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?

Including a reference to someone's birth sex serves a very important function: it permits people in positions of responsibility to determine whether they are male or female in situations where it is relevant, for example, access to single sex spaces, or for safeguarding reasons.

I realise you don't like this. But I don't actually care. Because the world does not actually revolve around you and what you want.

"Being outed" means others finding out the truth.

The only way its possible to never be "outed" is never to pretend the lie is truth in the first place.

Or make the lie as undetectable as possible. Giving men female birth certificates does not make the lie a secret, it highlights the lie.

Which the Attorney General has concluded is lawful.

Sex is determined in some cases, eg determine prison estate

And may well be applicable within law for single sex spaces, pre and or post an EqA change

Plus some sports do run based on sex

But prior to this the courts were dealing with something they deemed unlawful

Did civil servants and MPs not work on that?

To expand further on this point.

If, in the early 2000s, the consequences of implementing a policy allowing people to change their legal sex had been properly examined, the conversation would have gone something like this.

Q: What impact does allowing someone to change their legal sex have?

A: It allows them to be treated for all intents and purposes as though they are the opposite sex to the one they actually are.

Q: In what situations do we actually treat the two biological sexes differently?

A: In situations where we have single sex spaces, in sports, and in healthcare.

Q: Why do we treat the two biological sexes differently in those situations?

A: For reasons of safety, dignity and fairness, particularly for members of the female sex who are particularly vulnerable to male violence, unable to compete fairly against biological males in physical tasks, and some of whom have religious beliefs prohibiting them from being in a state of undress around members of the opposite sex other than their husband.

Q: Would allowing some people access to single sex spaces for the opposite sex in these situations undermine the purpose of those single sex spaces existing?

A: Yes, it would.

Q: Would allowing male people in particular to access single sex spaces where women are undressing, washing, using the toilet or receiving intimate care compromise the safety and dignity of those women?

A: Yes, it would.

Q: Are there any situations where we actually treat men and women differently, where we could accommodate some men's wish to be recognised as women without it having a negative impact on the rights, safety and dignity of the women in those situations?

A: To date we cannot think of any.

Q: If we introduce a new law allowing people to be legally recognised as the opposite sex in all situations other than those where allowing them to do so would have a negative impact on members of the opposite sex, what practical effect would it have?

A: Very little. Possibly none at all. They could be legally recognised as the opposite sex in situations where their sex isn't relevant to anything, but that is all really.

Q: What would be the impact of allowing someone to change the sex marker on their legal ID?

A: It means we would have no clear way of proving what sex someone is, if they say they are the opposite sex to the one they actually are.

Q: So how would we regulate who has access to which single sex spaces?

A: We would have no way of doing that.

Q: Doesn't that pose a safeguarding risk?

A: Yes, it does.

Q: What if it is just a very small number of people? Such a small number that most people would never be affected by this in reality?

A: We have no way of knowing how many people would seek to change their legal sex.

Q: But assuming it was a small number, could we allow just that small number into spaces for members of the opposite sex on the grounds that the harm caused to that small number by denying them access to such spaces outweighs the potential harm caused to the opposite sex in the very unlikely event that they encounter a person who has changed their legal sex in a single sex space?

A: This doesn't seem feasible.

Q: Why not?

A: Because in practice nobody is going to be checking who has changed their legal sex and who has not. So if a woman encounters a male person in a women's communal changing room, she has no way of knowing whether that male person is legally female or not. She has to assume he might be and either accept his presence in that space or remove herself from it.

Q: So the only way to let people change their legal sex without harming the rest of society is to allow them to have a piece of paper stating that they may be considered the opposite sex to the one they actually are in all situations other than those where we treat the two sexes differently?

A: Pretty much.

Q: And in order to do that their legal ID would still need to state their biological sex as well as their legal sex otherwise the system won't work?

A: Indeed.

Q: So is there any point in doing this?

A: Not really.

It is precisely because no fucker thought to have that conversation 20 years ago that we are having to have it now, to justify rolling back rights which have already been granted, but never should have been.

So why did the Home Secretary say that he couldn't certify that the bill was compatible with the ECHR? Did the AG have her fingers crossed when she said that it was lawful?

Being outed is a real, current issue relevant to some trans people including myself and is a very serious problem in certain lines of work

Do you really live your life in fear of people recognising your sex correctly? I feel bad for you for not being able to live authentically, it must be exhausting and distressing.

Dropping the deceit created by the GRA will benefit both women and people who are currently trying to live a lie.

I think we really need to stop politely pretending that people "pass", because it is actually quite unkind. It must be so traumatic for trans people when their expectation (that people see them the way they see themselves, encouraged by people who politely pretend) collides with reality (encountering a person who is unable or unwilling to pretend).

I always remember one time I was in town looking after a friend's daughter, who was about 8 at the time, and we saw a trans woman.

My friend's daughter asked me, at the top of her voice, "MARGOT, is that a WOMAN or a MAN?"

I replied in a hushed tone, "They're a man dressed a bit like a woman. But shhh, it's rude to shout and point."

She then asked, "IS IT FOR HALLOWEEN?"

We can teach people to be kind and polite but we are never, ever going to succeed in getting the whole of society to either believe or pretend to believe that humans can change sex.

There is a different between something that Government lawyers conclude is high risk versus something they consider unlawful.

If the AG had concluded that the original Rwanda scheme had been unlawful then it could not have proceeded. As it was I expect she advised instead that it was high risk but could plausibly be lawful.

The law on this stuff is crystal clear however.

Why can we disapply some parts of international law and not others?

I can answer that if you like but the answer is pretty complicated about the threshold for s19 declarations under the Human Rights Act.

Basically the s19 declaration is not ‘the act is incompatible with human rights’, it is ‘I cannot say with certainty that it is compatible’ (in other words it is probably very high risk of successful challenge but is not definitively unlawful).

Which is consistent with the approach of the Attorney General whose judgment is not going to be ‘this is definitely lawful’, but the question is whether her judgement is that it is unlawful. Judging that a policy is not definitely unlawful is not the same as saying it is definitely lawful.

I cannot think of any lines of work in which it would have serious outcomes if someone was discovered to be not the sex that they create the illusion of being. Unless it was a job role where sex is important, for example being permitted to provide single sex care to female patients. In which case the impact of this deception is considerably worse for the patient who discovers they have been deceived into accepting physical contact and intimacy that they would not have knowingly consented to, than it is for the trans practitioner who will no longer be accepted in getting to access the patient as they wish to if their deception is known.

This is not always and only about the choices of the trans person, it is about the reality of sex and that this does not go away and cannot be put aside because of the impact on everybody else. It is not like a gay person in the 80s who could be hounded out of their job if it was discovered that they went home to a same sex partner; purely on disgust at their 'sexual abberation'. The issues of being 'outed' are about losing control of other people's perceptions and deception is involved here.

I agree wholly that the whole concept of 'passing' is a cruel one, and should not be used because for many this is never going to be a viable goal. Other people's perceptions and lives cannot be controlled and dictated by a trans person's wish to be a different sex to the one that they are.

it is callously removing the legal protections of a tiny handful of people for completely nonsensical and self-contradictory reasons.

Those 'nonsensical' reasons including women's legal rights, equality, equality of access, privacy, dignity, bodily autonomy, the right to use facilities and resources and services that their taxes pay for including refuges to escape life threatening domestic abuse and health care, right to not be raped and harassed in prison, right to be openly homosexual, and the right to consent. And child safeguarding.

That sentence in itself illustrates precisely why the GRA should never have been created and needs consigning to the dustbin of history as fast as possible.

Those 'nonsensical' reasons including women's legal rights, equality, equality of access, privacy, dignity, bodily autonomy, the right to use facilities and resources and services that their taxes pay for including refuges to escape life threatening domestic abuse and health care, right to not be raped and harassed in prison, right to be openly homosexual, and the right to consent. And child safeguarding.

That sentence in itself illustrates precisely why the GRA should never have been created and needs consigning to the dustbin of history as fast as possible

Well put

No it isn't, Janette, because it's not in the treaty the UK actually signed and agreed to comply with.

The court fucking made it up, and if member states realise they fucking made it up and decide not to comply with it, there is absolutely fuck all the court can do about it.

This.

If your sex is relevant in any way to the job you are doing or the role you are in or a relationship you are conducting with another person, you should not be lying about your sex.

It's not a question of "outing" the trans person, because "outing" a trans person is a preferable outcome to deceiving the other person involved about the sex of the person they are dealing with.

It's the sheer narcissism that gets me.

"No, we can't possibly have accurate sex markers on our documents because it would be outing then people would know what sex we really are."

Yes, mate. That is literally the whole fucking point. Sometimes we need to know what sex you are, whether you like it or not.

Two thoughts here.

It seems to me that no matter how many times one points out to TRA’s that they still look like, sound like, walk like, talk like, and act like men, and therefore makes it impossible for anyone to “out them”

they out themselves as soon as they put on their garb.

Law often needs to be changed to keep up with other legal and societal changes. But it is usually a bloody long drawn out process because those who benefit from the old law will fight their way through all the courts available to them to keep the perceived benefit.

Even where there are wider benefits for others in society.

Best example is that it was legal to rape your wife, even if she did not live with you, as marriage was deemed as consent that could not be withdrawn.

This was only overturned in 1991 after a rapist took it all the way to the then House of Lords.

So anything is possible in law it is just so arduous.

@Froodwithatowel

This is not always and only about the choices of the trans person, it is about the reality of sex and that this does not go away and cannot be put aside because of the impact on everybody else. It is not like a gay person in the 80s who could be hounded out of their job if it was discovered that they went home to a same sex partner; purely on disgust at their 'sexual abberation'. The issues of being 'outed' are about losing control of other people's perceptions and deception is involved here

This was the situation we faced in the workplace. You may not remember it because it wasn't relevant to you but I'm afraid this was quite starkly real. Caroline Cossey's story was still stark and raw when I was coming of age - she was hounded out of public life due to being outed.

The GRA and later Equality Act exist to preserve our dignity and protect us from discrimination. You are using an example that perfectly illustrates why these laws take the form they do.

Dignity and privacy need to apply to women and girls too.

We need the law to change to enable that.

It's all just "me, me, me" with you, isn't it?

MY safety, MY dignity, MY privacy, MY rights, fuck everyone else and their right to these things.

Do you really expect people to believe you are a woman when you believe that you have the right to these things but women don't?

You are using an example that perfectly illustrates why these laws take the form they do.

No, it is not the same. Gay people were never attempting to force compliance with deception. And while hounding out a gay person was purely at moral disgust at who they slept with, the issue of sex has significant, radical impact on other people's lives and realities. The conflation of the two is convenient to try and hide this and pressure people into unthinking acceptance. I find the usage particularly offensive as my homosexuality history is highly useful to activists when they want to use it to try and push 'conversion therapy' laws through which will in fact impede anything but affirmation approaches, and to try and force that 'outing' is the same thing, and yet activists have provided me with more direct and revolting homophobia than I experienced in the 80s when I and friends were at risk at work. My crime of course in being declining to adapt my homosexuality to provide an illusion of believing that a man is a woman and a lesbian if he says so, and being willing to validate his choice with my body.

Which really is the bottom line in all of this. Women, validate men's inner lives with your bodies.

And my example of the deceptions pushed upon female patients by male transitioners illustrates why these laws need to go. As does your absolute misogyny and incapacity to care about women's voices, needs, interests and existence beyond being NPC props and tools.

This entitlement was born in the GRA. It needs to go. It is incompatible with women's equality and child safeguarding, and with many other people's protected characteristics, and while it might have worked with less rampant misogyny and entitlement, men have proved beyond all doubt that this is never going to be possible.

@ButterflyHatched I don’t want anybody to be hounded out of their job just because they look odd.

you out yourselves because no trans person fools anyone

people will be polite and tolerant to your face

but they still laugh and guffaw about you behind your back, because trans people frankly look and act like silly pastiches of their desired sex, which they cannot be.

I would not laugh at you or be mean about you but

Sad as that is, it is the truth, and no law can protect you from that

Its not discrimination to know someones sex.

We have laws to protect the two sexes from discrimination at the same time as knowing individuals sex.

People are protected by the PC of GR even without a GRC, when their sex is not hidden. They are not more protected with a birth certificates with the incorrect sex listed.

Yet again - the binding interpretation of the Court is part of what states signed up to in the Treaty.

No country is forced to be part of any treaty but for so long as it is part of a treaty then they must abide by its rules - in this case that includes Article 46.

Which brings us back to square 1. The UK can disagree with the judgments if it likes. It can withdraw from the convention if it likes. But it is crystal clear that its current international obligations includes allowing a process for people to change the sex markers on official documents, and British civil servants and ministers are prohibited from acting in a way that is categorically in breach of international law.