New video: Akua Reindorf, Maya Fortstater and Helen Joyce on the Equality Act

[Pluvia]

I was lucky enough to hear Akua, Maya and Helen participate in a discussion about the Equality Act in Swansea a few weeks ago and now Sound Women have released the video of the event.

The evening was effectively a blueprint for the way forward in revising the EA to strengthen women's rights. I'm going to be showing elements of it to my MP and asking him to let me what plans the Labour government have to correct some of the things that have gone wrong as a result of the poor fit between the Gender Recognition Act and the EA. As Maya Forstater says, did the people who wrote the act intend to create a situation where a man with a piece of paper is legally a woman?

M

Whoops: let's hope this link works:

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks pluvia. I look forward to listening.

Sorry, I got the name of the group that organised it wrong. They're Outspoken Women. I knew I shouldn't have had that second glass of Gavi.

Thank you - I was hoping they would release a recording of this. Bookmarked for tomorrow.

Grateful for this, thank you.

did the people who wrote the act intend to create a situation where a man with a piece of paper is legally a woman?

Yes - surely she knows that.

That's why they kindly included the tiny bit of respect called the Single Sex Exemptions.

That's where the phrase "legal women" comes from.

Sex is the only protected characteristic that is in fact not "protected" because the GRA demands the right to turn the notion of sex (biological reality) upside down.

Because the GRA was written to appease men, and then as always women were expected to accept their rights would take second place.

Not forgetting it isn't so much the law, but the fact that TRAs have weaponised it to further their queer agenda.

Which raises the question was the GRA intended as a trojan horse, or was it created to "be kind" without realising the unintended consequences.

I'm sure it was the later. The notion I think was to accommodate a very few shy, herbivorous creatures to go about their business without any fuss. I dare say had anyone realised a bunch of total fucking hatstands would drive a coach and horses through it to support a batshit reversion of reality wiser councils might have prevailed.

@Pluvia thanks for posting a link to the video - I've added it to my women's rights watchlist (which is getting wonderfully long nowadays 😊).

Pardon the derail but @lonelywater may I ask if 'hatstands' is a common slang term used in England/GB? I've not come across it until recently on MN and I find it amusing but I'm not quite sure I understand exactly what it means - is the meaning equivalent to 'bonkers' or is it more like 'weirdoes'? TIA 👍

"Hatstand" was a term popularised in the first instances by the comedy magazine "Viz" and means, as you rightly surmise, completely and utterly mental-think Talcum X, fox beater and Himdia levels of batshit.

if 'hatstands' is a common slang term used in England/GB

No - virtually nobody uses it apart from sections of society that grew up in a particular period with a similar range of interests.

ie it isn't useful to use because 99% of the population would not have any idea of what you are talking about!

ie it is part of a British sub culture and says more about the user than anything else!

that's me told then. Ok, will have to go back to using batshit mentalist nutters then.

It's pretty clear from the context what hatstands means IMO. Also made me smile!

Thanks for the link Pluvia

Same here. I do remember Viz's use of "hatstand", but even without that knowledge, it would be clear what it means. I think it's perfect - "completely hatstand" is a much better term for Maugham et al than "completely batshit", which is worn out through overuse.

I was unaware of the use of hatstands. However, it goes with the ability of English to make almost any noun an insult.

Am going to use 'hatstand' more often now :)

Suggest you listen to the full thing and then come back. Maya and Akua both had quite a lot to say about unintended consequences.

Suggest you listen to the full thing and then come back. Maya and Akua both had quite a lot to say about unintended consequences.

I dont doubt they do, as do many posters on FWR. Just about every thread on here relates to that.

I am never quite sure why some put more signifigance on those who feel they need to speak from a platform, when in fact most already know and are discussing this not only of FWR and facebook and twitter and with friends.

If the meeting had been about setting up a coordinated campaign I would be more inclinded to give up time to listen.

Not sure what function it serves to have the same things endlessly repeated when the issue for those of us concerned about the erasure of women's sex based rights it not only how to stop it but how to reverse it.

The organisers ask some of the leading figures in the GC movement if they would be prepared to come and speak in Swansea, at one of Stonewall's leading university 'champions' and they said yes.

Last year three leading academics came and talked about academic freedom. with Alice Sullivan among others.

You can find all Outspoken Women's videos here:

Academic freedom and the Equality Act are cornerstones of our rights. But you would rather Outspoken Women had spent thousands hiring a theatre and security so that you could come (or probably not come) to a meeting with local women? You can join a local group any day of the week. ReSisters, WRN, LGBA, parents groups, SEEN groups. What's stopping you getting involved? Or is it just easier to use your keyboard to attack women who are actually doing something?

To be fair there were quite a few Parliamentarians sounding loud klaxons warning that what exactly has happened would happen. Unfortunately they were drowned out by the massive Labour majority, that is when they were not being given false reassurances by the likes of Lord Filkin.

Neither were all persuaded that the intended beneficiaries were uniformly shy, herbivorous creatures.

"The bill potentially hands the more aggressive transsexuals a legal stick with which to beat those who disagree with them. We must do more to limit the scope for vexatious litigation" ~ Baroness O'Cathain 2004

https://x.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1401842484905451521

Baroness O'Cathain
moved Amendment No. 50.
Page 5, line 13, leave out "all purposes" and insert "the purposes of this Act"

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I return to this issue of Clause 9 and its blanket assertion that a person who gets a gender recognition certificate changes sex in law "for all purposes". It is notable that the Government chose to call this the Gender Recognition Bill, "gender" being a political term favoured by sociologists who like to think of one's sex as a fluid concept and something which can be changed. "Gender" is the word used to write most of this Bill.

However, in Clause 9 where it really counts, the word used is "sex". In law it is a person's sex that is said to change. In Committee we have had all the arguments about how ludicrous it is to suggest a person can change sex, but the Government are determined to legislate for it. However, it is not yet clear why it is that a person's sex must be changed in law for all purposes. I fear that if we leave this clause in, the law of unintended consequences will occur in spades. Who knows what speculative litigation could be launched by a person with a gender recognition certificate on the basis that he should, for all purposes, be recognised as a woman? Sadly, some transsexuals seem to be extremely litigious, and very anxious to use the law to try to force other people to accept them in their chosen sex. It may be that they have felt excluded for many years and then, having got what they think they want, wish to parade it. I think it is probably a human failing, but that seems to be the way it happens.

The reason we are here with this Bill is that Christine Goodwin insisted on pressing his case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. Before him we had Rees, Cossey, Sheffield and Horsham all of whom sued all the way up to Strasbourg. The Government believe that they have to conform to the ruling in Strasbourg. Do they need to go so far that, in UK law, for all purposes, a person's sex is changed? Is that the case in all 14 other European Community states, or are we, once more, gold-plating? I need not explain to your Lordships what "gold-plating" means. We seem to have been doing it for ever. I base that statement on all the experience that I had in the agriculture sector many years ago.

Once the Bill becomes an Act, a man really will become a woman in law. On the second day in Grand Committee, I gave the example of the BBC programme:

"At the moment there is an example in the news of a BBC programme in which a transsexual man was referred to as a man. Press for Change, the transsexual rights group is campaigning for the BBC always to refer to transsexuals in their chosen gender".

That is even before we have the Gender Recognition Act. I also said:

"That is indicative of the Orwellian nightmare that the Bill encourages. Will people who refuse to call a transsexual man a woman routinely face that kind of hostility? Given what we established yesterday"—

the first day of Grand Committee—

"which is that the Government believe that many people change their minds and revert to their real gender, or oscillate between the two"—

I must qualify that once more by saying that the Minister did not say "many"; it was the joint working party to which I referred earlier today—

"how are people to know which gender a person wants to be known as at any particular time? I say again that it is absurd to say that a man can become for all purposes a woman or vice versa".—[Official Report, 14/1/04; col. GC 64.]

There are recorded instances in the United Kingdom of individual transsexuals using legal threats to intimidate people into accepting their change of sex. Only last week, Elizabeth Bellinger, who took his case for recognition as a woman all the way to your Lordships' House threatened legal action against the Christian Institute. The institute published a briefing describing Mr Bellinger as a man, and Mr Bellinger says that that is libellous.

The Government seem to think that all transsexuals are delightful, kind and tolerant. Most people are delightful, kind and tolerant, but we cannot accept that transsexuals are different from any other sector of the population and that there are not some who are nasty, unkind and intolerant. The Bill potentially hands the more aggressive transsexuals a legal stick with which to beat those who disagree with them. We must do more to limit the scope for vexatious litigation. We must do more to prevent the courts running amok with the legislation, forcing it to new extremes of which, no doubt, the Minister would disapprove.

Later at this stage, I shall come back to crucial issues of religious liberty in respect of which clear, unambiguous protections must be put in the Bill. In the mean time, I move the amendment to find out from the Minister the purposes for which a person's sex changes. Why must the provision be so broad? Why must it make an assertion that not only conflicts with common sense but could be used in whole areas of law to force acceptance of a person's sex change on unwilling conscientious objectors? Why cannot Clause 9 say simply that the legal change is only for the purposes specifically enumerated in the Bill, which is, after all, pretty comprehensive? I beg to move.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2004-01-29/debates/f813c7d4-41a1-4cfd-8115-6be9753889e5/GenderRecognitionBillHl#contribution-5c83f894-2b89-4d44-8c40-4369c5c01ffc

HairyLeggdHarpy's "Thread of Threads" is a fantastic repository but makes one weep for the lost opportunities to limit, or even entirely dodge, the damage that has been done by the GRA.

https://twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1177699186361458688

Archived: https://archive.ph/b8ift

Archived: copy and paste the twitter/x URL in here: https://web.archive.org/

How did the Labour Government sneak the Gender Recognition Bill in under the RADAR in the first place? They did not include it in the Queen's Speech but introduced it the very next day.

Baroness Blatch:
". . . this Government have little time or regard for the history, conventions and traditions of this or the other place. There is a universally accepted convention that a line in the gracious Speech should state, Other measures will be put before you". That line is included to allow the government of the day the flexibility to introduce legislation later in the parliamentary year that had not been foreseen at the outset or in response to an emergency situation. However, the Government introduced the Gender Recognition Bill—not mentioned in the gracious Speech—the very next day. The Bill must have been in print even as the gracious Speech was being made."

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2003/dec/04/address-in-reply-to-her-majestys-most-1#S5LV0655P0_20031204_HOL_158

This day's debate on the Bill in the House of Lords covers a lot of issues that are a cause of such trouble to us now. They were foreseen but those who raised them stood no chance against the Labour Government's stealthily sneaking of the Bill in and then bulldozing it through both Houses, though to be fair most of the resistance was in The Lords.

The Government of the day must have known that the Bill would not have public support otherwise they would have trumpeted it in the Queen's Speech.

Gender Recognition Bill [H.L.]
HL Deb 18 December 2003 vol 655 cc1287-326

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2003/dec/18/gender-recognition-bill-hl#S5LV0655P0_20031218_HOL_58

Reading the passage of the relevant sections of the Equality Bill through the Lords is much the same sad story.

Thanks for thorough collating of useful info as always Bosky