I was reading through the debates on the GRA as recorded in Hansard, and it struck me just how similar the arguments were then to now. In fact many MPs and Lords predicted exactly the problems we'd be seeing today.
On negatively impacting our right to single-sex spaces:
There are also fundamental issues of human rights in the Bill, affecting individuals who have not themselves undergone a change of gender but may have their rights compromised by a person who has changed gender. For example, it will be possible for an individual to change their gender without undergoing an operation for a sex change. That person will then be quite within his or her rights, as we understand it, to, for example, share a prison cell, nurses' quarters or sports changing facilities with others of their chosen gender. Even though there is treatment to modify sexual characteristics, should we not consider the feelings of those with whom that person shares very private areas? Whose human rights take precedence? How does one judge in individual circumstances what is balanced and proportionate? It is very difficult for all concerned.
On how men who desire to be women disregard the needs of their family:
Let me quote from an account of the struggle faced by a family when a husband became obsessed by the idea of becoming a woman. The wife tells how selfish he became, including spending the family budget on makeup and beauty treatments for himself.
On men cheating in women's sports:
When a six foot eight inch, 22 stone lady turns up to join the hockey club and denies that she has changed gender, who can attest to the contrary? Her birth certificate will have been altered and it will be a criminal offence for anyone to reveal that fact. Just how do we proceed in that matter? It is no good saying that we can leave it to people in the sporting associations. We cannot. That is impossible.
On detransitioners:
The ruling of the European Court supports a situation in which personal feelings and beliefs are given precedence over verifiable medical evidence. In support of that are four reports, which I have read, of men who were labelled as transsexual or having a gender identity disorder, but who no longer feel that they are women, and, a few years later, function normally as men. That demonstrates that the condition of some transsexuals is not permanent or lifelong.
With a contemporaneous example:
Sadly there is plenty of evidence that people regret having a sex change. Only today my attention was drawn to a television programme broadcast in September of last year on ABC, the Australian broadcasting network. It was called "Boy Interrupted" and was about Alan Finch who, with the support of health professionals, had sex-change surgery at the age of 19. He now says, "Anatomically, I was never a woman … Everything was fake about it from top to toe"." At age 31 he decided to change back to his biological sex.
On trans identity being merely a reality-defying belief:
Transsexual people are born with a gender that fits all known scientific criteria. Just because we have a yearning to be a boy or a girl does not make it so. It is just fantasy, reminding me how we used to pretend to be gnomes or sprites in the early days in the kindergarten sandpit. I have used the word "delusion" before—I use it again. I am sure that I am not alone in questioning whether it is right to go along with transsexual people in this delusion.
And how incongruous it is to go along with it:
If a person is paranoid and believes that he is being chased by secret agents, we do not hire a 24-hour bodyguard and buy them elaborate security devices. Similarly, if a person suffers from agoraphobia, we do not brick them into their home. Yet, instead of getting them all possible psychological help, surgeons trap transsexual people in their delusion by performing sex re-assignment surgery.