Thankyou! Really didn't want this thread to turn into yet another round of 'grill Butterfly for five pages on whether she really really actually really honestly looks enough like a Real Woman(tm) to experience misogyny, then seamlessly switch to saying that reporting the daily experience of having to deal with it must be some kind of skeevy fetish'. I tried to suggest we skip straight to this part - thanks for choosing to engage in good faith. It is very much appreciated - hope it wasn't too tedious to read.
I think that we have a moral obligation, as a society, to strive for compassionate policies that centre the struggles of vulnerable and marginalised people. I think it is even more especially important to bear this in mind at times like these where the easily-demonised become electorial punchbags.
While it is tempting to angle for segregation on the grounds of genetic markers, I think it is also important to acknowledge the reality of what that actually means. A chromosome isn't a magic jar that contains an indivisible and pure essence of maleness or femaleness.
It's a chaotic, fuzzy and fragile set of templates the body copies and translates when making proteins, the process (and even presence) of which is subject to an enormous range of environmental factors (and constant errors). Sex hormones and their effects are one of these environmental factors and they play an enormous role in how our bodies develop and maintain themselves. A single mutation in a single gene somewhere in the past made my body partially immune to the effects of testosterone and catapulted my life trajectory. I have XY chromosomes which usually cause a particular physical expression, but my body has built itself in a way that is aligned with a different physical expression. It would be patently ridiculous to any person who knows me to say I should use male facilities as I am clearly female. I know it's an edge case, but edge cases are the people who get marginalised by poorly written legislation.
I don't think the presence or lack thereof of sex hormones is a good basis of classification either - any route we take here ends up with an enormous amount of clearly inappropriate collateral.
Since chromosomes don't actually do what they are commonly misunderstood as doing (much to the enduring frustration of biologists), and the presence of hormones themselves doesn't tell us anything about who people are, what classification can we use?
Could we use the historical presence of hormones, or their effects? Well, that automatically excludes most people who medically transition from either category and many intersex people as well. People stuck in waiting list limbo - up to half a decade currently - are going to fall afoul of this one if we go with a 'most recent influence' approach, and it completely fails to account for people who do not medically transition anyway.
What do we do? Do we give up and tell this set of marginalised people they are once again not worthy of consideration? This government has managed a pretty solid line on that stance, especially over the last couple of years, so it's not entirely unexpected alas. I think we can do better though.
What's left? Well:
*Gender reassignment means proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex. To be protected from gender reassignment discrimination, you do not need to have undergone any medical treatment or surgery to change from your birth sex to your preferred gender.
You can be at any stage in the transition process, from proposing to reassign your sex, undergoing a process of reassignment, or having completed it. It does not matter whether or not you have applied for or obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate, which is the document that confirms the change of a person's legal sex.*
What's legal sex?
*You must not be discriminated against because:
- you are (or are not) a particular sex
- someone thinks you are the opposite sex (this is known as discrimination by perception)
- you are connected to someone of a particular sex (this is known as discrimination by association)
In the Equality Act 2010, sex is understood as binary being either male or female. It can mean a group of people like men or boys, or women or girls.
Under the Act, a person’s legal sex is the sex recorded on their birth certificate or their Gender Recognition Certificate. A trans person can change their legal sex by obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate. *
I think we should use the legislation that already exists - and was achieved after years of campaigning by the minority group it protects - to cover these situations. It's imperfect though, as it leaves non-binary and non-medical trans people behind. Perhaps if there was some kind of consultation on ways to improve the GRA we might be able to help? Of course, any open process pertaining to the delicate needs of a small minority group would be vulnerable to being swamped by bad faith actors, and there is the danger that it would be taken as an opportunity to have a chip at removing the GRA entirely.