Annaliese Dodds: "sex and gender are different"

[CheshireSplat]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/24/labour-vows-to-modernise-simplify-and-reform-gender-recognition-act

The proposals are that it'll be easier to get a GRC but no self-ID.

And nothing in the gender recognition process will override self-ID.

Agh, I meant nothing will override single sex exemptions under the Equality Act, not self-ID.

The bit that I find most worrying is the supposed commitment to those who provide "single sex services". Does she mean changing rooms In sports centres? Fitting rooms in shops? Toilets in theatres?

Yes. And what’s to stop a man saying ‘I can come in here, I’ve got a GRC?’

I find it interesting that she talks about the stigma of gender dysphoria previously being a psychiatric condition.

I don't think psychiatric conditions should be stigmatised any more than physical ones. I also can't understand how a mental condition that leads a person to undertake harmful surgery and drugs that damage their body in an apparent effort to calm their mind isn't a psychiatric disorder.

I think it would be useful to write to her and ask what single sex provision will be protected. I'll be amazed if she's willing to give a single specific example.

They've come to this position, having still not met Lesbian Labour, I take it?

It's a no from me.

They’re beginning to realise that gender is the Uxbridge ULEZ effect but writ large across the country. The more this is made clear to them the better, and the more pressure is put on them to clarify the sex means biological sex, and single sex spaces and services need preservation and protection, the better.

Any move away from a commitment to self-ID is a good move.

The EA needs strengthening though, so that it’s absolutely clear that “case by case basis” does not mean that any single sex women’s space has to assess each and every man that demands access, but rather each enterprise has to argue its case to be single sex, then after that it’s non-negotiable.

Obviously I’d prefer the GRA to be removed altogether, but a shift away from self-ID is a huge change and will be met with some nice, demonstrative utter fury, I’m sure.

I would not trust them at all.

Anything in this shiny new presentation of their commitment to people who self describe as a member of the opposite sex about ensuring that male facilities are welcoming to, and inclusive of, males who self describe as a member of the opposite sex?

Too little too late.

Dodds just doesn’t get it. The priority is not making gender recognition easier, the priority is making child brainwashing, child mutilation, rape, and sexual assault harder.

However, in saying that, the message is getting through with regards to the importance of these issues. And that they have done so poorly on them.

And that attempting to do an interview like Iain Anderson did, using the tactics that Starmer has been using will simply not work in the future. Any interview could be a Beth Rigby interview and Labour have shown that they are ill prepared.

Or is it about trying to recreate the idea that only a teeny tiny number of lovely and adorable males would ever hold themselves in such contempt that they would self-describe as the opposite sex, so women can stop worrying their silly little / meany old selves about the removal of women’s right to single-sex female-only male-free facilities?

Simpler GRC could easily be turned into Self ID through the back door.

Dodds said the current process meant that “a panel of anonymous doctors” got to decide something of momentous significance, “based on reams of intrusive medical paperwork and evidence of any surgery”. She added: “This is demeaning for trans people and meaningless in practice. A diagnosis provided by one doctor, with a registrar instead of a panel, should be enough.”

In other words getting a GRC will be every bit as rigorous as going to your GP and getting signed off sick with stress.

Dodds said: “We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act.

If sex and gender are different, why does anyone need a gender recognition certificate? What is its purpose? A GRC is no longer the thing that confers the right to marry a person of the same sex, as equal legislation conferred that right. If sex and gender are different why would a GRC give access to opposite sex facilities?

Changing gender is not a decision anyone makes lightly,” wrote Dodds.

How does she know? Has she met every single person who has changed gender? And what does she mean by “changed gender”? Genital surgery? A GRC? “Girl mode” of lipstick and thigh high stiletto boots some days and “boy mode” of lucrative male acting roles other days?

If this political party actually cared about the well-being of truly vulnerable individuals, they’d be campaigning for research into the causes of this huge upsurge in female adolescents expressing discomfort with their sex, challenging the viciously porn-soaked world that children are growing up in, highlighting the wholly inadequate mental health support services for troubled teens, and committing to listening to and platforming detransitioners to reduce the number of individuals making the same mistake.

And the same goes for the Tories campaigning on this issue.

I don't care whether people make a decision to change gender lightly or not. I care that men stay out of single sex spaces. I actually think its good to recognise that genderbia different than aex. Next step is to recognise that it's also irrelevant. No need for bits of paper to declare it because most peole don't care. Its like being a fan of a football team. You say whether you are and of which team if you want. It doesn't change the law of the land and many people couldn't give a stuff. Spaces are, and always have been, segregated by gender. If men are making TW uncomfortable in men's spaces then that's on them and it's for men to sort out not women.

If it’s not a psychiatric condition and (presumably) not a physical one, why is it taking up nhs time and resources?

They just don’t get it. Even if they turned round and said they had been wrong, I couldn’t believe them now.

If I have a delusional disorder which leads me to believe Im Elvis, should that be now termed something different from a MH disorder to avoid me having to say I have a psychiatric disorder

I now identify as Elvis and everyone just needs to allow me to be Elvis rather than diagnose correctly that I have a MH illness.

So trying to give something to both again

Weasel words. It won’t work

It’s an interesting attempt at a compromise.

I know it’s sometimes mentioned here - but I’ve been thinking for a number of years (since kids at school started identifying as trans) that, rather than being a psychiatric condition, gender dysphoria is a manifestation of autism. If we think about other conditions that are misdiagnoses or presentations of (especially female) autism - bipolar, EUPD, personality disorders, gender dysphoria, anorexia - then society might be start to change the way we support different presentations of autism, without dismantling safeguarding.

They do just pretty much mean self ID through the back door don't they? I guess at least it will put up barriers to the Barbie kardashians of this world.

The tone of that article is awful though. They deride the approach of the Scottish nationalists but the whole tone is very Nicola Sturgeon. "We'll take no lessons". 🤔