Post Westminster Hall Debate - what are the next steps to ensure the sex based rights of biological women

[IwantToRetire]

The other thread is now full https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4800027-debate-relating-to-the-definition-of-sex-in-the-equality-act-2010-will-be-in-westminster-hall-on-12-june-2023-430pm

And what it will achieve we will have to wait and see.

But is clarifying the EA the most important campaign to ensure women's sex based rights.

Or ...

Anyone introducing "real science" with "lols" is just going to get "lols" back.

There must be two sexes. If there weren't, how would "gender affirming" "health care" providers know that transwomen want less testosterone and more oestrogen, but transmen the reverse?

It only makes sense when they want it to.

Why would TW go to the bother of removing their penis and testes (sometimes), having boob implants, electrolysis, facial feminization surgeries, tracheal shaves, growing their hair, shaving off other hair, constructing a "vagina", going on cross sex hormones, having voice lessons etc?
Why go to all that bother if there IS no difference between the sexes?
Why are they trying to imitate the female physique?
How do they know what characteristics they want to replicate?

And why do most trans men grow facial hair? Why do they have their breasts removed?

It's obvious that there are some characteristics that people associate with each sex.
Could it be that there ARE actually two distinct sexes with pretty distinct features?
Could it be that sex is actually very real? And demonstratable across the entire human race regardless of race, ethnicity or sexual preference (or "gender identity")?

Nobody seems to know what a woman is, but they seem to know what aspects of "womanhood" they want to (badly) copy.

Exactly. The whole concept of genders matching sexes that underpins the definition of trans relies on... a sex matching a gender.

How anyone thinks about this for more than 4.7 minutes and doesn't see the inherent contradictions is beyond me.

That new improved biology must be so new that @MishyJDI is still waiting for the ink to dry...

@Slothtoes good letter!

So maybe the Joanna Cherry article just got hit by a technical hitch, and great that it is now online - although behind a pay wall. But pasting the URL for the article https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23592821.benefits-uk-clarifying-sex-means-widespread/ into https://archive.ph/ lets you see the text.

So much of what she said in the debate, but gave a nod to JP warning about single sex services, and a swipe at the Labour lesbians who seem to think men can be lesbians.

Vito, I am sad to report there is a frakenstein hospital 'for women' in NSW Australia who have just conducted, sucessfully, their first uterus transplant, (thankfully into a woman.) They are talking of offering this to men who want to transition! The same hospital has also just created the first synthetic human embryo, no sperm or egg involved! The Australian Govt seem to thnk this is ethical?

Uterine transplants have been used for a while in Muslim countries where surrogacy is illegal to allow a woman to have children. Issues with tissue rejection mean that the woman usually has the uterus removed again when she's had her children.

Men have the wrong pelvises to gestate and deliver a baby, organs where you'd want to put the uterus, and blood circulatory system not evolved to support a pregnancy. Around a century ago, Lili Elbe died from a failed uterine transplant into his male body. It risks trans lives to attempt this kind of surgery.

I'm not sure where that information comes from. I recently read a journal article from 2020 that notes transplants have taken place in Saudi Arabia (n = 1) and Lebanon (n = 1). There was an attempted transplant in Turkey but the organ was rejected.

FUN SPONGE.

You know we are all just waiting patiently for

THE NEW SCIENCE

Itll be the bestest ever science ever.

If sex is a spectrum, not a binary, how do dose hormones accordingly to the right level for that personality?

'used for a while' = a handful of experimental attempts made

And what gametes do those in the middle of the spectrum produce? And what is the roles of those gametes in human sexual reproduction?

I'm waiting for Mishy with the lols modern science to inform us.

If you dose incorrectly is it transphobic.

Are SpEggs transphobic gametes if they come from the wrong body?

Mishy joins the long and inglorious ranks of trans/trans apologists taking the piss out of women.

The problem is not Mishy. It's Fi and Jane. It's James OBrien. It's Emily Maitliss. Etc etc. For not questioning this culture right when it raised its ugly hydra heads.

And now it's metastasised into the likes of Mishy gaslighting the 51%.

@RedToothBrush @Florissante https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uterus_transplantation has an overview. It was indeed in Turkey that a transplant allowed the woman to have a pregnancy.

Allowed a

Righty O

My memory's not 100% and I typed from memory instead of rechecking this one time. So shoot me.

re the EA -
It combined previously separate acts, such as SEX discrimiantion and in doing so watered down the provisions for SEX discrimination because it had to include GRA provisions.

The long title of the EA says it is "to reform and harmonise equality law and restate the greater part of the enactments relating to discrimination and harassment related to certain personal characteristics". It is NOT just a consolidation Act that brings together SDA, disability laws, etc under the one title. Some parts of these laws were dropped. Its entire point was to be a standalone Act, that reformed all equality legislation and should be read without reference to any of the laws such as SDA that were repealed.

And other than a couple of minor points regarding opt outs for ministers from marrying trans people and pension arrangements after same-sex marriage was legalised there is absolutely no mention of GRA in the EA.

However where there is stated to be the need for specific purposes that it mean biological sex these are allowed via the exemptions.

Again this falls at the first hurdle. There is, according to Haldane, no protected characteristic of biological sex, so a legitimate aim can only be to provide single-legal sex services. We get stuck at the first test and can't even get to looking at proportionality for any exceptions.

Anyhow, this is how the EA is currently interpreted.

It is one interpretation, previously (currently?) favoured by the EHRC. It is not the only interpretation. The courts have accepted it is ambiguous hence giving permission for it to be examined in a judicial review.

Lady Haldane points out that those wording the EA could so easily have added this clarification and chose not to.

Many would say that they didn't need to. Woman means a female of any age seems quite a clear reference to biology. Arguably, perhaps the drafters should have specified that sex including that modified by GRCs if that's what they intended. It's a poor argument by Haldane who still somehow recognised that sex (with no extra clarification) in the Forensic Medical Services Act meant biological sex and not legal sex when it referred to rape victims requesting the sex of their medical examiner.

So it would be interesting to see whoever is giving FWS legal advice that a court can changed what more now recognise can only be resolved by amending the EA.

It can be resolved by either case law or parliament. The EA might not get amended if there is a general election, the FWS case might not win, but they wouldn't be going ahead without a strong case. I think a belt and braces approach ups our odds though!

I cant find any reference to gender re-assignment not being a protected characteristic

Para 51: "Thus whilst a person in possession of a GRC may share the protected characteristic of gender reassignment"

WHERE IS MY NEW SCIENCE

.

Mishy didn't promise new science. She merely promised a replacement for old biology based on real science. So the question is 'What is this real science and how does the replacement for old biology build upon it?'

But...I put all my Old Biology in the bin. Now I'm bereft of any kind: old, new, emerging. What am I to do?!

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/patient-stories/491-first-time-mother-gives-birth-after-uterus-transplant

A number of babies have been born of transplanted uteruses. All in women of course. It would be monstrous to experiment on a baby by trying this in a man but if the current trajectory of the world continues then I can see it happening.

I did think the debate was a real step forward compared to where we were a few years ago. It would have been unthinkable to hear so many GC voices. Slow progress but it is progress.