A bit of rewriting history going on- MN didn't exist before 2020?

[GrumpyMenopausalWombWielder]

https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/1863356570991743187?s=46

"This is not how the history went. The majority of the faction that is now known as the ultras turned up after 2020, largely in 2022/23. The bulk of the original grassroots of the movement were left wing feminists. That is, what happened is that a group of people who turned up later attacked the core of the original movement who had stood against trans ideology, in the first place, by themselves. And who, quite understandably, were pretty pissed off."

You'd think the fact one of the people involved in the FWS court case was a MNetter, would avoid this selective rewriting of history on who did what & when, as well as why women are still pushing for repeal of the GRA despite all the very learned professionals telling them to stop being so stupid and quiet down on that.

All the early meetings, Venice Allen ones & WPUK, were linked on these very pages, and MNetters made the bulk of the women attending. I remember getting to know people & we all eventually confirmed who we were on MN back then. This attempt to frame women who just won't shut up about repeal of the GRA as Jenny come latelys who had nothing to do with any achievements or wins, when so much of the grassroots movement were women who gathered here, raised consciousness here, organised here & networked here, is just wrong.

I'm getting pretty tired of the narrative being pushed that it's only women who are late to this, who are right wing, bigots, trolls or keyboard warriors who did feck all & have achieved nothing, who keep pushing repeal. I'd much rather the substance of the arguments were tackled instead of the endless high school level rhetoric that follows from someone questioning law fare tactics.

The GRA is bad legislation. It was when it was brought in & remains so now - even more so. Questioning why it is beyond touch is no more an ultra position than refusing to bastardise language or deny reality. But wiping out the place Mumsnet has in the story of how women fought back is a particularly stupid thing to do.

Mumsnet don't even want to be seen as playing the part in this that this place did - they certainly tried to suppress women's language & opinions, and banned lots of women who stood firm. They didn't slope off never to be seen again. They got active & were the backbone of the grassroots movement that's shifted the dial in the U.K.

Forth Form at St Clares spring to mind.

What is the legal definition of sex in European Law?!!!

I note that actually EU protected characteristics are notably different and actually should the Supreme Court case fail, it think this is notable:

What are protected characteristics in Europe?
Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

Note the one: genetic features. Arguably there's a problem with UK law staring us right in the face there.

It's yet another cluster fuck that gives opportunities for the far right either way because the whole process will take years and tonnes of publicity.

Its fucking depressing on all levels.

What has the EU got to do with this?

Yes I don’t really understand why repeal is considered by some to be such a logistical impossibility. I get Mail-out reminders for smear tests, to update my drivers license, to vote, I had to get a new car with ULEZ, or fall foul of the law, etc. I remember being overwhelmed, wondering how the logistics of Brexit would work.

Repealing the GRA seems far easier than many other changes to law and policy to implement. It’s just admin for goodness sake. Literally just words on a database and pieces of paper.

The UK is subject to European law under the ECHR still despite leaving the EU. It's a separate entity.

@HarmonicSeries

The current GRC acts to change someone's legal sex.

I'm saying it needs to be altered to change someone's gender and recognise gender as separate to sex.

Whilst GC and don't believe gender is an actual thing. To me this is the easiest way to both recognise trans and provide protections whilst also retaining sex based rights.

So I don't really like gender being something codified into law as an actual thing. It's the easiest way I can see us getting to protect sex based rights.

‘European Law’ is not the same as the European Convention on Human Rights. The EU, and any protected characteristics it lists, are irrelevant to the discussion.

Strong agree. Let anyone who wants one have an official certificate saying they are bifluidambicatgender or whatever, and at the same time make sure this makes no difference to anything anyone else has to care about, and we are all sorted. In our lifetimes? Maybe.

I still don’t get what you are driving at. Our birth certificates record our sex. It is used as an ID document. The GRC is not an ID document, it just certifies you have the legal ‘right’ to a false birth certificate.

Are you suggesting that all birth certificates now record both sex and gender? (Massive can of worms greater than the fallout of repeal)

Or are you suggesting all birth certificates now record gender not sex? (Another massive can of worms greater than the fallout of repeal)

Or are you suggesting that the GRC can be used in the place of a birth certificate?(lots of issues around this, since the current law makes it illegal to ask to see one, and this would still require the acknowledgment of the person’s actual sex).

Unless we stop giving out female id to men, i can't see a solution to this.

We'll just be talking about safeguarding failures and court cases forever.

If people are arguing to retain a GRC which would just be a certificate of being ‘trans’ and nothing else, then you are arguing to repeal also, because it implies birth certificates being restored to a truthful record of birth.

There are a good number of TRAs out there who have sensed the change in the wind and are trying to sound ‘reasonable’ by saying ‘you can pull up the drawbridge behind ME’.

The state recognising a persons gender isn't a problem, a waste of time and money, but nothing else. Its the issuing of female id to men.

That what the policians and courts are hiding behind. They talk about the needs of people with a gender, and dont talk about the fact that they are giving them incorrect documentation and risking safeguarding.

Tell us why a man needs to pretend he was born a girl, and why safeguarding takes second place. If they cant justify these laws, why are they in place?

a) nearly half of GRCs have been given out to people born female

b) the mess at DVLA, Passport office, NHS etc is because of illegally operated self ID - they KNOW whether they used a GRC to change the data. If not make them change it back

c) those who already have a GRC will be protected as at present under the 2004 law. The rest will have to fit around the rights of women enshrined in EA2010

This is an interesting thread in site stuff from 2010

The number of women having fake birth certificates doesn’t negate the safeguarding risks of giving men fake bc.

Passports and driving licences have allowed men to change their sex to female since before the GRA, in part, because they are not proof of sex. Now these id are used to inform the GRC process. Without being able to change id, a person cannot get a GRC.

Men were placed in womens prisons and hospital wards before the GRC because womens saftey was never a priority of the state.

We need everything to change, and its starts with politicians being clear and follow through with their claims that sex and gender are different.

I've been on MN since 2004 and FWR since about 2010. Radicalised in 2013.

I would like to see the GRA repealed and the PC of gender reassignment removed from the EA.

I'd also like to be 20 years younger, and able to sing.

'Politics is the art of the possible ' is not just a hackneyed phrase- it's a hard fact.

There is also the ever-present risk that the Supreme Court upholds the Haldane judgment and the Labour government makes GRCs easier to get. Which would be a disaster.

So as much as I'd like to see the GRA repealed, it ain't going to happen any time soon and in the meantime the ONLY possible route open to us is neutralising it (via amending the EA) so that having a GRC doesn't give certificated men accession female spaces etc.

However, having the repeal of the GRA as a longer term goal is still important and those who are campaigning for it (and who are currently well outside the Overton Window of political possibility) are still providing a service by the very act of raising it as an objective.

Even if we still had a Tory government, repeal would be a big ask. Under Labour it simply won't happen.

There is room for and a need for both approaches. However those in the repeal camp, instead of throwing bricks at the other camp, need to just get on with trying to put their plan into action. I rather fear that their hardline approach may not win any allies in Parliament, and it's worth remembering that it's only Parliament who can change things.

Personally, I'm happy to see all and any push to end the ideology. Certainly, and crucially, all the court cases and the chipping away.

But also campaigning to repeal the GRA. However hard it is.

And party because I want it front and centre. I want the whole fucking population to realise that birth certificates are being falsified. Because they really don't.

And I want them to realise what the criteria is. As the Supreme Court says, it appears to be 'just wanting one'.

And I want people to be talking on podcasts, and interviews and in the papers, about the utter state of the sexism that makes a law that goes out of its way to use damaging stereotypes to (allegedly) treat a medical condition. I want politicians to be asked what the fuck were you thinking?

And I want that discussed. Is it a medical condition? Or is it a fetish?

Have we made laws to support a fetish?

There is also the ever-present risk that the Supreme Court upholds the Haldane judgment and the Labour government makes GRCs easier to get. Which would be a disaster.

If this happens, then I hope FWR take it to the ECHR. That could force the repeal of the GRA.

Yes exactly @fanOfBen

@HarmonicSeries

This option..
Or are you suggesting that the GRC can be used in the place of a birth certificate?(lots of issues around this, since the current law makes it illegal to ask to see one, and this would still require the acknowledgment of the person’s actual sex).

And that birth certificates going forward stay original. That's it's no longer illegal to ask for the GRC but that it's irrelevant anyway because a GRC doesn't allow you access to women's sex based spaces anyway so why you would need to see one I don't know.

I have no idea how people do ID like driving licenses and passports.

But the point is more of a zeitgeist change. Atm we have men producing these certificates to say ha, gotcha! Let me in this changing room, sport, intimately search this woman, wax my balls or I will sue you.

Now it's going to be a zeitgeist of well that doesn't matter. Misrepresent your sex with the intention to bypass sex based rights and your open to being prosecuted for indecent exposure, false representation, sexual assault by deception of sex and lack of true consent etc.

It will mean those exposing no longer feel emboldened. Even though yes it's a bit of a legal paperwork mess. The lines will be redrawn.

*abusing not exposing.

On mobile so can't edit sorry.

....and some of those women who had previously considered themselves to be of the Left - though maybe not so strongly as a badge of identity as others - under-went a radical re-structuring of their thinking and perspective, and I include myself in that. I jettisoned my automatic antipathy to what may have been considered right of centre views - and disengaged from committed Left tribalism.

Some, though, dug themselves further in, are still clinging to their purity version of Left wing politics/Socialism/Marxism/ Intersectionalist Feminism of Oppression - for dear life. Some have made a career and a name for themselves out of being such.

I think it is assumed that the majority of the orginal grassroot movement was left wing because it was apposing a Conservative policy. And the assumption of some that right wing voter are less likely to be feminists.

The majority might have been blair voters - sure start type left wing, but i dont think they were as radically left wing that the academic types imagine.

Exactly the same for me. I first registered on here that year because I wanted to find out more about the government's consultation on proposed GRA reform. I learned a great deal in a short time because there were a lot of intelligent women who had been debating these issues on here for years. I was also introduced to JCJ's brilliant Annals of the Terf Wars back then.

That set of characteristics seems remarkably broad. Genetic characteristics covers quite a lot.