Harriet Harman says women are women, or men who are 'certified' women.

[ArabellaScott]

https://twitter.com/roseveniceallan/status/1713176479528300891

'There's a question of what is a woman and what is a man. But I would say a woman is someone who is born a woman or someone who under the GRA 2004 is certified as having transitioned from a man to a woman'.
...
'I support the GRA and don't want to see it rolled back. We brought it forward for a very good reason'.

Harriet Harman, at the Fawcett Society event.

Thank you, Julia Long, for asking the question.

Did she offer an explanation as to what the good reason was?

My understanding is that in 2003/4 that 'good reason' was avoiding marriage equality across the board for same sex couples so the GRA was created so some same sex couples could marry if there was a certificate to say one of them had 'changed' sex.

That no longer applies so what good reason/s still stand in 2023 in light of the snowball of damage the GRA has caused for women and girls?

I know! You'd have thought she'd have learnt, but it seems not.

How on earth can they still be clinging to this?!

It defies belief.

They've seen rapists in women's prisons, they've seen women's sport being decimated, they know about the Cass report and the collapse of the Tavistock gender clinic, and they understand, like everyone else, how predatory men will, and are, exploiting the fuck out of it.

How on earth do they think they are going to square the fact that some men can be called women, without the slightest bit of gatekeeping, with the opinion that it won't be detrimental to women.

they can't.

And as No Debate disappears over the horizon, the questioning is going to ramp up.

But I would say a woman is someone who is born a woman or someone who under the GRA 2004 is certified as having transitioned from a man to a woman'.

And no one is allowed to ask or disclose whether someone has a GRA or not. So in effect, any man behaving as if he has a GRA must be assumed to have one and therefore, accepted as "a woman".

Harriet, stop trying to find a "reasonable" middle ground. There is no middle ground.

Either "woman" is a coherent and meaningful legal, political and social term for female people under which they can organise and speak to the needs and reality of being female, or "woman" is a mental/emotional state found in either sex. It cannot be both.

Adding "just a few" men into the first definition undermines it entirely, rendering it utterly useless, in fact worse than useless, actually regressive, to female people for any practical legal, social or political purpose.

These two things - the physical fact of femaleness and the mental fact of whatever people who use "woman" to label their identity are feeling - are not the same thing. They are totally different things and they should have totally different words, rights and political, social and legal voices.

If what trans people feel is truly a real and genuine innate identity and not just a deliberate or naïve projection of their own sexist beliefs, it needs a different name. It should never have been labelled "womanhood" or "manhood" in the first place because it is nothing, nothing, to do with what that word previously meant.

That, Harriet, is how we truly move forward. Stop trying to the square a circle of making two mutually contradictory meanings true at the same time and start in a new direction where we look at the two things separately and see what each needs in its own right.

No.

'We brought it forward for a very good reason and it had cross party support in the HoC. And also, I want to be very much alongside and supportive of those transwomen and transmen who face terrible prejudice and discrimination and threats of violence'.

At c25s in the clip above I think HH actually says:
"A man is either someone who is born a man or someone who is certified under the gender recognition act as having transitioned from (sic) a man."

I mean I actually agree with her here - a man is a man regardless of the existence of a GRC but I don't think this is what she meant to say.

Interesting slip to make!

It's just a clever way of trying to have your cake and eat it at the same time. Don't fall for it.

Damn right.

I will be asking them this, and I hope every hustings, every doorstepper and a good many letters and emails are asking them this question.

We don't want the sex fudge, Labour.

How does one know if a man has a lady certificate Harriet since my understanding is you also made it illegal to ask to see it? Not that men with lady certs are women either, but it might help keep down the numbers of those with an unsavoury interest in being in women’s spaces.

OK, so if this becomes the official Labour Party policy it's a 'no' from me at the next GE.

It seems pretty clear that this is their policy.

They claim to be supporting 'single sex' spaces for women, but include certificated men in those spaces.

Which means any male who ‘identifies’ as otherwise as we can’t check anyway

Yea I was coming in to say that too. Wouldn’t believe her if she told me it was Sunday. Disgrace of a non-male/birthing /AFAB person.

This is I think the "thought" process going on (I say thought, but with such lack of intelligence here, it's just random neurons firing).

Women have achieved full human rights, from equal pay to maternity leave, divorce rights, abortion, contraception, marital rape etc etc.
In no area of law is a woman inferior to a man.

And the "progressive" left (well it's more like a crab scuttling sideways than forward direction) believe in bringing up all minorities, disabled, gay, PoC...and of course, now trans/NB.

And in their ethos, there can be no more judging (fat slags, benefit street, feral youth etc etc), no more moralising or shaming of behaviour, appearance, ID.

And trans has gained pre eminence in the last decade as human rights law has matured, as we're told to never make judgements on individuals acting within the law, to be prejudicial.

And with women having already settled rights, it's only fair for them to budge up a little on the Park Bench Of Rights, asking should be enough, we don't expect any resistance. Just asking women to offer up their space to a beleaguered group who are prone to depression and suicide, who are failing in society so often, it's a little favour for such positive benefit to an isolated group. Women are doing well, and because you're so supportive and collegiate, you can accept some pain and discomfort (we do get why Isla Bryson and Emily Bridges could feel untoward to start), until the system works it way out, and we can then all fit happily on the intersectional spectrum of IDs.

Because it means more to have trans, especially transwomen accepted, held up, celebrated, to stop those suicides and depressions and lost potential, than women to feel somewhat discomforted in the short term. We've always asked people to make sacrifices, for social justice. All that is asked is that as all good women in history, you share and make do. Always done it. And can again.

Details like violence in women's prisons, and disadvantage in women's sport, privacy issues in women's toilets and changing rooms, anxiety in refuges, uncomfortableness in lesbian clubs and women's associations, can all be worked out with practical steps, an effort to accommodate, and women's natural proclivity to find fuss free solutions.
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This is where the Be Kind And Don't Judge end of progressivism sees the trans debate, HH a prime example.

Ahhh I was swinging towards maybe giving Labour another chance.

But if this is their definition of ‘woman’ then all their backtracking has meant jack shite.

Guess it’s back to attempting to actively keeping them out of power then.

So a woman is a woman, or a man with a bit of paper stating that they are legally and fictionally a woman.

Which makes them very obviously not a woman.

I don't agree with the GRA and I do want it rolled back. It was a bad piece of law, badly made, by politicians bad at their jobs, with appalling consequences for the sex class men can get a piece of paper entitling them to walk all over. And yes, this is the same person who fell for the Paedophile Information Exchange and still apparently hasn't learned more cautious judgement.

We all knew this is what they meant by women, it includes the men dressing up as women. Certified woman indeed, since when did women need to be certified, women are women, men dressing up as women are not women regardless of how many bits of paper they have and they never will be. Men can't be women, they can't change into women, they can't become women, they will always be men, not women.

I doubt this.

The ECHR case in question, was about privacy as well as marriage, and required people being legally recognised as the opposite sex.

However it was for someone given a full sex change by the NHS, so proper transsexuals.

If you then extend that to "self ID" or pretty much self ID with you just having to get one doctor to sign off on it, then that goes way beyond the ECHR decision.

Gonnae naw?

I wonder if I get a piece of legal paper I can identify as the leader of the Labour Party and silence all protests on the grounds of bigotry?

Omg. So I can’t call someone a b*ch now?

"However it was for someone given a full sex change by the NHS, so proper transsexuals."

If this is true, that's not how it was adapted inyo UK law, of course.

The GRA does use the term "transexual" in its Explanatory Notes, but the conditions are that the applicant for a GRC
"- has, or has had, gender dysphoria,h

• has lived in the acquired gender throughout the preceding two years, and
• intends to continue to live in the acquired gender until death."

There is no.mention of surgical or medical intervention

But you can’t change sex. You can do things medically to make the body look closer to the opposite sec but that’s cosmetic.

I’m sure I could find a plastic surgeon to graft on a pair of furry pointy ears and a bushy tail on me but it won’t make me basil brush.

You're on a feminist board. You don't see the issue with using sexist slurs?