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.

What's he say now?

He has worked it out! He hung out in the park by the uni in town a lot and shortly after I explained to him how much this movement attracted men who didn't fit in, a man he saw often behaving irrationally and always on the brink of losing it, showed up in a dress.

And a clearly messed up girl on his course who wore a binder that made her very ill, but was cheered on relentless for it, finally gave up the pretence she was a man.

Everything I said about it he saw first hand eventually.

At the risk of seeming like a Trump supporter, does anyone know what happens if you have several email addresses each with a private vpn
and vote ‘once’ several times?

Usually the petitions on this site let you know if you have voted already, but how would they always know you are the same person?

Students are probably more techy generally speaking than the demographic who care about women’s rights.

In the small print about petitions, it says:

"We’ll have to reject your petition if...

It doesn’t ask for a clear action from the UK Government or the House of Commons"

The other one isn't asking for an action. It's asking for no action. So could it be rejected on those grounds?

It does also say you have to be a British citizen or UK resident to sign. But the rules on that seem lax. Perhaps there's some background way it's checked like IP and so on. It does say this under privacy:

petition.parliament.uk/privacy

"The personal data we collect from people who start and sign petitions will include: your name, your email address, your postcode, the country you live in, whether you are a British citizen, the IP address you use when starting or signing a petition.

...

Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of starting and signing petitions to raise issues with the UK Government and Parliament.
We use your personal data to:
• check that you’re eligible to sign a petition
• make sure that people only sign a petition once
• contact you about petitions you start
• with your consent, send you updates about petitions you have signed.
If you start a petition and we accept it, your name will be published with the petition for the time it is open for signatures. We won’t publish any other personal information about you.
If you’ve signed a petition, we won’t publish any personal information about you. We’ll use your postcode to work out how many people in each parliamentary constituency have signed a petition.
For the purpose of petitions, we consider that the lawful basis for processing your data is that we are engaged in a public task. The processing is necessary for the performance of a public task, namely the exercise of a function of the House of Commons (UK GDPR Article 6 (1) (e) and DPA 2018 (8)). Specifically, processing this data is necessary for the e-petitions website and the work of the Petitions Committee."

Oh those gov petitions have form:

https://metro.co.uk/2016/06/26/77000-fake-signatures-removed-from-second-referendum-petition-5967794/

And from
https://fullfact.org/europe/possible-repeatedly-sign-parliamentary-petition/
A House of Commons spokesperson told us it’s possible to sign a petition up to two times from the same email address, but no more than that.

Now given that its email address dependant, its not hard for someone to use multiple email addresses if they wanted to.

I once belonged to an online gaming community which used Facebook accounts as the sign in. There were accusations of cheating. It eventually transpired that a number of the 'best players' actually simply had set up hundreds of accounts to allow them to cheat. I think I came across one player who had more than 300 accounts - just think of the time to set up to set up that number of email accounts never mind the Facebook accounts.

It has focused my mind as to how obsessive and how far some individuals will go to on line if they are that way minded.

I think the fact that there is such concerntration of locations for the other petition says either unimaginative cheating or a very narrow demographic going on which isn't reflective of the population as a whole...

Meanwhile the first petition is more spread out, and many women feel unable to sign it because of harassment or consequences to their employment...

FactCheck: is the “stop Brexit” petition reliable? – Channel 4 News

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-is-the-stop-brexit-petition-reliable

and

There was a rejected petition
Require a login to sign petitions and review security
and the reasons they give include some reassurances. There can be two signatures from the same email address but they look for patterns of over 1%
https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/254031

I can’t see anything about someone possibly having several email addresses each with a different VPN

the IP address you use when starting or signing a petition.

Anyone who knows much about online trolling on forums, knows about dynamic IP addresses. I have friends who were doing this shit 20 years ago to get around forum bans (its why MN can't just ban IP addresses, cos its fucking pointless).

An email address is bollocks as 'identity proof'. And postcodes can be looked up online pretty easily.

Put it this way. The government are over 20 years behind idiot level tech stuff on this.

Its not something you need to be tech savvy to do at all.

Switch your router on/off and away you go!

Thanks for your replies to my question RedToothBrush and ResisterRex.

Re:
Meanwhile the first petition is more spread out, and many women feel unable to sign it because of harassment or consequences to their employment...

I know women on Mumsnet often said they were reluctant to sign in case they were found out.

🤷‍♀️
By her own beliefs she’s wrong though- if she really believes TWAW and can be lesbians then she might need contraception. So she’s either saying lesbians (with penises) can’t get lesbians (without penises) pregnant- which of course they can, just as any other man can- or she’s saying she only has sex with lesbians who don’t have penises and according to Stonewall she’s basically a sexual racist. So bold move to state that!

A thread by Michael Foran on "for all purposes" and how the government could act. Main link:

twitter.com/michaelpforan/status/1645462887979274240?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

A part of the thread:

"S9(3) limits the application of the “for all purposes” clause by reference to the provisions in the GRA or in any other Act which might limit the applicability of a GRC.

Within the Gender Recognition Act itself this means that having a GRC does not affect one’s status as the father or mother of a child, it doesn’t affect peerages or their inheritance, it has complicated effects on marriages and civil partnerships and it doesn’t affect sport

So it’s clear that a GRC does not change sex for those above purposes. But what about other statutes? There is some ambiguity over whether s9(3) requires explicit invocation in other statutes or if it is taken to apply where the statute sets out it’s own definition of sex.

If the latter then the ‘for all purposes’ clause won’t apply to the Equality Act bc the Act has its own definition of sex, tied to whether you are male or female. But this isn’t entirely clear and we haven’t had much caselaw testing this. What is we’ve had has been conflicting.

So if it’s not clear whether s9(3) is applicable for the Equality Act, then s23 of the GRA may be relevant

This permits the Secretary of State to issue regulations clarifying whether GRCs affect the operation or interpretation of the Equality Act. That would not require primary legislation and it wouldn’t require the insertion of a new definition of sex into the EA.

It’s not clear what the government will do in response to the EHRC letter if anything but it could enact primary legislation to insert a definition of sex into the EA or it could issue regulations making it clear that a GRC does not change sex for the purposes of the EA.

Either way it’s wrong to say that the Gender Recognition Act intended for GRCs to change sex for all purposes or to imply that clarifying this ambiguity is contrary to the purpose of the GRA. It was clearly envisaged that issues might arise such as this. That’s why s23 exists."

Michael Foran has been consistently clear and brilliant on interpreting the law around this

MBM blog on the matter of "sex". This stands out, which came before the Haldane judgement:

"exchange at an online seminar in November 2020 and the response of the then Head of Legal at EHRC Scotland.
Audience question: “Does being covered by gender reassignment change a person’s sex for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010?”
Head of Legal, EHRC Scotland: “No. Is the short answer. You would have other characteristics, gender reassignment would be a characteristic that you held along with sex, and disability, or religion or age, so no.”"
www.engender.org.uk/content/events-past/110-lunchtime-webinar-understanding-the-equality-act/

They also summarise the political reaction to the EHRC's letter in Scotland (basically no real comment!). They think change will take time. But if it's a statutory instrument then I don't see how it will take months and months(?):

murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/04/10/defining-sex-in-scotland-how-the-recent-ehrc-letter-relates-to-scottish-legal-analysis-and-politics/

ResisterRex · Today 11:23
Thank you for those links , how useful to have that analysis.

Given the census thread currently running and the ramifications of poor data for worsening diversity and inclusion, in terms of the law I don't know how you can argue in good faith as a politician for more diversity whilst advocating for legal fictions over sex.

The two concepts are incompatible.

You either believe in improving diversity via data integrity and quality leading the way or you believe in fictional representations of the truth - aka as total unrepresentative meaningless bollocks.

Ladies, do you realise there is a counter petition asking EA2010 to define sex as genderid not biological fact?

I'm trying to get people to sign the Maya Forstatter petition but having to start from scratch, esp with men "but it only affects a tiny minority..."

Here we are pushed into an anonymous forum and not allowed to promote a petition in favour of women. Has Women's Hour featured it?

Ladies, do you realise there is a counter petition asking EA2010 to define sex as genderid not biological fact?

I didn't know but I am not surprised. Sigh!

And I'm afraid they have more signatories too. Not surprising as they are all over social media while women have to keep their heads down.

The petition is open to all UK citizens and residents. IE your daughter, who will be most affected, can sign it too. Or your son if he supports free speech and women's rights. No age limit, just old enough to have an email address.

I'm all for democracy working for people of all opinions. The aim of that petition was to get a debate where women's side of things could be heard. No one's missed hearing the activists' side of the story, it's been everywhere and the HoC are very well soaked in it: the women's side of it is the bit missing. And law and government has to work for all, not just noisy activists who'd prefer women to lose their rights.

This has also happened in the context of years of evolution from the EqAct 2010, things happening that were foreseen but handwaved away as unlikely and things that were never foreseen at all, multiple court cases, ongoing issues particularly around women's equality, access, inclusion and about homosexuality, hospital wards and same sex hcps, refuges, the rapes and assaults in prison and the total lack of gatekeeping that led to Isla Bryson, Sturgeon's downfall, the New Zealand riot where a mob of activists tried to kill a woman and fractured the skull of another one, and terrorised women who were LGB but not sufficiently to be safe in a loving mob of T activists, all mirrored in two lynch mobs in London trying to assault women in front of scared police in the same weekend... and a lot of hard work on the part of women to raise awareness that blanket permission for men to be women in all situations without exception or thought or care...

does not work for women .

And all this ending in the letter from the EHRC after hours and hours of thought and discussion.

It's not just a case of whichever petition gets the most signatures gets their own way.

Feels like the Scottish legal challenge to S35 just got rather weak?

twitter.com/mforstater/status/1645882510667128836?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Anyone know more about this? Are they about to change the EQA?

www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1762180/rishi-sunak-womens-rights-express-campaign

Rishi Sunak pledges to protect women’s rights - 'That’s why I support Express campaign'

"I’ll protect women’s rights and women’s spaces.
That’s why I am supporting the Express’s campaign today."

👀