MPs are being briefed that the GRA needs to be reformed to align with other European countries

[IwantToRetire]

Reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 – A Briefing Note for MPs

The purpose of this briefing paper is to outline the current legislation in Western European countries regarding the rights of trans and gender nonconforming people to change their gender markers on official government documentation legally.

It will briefly outline the current and proposed legislation for each of the Western European countries and identify the year that the legislation came in/or is coming into effect.

......

In conclusion, it can be seen that the United Kingdom has fallen behind the rest of Europe in terms of having gender recognition laws that are fit for purpose in the 21st Century. In addition, the United Kingdom has been surrounded by countries with improved rights for several years, and in many cases, it has far exceeded what we currently have in the statute books.

The aggressive approach we have seen from the previous government has only made matters worse for trans people, a demographic that makes up approximately 0.5% of the population. A targeting that was never justifiable when compared to how our European neighbours treat the legal and social standing of trans people in their countries.

A change of direction and governmental attitude towards trans people, bringing us more in line with the rest of Europe, is both necessary and long overdue.

TransLucent.Org.UK December 2024.

https://translucent.org.uk/reforming-the-gender-recognition-act-2004-a-briefing-note-for-mps/

Are any gender critical groups similarly briefing MPs?

Never heard of this group before but when you click on "about us" there's a bunch of trans people, parents of trans people, and our old friend Robin Moira White, who no doubt drafted this crock of shite.

No, the UK doesn't have to align itself with what the rest of Europe is doing. Remember all those arguments about sovereignty a few years ago? The whole point of living in a democracy is that we get to elect our political representatives and they get to make and unmake our laws. We don't have to copy what Germany is doing.

What fresh shite is this!

Translucent. 😂😂😂

We're not in Europe anymore, we'll reform it right out the bloody window #RepealtheGRA

It has nothing to do with being in the EU or not.

Given how busy Labour is cosying up with Europe, I suspect comparing the UK to Europe in a negative way will resonate with many in the Labour Party.

And they are the Government.

And they could make the time, and have the majority to "reform" the GRA in months.

Who would stop them?

The Daily Mail might.

Remember, most people in "Europe" aren't going to be deciding whether the government keep their jobs in five years' time.

The Daily Mail might.

That would just make Labour feel they were even more "correct" to be doing it!

I'm not so sure. Left wing German politicians don't get to vote in UK elections, whereas Daily Mail readers do.

Starmer knows this.

He also knows that the trans stuff is a load of nonsense and wishes that Labour hadn't got so enthusiastically on the bandwagon.

I actually think many people in Labour (and other political parties) have seized on Cass to give them an excuse to start reverse ferreting on a lot of stuff. They were relieved that a grown up had entered the room.

Translucent... 😂

Patron is Michael Cashman whose recent claim to fame was to label safeguarding children as "right wing bigotry.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4954762-pushing-back-against-safeguarding

Director is Steph Richards who organised the protest outside the Portsmouth FILIA conference where women were routinely abused with threats of sexual abuse and violence. To add to this, protesters drowned out an East African refugee speaking about mass rape and disrupted a candlelight vigil for murdered women and girls.

https://sex-matters.org/about-us/what-we-are-up-against/transactivist-violence-a-timeline/

Tells us all we need to know about what the organisations stands for.

'Steph' is also the charmer who took a CEO position for an endometriosis charity. And got Steph's arse handed to Steph by Emma Barnett on Woman's Hour.

Labour is very much supporting single sex spaces under the radar. They can't work out how to appease transidentifying people but Cass and the tribunals are succeeding in getting them to support women. This group is a last gasp of the men's rights movement.

Even without Brexit, this is not something that the EU would have had anything to do with. (People on both sides of the Brexit argument are often surprised to find out how many huge areas of legal and social debate are not within the EU's remit. During Covid a lot of people were surprised to discover that the EU has almost no responsibility for public health, for example.)

Even the European Convention on Human Rights is silent on quite a few topics. You will scour the Convention, and the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, fruitlessly if you are looking for statements that, say, access to abortion is a human right.

Anyway, this document is just a pressure group saying "We think that these other (carefully selected) nearby countries do this better, so you lot should feel bad". Which as a political tactic is fair enough --- I would do it too if there was some issue that I was campaigning on. But don't imagine that this is not some kind of neutral civil service briefing about trans issues. It's lobbying by an interested party, but I guess that if you write "briefing note" at the top of the page it sounds better.

Thank you. As we slowly starts to return to sanity over this issue, those who are used to pandering politicians "Of course women don't need male free places to undress in - mixed sex changing is so inclusive" are now howling into the wind. They're discovering that with the disappearance of #nodebate, women's rights, single sex spaces and sport, children being free from gaslighting that changing sex is desirable are actually what society wants. And society is saying so very clearly.

As they fall down the cliff they hang and grab to every structure, be it grass or rock to avoid ending up in the ocean, that will surely wash them away.

And the friends they once had will not risk their own lives to save them. Not even a float, they will not cry as they walk away.

This is what we are watching, in slow motion.

I am not sure why everyone is referenceing Brexit.

From reading the article it is clear their position if that the UK is now seen as reactionary.

And no DM readers could not stop a majority Labour Government pushing through something they are committed to.

I suspect the only thing that will stop them from doing this is that they have made so many blunders within the few months of being elected, to the extent of having to have a relaunch, that even those in the Labour Party who are pro trans, they will know their constituents will want to see them sorting out cost of living, housing, immigration, etc..

But this doesn't mean this isn't the first step towards an objective that could be passed at any time in the next 5 years.

Even more reason to get the EA re-worded to make clear that sex means biology.

Then they can change as many aspects of the GRA as they like, but no longer use that to say women cant have and are not entitled to have their sex based rights.

The two most powerful briefing groups on the gender realist side [besides religions who are pushing their own gender ideas] are Sex Matters linked above. They have been inside Parliament recently more and more and are increasingly influential.

The other is Labour Women's Declaration who have four open supporters on the Labour Front bench.

Shabana Mahmood MP, Birmingham Ladywood, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
Dame Diana Johnson, MP Hull North & Cottingham, Minister of State (Home Office) - (Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention).
Feryal Clark, MP, Enfield North. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology - AI and Digital Government
Jess Phillips MP for Birmingham Yardley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office) - (Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls).

Mahmood is a a very powerful figure inside the Starmer cabinet.

All unthinkable 4 years ago ! They are at all the Labour conferences openly and are hiring a full time lobbyist at a good salary:
https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/senior-consultant-to-lead-on-policy-parliamentary-liaison-public-affairs/

The war inside Labour is ongoing, but no debate is over and the TAs are now playing defense and they are not that good at it.

For instance here is LWD's MP briefing – Labour proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act
https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/mp-briefing-proposals-to-reform-gra/

Unlike the translucent briefing a bunch of MPs will have read this briefing.

I know someone is going to accuse me of being a Labour shill and saying everything is FINE far from it. The Tories, Labour, SNP even Lib Dems and Greens are being forced by active resistance inside their parties and outside to recognise more and more women and homosexuality are real. That progress has happened and everyone who ever posted, contributed and spoke up helped.

Huge victories have been made. Lots more to be done. Yes the TAs are trying a bunch of sneaky stuff. They can be stopped though and Mumsnet is a big part of that.

Well they'll find out the hard way at the next election if that's the game they want to play.

I think Brexit is relevant because only a few short years ago we had a very heated public debate about sovereignty. Slightly more than half of those who voted in the referendum voted to leave the EU, largely on the basis that the UK is a sovereign country and its laws should be made by our democratically elected parliament, not unelected Brussels bureaucrats.

I suspect that the number of people who actually believe sovereignty is important is even higher than that.

I was an ardent remainer and still believe that leaving the EU was a stupid idea.

But the EU is a trading bloc and the legislative authority that we delegated to the EU was never supposed to include matters such as gender recognition. The same way that it doesn't include matters such as abortion, and indeed there are parts of the EU where it is still difficult or even impossible to get an abortion. We never consented to the EU having any kind of authority over our rules about gender recognition, so the EU can butt out. And that would be true even if we were still members.

Now when we're talking about other, EU adjacent organisations or treaties to which we are still a party, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, yes, the argument is that we haven't left, we are still members, we still have to respect the rules. But the principle of sovereignty still applies. And when the UK was a founding member of the ECHR, when we actually agreed to uphold the principles in the treaty, there was nothing in there about gender recognition. All this guff about it being a human right to be legally recognised as the opposite sex to the one you actually are has been retrospectively interpreted into the treaty by reading between the lines and squinting very hard. But we never agreed to it. So if other individual countries want to introduce self ID or make it a hate crime to misgender someone, that's up to them. But we are under no obligation to follow their example. They have no authority over us. They have no democratic legitimacy in the UK. And I would argue that they are the ones in breach of the actual human rights obligations that are actually written in the treaty, not us. The UK is, at most, in breach of imaginary obligations which are not written in the treaty (but which unelected trans activists think should be), and which are not actually obligations at all because we never agreed to them.

Started typing this ages ago, so apologies if it says something that's already now been covered....

I presume this is a timing thing.

It's pretty likely (hopefully) that the Supreme Court will decide that sex in the EA means biological sex. Therefore, as per Ruth Crawford's speech in court, this means that any male who identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is a man as far as the law is concerned. The full explanation that she gave also brought sexual orientation into the mix: according to Ruth, a male (who identifies as a woman) who is attracted to women who doesn't have a GRC is a heterosexual man. That same person who does have a GRC, according to Ruth, is a lesbian woman.

So presumably there's going to be a MASSIVE uptick in the number of GRC applications. And this lobbying is about preparing the way for GRC holders to have access to all the sports, spaces and services that they want.

The GRA currently says that some of the "rights" within it could be superseded by future legislation. So presumably Robin and friends are worried that a tightened up EA might not allow a £5 certificate to give them what people in Germany etc can have.

If the court decides that sex means biological sex only, a GRC is irrelevant to the operation of the EA. It won't make a man a woman for the purposes of the Act.

The PC of Gender Reassignment (already) applies to anyone who claims a special identity, whether they hold a GRC or not.

But the EU is a trading bloc and the legislative authority that we delegated to the EU was never supposed to include matters such as gender recognition.

Well then, it's a good job that the legislative authority delegated to the EU by member states does not include such matters.

As I mentioned in my PP, the EU does not have any mandate or position on family life and related social questions. Nor are there any proposals for it to do so. Apart from anything else, even with qualified majority voting, any gender recognition proposals would not get the necessary votes because most countries in central and eastern Europe would be against them. Some EU member states still don't recognise same-sex marriage, and there is neither a Directive nor a Regulation on the matter.

The fact that a UK-based lobbying group mentions "other European countries" does not suddenly mean that the EU has, or proposes to have, a position on this. Nor is there any likelihood that it will because the EU has always stayed out of social/moral issues, partly because its mission is to avoid conflict among member states and Catholic/Orthodox Europe is some way behind the secular Scandis and Dutch on many of these topics.

So yes, Brexit is, and remains, completely irrelevant to this discussion. 🙏

It's pretty likely (hopefully) that the Supreme Court will decide that sex in the EA means biological sex.

It could go either way. I wouldn't say it was "pretty likely". The law is an ass.

Therefore, as per Ruth Crawford's speech in court, this means that any male who identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is a man as far as the law is concerned.

This has always been the case and will continue to be so regardless of the verdict.