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?

@PlanetJanette If you think my post is incorrect, would you care to explain the legal mechanism by which you think the European Court of Human Rights can stop the UK from.guaranteeing single sex spaces for women and girls on the grounds that they believe it conflicts with a right for some people to change their legal sex which is not actually written anywhere in the treaty but which some unelected judges have decided the UK should nevertheless be retrospectively bound to respect?

Can you actually talk us through that legal process and its likely consequences?

I could use a laugh.

I am very interested in having this laid out in detail too Margot.

The most likely outcome if the UK does this is that some unelected twats clutch their pearls about transphobia and everyone else ignores them because it's getting really fucking tedious and the vast majority of people don't support this nonsense.

🎯

'Listing HIM as female'.

I am curious too, @PlanetJanette, why you think the UK government can't use article 14 guidelines to strengthen sex based rights whilst simultaneously using the article 8 guidelines to update the GRA to gender identity marker?

To follow on from my previous post, here is a very good reason why the European Court of Human Rights would be well advised to shut its gob and hope nobody points out all the ways in which it has already overreached its powers in this regard.

Let's just imagine for one moment that Janette's hypothetical situation comes to pass. The UK legislates to guarantee single sex spaces for women and girls, which has the effect of making gender recognition certificates essentially meaningless because men could only be considered legally women in situations where no one actually cares what sex they are.

The European Court of Human Rights says, "You can't do that."

The UK says, "Yes we can."

The European Court of Human Rights says, "No you can't, it's against trans people's human rights."

The UK says, "Oh really? Can you point to where it says that in the treaty we signed?"

The European Court of Human Rights says, "It's in the jurisprudence."

The UK says, "Your jurisprudence? That you made up? Not the treaty that we actually signed? Heh. Well we're not bound by it then. Bugger off."

And then what happens?

Lots of other countries realise they are not bound by it either.

And right wing governments in countries such as Italy and Poland start to say, "Oh, cool. We don't actually have to do the gender recognition certificate nonsense at all, do we? No one can actually make us. Right, well that's that law scrapped!"

Not just Italy and Poland. Germany and the Netherlands aren't inclined to implement it either, and neither is France.

Seems parties that push this tend to lose elections because people want them to fix problems, not focus on side issues and then make things worse

Jobs geared towards international human rights lawyers tend to be scarce and thus extremely competitive, especially at prominent institutions like the UN. It's also worth noting that the UN system oversees a broad scope of affairs, and given its size certain employees and/or judges presiding over the international courts may have beliefs that would run counter to women's rights in certain fields; however, describing the entirety of UN as "filled with activists" would be incorrect.

I do not think it would be incorrect to describe the UN, and most international human rights organisation, as being ideologically captured in relation to this issue.

This is very bad news from a general human rights perspective because the people who run these organisations tend to believe that they know better than everyone else, and will not interpret the growing ideological divide between themselves and the rest of the population as a sign that they have got this wrong. But ultimately they are only there with the consent of the democratically elected governments of their member countries, and behaving like despots in relation to gender issues risks bringing the whole house of cards crashing down.

If they can’t course correct and countries diverge further via electorate votes then yes I’d say some will start to pull away entirely

Yes.

So let’s say a minister says to their officials ‘prepare legislation to repeal the GRA’.

Her officials then say ‘sorry Minister but the settled case law of the ECHR is that there must be some mechanism for people to be able to change their official documents. Pure repeal of the GRA would be unlawful’.

The minister says ‘I disagree/don’t care if it’s illegal’.

The officials then take advice from the Attorney General’s Office, who in this case would be looking at an extremely clear set of case law from the ECtHR. The AG would probably try to be helpful and give some options of what would be possible within that case law - but any option would require some sort of process to change official documents.

The minister then says ‘OK so the AG says it’s unlawful but I don’t care - repeal it anyway’.

At this point her officials point out that the Ministerial Code and the Civil Service code prohibit both ministers and officials from acting unlawfully. And so officials cannot work on that legislation.

The legal framework to prevent the UK acting unlawfully already exists within the UK’s own system.

Nul points for you, Janette.

The question was not about repealing the GRA. It was about guaranteeing single sex spaces which are unaffected by any magical pieces of paper any individuals might happen to possess.

Would you like to try again?

@PlanetJanette, what about not repealing but splitting the markers for gender identity and sex. This means article 8 is fullfilled and article 14 can also be upheld. I think this is something worth investigating.

My concern is that this focus on just gender identity within a whole article that is actually devoted to the right to a private life, is going alienate more governments as their population get more upset with the infringement of men on womens boundaries and consent. It is madness to risk the whole human rights framework for the European countries just so that a small group of men can do whatever they want.

It's an ambitious goal but I am heartened by how much the overton window has shifted on this, just since the late 2010s when GRA reform started to be discussed. Back in 2016-17 it was considered an extreme position, even on this board, to suggest repeal. The more people learn, the more they can see what a terrible law this is.

This. I remember TRA ploppers coming in then and making a big pantomime of how a few of us here on this board wanted to repeal the GRA as if it was completely beyond the pale to even imagine such a thing. And they were reassured by some here with mild GC views that it was the extreme view of only a few of us.

It's a much more common view now, because people can more easily see what it's meant for women's rights.

Which is why I specified "the entirety of UN", as for those who are not familiar with intergovernmental affairs it's sometimes easy to forget that a certain part of UN's "stance" on one issue does not always translate to other issues (same goes for employees' views).

Yep it has shifted

And public events keep reminding us how far men are willing to go, it’s becoming more mainstream to say no

I think it’s you that needs to try again.

Ive never claimed that changing the Equality Act to strengthen single sex spaces would be a breach of the ECHR.

My only claim is that repealing the GRA would be a breach of the ECHR and could not be progressed by the Government without also withdrawing from the Convention.

How have you got this far in and still not understood that I am saying that it is repealing the GRA and not changing the Equality Act that would be unlawful.

Eventually I can see populations saying "nope, we've had enough" and actually rolling back tolerance and acceptance to a very scary place.

That's the threat we're facing.

No that would not be lawful.

The entire point of the case law is that having official documents that necessarily put a trans person is a breach of their Article 8 rights.

Having distinct sex and gender identity markers exacerbate rather than solve that breach.

You could just scroll past the posts you find irrelevant.

It's certainly my approach to certain posts.

Yes, this is one of the things feminists have been sounding the alarm about. The backlash is not going to be good.

But hey, nobody listens to feminists.

In which case I'm not sure why you're arguing with me given that I don't advocate repealing the GRA. Just making it essentially meaningless.

None of this is set in stone. The people who brought in the GRA didn’t think through the ramifications

Yes, I'm damn sure the transactivists campaigning for a change in the law in the 90s and 2000s didn't consider themselves responsible for those ramifications and consequences and the knock on effects on others.

The Gender Recognition Act is a nonsense. It has enshrined a lie into law. As a feminist, I believe it needs to go. I'm putting pressure on people who get paid a lot of money and have authority whose job it is to legislate. It's for them to make the decisions.

Everybody will note that @PlanetJanette has not at any point suggested that men with gender identities might want to wind their necks in a bit and accept that not everything has to be for or about them, otherwise they are at risk of compromising peace in Northern Ireland.

Quite.

Making it meaningless falls foul of the same issues.

But glad you’re at least recognising the issues with full repeal.