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?

I fall on the side of repealing the damn thing, it is the most sexist, misogynistic, homophobic Act ever and should never have been enacted, however, repealing a Law is slow and Parliament don't like doing it so making it worthless may be the way to go.

I would add to your list removal of the secrecy surrounding who has a GRC, it's utterly ridiculous and dangerous that proof of having one cannot be asked for and look at the problems shrouding it in secrecy has caused.

But my point still stands. The woolly definition of the PC of GR avoids imposing any definition of GR upon people claiming that PC. It is as bad as the TRA definition of woman.

It is obvious to anybody who stops to think for 10 seconds that, just as the comparator for a pregnant woman (ie with the PC of maternity) is a non-pregnant woman (ie without the PC of maternity), the comparator for a transwman (ie a male with the PC of gender reassignment) is a man (ie a male without the PC of gender reassignment).

Woolly definitions, however, muddle people and enable organisations like Stonewall to deceive them into applying Stonelaw instead of actual law.

The requirement was found to be unconstitutional and struck out by the Supreme Court. It apparently breaches Article 13 of the (American written) Japanese constitution.

Agreed.
The way back is small stepping stones, which is why I think that an extra box for gender identity (left blank unless requested to be filled in by the individual) along side a sex marker that can never be changed is the way forward. The gender identity crowd gets gender self-id that they want, however it doesn't give them any rights to the provisions for the opposite sex as they can't change their sex, legally or biologically nor can they hide it because it will be on all documents and records

Ideally repeal but meantime to ensure clear definitions for all relevant terminology. Surely this is not an unreasonable expectation for any legal text. So enforce the definition of ‘gender’ such that it is unambiguous and see where that leads to …

I think what most people fail to comprehend is that even having a requirement for surgery in order to get a GRC wouldn't stop men with penises from being in women's spaces. Nobody is standing at the door checking to see whether you have a GRC.

The only way to keep penises out of women's spaces is to say, "Absolutely no males in women's spaces at all, regardless of whether they have had their penis removed or got a GRC."

Tbh I l’m past any exceptions

The solution imo is males learn to accept all of their sex class with or without hormones / body parts

Repeal GRA and let Equality Act (updated to distinguish sex and gender clearly) protect people who don’t conform to gender norms. Everyone would be equally protected then.

Repeal - but most importantly, the law needs to make crystal clear the difference between sex (biological, nothing to do with individual preference, immutable) and gender (should be treated in much the same way as religious belief, people allowed to believe what they like but not to force others to pretend they do too). We need this clarification even if we repeal the GRA because of the existing GRC holders. (If we have the clarification, it's also unlikely, I guess, that many people will apply for GRCs in future, as it's hard to see what would be in it for them, so we could even leave the possibility intact; the only downside would be the failure to send a clear message that the GRA had been a mistake.)

Off topic, but there are people trying to get Down Syndrome recognised as a separate PC but their intentions are not good. They are using a disability rights figleaf to try and chip away at abortion rights.

While DS is not a PC in its own right, these campaigners have managed to get the weirdly empty Down Syndrome Act passed, have revived the APPG on Down Syndrome, including a couple of prominent anti-choice politicians, and are pursuing a case to the ECtHR to limit all abortions to 24 weeks, even in the case of disability. They are also against early pregnancy screening - they're the same people behind the Don't Screen Us Out campaign.

https://makingrightsmakesense.wordpress.com/2022/01/21/a-cunning-fox/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10679305/Concern-new-Downs-syndrome-law-championed-Tory-MP-Dr-Liam-Fox.html

I think what most people fail to comprehend is that even having a requirement for surgery in order to get a GRC wouldn't stop men with penises from being in women's spaces. Nobody is standing at the door checking to see whether you have a GRC.

Thats why i think the politicans who devised the law werent thinking straight.

Being generous, i think politicans assumed that men with GRC would only use their aquired gender status in public if they passed. For most cases it was an admin right.

But it quickly moved on from that, so lots of the assumptions dont work any more. I think politicians were conned about the motivations for transitioning, and the robustness of the diagnosis process, and how men are unconcerned about the comfort of women and girls.

I think lots of the mess we're in is a result of the ineptitude and plain old sexism of politicans and civil service.

I suspect more women would be happier if they felt that a man had had surgery/ hormone treatment, the gender recognition process was robust, it was very few men and the access to spaces was limited.

Yes. More would. But it still would not solve the problem that some women will still be excluded from the women's space to let men use it. Because some women are going to be excluded by any man, regardless of the cosmetic changes made to that man, and the first job of women's spaces and resources and services is to be inclusive to all women.

Leaving some women, in fact ANY women, without anything at all in order to grant men more choice is not a solution. It should not be acceptable at all, and the fact that to some this is ok just reflects the binary sexism underpinning all of this: the belief that women are made to serve and sacrifice and men are more valuable and should get more at women's expense. Go and look a little girl in the face and tell her her birthright. And that if she's unlucky enough to be one of the groups affected, that she needs to accept that she gets nothing so that special men can have all their best life happy choices.

It's abhorrent.

And this WAS the GRA. That's exactly the compromise that the GRA was. That it would be a tiny tiny number of men who were all fully transitioned, and that justified the impact on women (who weren't consulted.) As we've seen, that crack in the door has been exploited to the nth degree by men, who have demonstrated that there is no good will, no reciprocation, no capacity for this to ever work because men cannot behave in ways that would allow it to. See 'why we can't have nice things'.

No men. At all. Other facilities will have to be created for men who do not wish to use men's spaces, and I'm not remotely interested in how sad or angry those men are at not being allowed to use women and women's spaces to meet their needs. I'm interested in the sad and angry women affected by these men, and in their needs.

Also important to note in this: third spaces and caring equally about women is the answer that values everyone and wants answers that work for all. And this is regarded as the 'extremist' view. Not the view that just excludes and harms women and celebrates it.

I think politicians were conned about the motivations for transitioning,

That politicians were being conned is plain to see in the House of Commons debate on second reading of the bill.

Of course not all of them were being conned - on the one side a small number pointed out the flaws in the bill; and, on the other side, it’s probably reasonable to assume that a small number arguing in favour were secretly part of the group conning the others.

Re protecting people who don’t conform to gender norms (mentioned in slothtoes post), we already have this as part of the sex-based protections available to both men and women under the Equality Act.
One of the many things that I don't understand about the current discussion of trans issues is how rarely it is pointed out that the EA's protected characteristic of sex protects men (including trans-identified males) as much as women. The act is spoken of as if it provided a special set of sex-based protections just for women (ie the biological kind), and therefore that women already have some special set of rights which put trans-identified males on the back foot - so that trans-identified males can speak of needing a balancing set of special rights of their own.
That is wrong. The Equality Act gives no special rights to women. Men, equally have sex-based protections under the act. Those sex-based protections place a duty on employers and service providers not to discriminate against men by requiring gender conformity ( ie by making presentational requirements that they wouldn't impose on women), or by providing services to them on a less favourable basis than women. Those proetections are adequate to ensure that trans-identified males are not discriminated against on the basis of not conforming to gender stereotypes, and are only excluded from women-only services in a proportionate and reasonable way.
Why is it that we never speak of these sex-based protections for men, which seem to go an awful long way (the whole way?) towards providing a framework for balancing the needs of women (aka the female sex) and men (including those with a female gender identity)?

Why is it that we never speak of these sex-based protections for men, which seem to go an awful long way (the whole way?) towards providing a framework for balancing the needs of women (aka the female sex) and men (including those with a female gender identity)?

Because the people shouting about their human rights don't want everyone's needs to be balanced.

I suspect more women would be happier if they felt that a man had had surgery/ hormone treatment, the gender recognition process was robust, it was very few men and the acess to spaces was limited.

Then they would be very naive. Male strength and aggression are not magically nullified by surgery or testosterone suppression or exogenous cross-sex hormones.

This

Anyway, what defines a gender recognition process as robust? How many stereotypes is the transitioner required to conform to, in order to guarantee robustness? Which authorities have the right to proclaim upon this transition and grant the conversion certificate? What if the various 'authorities' disagree on what constitutes a genuine conversion? After all this happens all the time with religious conversions. Gender identity is purely belief-based, just as religious identity is.

More women may be happier.

However, not when they start to analyse just what changes and doesn't change with those treatments. When they realise that not a fucking thing changes really, that these people are still men/boys and will always be, they will not be happier. They will feel very pissed off.

The initial reaction may have been 'no penises' but once you start thinking this through and seeing just how many of these male people are committing crimes that are overwhelmingly 'male' dominated crimes. Coupled with the abuse of women who reject these people's identities, then they move to the next stage of 'no male people with or without penises.'

Ah this old chestnut.

Not possible to repeal it without breaching the ECHR. It could theoretically be replaced by something that is compatible with the ECHR but it is already at the lower end of what the ECHR requires so any replacement would need to provide very similar or stronger rights for trans people.

The funny thing is that stuff changes. If people push for it enough, it can change.

We have a voting system after all

Is your grasp of the idea of constitutional limitations on Governments that patchy?

The idea of Governments being bound by written constitutions might not be particularly British but it is common in every other democratic society.

How do you think the voting system can change the ECHR?

Not in the slightest.

I'm just unclear as to why a government which is sovereign enough to maintain the death penalty despite the fact that the entire international human rights community unequivocally condemns this practice isn't sovereign enough to tell a man that there is no such thing as a female penis.

any replacement would need to provide very similar or stronger rights for trans people.

The 'right' being sought is to use, subordinate, exclude and harm women.

That is not a 'right'. It is something else entirely. And it is wrong.