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.

I have had more than one post removed but it seems to be that suggesting that women who put the wishes of men who identify as women above the needs of women are engaging in trans rights activism by repeatedly coming onto threads or starting threads with the aim of convincing women to lower our boundaries with regards to males in single sex spaces is not allowed.

I'm quite literal - to my mind it actually is engaging in activism for trans right's over those of women = trans rights activism.

It may not be the primary motive, it may just be that they really want us to vote Labour , but the end result is the same, putting women's needs behind the wishes of men who identify as women.

It's quite ironic really, that in the same thread where some people on the, shall we say, "pro Labour" side of the argument have thanked those with a different view for engaging in civilised discussion, other people on the "pro Labour" side seem to be hinting that they may be making liberal use of the report button.

Either this has been a productive, civilised discussion, or it hasn't. If it has, reporting it as a "TAAT", which it clearly isn't, or combing through people's posts looking for any language which could be reported as being against the somewhat opaque Talk Guidelines, seems counterproductive.

Regarding the accusation about calling people liars, I have not reported any of Jess's posts for what seems to me to be childish whataboutery or derailing. I have indicated my scepticism about the idea that gender non-conforming women are routinely challenged in women's toilets by people who think they are men. I have explained the reasons for my scepticism quite clearly.

They are:

• There are multiple examples of women on the internet, who self describe as "cis" and have preferred pronouns, claiming to have been challenged when using women's toilets even though it is plainly obvious from their photos that no one could ever mistake them for being male. Therefore, it is obvious that this is something some people lie about.
• We are all posting anonymously on a forum where we do not provide photos of ourselves. There is no more reason to believe people posting anonymously that they or their female friends or relatives have been challenged in women's toilets than there is to believe people saying the same thing using their real names and providing photos of themselves.

Jess might interpret this as me calling people liars. I wouldn't go that far. I simply just don't see why I should pretend to believe something I don't believe for fear of offending an anonymous person on the internet who has said it is true.

It's quite ironic really, that in the same thread where some people on the, shall we say, "pro Labour" side of the argument have thanked those with a different view for engaging in civilised discussion, other people on the "pro Labour" side seem to be hinting that they may be making liberal use of the report button.

It’s almost as if those were two different people, isn’t it? My engagement with you has been exemplary, others’ experience may be different.

Either this has been a productive, civilised discussion, or it hasn't. If it has, reporting it as a "TAAT", which it clearly isn't, or combing through people's posts looking for any language which could be reported as being against the somewhat opaque Talk Guidelines, seems counterproductive.

It’s been both, depending on the posters involved. There’s been no suggestion of reporting as a TAAT but one post has definitely sailed close to the wind with combing through threads and quoting them.

Just to make my position crystal clear. I have been completely straight about not wishing to engage with one poster. The response was to call me a name so I reported it. I’m not a great fan of reporting, I think people should generally be judged on what they post.

People had the opportunity to read the post before you had it removed.

I did not call you a TRA, I said that the failure to answer a specific question on how many women & children you thought it was acceptable to be harmed before you would put them above the males who want to be in those spaces was a typical TRA tactic, which it is.

You have called me plenty of things on other threads and implied I have some form of tory/ right wing agenda. You are entitled to think of me as you wish. I haven't reported any of the posts that you have made about me.

I do believe strongly that we have got to a turning point. I do believe that anyone who is now, after seeing evidence of harms done to women and children, still saying that these issues are not important and still saying that women and children being harmed is an issue too difficult to deal with or not as important as other issues, is an activist for trans rights.

I would love a situation where women could be seen as fully human again. Where people could go about their lives wearing what they want and loving who they want free from discrimination in the workplace or in housing and free from experiencing discrimination or hate on the streets for being who they want to be, but this shouldn't be at the expense of women. We know it is so we should fight for this to end, saying we won't vote for a party that we do not have confidence in, wrt these issues doesn't make a person right wing or aligned to the religious right.

That would be fair, that would be equality. What we currently have is not equality, it favours males and identities over the material lived reality of women caused by discrimination related to our sexed bodies and assumptions about our reproductive capabilities not our gender preferences.

In a democratic society women should be treated as equal to male. Gender ideology removes the ability of some women (often the most vulnerable in society) to move freely about our lives. It always strikes me that in the developing world bodies like Unesco speak and advocate for the rights of women to have single sex toilets yet women here are told that they don't matter. Humans are the same where ever we live. Human females are at risk of harm from human males due to physiological differences that don't change based on notions of gender. This is not a theoretical argument any more. The move to mixed sex facilities has proven to result in more harm to female humans. Yet we are to ignore all of that because it's not important or it's right wing, or the tories are worse.

It just saddens me.

I can't say I had noticed any argument. Has anyone disagreed with the facts laid out in the OP?

As a result young gender fluid and non binary people who have no intention of reassigning their gender arguably don't fall within the scope of the EA as worded.

'Arguably' Being the key word. As with much employment law, it's only really when tested that we know one way or the other. Currently some legal advice (see below) suggests that previous cases imply protection for anyone who describes themselves as gender fluid or non binary. It's certainly true that most could be covered at the very least by perceptive discrimination. It also appears true that many, many employers and public bodies err on the side of caution so they don't end up in a tribunal - use of supposedly single-sex facilities by members of either sex being probably the most common manifestation of this.

What all of this suggests is that the law isn't particularly clear, which is seldom a good thing for anyone.

https://www.brethertons.co.uk/site/blog/gender-fluid-persons-protected#:~:text=Section%207(1)%20Equality%20Act,or%20other%20attributes%20of%20sex.%E2%80%9D

Best post on the thread so far.

The OP has been pretty much abandoned in favour of the usual discussion about toilets, what voting for Labour actually means and an attempt at a TAAT. Any attempt to return to it’s been given a stiff ignoring. It’s a real shame because it could have been a really interesting discussion.

Best post on the thread so far

Yup. That says it all, for me.

IIRC someone corrected the figure of the number of GRCs issued so far and another poster highlighted that self ID has been proposed by both Labour and Conservatives at different times. So "a tory proposal from a tory govt" is a bit misleading.

But the basic history of which acts were passed, when and by whom is uncontroversial.

Edit- this is a reply to the question " has anyone disputed the facts in the OP?"

Quoting the whole of this post, sorry, because I want to pick up on a couple of points here.

Regarding the different approaches of human rights organsations in the developing and developed world, this strikes me as part compartmentalisation, part pragmatism, in the sense of wanting to focus on what they see as the most serious threats to human rights.

In the developing world, there is no question that women and girls without access to safe, hygienic sanitation facilites are some of the most marginalised people in society. There is no equivalent in the developed world to the risks that women and girls without access to toilets must take when they need to empty their bladder or bowels, or change their sanitary protection. The risk of being raped whilst partially exposed in the open air is significant. And funnily enough, there don't seem to be many birth registered males identifying as women or girls in those societies. Trans activists will tell you that this is because it is too dangerous to be trans in these societies, without acknowledging that it is too dangerous to be female in these societies, but women and girls have no choice. I think international human rights organisations take a more reality-based, sex-realist approach to issues arising in those countries because there is no doubt that these women and girls are the most marginalised, and because there is no significant trans population with competing needs. They take a different approach in developed countries, where women and girls aren't being confined to menstrual huts or at serious risk of being raped every time they need to use the toilet, and where the prevailing narrative is that the trans population - which is much more significant in developed countries than it is in developing countries - is the most oppressed and marginalised.

I think, however, that it is dangerous to take a view that just because women and girls are better protected in countries like the UK than they are in developing countries, that they are not oppressed or discriminated against. That is a kind of complacency we cannot afford.

Regarding the views of certain posters in this thread and others, I would prefer to call them "pro Labour" than trans activist. I do take your point that when certain information is known, for example about the impact on women of not having access to single sex rape crisis support, if you fail to adopt a pro women stance, you are by default adopting a pro trans stance. Because the pro trans stance is that which is adopted by most organisations today, which is why women don't have access to single sex support, and so either you accept the status quo or you stand up and say "this is wrong".

I think what frustrates me about the political aspect of this debate is the implication that any woman who feels unable to vote Labour due to their policy positions on sex and gender is either an idiot or a closeted Tory.

That is absolutely not the right way to convince people of your point of view.

It's 14 years since Gordon Brown called Gillian Duffy a "bigoted woman" for being concerned about immigration. It's nearly 10 years since the "metropolitan elite" started openly sneering at the stupid idiots who wanted to leave the EU.

Have we not all learned by now that saying that someone only holds the stance they hold because they are either too stupid to understand the issues at stake or because it is a pathetic figleaf to conceal the fact that they are a raging right wing bigot is absolutely not going to bring them round to your point of view?

If I wanted to persuade someone to vote Labour despite their policy positions on sex and gender, I would say something like this:

"I understand why you feel the way you do about single sex spaces, transgender healthcare and the risk of self ID. Of course everybody's rights should be fairly balanced, and if people don't feel that Labour has got the balance right between trans rights and women's rights, that's something Labour needs to address. But there's still quite a way to go until the general election and this debate is rapidly evolving. A few years ago the Tories wanted to bring in self ID and a trans inclusive conversion therapy ban. They scrapped those policies. Labour does seem to still be more in favour of those policies but there's been a lot of position shifting over recent months and weeks, particularly since the Cass report came out. There's still room for their position to shift further as we get closer to the election. So perhaps you should keep an open mind at this stage and judge them on the contents of their election manifesto when it actually comes out. And do write to your Labour candidate about this, and raise it with anyone who knocks on your door. Make your views heard!"

And then I would be writing to my own Labour MP or candidate, and anyone else in the Labour party I could think of, saying, "I fully plan to vote Labour in the next election but when I talk to other people I'm hearing so many concerns about this gender issue. They don't know what you mean when you say you've dropped plans for self ID but still plan to modernise the Gender Recognition Act, or when you say you will implement the recommendations in the Cass report but still plan to introduce a trans conversion therapy ban. A lot of women would really like to see the Equality Act clarified so that they know that biological sex is actually a protected category. You could win over these undecided voters by taking a more pro-woman approach than you currently are. Women are 51% of the electorate, don't forget."

At the end of the day, it's not up to women to put their concerns to one side so they can vote for Labour. It's up to Labour to come up with policies which give women the confidence they need to be able to vote for Labour, without worrying that Labour will then implement all these pro-trans/anti-woman policies they've been equivocating about as soon as they get into power.

Because Labour have form for this. In 2017 they sat on the fence over Brexit, saying they would implement the result of the referendum to satisfy leavers whilst leaving just enough doubt in the minds of remainers to get them to vote Labour in the hopes of getting a soft Brexit. And then after the election, all those remainers who had lent their votes to Labour were told they had voted to "get Brexit done" and had to sit back and watch as Labour did very little to stop the UK from hurtling towards the cliff edge.

So, no, I don't trust Labour. For me, vague statements about self ID not being a priority and implementing the Cass report are not unequivocal enough to satisfy me that it is safe to vote for Labour. I don't want to vote Labour and then be told, a few weeks later, that this means I believe trans women are women, support self ID and want a trans inclusive conversion therapy ban, because Labour have been clear that these are its positions. In fact, in the absence of a clear statement that Labour's position has changed and a commitment not to do these things, I consider that by voting Labour I would be voting for those things.

material lived reality of women caused by discrimination related to our sexed bodies and assumptions about our reproductive capabilities not our gender preferences.

I think women suffer discrimination because of assumptions about our reproductive capabilities/intentions AND assumptions about our gender preferences.

This is why the "TWAW / Feminism is for ALL women" is such a nonsense, because it lumps together TW who believe they have a mental "woman-gender" and dearly wish to be perceived and treated as such within society, with female people for whom being assumed to have that mental "woman-gender" is frustrating and limiting and they want society to stop doing it.

"All women including TW" feminism is attempting to meet two literally completely opposing needs and eventually it will have to let one group down or tear itself apart. Ironically, like the Rainbow coalition it's probably only being able to focus on what they believe is their common enemy "the TERFs" that keeps them from falling apart.

Even more ironically, if they'd just stop and think about it they'd realise gender criticism is actually the solution to both their problems, because if they stopped pushing gender transition from men to woman or vice versa as the solution for TW and instead focused on divorcing gender stereotypes entirely from sex, TW get to adopt as many "woman-gender" stereotypes as they desire while remaining the men they truly are, and women get to live free of those "woman-gender" assumptions.

Excellent post

I don't want to vote Labour and then be told, a few weeks later, that this means I believe trans women are women, support self ID and want a trans inclusive conversion therapy ban, because Labour have been clear that these are its positions

this is similar to the 2019 election when it was said that people were voting on brexit…again

MsScarlet our positions are aligned.

I think though that there is a fine line between coming on threads to advocate for Labour and coming on to threads to advocate for trans rights.

Some posters are advocating for both at this point.

I think, however, that it is dangerous to take a view that just because women and girls are better protected in countries like the UK than they are in developing countries, that they are not oppressed or discriminated against. That is a kind of complacency we cannot afford.

100% this.

Great post.

That’s a very thought provoking post @MissScarletInTheBallroom.

Just to make it clear I have no interest in influencing anyone else’s vote. What I am concerned about is correcting misinformation about what a Labour vote implies - like they’ll bankrupt the country and they’re the same as the Tories. Clearly I’m talking generally here and not specifically about this thread. I hand on heart believe that Labour is constantly misrepresented on the trans issue and that’s supported by the presence of gender critical women in the parliamentary party.

The thing is that we really don’t know exactly what we’re going to get however we vote. I’m pretty sure most people who voted Tory in 2019 didn’t envision huge amounts of our money being used to send a few people to Rwanda, yet here we are.

All I can do in determining where my X goes is which party is most closely aligned to the ideals I hold dear. I’m really fortunate because I care passionately about enough issues for that not to make me a single issue voter.

I hand on heart believe that Labour is constantly misrepresented on the trans issue and that’s supported by the presence of gender critical women in the parliamentary party.

I would like to see some examples please of how Labour is constantly misrepresented on the trans issues?

Because I do not believe that this is the case at all.

All I can do in determining where my X goes is which party is most closely aligned to the ideals I hold dear. I’m really fortunate because I care passionately about enough issues for that not to make me a single issue voter.

Women's sex-based rights aren't a single issue. As many, many posts have said across multiple threads when discussing Labour. Anybody who's been on those threads will have seen the reasons why they're not a single issue.

I care about public services, the environment, education and the NHS so for me it’s a single issue. I don’t frequent FWR as a rule so I haven’t been privy to those arguments. The only reason I’m here now is because this thread’s been moved.

I agree, when I think about the way in which the 'toilet issue' is dismissed I think of the girls in schools who are avoiding school when they are on their periods or not drinking water when there because they don't want to share toilets with boys of any gender identity.

I think of children who have been harmed by being made to believe that the answer to their mental health issues is to go on a life time of body harming drugs and sometimes having radical surgeries.

I think of teenage girls like my daughter who used to be gender non conforming but now is trying to get on in her sport in a competitive way, she not only has to face discrimination when it comes to access to changing rooms/ assumptions that she is weaker than boys the same age based on her body, but the governing body of her sport firmly believes TWAW and she might lose her spot in the county team to a boy who identifies as a girl.

And this is not to mention the other examples of lack of single sex rape crisis, a woman being raped on an NHS ward, the inability in the future to collect sex based data and the impact that might have on things like pay equality etc etc etc.

This single issue makes life unjust for women and girls across every aspect of our lives.

It is so dismissive to treat it as a single issue.

I hand on heart believe that Labour is constantly misrepresented on the trans issue and that’s supported by the presence of gender critical women in the parliamentary party.

If Labour wanted to be clear and unambiguous, they could be, easily. But they are not. And not reasonably, that makes people suspicious.

@Bigcoatlady "Indeed levels of violence in our women only accommodation are vastly higher than in our male only accommodation."
This is a throwback to a much earlier post on this thread, but this claim is so unlikely to be true I want to draw attention to it.

They’ve tried. Annelise Dodds couldn’t have been much clearer but anything they say is just met with disbelief.

Blossom, if you are talking about Annelise Dodds from this article https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/24/labour-will-lead-on-reform-of-transgender-rights-and-we-wont-take-lectures-from-the-divisive-tories#:~:text=Labour%20will%20lead%20on%20reform,Tories%20%7C%20Anneliese%20Dodds%20%7C%20The%20Guardian

I don't think it is clear at all.

We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act. Put simply, this means that there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access. Labour will defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services.

There is no clarity about what happens to the males who have the legal sex of women and where they fit in to this - the process for which is going to be made easier according to Dodds in the same article. It might well be that they will not be allowed in single sex spaces but it begs the question of what on earth is the point of simplifying a process which confers no benefit.

And there is no clarity over which spaces Labour deem it to be reasonable for only 'biological' women to have access.

It is very easy for Labour to clarify both of these concerns.

So you may think this is clear, I do not. Many commentators on this agree with my position.