1643706523988766725?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

A former EHRC legal director "has thoughts". Sadly they do not address the EHRC's analysis or offer any alternatives and how they would work:

twitter.com/greycollier/status/1643883668195229696?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Cos of course the law is currently working well and perfectly clear in how it ensures women have the rights under the exemptions written into the equality act as it currently stands...

His argument is so fucking bollocks I don't know where to start. He is pushing his ideology because he has had a particular job, but this doesn't make the law we currently have any different or to say it's actually any good.

I have seen a lot of hyperbole about how treating the word “sex” in the equality act to mean “biological sex” would be devastating to trans people , but no one has ever explained why this would be so. Trans people can already be excluded from single sex spaces, but the ambiguity they have created around the meaning of sex and gender means service providers aren’t confident in making female only spaces. Is it devastating because they can no longer muddy the waters and take female only spaces away from us ?

This just shows the mantra of “sex is separate from gender” is bollocks. Trans women in effect want two protected characteristics all to themselves - gender re assignment AND protection on the basis of being the female sex. If sex had nothing to do with gender as they keep saying then no amount of redefining of “sex” should affect them.

the reality is that trans women are having a massive tantrum because the law could no longer be used to uphold the delusion that they are women.

This just shows the mantra of “sex is separate from gender” is bollocks.

I've never understood the difference. To me the difference is male vs female.

Have a look at his Twitter bio. He’s not an impartial observer on this topic. He has a clear vested interest. Mermaids Trustees

For some reason the link isn’t working but if you check Mermaids trustees on the Charity Commission website there they are. I’ve attached a screenshot.

The tantrums are quite something. There will be two sides to this. The other side might (correctly) assume that if anything they say is going to get splashed all over SM, it would be wise to be circumspect:

twitter.com/helencbelcher/status/1643908312092618754?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

The difference is actually quite useful in feminist analysis. Sex is the fact of our bodies. It simply is. It remains exactly the same across time and cultures. It can never be changed.

Gender is all the social expectations and limitations placed upon people because of their sex. Gender varies dramatically across time and cultures, which is how we know there's nothing innate or essential about it. It is helpful to have a word to describe this idea.

Or anyway it was before a certain section of society deliberately muddled it all up.

Why not do away with sex/gender all together and just say 'male' or 'female' based on your biology?

Because it's a useful distinction if you are interested in analysing inequality between the sexes. Gender, as the word is used by feminists, is basically what a certain society at a certain point in time considers to be masculine/feminine. It is a social construct, but that doesn't mean it's not real or that it doesn't have significant impact on people's lives.

If there was no gender and the only distinctions between men and women were purely based on our biological differences, we'd be living in a feminist utopia. We need some way to talk about gender in order to combat it. I've seen people suggest throwing out the whole word as a bad job and talking instead about sex roles/stereotypes, which is fine as well. But the distinction is vital to feminism.

What a tantrum.

Belcher did the same on LBC yesterday.

It's quite a spectacle, men insistent that it's absolutely impossible to define the thing that they are absolutely sure they are.

Of course people sit in silence, they know that Belcher is unable to grasp how ludicrous it's become.

I hope Belcher eventually realises this incoherence is going nowhere.

What particularly annoys me is the crap about the government 'manufacturing a fake culture war' coming from the group that sort to turn the idea of being a woman into a quasi-religious belief based on regressive gender stereotypes to suit themselves with no regard to women. It was deliberately largely done by stealth with it on record that part of the tactic was to pass legislation 'under the radar' and to crush any debate.

The only group that created a culture war is the one who decided that thousands of years of understanding biology was wrong and that womens safety and dignity should come second to men's.

No. We were never consulted and every effort has been made to shut down women's concerns. For years.

The law is not working. It needs review. Law needs public consent.

RedToothBrush · Today 13:14
What particularly annoys me is the crap about the government 'manufacturing a fake culture war' coming from the group that sort to turn the idea of being a woman into a quasi-religious belief based on regressive gender stereotypes to suit themselves with no regard to women. It was deliberately largely done by stealth with it on record that part of the tactic was to pass legislation 'under the radar' and to crush any debate.

The only group that created a culture war is the one who decided that thousands of years of understanding biology was wrong and that womens safety and dignity should come second to men's.

No. We were never consulted and every effort has been made to shut down women's concerns. For years.

The law is not working. It needs review. Law needs public consent.

Well said.

Absolutely. And it's happened - it seems - all across the western world. It's not isolated to little old "TERF island". Not by a long shot. It's an internationally coordinated attack on women and children.

Sooner or later, one country has to stand up and say no, enough is enough. Let that country be ours.

Yes, it's like the 'self-ID has nothing to do with women' argument. How can it be both?

Maya has collected some of the hyperbole. And the receipts:

www.forstater.com/time-for-civil-debate-yet/