What do you think should happen to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA)?

[TERFisTHEnewTREND]

Personally, I can't believe this act was ever passed! I know 2004 was a different time, but still!

I believe that the only way of moving past the gender madness in law is to revoke the GRA. "Gender" is about as useful as someone's favorite type of music, so it has no place on a legal document.

As for what should happen to those who already have a GRA... well, I think some of them are owed an apology by those who told them that this piece of paper would change their sex (which it doesn't).

What do others think?

Why is it not legitimate for the UK to decide it cares more about the human rights of 51% of the population, including that of Northern Ireland?

I do not for one moment believe that peace in Northern Ireland would break down if the UK decided to withdraw from the ECHR because its continued membership was incompatible with protecting women's rights.

But IF the ECtHR made it clear that the UK's sovereign government could not make changes to its own laws to protect its female population without falling foul of the ECtHR's entirely self made rule that men with gender identities are entitled to falsify their legal documents, and it did so knowing that it was forcing the UK's hand on this issue and that there could be a knock on impact on the Good Friday Agreement, the only relevant question here would be why the ECtHR was prioritising the demands of a small number of men with gender identities over peace in Northern Ireland.

Is there anything that must not be sacrificed on the altar of trans?

Like it or not, Janette, women are allowed to say no, and our government is allowed to support women. If the ECtHR has a problem with that because it goes against their bizarre belief that if you squint very hard in the light of the full moon you can clearly see that the participating member states intended for men to have an inalienable right to falsify their legal documents and access women's spaces, the ECtHR simply isn't fit for purpose. That's not women's fault, and we are under no moral or legal obligation to put up with this shit.

cor

is there anything that uppity women refusing to act like doormats aren't responsible for?

restarting the Troubles is a new and interesting plot twist so well done Platy Janty on that one.

Wowser, so if women feel screwed over by the GRA, bad luck if you want it changed because it will cause the troubles in Northern Ireland again. Sorry, but this reeks of 'everything is womens fault' and is up there with 'women will get raped anyway'

But I am wondering, and please dear MN-ers, help me out here, how the court deals with the conflict between article 8, the right of private life, that is used to underpin the GRA, and article 14 discrimination based on sex. If you read the guidance it is all about protecting women against discrimination based on sex and government having frameworks in place to protect women. But the way article 8 and the GRA is used directly undermines any all and all framework for article 14.

So how does the ECHR think this would work? Anyone know?

@MargotBamborough fantastic posts throughout this thread, thank you

It reminds me of the 'if you push for single sex spaces you run the risk of losing your abortion rights so sit down you're rocking your boat'.

It's all mad sexism. Always. With the sole goal of men's sexual freedoms.

Seconded.

@PlanetJanette stop it now. Are you even northen Irish?
Are the people aware you use them as a threat of violence, so unstable apparently are these people it's a very delicate balance to stop them breaking into civil war.

As for not trusting the UK courts, literally the most trusted courts there are, and wanting to be subject to the eu, ok then. Ireland can unite and be part of the eu as it is then. Otherwise NI really need to stop trying to hold England to some sort of threat, again. It wasn't OK then and it still isn't now.

We well remember the bombs and threats made, having to evacuate to the field at school because of a threat. How dare you threaten women with terrorism?

If anyone in NI reacted that way then they would hopefully be sentenced and imprisoned very quickly indeed, if peace is so fragile.

Fourthed!

I cannot answer for any other poster. I am invested in the continued and (hopefully) growing movement towards the normalisation of peace in NI. I despair that the DUP can demolish effective democratic representation and Strand 2 of the GFA without any sanction from the GFA framework. I say this because I believe that the continued success of the GFA depends on goodwill rather than the ECHR.

Fifthed?! Do people say that? Oh well if not maybe I'll take comfort from the fact it's rather a more minor transgression than reopening The Troubles...

Have a Margot!

add me to that list too. Thank you Margot.

BTW, I do not believe that there are 10,000 homicidal maniacs that are only held in check by 37 pages of paper.

Please stop talking about something you evidently know nothing about.

You just demonstrate again that you have no understanding of Northern Ireland when you claim - in the context of Catholic and nationalist insistence on rights provisions in the GFA - that the British courts are the most trusted there are.

You demonstrate it with a simplistic ‘well just arrest them’ - as if no one thought of that through the 70s to the 90s.

You demonstrate it when you suggest this is about staying part of the EU, when it is actually about the ECHR.

And you demonstrate it when you say NI can just unite with Ireland - despite already having been told that the risk in unravelling the GFA lies not in a majority wanting constitutional change (that would be manageable and legitimate). The risk lies in the undoing of the acceptance of the principle of consent and other key tenets of the Agreement, without which the entire basis of the disbandment of proscribed organisations potentially falls away.

This would be a very bad idea. As PP pointed out, it's important for safeguarding that sex and age are clearly and accurately recorded.

It would be giving the TRA exactly what they want - further erasure of sex. The Yogyakarta plus 10 principles, say that legal gender recognition is a mere stepping stone to the decertification of sex altogether.

https://yogyakartaprinciples.org/principle-31-yp10/

This has been discussed at length on this board because KCL got given £575K to explore the idea. A few of many threads:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3274586-Big-research-project-to-decide-if-we-still-need-sex-as-a-legal-category

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3401337-Attitudes-to-Gender-a-survey-being-used-to-write-a-new-gender-bill-in-the-UK

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3732308-Future-of-Legal-Gender-academic-talk

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3913843-Future-of-legal-gender-and-mumsnet

Janette, you are straw manning.

This subject has got fuck all to do with Northern Ireland.

If it's not possible to balance women's rights against the ECtHR's completely undemocratic interpretation of "trans rights" whilst respecting the current provisions of the Good Friday Agreement in relation to ECHR membership, a workaround will need to be found.

As I said before, the mechanics of that are a fuckload easier than squaring the circle of how you keep an open border between a country that is in the single market and a country that is outside it.

But you know this.

Everyone knows this.

The only reason you are making this argument is because it's literally all you've got. Because you cannot come up with anything even vaguely resembling a respectable argument as to why it is more important to respect a completely imaginary treaty right for a few men to change their "legal sex" than it is to respect women's actual, real human rights.

PlanetJanette, can you please stop bringing up the GFA when the discussion is the repeal of the GRA? Your point is understood that it is a good thing if the UK can keep the ECHR framework.

Can we discuss how article 8 and 14 conflict when it come to the registration of gender identity and whether the right to private life should mean the right to change your sex marker on official documents?

With the majority of transwomen being very obviously male, having a sex marker that says male is not a breach of private life as everyone will already know they are male. Knowing the sex marker doesn't change or add anything about the person. Thereby the argument that it is necessary to change your sex marker to protect your private life is no longer valid. Doesn't that remove the legal basis of the GRA anyway?

Well this has escalated!
It's amazing how those desperate to wedge the male penis into changing rooms where girls and women undress now use the GFA as a stick to beat women with along with all their other random accusations.

Quite the clown world as someone else has pointed out.

So it's pesky wimminz fault for insisting on having human rights if the religious and sectarian terrorism campaigns kick off again in NI? Women's fault for.....what, exactly? Are we pulling the guns and the bombs out of our fannies or something? Is THAT where they hid them all?? Jesus, I've been throwing myself down on the couch all these years without a care in the world, and at any given moment I could've went "boom"???

Nah. It's just Planet trying to guilt us into STFU.

You keep doing this whole ‘it’s not relevant’ and ‘it’s so simple to solve’ lines (both lines are contradictory by the way).

But you have still been unable to provide any actual basis for those claims.

If it’s not relevant then you can either show how GRA could be repealed within the ECHR as it stands (I get you think it might change, and I don’t - but unless it does you’re stuck with the ECHR as it is), or why withdrawal from the ECHR isn’t relevant to the Good Friday Agreement. But you can’t do either - because the facts are pretty clear on this.

So then you’re left with ‘it’s easy to solve’ - but you have repeatedly failed to even begin to set out how in any way that stacks up.

You can keep dismissing the facts I’ve posted if you like. It doesn’t change those facts though.

You’re free to discuss whichever bit of this topic you wish. I’m free to discuss the aspect that I consider to be most relevant. Which is the bit that everyone here is so keen to avoid - which is that simply calling for repeal like it’s some simple matter with no wider consequences are being deeply dishonest or deeply ignorant (or both).

Another one keen to dismiss but without a shred or argument or fact as to why what I’ve posted is wrong.

So the "wider consequences" are important when it comes to NI, but not when it comes to legislation that adversely affects over 50% of the world?

Gotta prioritise the chaps, haven't we?

Are you under the impression that there are no women in Northern Ireland?

Or do you think they were untouched by the troubles?

Do you think they are untouched by gender ideology?

It's appalling that you are twisting the Troubles to suit your narrative that women should just put up and shut up.

Why do you hate women so much?