The history of the Gender Recognition actand Labour's role

[AdamRyan]

There have been lots of threads recently about Labour's position on gender and their role in the GRA. A poster on another thread made a slightly off topic point that I thought deserved a thread of its own. Please scroll on past or hide this thread if you aren't interested in discussing further!

Thanks to @bigcoatlady....

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 only allows people to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate if they have two written reports by medical professionals confirming that they have lived in their affirmed gender for two years as well as evidence of any medical treatment they have undergone. There is no requirement for a GRC to be issued that the applicant has undergone surgery, the reason for this is the original bill introduced by Labour restricted GRCs only to those who had received surgery and this was removed in the Lords by Tory peers uncomfortable with the requirement that 'men' undergo surgical removal of the penis.

That much is ancient history. Less than 5000 people in the UK have a GRC.

In 2015 the Home Office launched a proposal to remove the costly and time-consuming medical assessment of applications for gender recognition in favour of self-ID. This was a Tory proposal from a Tory government. They have since reversed their position on it but it was never a Labour proposal.

The Equality Act 2010 has always made it possible to exclude trans women from women only competitive sports (s.195), women only services (sch 3), all women shortlists(s104(7)), communal accommodation (sch23), women only associations (sch16) and job requirements (sch 9).

As a result employers who want to recruit a woman but not a transwoman to a role such as 'rape crisis counsellor' have always been able to do so. If a rape crisis service wanted to offer rape crisis group therapy ONLY to women and not trans women they are entirely permitted to do so. If a domestic violence refuge (and I have chaired the board of trustees of a housing charity which offers refuge services for many years) wants to only accommodate women and not trans women it can do so.

Services such as Survivors Network are choosing to include transwomen in their service for whatever reasons but there is no legal obligation on them to do this.

Even had the Tory proposals to permit self-ID gone ahead it was never proposed that the law be changed further to reduce the protection for women only spaces in the Equality Act.

You can call that a gender ideology scandal if you like but its pretty tame.

There is another scandal. During those fifteen years, those of us who have been scrabbling to fund frontline services have been hard hit by austerity. In the city my charity operates in the women-led charities which delivered refuge services went to the wall in the first round of austerity. By 2015 we had no DV refuges at all. Our Rape Crisis nearly went bust and is currently closed to new referrals. We are not a women only provider but we started to offer specialist accommodation for women at risk of homelessness 8 yrs ago because of the massive demand. Women leaving violent partners were becoming street homeless and ending up in hostels surrounded by aggressive mean with drug issues due to the shortage of safe accommodation.

Two years ago the govt did create a statutory duty on councils to urgently accommodate households leaving DV BUT by then it was too bloody late, the good charities had already sold up their properties and moved on. The sector has been ripped apart by the last fifteen years

This is a bigger scandal than the GRA.

They never were.

I am not "trying to use it as an excuse". HTH

This isn't true though, is it?

Up until recently men generally stayed out of women's spaces regardless of whether there was a bouncer on the door or not.

Lol the next post will accuse you of wanting to introduce genital inspectors 😂

This is another harking back to a golden age that never existed point.

Male shame, male decency and male respect for female needs are no longer more powerful forces than male entitlement.
Never have been. Men (as a class) don't really notice or care about the needs of women (as a class). This is feminism 101.

Unfortunately, the social contract genie can be very difficult to put back in the bottle once it's out. The social contract genie was never in the bottle in the first place. Some TW and other males have always used womens spaces when it suited them, for whatever reason.

So why have men generally stayed out of women's spaces until now?

Nope. I am just trying to understand what's in the mind of posters adamant that a change to the law will Save Our Toilets!

Personally I don't think "asking nicely" will achieve much. Women have been "asking nicely" for all sorts for years, men don't care.

But as I'm not the one all het up about toilets, that's luckily not my problem to solve.

I wasn’t talking about toilets, my point was more general. Male entitlement has always outweighed anything else throughout history or there’d never have been any reason for feminism. It’s where the saying “It’s a man’s world” comes from.

It’s incredibly annoying that this thread has been moved because it’s become just another collective rant by the same old names regurgitating the same old points. The real mistreatment of women is removal of services through lack of funding. Rape isn’t being convicted, women’s services are being rationed or closed, meanwhile a group of obsessive “feminists” fiddle while Rome burns. Maybe raise your eyes above toilets?

For the same reason they will continue to. Most men go to the toilets because they need the toilet. Most humans prefer a single sex space for toileting (especially in the UK where that's our culture). Therefore they go to the gents.

TW are a subset of men. They use womens spaces if they can because they have other drivers than just "using the toilet".

What we do or don't do about TW is going to be irrelevant to the vast majority of men.

@AdamRyan
Some TW and other males have always used womens spaces when it suited them, for whatever reason.
It's not disputed that the number of TW has increased dramatically though has it? So even if the proportion of TW who use women's spaces is consistent that is still more males in women's spaces.

The social contract genie was never in the bottle in the first place.
A big difference now is that far fewer people are confident that they are legally entitled to challenge an obvious male in a women's space. When I was growing up, if someone stopped a bloke going into women's toilets or changing rooms, it wouldn't have provoked a heated debate on who was right or wrong and the legal technicalities of it.

What has changed is that women are now no longer allowed to object to men in their single sex spaces.

We need to bring back the ability to get these men kicked out.

The number of people has increased dramatically.
Can't say I've personally noticed more TW in the ladies, but who knows.

Last time I checked the government was too busy trying to ensure people that had been made vulnerable by working for the government were not able to claim asylum in the UK.

A man in the womens toilets was never thought of as a women legally. The reason they were there was because they either thought they passed, or they knew the majority of the time women couldnt physically remove them. We often had to get help.

The GRC and the PC of GR introduced a legal ambiguity to men in womens spaces. The law was written with that ambiguity- giving men female id, saying service providers may offer single sex provisions.

So now we are in a position where men enter womens toilets because they think they pass, dont think women have the strength to remove them, or theres enough uncertainty in the law that women and service providers dearnt remove them because of legal action.

Labour introduced this legal ambiguity, and the conservatives have gone along with it. They all maintain the ambiguity by not stating clearly that men do not belong in the womens toilets.

And that ambiguity applies to every single single sex service or opportunity.

If women toilets have never actually been only for women but include any man who wanted to be there, why have female/woman on the door? How do service providers get away with false advertising?

Asylum seekers can't legally work in the UK.

We know. Afghan interpreters who worked for the government in Afghanistan are being refused asylum. 🙄

If women toilets have never actually been only for women but include any man who wanted to be there, why have female/woman on the door? How do service providers get away with false advertising?

There is no advertising involved, it's an advisory sign

Service users can and do vote with their feet. See planet fitness in the US.

The fact is the GRA and the EA are both law, no party is planning to remove them. Any woman who supports repealing the EA is shooting themselves in the foot. But then again people voted for Brexit and Bo Jo so idiotic acts of self harm appear to be commonplace these days.

And I'm bored of discussing toilets now. Happy to discuss the points in the OP though.

How many times are you going to post variations on the laughable theme that we have a binary choice between supporting poorly thought out policies on sex & gender or supporting the worst policies of the Conservative government?

A GE will be called soon. Policy proposals on every topic will be examined and debated in detail. If all the left leaning GCs just shut up about gender (as it seems you'd like us to) the Labour party will assume it's not a big issue for their voter base and will have zero incentive to improve their position.

There was a story about some Afghan translators having difficulty getting visas to come to the UK. Is that what you mean?

If all the left leaning GCs just shut up about gender (as it seems you'd like us to) the Labour party will assume it's not a big issue for their voter base

And they’d be right because it’s not an issue at all for its voter base, let alone a big one. You can argue about this in your echo chamber (to which this thread has ironically been moved) from now until election day but it just won’t be a game changing factor at the ballot box. Rolled up as part of a broader concern about women’s rights it might actually get some traction. As it is you keep reducing it to toilets.

No. Have you not read about the Rwanda bill debacle?

I fkin hope so. Rishi Sunak seems determined to squat in downing Street, wreaking havoc til the last possible minute tho

Probably until the point when the Prime Minister after Starmer introduces PR and so we no longer have an in built two party system.

I have, and I can see that there has been a concession for Afghan interpreters. It's unclear to me how many of the people affected by the Rwanda bill actually are Afghan interpreters. All the news coverage seems fairly light on detail.

Previous news coverage concerned Afghan interpreters trying to get or waiting for visas to come to the UK, which would mean they were not asylum seekers.

How many have actually managed to travel to and enter the UK from Afghanistan without a visa and are now claiming asylum?

Either way, since the Home Office doesn't deal with gender recognition issues, I'm not sure how this point is relevant to the current discussion. I hope it's not just a distraction technique on your part.

And you think Labour is actually going to do that, do you?