The double speak about what a woman is makes it impossible to understand the law

[andforthatminuteablackbirdsang]

I've been reading about this for years, but so many things are contradictory and the double speak about what a woman is makes it impossible to follow.

I still don't understand exactly where the law stands on something as simple as toilets, simply because I don't understand what is meant legally by the word "woman" any more.

For example, I think I understand that the public sector must provide single sex toilets for their employees and in some cases service users. But I don't understand where the law currently stands on what is a woman.

Do you need to have a GRC to "be a woman"? Or can a man just self-ID (even though AFAIK no self-ID law has been passed in England)?

How hard is it to get a GRC? Did Isla Bryson have one (probably no, because Scotland so self-ID)? Did Scarlet Blake have one (possibly yes, because England, so no self-ID, but the Tavistock sent him on a "gender journey")? Was it his GRC that persuaded the police to misgender him as a woman?

As the law stands in England/Wales, do you need a GRC if you're a man, to explain your presence in a woman's changing room, or to be recorded as a woman by the police when you kill someone? What is the mechanism that makes these things possible in the law?

And then I think about the transchild in the girls' toilets at a school. Surely they're too young to have a GRC, and yet they're male in a single sex female space, provided by a school, part of the public sector.

Absolutely lost. Sorry to be thick.

As far as I can tell you don't need a GRC for anything really. Plus, no one is allowed to ask to see it anyway. So if you say you're a woman, the police will record you as a woman. You can march into women's toilets and women who object are bigots. You can murder a complete stranger in a particularly violent crime, and all the newspapers, including our national broadcaster, will call you a woman and dismiss complaints from the public. Who needs a law on self-id? It's here already.

That seems to be the current state of play .

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

We’re not supposed to be able to define anything.

Everyone could all be 2 spirit, NB, Demi boys and each for a completely different reason.

So us boring ones can be told off for not being respectful of the group in the morning then told off for trying to define the group in the afternoon. Then be told off for not having the right legal protections for the group in the evening. Then be mocked for not being educated enough about the group the next day. Then be called out for trying to promote the needs of any other group etc etc.

Hi Avacado - yes - not a bug but a feature. In my darkest conspiracy moments I always hark back to this bit from Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation - .

I'm pretty sure trans ideology is funded for destabilising reasons as well as for commercial and ideological reasons. But I also tend to think it's just a meme that's able to propagate successfully at this moment. They chucked it in and it happened to swim. But it can be stopped. I just don't want it to be stopped by a huge tsunami right wing backlash where we lose the baby with the bathwater it just shat in.

Thanks DuesToTheDirt. But why is self-ID here already? I'm attempting to answer that question for myself below.

I did some research online to see what someone needs to get a GRC. It looks like a lot of admin, something that would be easy enough if people (therapists, plastic surgeons) were being paid to shepherd you through. It's quite medicalised. Meh, I wouldn't fancy it.

We're caught in a dilemma. Sorry. Just thinking out loud.

A. If the law was tightened up/acted on so that only the GRC was legitimate it would be sensible to focus our fire on the GRC-board, forcing it to look back at all its past missteps, look at WPATH exposed today, pause and take stock. It's a much smaller target. Also we could use that clear legal position to make things a little clearer. Force everyone only to accept a legally recognised GRC and roll the whole thing back from there. It's a better starting place than self-ID by the back door.

OR

B. On the other hand, none of us want adolescents and young twenties to feel forced down a medical/GRC route just because their minds have been hijacked by Stonewall. We don't want children or young adults to take an irreversible step, because they decide that only a GRC will give them the validity they crave.

From the perspective of B, a sort of anything goes, self-ID world maybe seems preferable. "The medicalised gender journey is not one you can come back from. Let's not force them down it." I imagine that's what many of the vocal TRA political/arts/media types are really thinking when they look at their children and turn in hysteria on anyone gender critical.

At the moment this is predominantly a upper-middle and middle-class problem. I have sympathy for them, but hey my grandchildren are caught in the crossfire of this, not yet indoctrinated, but running through the shooting gallery.

Position B just allows the contagion to spread wider and wider.

Just trying to 1. Pin down the law if I can. 2. Understand why people who should know better have been hijacked by Stonewall. I'm clear in my mind that for many, it's because their children have already been taken prisoner. I'm seeing little ripples of this in my own family.😬

Yes the law is a mess, but also there are the single sex exemptions that specifically give organisations the right to provide services or employ only biological females.

The problem is that many people dont know about it and that those that do cant be bothered to put forward the arguement why whatever service they are providing eg changing rooms or toilets (or even the Women's Pond) is legitimately able to claim to operate under the single sex exemptions.

Apart from the more recent Stonewalling of society prior to that misogyny and doing things on the cheap meant that many organisation that could make use of the SSE choose not to do so. eg the NHS and single sex wards.

Long before queer politics pushed the trans agenda into the main stream good old fashioned sexism and lack of respect for women meant that those that could, couldn't be bothered and expect and largely did get women to put up with losing what was once thought obvious.

Obviously it would be easier if the EA was re-written to make it clear that sex means biological, but I bet even if that happen many would try and wriggle out of having to spend money on women.

It is the lack of respect for women's rights that means whatever excuse is used, the bed rock to that is women aren't respected.

(As I was typing where I meant to say main stream, I actualy typed man stream. And that's what it is. The patriarchy. Men are primary even when they say they are women.)

https://twitter.com/michaelpforan/status/1764975352588222721?t=WATQ-h94rCwn8BYajDZvvw&s=19
You're not at all thick. I found this thread on TwitterX really helpful. It is definitely a mess but that mess is further obscured by activists who want to be like the caterpillar in Alice and have done quite well capturing our public institutions. The problem is that the GRA ( Gender Recognition Act) deems people to be women ( or men) if they get a certificate (GRC). And bizarrely permits them to rewrite the past by getting new birth certificates etc. ( kid you not). And our public bodies go further. So eg you can get a passport in your declared "gender" even without getting a GRC. All this has been creeping up for ages which is why it's so hard to get the ground shifted. Let's remember that only 4 years ago an employment tribunal found the view that sex is immutable "not worthy of respect in a democratic society" in Maya Forstater's case. There's been a big shift and a long way to go.

Incidentally, a good example of "self-id is here already" is the BBC response to the Scarlet Blake reporting fiasco:

BBC reporting in this area follows the publicly available BBC News style guide. It says: “We generally use the term and pronoun preferred by the person in question, unless there are editorial reasons not to do so.”

You might think that misleading the public was a good "editorial reason not to do so", but the BBC doesn't seem to agree.

Thanks everyone who replied to me. I read Michael Foren's twitter thread and also the paper he wrote - and bookmarked for further, less-crosseyed reference. What a semantic jungle. It's case law all the way through in England because our legislators clearly do not adequately signpost their meanings. I hope someone can cut through it. Thanks @Ariana12. After years of silence and rage I really want to question this in a sane, logical and ultimately legalistic way. Who knew the law was so open to interpretation - that's my take away.

@DuesToTheDirt I'm wondering what would the BBC consider adequate editorial reasons not to use a person's preferred pronouns? Can we FOI them to find out whether/when they have not used preferred pronouns? If never, what are their criteria? Can't we FOI the hell out of this? Say you think so, and I'll do it. 😃

I'm still awaiting a response to my complaint to the BBC about Scarlet Blake. The first response that people got to their complaints is what they still have on their website, a part of which I quoted above. But later replies changed to say that they were looking into it some more.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/what-does-a-grc-do/
I found this a really helpful post/blog by a discrimination/equality law expert. It explains what a GRC (gender recognition certificate) does.