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.

And how do Labour plan to fix it?

You certainly need a word for/concept of woman (in the original sex-based meaning) to do the statistical analysis to uncover and track systematic bias in employment, in legal outcomes, in cultural visibility, in political representation, in patterns of offending, in domestic violence, in childcare and domestic labour,.etc etc etc

Or do you think the only things that affect outcomes for women are the ones that directly involve our genitals and reproductive organs, and outside that it's all fair and equal between the sexes?

Yes, obviously, the same way that you need clear language to analyse multiple factors that affect any other group. Why would you avoid it?

However with the shadow justice secretary agreeing that biological sex is real and immutable and the apology from Dawn Butler, I think Stonewall can no longer dictate ideological lines to Labour. That ship has sailed.

Nope. Obviously it isn’t. But you appear to think gender identity is a significant vote determinant and it clearly isn’t. You asked why Labour isn’t putting it front and centre and the answer is simply because it’s not necessary. In case you hadn’t noticed there’s a huge wave of anti Tory sentiment in this country right now, hence tactical voting to GTTO. A lot of voters just want them gone.

You have heard of that age old adage that oppositions never win elections, governments lose them?

Well, don't talk about toilets then 🙄I'm replying to your post 😂

I think you are the one who is missing the point here.

I think it is virtually certain that Labour will win. And no, I don't think gender identity is "a significant vote determinant". I think Labour will win because people want the Tories out at all costs, not because Labour is actually offering anything particularly attractive.

The risk is that Labour will win a large majority and use it to implement anti-woman policies which the vast majority of people do not support.

So you think you have to have a word for "men" to crack down on rapists? Rather than,cracking down on rapists who by definition are of the sex with a penis?

Yes you do have to have an accurate designation otherwise you get the horror of women victims of rape being compelled to refer to their rapist as 'she' in court and before you say this is happening under the Tories and is therefore their fault this was pointed out during the debates on the GRA and the Labour spokesperson agreed that would be the case and they didn't see any problem with it and it has indeed come to pass as that legislation provided for it.

Or you have to have a word for "women" before you can take action against maternal mortality? Otherwise how can you possibly know which sex ate at risk of dying?

Yes, otherwise it leads to that useless and stupid post by the NHS on their website that (if I recall correctly) 8 out of 10 people can get pregnant.

I know this one.

By using 150 judges to sit on cases pertaining to deporting those who formally worked for the British government to Rwanda.

The U.K. birth rate is now about 1.5 births per women, so the average woman will spend just over a year pregnant - not long in terms of an entire working life.

However you cannot just analyse the impact of child birth on work in terms of ‘pregnant people’. You need to look at the impact of E.g. employer concern that a woman might become pregnant, miscarriage, fertility treatment, maternity leave, and the fact that these can have long lasting consequences.

Why would you not want sex based analysts?

The risk is that Labour will win a large majority and use it to implement anti-woman policies which the vast majority of people do not support.

I think that’s highly unlikely. It will take them at least two terms to sort out the shit the Tories have inflicted on us and they’ll want to be re elected so certainly won’t introduce unpopular policies. The next government will be far too busy working on issues the majority care about.

Was that supposed to be funny?

you cannot just analyse the impact of child birth on work in terms of ‘pregnant people’.

Why not? Those will all be biological women regardless of what they choose to call themselves.

In that case, why don't they commit to NOT bringing in anti-woman policies, and to making some small tweaks to their own legislation which is no longer working as it should to protect women, so people like me can vote for them?

The point is that you need to be clear who you are analysing, which is very difficult when you are denying that the relevant group of people exists in law or policy.

See, you’re doing it again. “Why won’t they tailor their policies to my requirements?” Because they don’t need to, they don’t need your vote.

It's not about "my requirements".

It's about 50% of the population.

Oh and BY THE WAY, protecting women should be a priority for any progressive party, whether it's a vote winner or not.

No, my post was full of lies, I would have thought you would have noticed that.

No it isn’t. If it was 50% of the electorate would be boycotting Labour - and they’re not, are they?

What about people who in practice never become pregnant but employers are prejudiced in case they do? How at the population level do you differentiate between them and people who employers know will never become pregnant so that you can assess the impact of this bias and write rules to protect them?

The point has gone whooshing over your head again, I see.

Women are 50% of the population. We deserve to be protected. We deserve to be protected regardless of who we vote for, or even if we don't have the right to vote, because protecting us is the right thing to do.

Some of the issues around gender ideology and its impact on women are the direct result of Labour making bad law. They could fix these laws very easily if they were minded to do so. And they should. Because they are Labour's mistakes, Labour will have the opportunity to fix them, and it is the right thing to do.

If they won't do that, we are all entitled to draw our own conclusions about why that is.

We already have those laws. The fact that they continue to be ineffective won’t be changed by terminology. Added to which employment discrimination against women of childbearing age also benefits older women - I know because I’ve been the beneficiary in the past.

Because. They. Don’t. Need. To.

And they won’t have time at least in the next parliament.

@AdamRyan apologies you copied my post on a.n.other forum and wanted to try and have a reasoned debate here. I'm not going to join in here for the simply reason that the debate is so debased and pointless. I am not a trans rights activist. And I certainly have not captured the delivery of refuge services to women where I work. I have simply spent hours of unpaid time trying to secure funding for accommodation for women who have been victims of DV when all other services were withdrawn. The organisation I volunteer for organises services on the basis of sex not gender. No woman we accommodate has ever shared accommodation with a trans-woman. We are not an exclusively DV charity and could take referrals from transwomen and transmen - our non-DV residents have to have priority for accommodation for other reasons under homelessness legislation usually vulnerability and we always conduct an individual risk assessment to establish where they will be safest living which could be in a mixed sex non-DV house or in a single occupancy flat depending on circumstances.

What we want to deliver is single occupancy flats for all women (whether they have experienced DV or not) so that no woman coming to us has to share accommodation. As I'll explain below it is actually very hard to keep women's shared accommodation safe. Single-occupancy accommodation with call buttons and CCTV would be better ways to ensure that her safety plan and recovery plan can be entirely personalised. At the moment that it is extremely difficult to offer this to men and women under 35 as their housing benefit only entitles them to subsidised rent at the rate for a room in a shared house. The situation is different where a woman leaves with children and additional funding can be made available from children's services.

[There is a hypothetical argument that since we run shared womens houses a transwoman who passes incredibly well and has changed her birth certificate and passport - which we legally have to see as her landlord - could have been accommodated by us without our knowledge. I cannot disprove a negative, I can only say it is statistically unlikely that this has happened and if it has happened we have not had allegations of rape or sexual assault involving a penis occurring as a result. We have had women tenants participating in prostitution, bringing male pimps and dealers into the properties, engaging in violent crimes and threatening other residents with knives and guns. Indeed levels of violence in our women only accommodation are vastly higher than in our male only accommodation. Not because women as a class are more violent than men but because young women without children leaving violent relationships who do not have family to turn to are usually care experienced, have a history of drug use, have already been in prison, may have had their own children removed from their care and are usually very deeply traumatised.]

This thread is over-run with hypothetical arguments about risk which bear no relation to the realities women leaving domestic violence live with. Aside from the fact I'd hardly volunteer to do any of this stuff if I did not care about the safety and welfare of our residents risk assessment is of paramount importance to providers due to the fact that our survival is on the line if we don't keep people safe. This theory that we have been captured by TRAs and will compel women to share accommodation or services with transwomen or men is just not evidence based. Aside from a risk of sexual violence if a woman is frightened of a co-occupant of her home this will simply put back her recovery which helps no one. As I said, my dream is for women in this state of distress to have safe accommodation and consistent stable support around them to enable them to heal.

In the meantime we weekly turn away applicants for accommodation due to shortages, exacerbated by the huge crisis in temporary accommodation generally.

We have never been required to offer our shared women's accommodation to transwomen. The EA guidance on this is clear and straightforward. If other charities find this difficult to interpret the most constructive action anyone could undertake is to join the board of their local housing/DV/rape crisis charities and argue for application of the law as it exists currently. But I have been baffled as to why the noise about this takes place on social media and in courtrooms rather than in charity board meetings. We are all publicly accountable organisations and people concerned with the preservation of single sex services of women could step forward and take this simple action.

Charities nationally are crying out for volunteers. At least consider it.

Because apart from anything else the impact extends beyond the pregnancy.

Is that not obvious from what I said?