A queer perspective of the acronym with no name

[Ingenieur]

Queer Majority, an LGBT website, has published an article discussing the issue with the acrobym we cannot name here.

https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/the-forbidden-knowledge-of-autoheterosexuality

Followong long delials that this exists, or is an anti-trans dogwhistle, perhaps we have reached the point where it is admitted that "yes it does exist, and it's a good thing".

@ArthurbellaScott ok, I have always used that phrasing but most definitely not a TRA.

Detransitioners also don’t have legal standing. For example Kiera Bell has a GRC making her legally male and she can’t change it. I think that is appalling and is one of the legislative changes I would like to see. I think any legislative revisions will have to consider if non-binary should also be recognised.

More evidence that in law "gender" is synonymous with"sex". That tgey mean ghe same thing.

*The Gender Recognition Act enables people to change their legally recognised sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), which entitles the holder to be treated for legal purposes in line with their acquired sex"

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-gender-recognition-disclosure-of-information-england-order-2022-equality-impact-assessment/the-gender-recognition-disclosure-of-information-england-order-2022-equality-impact-assessment

@BonfireLady Repealing the GRA would take a huge change in society. I think most people are live and let live, c5-6000 people holding a GRC are seen as a very small minority within the much larger trans umbrella.

Revising the GRC or absorbing it into the Equality Act are far more likely. There are many who still want the GRC changed to include self ID, focusing on separating sex and gender so legal and biological/genetic sex mean human male/female may be the most pragmatic approach.

One positive aspect of the FWS case is that if you don’t have a GRC you are legally your sex recorded at birth. That is important and can be leveraged.

I think any legislative revisions will have to consider if non-binary should also be recognised

I can't imagine that it would need to be. We don't need any tenets of any other belief recognised in legislation. It's presumably covered under gender reassignment already. If gender is fluid (according to those who believe it exists), having a non-binary identity could be anywhere where along the pathway of gender reassignment at any stage. It's either a temporary thing on the way to somewhere else or an end point. Either way it doesn't matter because it's only really important to the person who believes in it and that they are protected from being discriminated against under that PC.

This is a whole topic in itself that I'd suggest goes on to a different thread.

The key point back on this thread being that understanding the acronym is helpful when it comes to making sure that it doesn't weave its way in to any more loopholes or gaps in education, healthcare and legislation. Getting it out from where its already embedded is happening slowly.

I'm assuming too that most people are live and let live. But that this doesn't include enabling or indulging fetishes, pushing gender identity as a truth, leading vulnerable young people in to harm or any of the other impacts of it being compelled as a truth that we're currently dealing with.

First of all, yes I do frequently pick up on this when posters talk about people being 'genuinely trans', which is why I came up with the reincarnation example in the first place.

But I'm not sure if you have fully understood my example. I'll rewrite part of your post using reincarnation instead of trans/gender identity.

Some people believe in reincarnation and as part of their belief they believe they are reincarnated. So reincarnated people exist whether or not you and I believe in reincarnation.

Do reincarnated people exist, regardless of whether or not I believe in reincarnation? Or is it just that people exist who believe in reincarnation and believe that they are reincarnated?

@BonfireLady to bring it back to paraphilia’s, we already have some legislation for specific paraphilia’s such as voyeurism, exhibitionism, necrophilia etc. Defining each paraphilia’s in law and boundaries of expressing them in public may be one option going forward.

If trans people and non-binary people exist, we need a definition of 'trans' and 'non-binary'.

Up until about 20 years ago there were just transvestites and transsexuals.

Transvestites were people (usually men) who liked to dress in clothing of the opposite sex. Those people existed.

Transsexuals were people (usually men) who had modified their bodies using medication and surgery to resemble the opposite sex. Those people also existed.

But now, what is a trans person? What is a non-binary person? Is there an accepted definition other than the circular 'someone who identifies as trans or non-binary'?

@OldCrone exactly and the bun fight between the TRAs, stonewall Mermaids et al trying to agree definitions will be fun to watch.

Exactly what @Sisterpita?

TRAs, Stonewall and Mermaids won't ever provide definitions. The whole of gender identity ideology rests on there being no definitions for gender identity, trans or non-binary. Because all the possible definitions are circular or based on stereotypes.

“It’s all just a pack of cards!” as Alice might say.

#NoDebate did a real number on us all. It’s Through the Looking Glass stuff when you stop to look at it properly.

It's an interesting idea but I'd imagine it would be impossible to create a law to stop someone performing the acronym fetish.
The Genspect conference fallout is a good example of why.

Ideally it should be obvious that the dress choice in relation to the occasion, and whether it's in keeping or incongruent, (not just the fact someone was in a dress) is very much a part of it.

Grayson Perry talks about his own thoughts on all of this in his autobiography, including why he wears dresses with lots of fluffy layers to hide how much he's enjoying being out and about in public dressed as his alter ego, Claire. There are pictures on the internet of him in schools, at Buckingham Palace etc. Arguably his dress choice is a particularly clever one because he's created a character who wears these type of dresses, no matter what the occasion.

It would be impossible to legislate for it. It's about understanding it and then mitigating for it, through spreading that understanding and using current laws effectively. We've already got a legal framework in the EA to sort out the difference between the sexes, with access to single sex spaces etc.

People with this acronym are very adept at moving around wherever they want to go. When they step forward to talk about what it's all about, that's got some useful info in it. But the guardrails need to be robust beyond laws in order for that kind of conversation to happen. Public shaming used to cover it but that's been eroded by all the Be Kind stuff, to the point where sometimes those doing the public shaming don't get heard at scale in the way that they intended it to land. The infighting that has resulted from the Genspect stuff is a good example of this.

I'd rather leave them to whatever definitions they do or don't need within their belief in gender identity. I have no interest in what each of the gender identities means or how many there are because they are irrelevant to me as a non-believer.
Edited to add: I've just realised that this is probably what you're saying @Sisterpita Yes, they would go round in circles like @OldCrone says too.

I don't need an in-depth discussion about Jesus' paternity to know that I don't want school biology lessons to include the idea that not all conception requires sperm.

If it's acknowledged as a belief, anything that happens within the belief only impacts those who believe in it. And laws, education and healthcare don't need to accommodate it any further than recognising that some people hold this belief. But it should hold no more significance than a belief in reincarnation. Religions are treated separately in law, which is why I think the reincarnation analogy is particularly helpful at this point too.

For example, I should imagine that a doctor in a hospital could treat a patient with respect and dignity without directly challenging them on whether they really were the reincarnation of Julius Caesar (and could choose whether or not to call the patient Julius depending on which would be more helpful at the time). If enough people believed in reincarnation it might even be helpful to have a field recorded on their health record, perhaps especially so if people started getting surgeries to look a bit like the people they believed themselves to be. But the patient should still be treated according to laws which don't bare any relation to the belief. And nobody should be compelled to uphold the belief as a truth. Use of preferred reincarnation name - or preferred pronouns, to roll the analogy back - should never be compelled.

@BonfireLady I agree AGP is difficult but when coupled with exhibitionism and voyeurism the boundaries become clearer. If you can demonstrate the 3 frequently go together you have a stronger case.

The more we can talk about paraphilia’s the better.

Heh, the problem is the ick factor. I sometimes feel the expressions my face is involuntarily pulling when I read things I’d rather not know. Channelling Mary Whitehouse through my facial muscles (I originally wrote Barbara Woodhouse!).

I don’t consider myself a prude, but maybe I am.

True. And narcissm and other personality disorders, to borrow the collective wisdom of other posters on other threads.

Yep. It's all about the guardrails at that point though, to limit the impact of it all.
This is an open thread on the internet about it so I'm very much on my guard already. I bet we all are!

Mary Whitehouse was not my cup of tea but she definitely had a point about the dangers of the normalisation and boundary erosion surrounding sex. Talking about paraphilias needs to be done with some very strict controls about where, when and how that is done. Ideally this fetish should get a poker face in public, surrounded by lots of public shaming. If it's paraded around online (and it will be, whether people say no or not) it can be scrolled past. But understanding it is still important. It's a very fine line. I'm still learning how to tread the line, mostly in relation to my choice of phrasing.

It has been considered. And rejected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Christie_Elan-Cane)_v_Secretary_of_State_for_the_Home_Department

'The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Christie Elan-Cane's appeal, which came after the Home Office won an earlier ruling in the Court of Appeal.
Lord Reed, president of the Supreme Court, said in the ruling that gender could be checked against birth, adoption or gender recognition certificates as part of confirming an applicant's identity.
"It is therefore the gender recognised for legal purposes and recorded in those documents which is relevant," he said.
He said Christie Elan-Cane's interest in having an "X" passport was outweighed by other considerations, including "maintaining a coherent approach across government".
"There is no legislation in the United Kingdom which recognises a non-gendered category of individuals," he said.
He said legislation "across the statute book" assumes all people can be categorised in two sexes or genders - "terms which have been used interchangeably".'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59667786

@ArthurbellaScott interesting but we will have to agree to disagree about what is up for discussion when considering revisions to the EA2010 and GRA.

It sounds like you would disagree with me too @Sisterpita as I see no point whatsoever in non-binary being defined in legislation.
I would rather leave it at the "agree to disagree" level, as an in-depth discussion on that particular point would probably lend itself better to a new thread (discussions about non-binary identities seem to take on a whole life of their own from what I've seen in my time on this board).

@BonfireLady i am not talking about what I think should be up for discussion but what is likely be up for discussion. Two very different things.

If the government keeps kicking legislative change into the long grass the legislative position will continue to evolve through case law.

However, if the government decide to make legislative changes it is likely those on the other side of the debate will want a lot of things included such as self ID and non-binary. You only have to look at the Scotland Gender Recognition Act 2022 to get an idea of the wide ranging issues that are likely to be discussed.

Remember it may be a Labour gmt or even a Labour Lib Dem coalition bringing forward legislation.

The idea that gender dysphoria runs in families has been around a long time but I have never seen any proper evidence of a causative relationship, not even a correlation. Pretty sure the trans activists would have trumpeted it if such evidence existed.

I can't access the body of this study so no idea if the authors put forward anything like solid evidence of a causative relationship. I somehow doubt it.

It's possible there is some kind of higher incidence of gender dysphoria in children of parents who have come out as trans as I have come across cases. However it was pretty clear that the child declaring themselves trans was making a desperate bid for attention from their toxic parent and they desisted some time after said parent abandoned them. Definitely worth looking into that angle.

Dysphoria does seem to be prompted in lots of cases by homophobic parents, or those with strict ideas of gender roles.

In this sense I can see how these social conditions within a family could run in a family.

But in the absence of any evidence to the contrary the genetic argument seems bonkers, unless there is an epigenetic mechanism as-yet unexplored.

I can't access the body of this study so no idea if the authors put forward anything like solid evidence of a causative relationship. I somehow doubt it.

There's a link on this page to a pdf of this study if you want to read it.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=coolidge+stillman&as_publication=&as_ylo=2020&as_yhi=2021&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5