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.

You have said on several threads that this is an issue you don't care about and you think that women should have to share some single sex spaces with males, even though you know that this harms some women and displaces some women.

I haven’t said that. I don’t mind sharing toilets with trans women. I’ve been completely clear and open about that. Me, personally. I’ve never said anything about harming or displacing women, you just made that up.

That is the result of a conservative intervention. I don't think Labour would have the same ethos but that's a moot point until we see the manifesto.

" Some spaces" is not enough, I'm afraid. They need to make a clear definition of 'Sex' and the ensure single sex provisions are just that.

Time for people to start to twig that 'third spaces' and categories are the obvious practical, and fair, solution for all.

your post from earlier -

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?

You are minimising the impact of men being in women's single sex spaces when you know that women and children have been harmed or displaced in those spaces by trans women.

As you do not think that increasing number of trans women in women's singles sex spaces is 'real mistreatment' of women you are putting the wishes of trans women upon the needs of females in those spaces.

These spaces matter to some women.

I apologise if you thought I'd said you had said that the women of trans women are more significant than the needs of women, you haven't said it in so many words but calling women who do care about the women & children harmed or displaced by these men 'obsessive 'feminists'' rather implies that that is your position.

So how many women and children need to be harmed or displaced by males in these spaces for you to think this is an issue that feminists are allowed to discuss Blossom?

What do you mean by "stay in the NHS"? The medical reports for a GRC can be obtained privately already.

I think Labour taking that option away would cause a huge outcry from genderians and their allies, not least from those private doctors who specialise in the transgender market.

I’m not engaging with you @lifeturnsonadime. You know my views on your tone and approach. You also know exactly what I think on these issues. Any interaction between us is fruitless and I’m not prepared to go there. And before you say it, that doesn’t mean I’m copping out of the discussion. I’m more than happy to engage with anyone else on this thread.

I would have thought doctors diagnosing & prescribing privately was the pre-NHS model and has continued in parallel to the NHS but been used by fewer people. But this joins the long list of topics I'm commenting on without being an expert. The other option is where my assumption has been that a specialist would need to make the diagnosis, they could actually rule that a GP can do it. That would suit the TRA side more but then would make a starker difference between the status quo and Labour's modernised process.
But like you say, wait for the manifesto.

Also, further embedding the concept of gender identity is going to impact on children and young people growing up in a culture in which there are laws which actively encourage it or make it easier; and this hot on the heels of the revelations about the damage affirmative trans ideology is having on distressed young people ( Cass Review)

What we need in the short term is a clearer definition of 'Sex' written into law.
I sense Labour is still trying to wriggle and worm around to find a way through to implementing what Starmer has promised LGBTQ activists he would.

Re. Diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

This is simply based on the patients verbal account of the feels in their head. There is no medical test for it and it has no basis in science.

What a fine basis for giving someone the right to falsify their sex on legal documents.

So from that point of view having 1 doctor rather than 2 confirm feelings in a person's head is no real detriment. The whole thing is a farce in the first place.

All this dancing around on the head of a pin about just how much a man can be a woman because of how he thinks.

Take a step back and it's utterly breathtaking in both the sexism and the stupidity.

No political party will ever be able to deliver a rational, reasonable compromise because any compromise is ultimately trying to bend reality to fit a lie. Every time you think you've got it sorted another edge case pops up and it gets more and more complicated until just keeping the lie functioning is taking up a huge amount of resources.

2012 Health and Social Care act:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/nhs-privatisation-impact-on-patients/

Regarding your second paragraph Rebellious I'm not sure that that goes far enough. It is so easy for a person to get a passport with the wrong sex marker on it, they don' t even need a GRC.

What is the point in a biological male having a passport with F in the sex and then this not conferring them the right to be considered by society as being female?

If the male in question has mental health issues it's cruel to issue a passport or a GRC and then say but you're not really a woman & you need to stay out of single sex spaces for women. How confusing is that?

The whole thing is based on a nonsense. No one can be the opposite sex.

More and more children will be harmed as young adults by being lied to like this.

This is why I think that there ought to be political appetite for removing the GRC altogether rather than making it easier to obtain one.

If this is just about gender expression then society should move more towards people being able to express as they wish without it then leading to being able to falsify documents etc. Less women and children would be harmed that way.

Yes.
The reality is though no parties are planning to change that other than reform, SDP and PoW.
So you have 3 choices:

1. vote for a party that says some men can be legally women and use other criteria to decide your vote
2. vote Reform, SDP and PoW on this single issue
3. don't vote.

That's it!

One could say the same about many mental illnesses.

I'd be pretty pissed off if someone called my depression diagnosis "based on my account of my feels in my head".

What a let down the Labour Party is on this though,

You'd think that they'd care more about women and the vulnerable children who will continue to be psychologically damaged by the gender lie.

You'd think after Cass it would be clear to all political parties that women and vulnerable children deserve better and that the gender experiment has failed.

Exactly that.

You forgot to include the Communist Party.

Why exactly should women believe that Starmer and Labour will do right by us when they are conspiciously deliberately avoiding saying they will?

This isn't just omission or priorities, this is a conscious choice, and that is meaningful in itself.

I wonder, would you be as comfortable exhorting another marginalised group to hold their nose and trust for the best by voting for a party and party leader who has repeatedly been given the opportunity to reassure them they are not being dissolved as a political and social group but has consciously chosen not to do so?

Starved yes but out of existance - no. These spaces are all over the country in evey town and village - toilets, social care, GPs surgeries, hospitals as well as prisons and refuges, rape support centres, etc. etc. Every village halls has toilets. Every council is responsible for services. These things exist in huge numbers however starved servcies may be.

At the moment there is a restrained free-for-all over them. They question is do you trust Labour or the Conservatives to at least keep the staus quo or preferably improve the situation?

Most potential Labour cabinet ministers have very ideological views or have stood by and watched a woman bullied on their own benches for years. I don't trust them.

Many of the shadow cabinet stood by and watched women bullied out of the PLP during the antisemiticism mess they created.

None of the above is true of any senior Tory except Mordant. I dread the idea of Mordant as PM but at least she would be held back by her party. Labour, no I don't trust them. They hate women - that's why they not only never get a woamn leader but the women usually come last. Women have been singled out repeated for rough treatment - the PLP bullying, the refusal to have Labour Women's Declaration and others at the conferences - that likely to change soon? Don't hold your breath. the lack of support at local level, the lehaviour of Labour local authorities - like Calderdale removing women's books (Helen Joyce etc) from the shelves in the library.

The Tories may be tough on the money side but they're not singling out women for worse treatment - they believe in a small state and that's what they were voted in to do (in theory). Lots of Labour members/voters think that women's concerns should be last and therefore women should just vote Labour and forget about what Labour have done to women over the last five+ years and ignore what they may push into law when in power (the conversion therapy bill that may criminalise parents and teachers which they STILL have not backtracked on, etc).

I don't think women should have to put themselves last. Voting Labour is like saying we don't count. And frankly Labour can get stuffed with their contempt.

If you're a left winger economically why not put your energies into supporting the SDP instead? Genuine question. Supporting Labour makes zero sense. Supporting Labour however awful they keeps Labour ignoring women. At least Tory voters move and vote for other parties if they feel neglected, and that changes the direction of the Tories. Labour give you the same old, same old ... because they have your loyalty in the bag. Have some bloody self-respect. Take your vote elsewhere and change the party. It's like a cult, not matter how much evidence there is that Labour will let women down, women still vote for them. Jesus, talk about voters with cognative dissonance!

No. I think the way to treat mental health conditions is by expert interventions, based on research and science, delivered by medical professionals.

Not to tell people that their struggles are "their feels in their head".

Now I'm done talking to you. This latest exchange is pure ignorance.

You should scroll up and read bigcoats post.

@illinivich

I've taken your post point by point...

"In some very controlled situations, it is possible to offer single sex provision. But that isnt guaranteed."

But those 'controlled' situations have been the same since the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 - this created the single sex exceptions and the logic of those and the justifications for them under the EA are essentially the same. The recognition of gender reassignment as a protected characteristic is exactly that, a separate and distinct protection for transpeople. In 2010 self-ID wasn't up for discussion so the aim of the EA was clear, to ensure anyone who had undergone gender reassignment was not treated unfairly in access to employment/provision of goods and services whilst preserving the existing right for providers who needed to make exceptions in service provision for women to do so. Providers must, as they have since 1975, be able to justify why the service is not available to men and transwomen and the provision must be proportionate. For example, as we are not a women only provider if we decided to ensure our single sex accommodation did not accommodate trans-women by excluding them from our services entirely that would be disproportionate. But if you want a woman only sport you absolutely can. If you only want to hire a woman for a role with good reason you can. If you think the girls sport or leisure activity you run should be girls only it can be.

If charities, businesses and public sector bodies decide the proportionate response to their legal obligation to the needs of the community they serve is to include transwomen and trans young people that is also lawful (again provided it is proportionate - the case in Brighton re rape crisis is presumably testing whether the inclusion of transwomen in their service is proportionate). And it was before and after 1975.

"This is because governments set up a series of laws that allow men to have female id, and then allowed providers to offer single sex and both sex services using the same language."

No it isn't. Successive governments have tried to pass laws preventing discrimination on the basis of sex whilst defining in each case what a valid comparator class is. Usually men. Transpeople - male and female, complicate the concept of sex discrimination because they call into question the default assumption that men are the comparator class. Is a sport fair or not if transwomen AND women participate? Is it justified and proportionate for a single sex space to exclude transwomen? This is complex - there are circumstances where the inclusion of transwomen with women is right and circumstances where it is not. If I worked in a city like Brighton with a v large gender diverse population as trustee of a housing charity perhaps I would be more concerned about the delivery of trans-inclusive services to relieve youth homelessness, than I am in the North of England where excluding transpeople from our DV service won't increase homelessness and will increase provision to women.

Regarding 'allowed providers to offer single sex and both sex services using the same language'

Service providers are not allowed to say 'women only' - its discriminatory against men. When they do they must do so within the scope of one of the existing sex based exceptions and can decide whether their service is to be trans-inclusive or not. The fact 'women only' can have a trans-inclusive meaning is simply because trans-women exist. But this would have occurred whether or not the GRA or EA had been passed. The first birth certificate issued to a transwoman was in 1951.

"Women on a door could mean female only, female and grc holders, female and men with the PC of GR, or anyone who wants to be there."

In theory yes. Although in practice, (if you have empirical evidence to contradict me go ahead) I think the circumstances like group therapy, refuge proivision etc where you would expect to see only women and not transwomen are more common than circs where transwomen are present. This is for all the reasons I gave in my previous post. I did look up Survivors Network after that case was drawn to my attn and they do make it clear some of their group therapy is inclusive of people who self-ID. That's a decision for them to make, but its not legally required and a quick check of rape crisis services near me shows none of them do likewise. As to whether providers in these cases will think women who ask are bigots...possibly, who can account for other people's attitudes. In a therapeutic setting judging a woman for this would seem unprofessional.

Wider circumstances, the guidance I cited says providers can further exclude transwomen from womens toilets, or sports changing facilities. The biggest barrier to that I know of is not the law but simply policing it. It would be lawful for a sports centre or hospital to say if you are trans please use the bathroom for your sex assigned at birth. But no one has ever asked me for ID going into a toilet.

Society is changing. The Cass Review acknowledges that younger millennials and Gen Z are much more likely to identify as gender incongruent or non-binary than older age groups (off the top of my head I think she gave a census figure that put is as high as 2.5% in the 18-25 age group). Many, if not most of these are not seeking medical attention or to physiologically transition and therefore do not fall within the definition of 'gender reassignment' for the purposes of the EA. Their 'transition' is purely social.

If there is a problem with knowing what is behind the door that is it. But it works in both directions. These young people are increasingly not asking for single sex spaces and are asking for trans-inclusive spaces. The social factors contributing to this change in attitudes and behaviour are complex and Cass makes no grand claims about what is causing this. I certainly don't know - and I work in adolescent MH every day and have three of my own to study at home. But it also is not going to go away and nor is it a consequence of anything earlier generations did in trying to make life a little bit easier for the very small number of people who either hold a GRC or who fit within the scope of the EA.

I don't care who you vote for.
I care about misrepresenting politicians position so that women can't make an informed choice about how to vote for.

And I'm happy to give my reasoning why I'm voting Labour despite the duffield situation.

Neither of which are particularly "activist" positions.

I don't care who you vote for.

So why reply with your list of my voting options then?* *I certainly didn't ask you to!

Do you know you have a weird habit of introducing a subject then complaining you don't want to talk about it? 😂