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 am so glad that there are level headed women who are able to engage in sophisticated debate here because I am ready to smash a window with rage at the suggestion that I did not actually feel unsafe in the service for women survivors of male violence that had been so central to my own healing when it suddenly started centering male people in its service provision, no, I'm being controlled by Russan bots.
YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR OWN STORY, WOMAN. YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR OWN BOUNDARIES. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE WORDS COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH REALLY MEAN.
This is horrendous and why the people saying it also claim to be feminists who are not trans rights activists - I guess I just all contributes to the muddling of words, to the loostening of meaning, unhinging us and preventing us from saying what we want. That's right, we don't know what we want! We're just little puppets who have too much time on our hands inventing fears of things that could never actually happen, wouldn't it be nice to find a charity board to volunteer on to use up that abundant free time, hystrionic little dear.
I feel so much safer with people whose political position is that my trauma doesn't matter to them, and that the state should not be responsible for funding services to help me heal, than I do with those whose position is, yes, the state should fund services, but you don't actually know your own story, you need to reframe your trauma, you can ask for what you want and need but we'll tell you what the words you use really mean.

@LilyBartsHatShop

It is sickening that these women dgaf about these issues so long as their beloved Labour Party get into power.

It is sickening that the Labour Party put the rights of males who identify as trans above the needs of women.

They don't like being called names and find it offensive, the real offence lies in the harms done to women by the Labour Party. It is inconceivable that the democratic opposition (which is supposed to be forward thinking) should treat women so abhorrently. It is disgusting that we have women who know the issues and turn a blind eye to these harms.

Well said, @LilyBartsHatShop💐

It's absolutely disgusting that people like you and Sarah Summers are being dismissed by people who say that trans people's identities are real and valid but that your experiences and feelings are the product of "misinformation about trans people" and need to be "reframed".

Until they kick out the people who threatened to assault Rosie Duffield they have no credibility, I don’t believe a word they say, they haven’t even censured them. They have refused the GC women a stall at the conference yet again, you haven’t actually addressed these issues once.

Thank you.

And @lifeturnsonadime and @MissScarletInTheBallroom , many thanks.

I would say "biological women only" makes it pretty clear.

To be fair, the current government said nothing about deporting desperate people seeking sanctuary to Rwanda and they are trying to do it, so there is previous for ignoring what the manifesto said.

The topic is about disinformation being spread. The researchers are clear about how they've identified disinformation. They haven't just analysed everything on the Internet.

You can discount it if you like. Others can choose to read and consider it.

Noone has said that.

We are back to the "you want trans people to die!!@!" level of rhetoric again.

BTW Sarah Summers got crucified on here when she posted recently, for daring to mention WPUK. Didn't see any 9f you sticking up for her then. Instead it was 40 pages of chastising her for wrong think.

Same with Rosie Duffield recently. These women are only useful when they are saying what you need them too. It's pretty shallow to start using them as a gotcha

Wow.

Yes, I'm at "wow" now, too.
Leaving now, best all round.

What is this strawman? I honestly find it so odd when posters bring up NZ and Australia with such derision. I live closer to that area and I don't recognise that attitude at all. Jacinda, in fact, was a much admired leader.

I've been having a look at this document and what it says about these themes in particular.

Did you read the detail? Because I'd like to see some evidence of where you think this kind of rhetoric is present on Mumsnet.

In the "threat to child safety" section:

"The reviewed literature also revealed a narrative where LGBTI+ people are identified as a threat to children through their supposed ‘predatory behaviour’, and attempts at ‘converting children into sexual perversions’; and finally, societies at large. In this narrative, so-called ‘LGBTI+ behaviours’ constitute a public health risk. The study ‘The European Union as a child molester: sex education on pro-Russian websites’, shows how sex education is vilified, and Russia is portrayed as a saviour of traditional values (Jarkovská 2020). Pro-Russian websites present extreme and manipulated representations of sex education in the EU, and callously exploit fears linked to concerns with sex education in educational systems (Jarkovská 2020). There are several examples of how the educational system is portrayed as a place of unwanted influence. For example, an overview of hate speech in Romania points at fears of children being taught ‘deviance’ (that is, homosexuality) in schools, and how this fear was exploited also in hate speech (Iordache 2015). Stoeckl (2018) reports how the EU is presented by certain media as imposing school curricula that teach masturbation. Sex education is also portrayed as an indicator of something worse to come (such as a general acceptance of so-called deviant sexualities, see Kuhar & Paternotte 2017). In this narrative, the child is seen as being threatened by indoctrination, sexualisation or being exposed to oversexual adults. The image of the innocent and endangered child seems particularly effective in triggering ‘moral panic’. This narrative is also connected to the prerogative of families to raise and educate their children according to their moral and religious beliefs (Kuhar & Paternotte 2017). Henning (2018) finds that the notion of Europeanisation of anti-discrimination policies in the arena of education makes the education system a key battleground."

I have seen absolutely nothing like this on Mumsnet. When Mumsnet users express concerns about child safety, it is generally in relation to children being encouraged to transition when they are too young to understand the consequences of this or give meaningful consent to any medical interventions.

I have seen some specific concerns raised about safeguarding risks inherent in people developing a relationship of trust and confidence with children behind their parents' backs, taking the view that adults who encourage children to keep secrets from their parents generally do not have those children's best interests at heart. I think this is a valid criticism.

I've also seen concerns expressed about specific individuals. I don't think it's fair to say that women who raise concerns about a self confessed paedophile being appointed to the board of trustees of the UK's largest charity for trans identifying children are spreading misinformation or hate about the LGBT+ community. Mermaids should have done some basic safeguarding.

In the "negative othering" section:

"The reviewed literature is rife with reports about various anti-narratives, where LGBTI+ people are given generic and unjust negative labels, where narratives either portray LGBTI+ people as morally corrupted and/or in some way a threat to society. Derogatory labels such as ‘faggot’ or ‘pédé’ (French), ‘maricón’ (Spanish) and ‘Tunte’ (German) are often used, as are statements of mockery through well-known slogans such as ‘homosexuality is an abomination’ and ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ (Russell 2019)."

Clearly, saying anything even remotely along these lines would get you banned from Mumsnet quicker than you can say "knife".

In the "gender ideology" section:

"Kuhar and Paternotte (in different combinations and multiple publications) trace a narrative of anti-gender across Europe, using Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovenia and Spain as case studies. The authors find that actors unite under an umbrella of resistance against what is labelled ‘Gender Ideology’. This so-called ‘Gender Ideology’ is said to permeate and dominate Western liberal democracies in general, and the EU in particular. Kuhar and Paternotte (2017) explain that the term anti-gender captures a general opposition to women’s quest for equality and LGBTI+ rights, which threaten to erode hegemonic masculinity. Opponents to so-called ‘Gender Ideology’ rationalise their opposition by claiming that they combat the destruction of the human race and civilisation, which in their minds are threatened by the expansion of equal rights to women and LGBTI+ people. In their study of the far-right and conservative movements in France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, Kovats & Pöim (2015) find that the term ‘gender’ successfully functions as a ‘symbolic glue’ for those involved. The term ‘Gender Ideology’ is an empty signifier which allows a diverse range of religious and far-right actors to team up to fight women’s equality, sex education and the rights of LGBTI+ people such as same-sex marriage. Hodzic and Bijelic (2014) conclude that fighting sexual and reproductive health and rights in the EU has united a range of different parties. Kuhar and Paternotte (2017) emphasise that opponents are transnationally interconnected, notwithstanding the fact that they proclaim their local embeddedness and support for national sovereignty; their declared aims are fighting against morally corrupt elites- notably represented by the EU and United Nations (UN) - that attempt to ‘colonise’ them by propagating liberal ideals. More recently, also the term ‘LGBT ideology’ has been repeatedly used derogatorily, notably by Polish politicians, to attack and dehumanise LGBTI+ people. (In response, the Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and others, including the EP, have replied that it is not an ideology, it is an identity).4 Since ‘Gender Ideology’ is a construction by outsiders opposing gender and LGBTI+ equality, in cases where the term is spread intentionally to deceive the public this falls into the category of disinformation. However, it seems from the reviewed literature that many opponents of a ‘Gender Ideology’ actually believe in this as an intentional ‘ideology’, probably mistaking it with ‘Gender Theory’ in feminist studies. The narrative can thus amount to misinformation, but could also provide a fertile ground for foreign sponsored disinformation."

Again, this is absolutely not the prevailing view on Mumsnet, and anyone expressing these types of beliefs would get very short shrift on here.

People on this board do use the term "gender ideology". I disagree with the authors that it is an empty signifier; as far as I am concerned it is shorthand for the belief that people have gender identities which may either align or not align with their biological sex and that it is gender identity, not biological sex, which makes someone a man, woman or something else.

I think that is how most people are using the term on this board.

This section of the paper completely fails to acknowledge that the term "gender ideology" is used by a lot of people, with varying political beliefs and motives, to describe a belief system that they do not share.

I can't see anywhere in this paper where the authors acknowledge that there is a whole bunch of other people who are not fully supportive of "gender ideology", or what the authors might prefer to call "LGBT+ rights", for reasons other than being right wing bigots, Nazis, homophobes, American conservative Christians or Russian bots.

This bunch of other people can be broadly summarised as the silent majority, who have no particular beef with trans people but don't agree that rapists should be housed in women's prisons, that people who were born male should be competing in women's sports, that a person with a penis should be able to use women's changing rooms next to their teenage daughter or elderly mother simply because they "identify as a woman", or that children who play with the wrong kind of toys should be put on puberty blockers.

This is an entirely mainstream view, shared by the majority of people.

So why have the authors of the paper not acknowledged this?

Is it a deliberate omission? Or have they simply failed to talk to anyone outside their own echo chamber, rendering their own research utterly nonsensical?

Either way, suggesting that the themes referred to in the paper are prevalent and tolerated on Mumsnet is absolutely disgraceful.

Suggesting that women's need for single sex spaces etc is due to disinformation spread by the American far right and an army of Russian bots is tantamount to saying that actually, Adam.

I can't comment on the Sarah Summers thread because I don't know which thread you are talking about and don't think I read it. I have only ever posted on here in support of Sarah.

Also not aware of the Rosie Duffield thing. I am fully supportive of Rosie.

Obviously I can only speak for myself, as we aren't a hive mind on here.

But speaking of Rosie Duffield, has anyone high up in Labour apologised to her yet?

Because what with all the reverse ferreting, and people like Wes Streeting seeing the writing on the wall and becoming what we might call "born again sane people", it would be good of them to acknowledge that what they are saying now is only what Rosie has been saying all along, and apologise for their treatment of her. No?

Calling women people with cunts is a hot take from someone who professes to want to have a civilised conversation.

We are women, that's enough. Biological woman as opposed to legal woman presupposes we have something in common and shared with men who identify as women.

And again, what is the actual point in a process which allows a man to become a legal woman and to have his birth certificate give the sex of female if it is not to make him a woman? Let alone a promise to simplify that process?

Is "people with cunts" what the deleted post was about?

Yes

Delightful.

I don’t think it should have been deleted. Gives you insight into the poster.

This is why I almost never report anything.

#operationletthemspeak

It doesn't. Not when we don't have a list of 'reasonable spaces'. Not when we have trans women saying that they are biological women even after they have fathered children. Not when we have women with penises because of laws which enable men to falsify birth certificates.

Words are meaningless and women and children are harmed as a result.

"Can you believe it, gender ideology has so rotted the landscape of services for women fleeing violent men that a conservative evangelical woman in the 90s had more of a grasp of what “women only” means than a labour-voting, charity board sitting, right thinking, left wing, frontline worker, who by their own words is not a trans rights activist, in the 2020s."

OK from the top I've worked in this field since the 90s which is a bit longer than five minutes. In fact if you haven't spotted I know quite a lot about this stuff.

Refuges and safe houses are not and have never been statutory services. When George Osborne started cutting funding to local govt in the 2011 and 2012 budgets and local authorities had to make cuts it was the non-statutory services that had to go. In my city that meant grants to our women-only charity which also ran our safe houses. So they went. Along with the childrens centres, the day services for homeless people, the central funding for supported housing.

I did not sit on the board of that charity though I supported it. I do sit on the board of another housing provider. The consequence of losing safe house provision locally for single women was dire. For women with children trying to leave DV it was still possible to get some help from children's services because they can allocate funding and work with housing to move women directly into social housing. But for young women without children (and for women whose children had already been removed from their care because they would not leave their violent partner) the situation was that IF/WHEN they left they could become street homeless, have to move into hostels with violent men before becoming eligible for temporary accommodation and then getting a room in a shared house, sometimes with other men.

So we worked really fucking hard to secure funding to ensure women presenting to our LA leaving DV were able to come straight to us and straight to accommodation which we got funded which was women only and safe. I work full time and have three kids who were a lot younger ten years ago and I still wrote a lot of grant applications, went to a lot of meetings to achieve this - not for money, or even for political reasons. I'm not a member of a political party. So now we run two women only houses with dedicated support workers funded by charitable grants. The housing costs are met by HB. We have security support from the police. We provide specialist therapeutic support to enable women to heal. As I said I don' think this is the right model - we should do better. We are not officially a safe house and are not commissioned as one, but in practice the police, social care and homelessness team know if they take a young single woman from a violent situation and need a bed that night she can come to us.

And rather than saying thanks for getting off your arse and on top of your full time job, full time parenting etc you chose to do something about the mess the Tories created when they withdrew the funding that enabled your local DV provision, on this thread there has just been insult after insult.

I'm not a TRA. I take no view on which way you should vote. I didn't even say I was a Labour voter.

But I am highly motivated and care passionately about this stuff. And it amazes me that GC feminists are so committed to just arguing about this stuff they would rather insult the women who are out there working on this stuff on the ground than try and make common cause on this issue.

How does that help you? How does that help women?

Indeed.

Anneliese Dodds talks about biological women in the context of the Equality Act exemptions. These exemptions exist for organisations which wish to make use of them and are strong enough to withstand pressure from LGBT+ rights organisations misrepresenting the law in this area.

What she doesn't suggest is that at any point in the future organisations will be required to provide single sex spaces, or acknowledge the doubt that currently exists over the definition of "sex" in the Equality Act.

Because the Equality Act says "sex". Not "biological sex".

Lady Haldane recently interpreted this to mean "legal sex".

There is a fairly large petition calling on Parliament to clarify this.

Rishi Sunak and many Tory politicians have indicated that it could benefit from being clarified.

And yet when Harriet Harman was asked whether it needed clarifying, she simply said "no" and did not elaborate further.

But who knows? Maybe Labour will commit to clarifying the Equality Act to specify that sex means biological sex in their manifesto. I'm listening. But I'm not yet convinced.

No. It wasn’t people.