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.

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

When I used that expression it was in relation to the ease of falsifying documents (specifically the GRC).

If a person truly has gender dysphoria then they should receive mental health support to help them come to terms with the fact that they can live their lives as they wish so long as in doing so they don't displace women from single sex spaces by doing so. Affirming their feelings by allowing them to become legal women and falsifying documents is cruel.

Don't Labour call non affirming therapies 'conversion therapy'? How does that fit in with the Cass report?

Just catching up on the last couple of hours of this thread.

Some really good points have been made by several posters.

I think, for me, what it comes down to is this.

I do understand that there is an expectation, in terms of international human rights, that we have some sort of legal mechanism for recognising people as the opposite sex in certain circumstances. I think this is really problematic, as it is essentially imposed on us by international organisations with little or no democratic accountability, and the only way out of it is to contract out of all our international human rights obligations, which would make us pariahs in the western world and more importantly, put human rights in general at risk.

At the same time, it is a nonsense.

A gender recognition certificate doesn't even change that much, legally speaking. It's not the basis on which trans people are accessing single sex spaces, or healthcare. It doesn't change anything for them in terms of getting married. It doesn't change anything in terms of how their children's births are registered. We're not allowed to ask someone whether they have one, or ask to see it. Even if we could, it wouldn't change anything from the perspective of most people who need single sex spaces or services. It's not limited to people who are of good character. In order to get one you must state that you intend to live in your acquired gender for the rest of your life, but there are no consequences such as revocation if you turn out to have lied (for example, Freddy McConnell becoming legally recognised as a man and then immediately undergoing fertility treatment in order to get pregnant). It's difficult to see what difference having one actually makes, other than to make it more likely that you will be housed in a prison for members of the opposite sex if you commit a serious crime.

So why does it need to be made easier and less bureaucratic to obtain one of these magical pieces of paper which actually does nothing other than to make it a little easier for you to conceal your actual legal identity?

Labour may not intend to move forward with full self ID, but they are still talking about "modernising the Gender Recognition Act".

If they're going to modernise it, why not look at other aspects of it? Why not remove the very un-modern exemption protecting male aristocrats whose inheritance is governed by the rules of male primogeniture? Or if not, why not add some more exemptions to protect the rest of society from any unwanted side effects of people being allowed to change their legal sex such as enshrining in law the fact that male rapists should not be housed in women's prisons, or preventing people who have committed serious crimes from being able to conceal their past more easily by changing their legal sex?

Why not actually define their terms, like they should have done in the first place? Explain what they mean when they use the words "male", "female" and "gender", like other pieces of legislation do when they use words to mean something other than their normal, easily understood, meaning.

But no. The only part they're talking about modernising is the part where people have to jump through a few hoops and over a few hurdles to get the magical piece of paper.

If they're going to go to all the trouble of improving legislation the last Labour government passed on the subject of sex and gender, why not also update the Equality Act to confirm that sex means biological sex because people with gender recognition certificates already have their own protected characteristic?

No. No time, apparently. Not a priority.

I am not sure I really want to ask, but anyway.

How do you determine what someone's sex is, in order to know what the opposite is?

We can see it with our eyes, Jess.

lol.

A thought has occured to me.
Could those feelings be further exacerbated by a girl or boy going into a changing room and someone accosting them saying they shouldn't be in there?
Would that intervention not enhance those feelings that might already be in their head?

So girls saying that boys shouldn't be in the girls' changing rooms are to blame if his dysphoria worsens now?

There is a pattern forming.

Funny that isn't it.

What were those rules of misogyny again?

Just catching up on this thread but wanted to say what a cracking post this is.

Undoubtably. That's why the lie of trans identity is so cruel - because eventually it hits up against reality and that hurts.

I think your instinct not to ask was the correct one.

I was more thinking of the girl in the girls changing room who you might challenge because you think you can see with your eyes that they are a boy. Or a boy in the boys changing rooms who that might equally happen to.

Is that because there isn't a simple answer?

No it's because there's a really obvious answer that everyone knows.

Your sex is observed at birth and recorded on your birth certificate.

For there to be a legal concept of a legal change of gender there first needs to be a recorded legal sex to change from.

@Bigcoatlady

I dont know why you assume that i dont know the law?

When the government had to announce that public buildings have to provide single sex toilets, we know its an issue of provision, not just policing.

I distinctly remember the government announcing that we shouldn't have parties. Turns out they were lying then and it was absolutely fine to have parties if one wanted and had been working hard. Convince me that I should believe what the government says?

So not by looking, but by inspecting birth certificates. Thank you for the clarification.

1 really needs to be sub-divided into:

1. vote for a party that says that some men can be legally women and have stated that they intend to make it much quicker and easier for them to do so.
2. vote for a party that says that some men can be legally women but can recognise that the current law is a complete shit show and whilst they are too cowardly to take the bull by the horns and deal with the problem are unlikely to fuck over women and girls by taking a large step closer to self-ID because they can see how many issues the current law has caused and why would you want to exacerbate it.

I distinctly remember the government announcing that we shouldn't have parties. Turns out they were lying then and it was absolutely fine to have parties if one wanted and had been working hard. Convince me that I should believe what the government says?

You can become an anarchist and never vote in an election ever again, for all i care.

Im not recruiting for any political party.

Oh, those imaginary girls. As you were.

Not in the context of your reply.

The post you replied to said
The whole thing is based on a nonsense. No one can be the opposite sex.

To which you said..
How do you determine what someone's sex is, in order to know what the opposite is?

Yours was a basic logic fail, it doesn't matter if an onlooker can correctly determine sex (although they almost always can). Your post would only make a shred of sense if somehow sex was indeterminate for people and trans people themselves didn't know what sex they were.⁹

😂

1. vote for a party that says that some men can be legally women but can recognise that the current law is a complete shit show and whilst they are too cowardly to take the bull by the horns and deal with the problem are unlikely to fuck over women and girls by taking a large step closer to self-ID because they can see how many issues the current law has caused and why would you want to exacerbate it.

A party that’s willing to fuck over women in every other conceivable way.

I think you will find those two options don't cover all the parties positions so they aren't good analytical categories

That's not true though, is it? It's not like in America, where the ones who know what a woman is want to take away their right to have an abortion.