What are your thoughts on Repeal the GRA?

[EasternStandard]

I haven’t given it a huge amount of thought but a pp on another thread raised it, which I found interesting

How do you feel about it? Is it something that should be considered

Bolding has always been the standard way to "quote-reply" on MN. The quote function has only existed for a few months.

Calling for the GRA to be repealled will end up with the situation getting worse. We need to be on the front line of defining what it gets replaced with.

It doesnt need replacing. Not all laws are good, sometimes they have to go. This is one of those bad laws, badly thought through and utterly useless. It's not even as if we can ask to see a grc, so what's the point?

Wow, I've never actually seen Goodwin but I've always thought it absurd that we have a law that seeks to keep such a basic, obvious fact (sex) secret. I mean, I can no more conceal my sex than the fact I have two legs and two arms.

Not only does the GRA need repealing, "Gender reassignment" needs gone from the EA. The sex PC would do the job just as well. People purporting to be the opposite sex, dont need a separate PC any more than people who lie about their weight.

I'm not sure it will make it worse. A lot of the trouble we're in has been due to women wanting to be kind, meet everyone half way and be willing to compromise, while the other side has simply run roughshod over all of it and demanded everything.
It's long past time that women simply said 'no' and men learned to accept it.
If they want to reform the GRA or come up with a new version of it, then it's up to them to come up with something that works for women, instead of demanding we just accept a loss of rights.
It's their problem. They can work out how to fix it.

I’m not sure there is any compromise that involves us?

We would like single sex spaces and sports back which means no males get access

Any move would need to be for other spaces, not ours

Sorry, yes. That's what I meant. They need to compromise, not us.
If they want to make a change, then it's up to them to find something that also works for women. This really shouldn't be our problem.

100% agree that it should be repealed, however there was a petition to repeal the GRA but it only got 16,000 signatures (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/628382)

The government response given on 30 January 2023:

"As announced in 2020, we believe the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is effective, strikes the right balance and allows for those who wish to legally change their sex. We have no plans to change it. "

Makes no sense, how can recognising someone's gender mean changing their legal sex?! What is it balanced with?

That petition response is what I mean when I say GC views are extremist. I believe the majority view in the UK is in fact that a physical sex change is possible (ie surgery) and that a legal sex change should be possible (ie with a GRC). I think it's pointless holding GC views at this level (which I do) and thinking they are genuinely popular - polls show that they aren't. Its not surprising, as truly GC views are radical feminist, which has never been a majority part of UK politics. Tbh I would say UK views n the mass haven't changed that much since the early 70s on this - that some people need to have a sex change and that a man who's had genital surgery is the same as a woman. As I said, not my views.

So what do we do about the sex class formerly called women, and the women bumped out of public life and facilities and equalities so men can have this lovely freedom? Bit extremist to be against equality for them?

And are you up for being of the sex class now subordinated? Because that seems quite extreme too.

I hate to burst your bubble PermanentTemporary but the view that surgery is ''needed'' is considered extremist, and not just by trans rights activists. Surgery involves sterilisation, and that makes it a human rights issue.

Where do you get the figures from?

The only poll I’ve seen recently is do you think TWAW and that is dropping quickly down with far more saying no now than previously

As recently as Feburary 2021, an absolute majority of British voters (51 per cent) agreed with the statement “a transgender woman is a woman”, including 6 in 10 women. Just 34 per cent disagreed.

In April this year, only 33 per cent of voters agreed that trans women are women, with 47 per cent disagreeing.

It’s certainly not ‘extremist’ to understand you can’t change sex

It’s the majority view

As recently as February 2021, an absolute majority of British voters (51 per cent) agreed with the statement “a transgender woman is a woman”, including 6 in 10 women. Just 34 per cent disagreed.

And aren't those figures also slewed by the fact that the Great British Public is unsure whether 'transwoman' means a natal male or female?

Once people feel males are not women then this stuff gets very strained

People become aware women are competing with men in supposedly female sports

Or any male can enter a female space

TWAW is falling rapidly so that is encouraging

Whether people know about the GRA enough to repeal it is another question. I have been talking about this topic for a fair while and the GRA rarely comes up, it’s opaque and not many realise it is the cause of everything they dislike about gender ID

So Sturgeon may be booted out, and politicians fear the same, but the link back to why is a long and complex path

I agree with pp we need more sunlight on this

A documentary on ‘why am I a non man not a woman’ or whatever

Well I agree with everyone else, of course it should be repealed.

Sex change surgery isn't possible though. That remains the case whether people believe it to be so or not.

I think the majority of people believe that having your penis removed doesn't make you literally a woman, but it makes you enough of a non man to be in women's spaces. People tend to change their views quite rapidly once they learn just how few trans women have actually had their penises removed.

I tend to think this is one of the reasons so many men are going along with this....the idea that a man is so uncomfortable with his body that he would voluntarily have his penis removed is totally abhorrent and viscerally disturbing to most guys.
So they automatically feel sorry for him, and think he should have all the accommodations and sympathy he can get. He is the most deserving ever because it's one of the worst things they can think of.

They don't seem to realise, or care to find out that the vast majority of TW don't remove their penis.

And even if they did it doesn't make them women, but most men don't really care about women's stuff anyway.

I think this is a big part of it.

Men, whether they admit it or not, tend to think man = penis and penis = man. (And, to be fair, from the gender critical feminist point of view, they're not wrong about that part.)

So if a man has his penis removed, he isn't a man anymore, and since there are only two types of humans that would make him the non penis having kind, i.e. the woman kind.

I think, as you suggest, they probably also think having your penis amputated is the worst thing imaginable and that anyone choosing to do so must be seriously mentally disturbed but is probably harmless to others, so just let them go in the women's changing rooms if that makes them feel better.

But a lot of those men, when they learn that most trans women keep their penises, then go, "WTF, that's just a dude in a dress!"

And they don't like the idea of someone else's penis being next to their wife/girlfriend/sister/mother/daughter when she is getting changed.

Whereas women tend to be more like, "We're all complex, there's so much more to us than just having uteruses and vaginas, it's so reductive to define a woman by her body parts, it's anti-feminist to reduce a woman to her ability to bear children", but then get stuck on what a woman actually is instead.

That, coupled with the emotional blackmail from the trans community saying they "just want to pee" and dropping ominous hints about suicide into the conversation, makes those women push their own feelings about maybe not wanting to get changed next to a stranger's penis really deep down, and insist that trans women are women and we should all be kind.

Maybe I used to think like that now I just see male as male, regardless of any alterations

Humans can’t change sex.

I really do feel this shouldn’t be our problem. It’s for men as a sex class to resolve

I'm happy for the handmaidens to resolve it, as long as they don't give any rights away on behalf of the rest of us.

Absolutely it should be repealed. No longer fit for purpose. No male should be able to claim he is female in law.

Oh it's still entirely fit for the purpose for which it was intended. It's just that that purpose was incompatible with women's rights.

Bolding and capitalising when directly replying to another poster reads as shouting.

nope! On mumsnet

THIS IS SHOUTING

Keep it down eh!

I'm not sure you are right, there, Permanent. Recent surveys suggest that about a third of respondents are under the impression that a trans woman is a woman who wants to be a man. This makes answers saying 'trans women' should be able to use women's facilities a bit opaque, if not everyone knows what a trans woman is. Once people know, they change their minds. Also, only a minute number of transwomen have their penis removed, almost all are intact, another thing many do not realise.

And that's another example of data which governments rely on to effect policy being damaged. Like the unclear and confusing census questions on gender which lead us to that bizarre scenario where there are apparently more trans people in Brent (was it?) than Brighton?