Women’s rights to be prioritised in equality law revamp .

[Feministwoman]

Women’s rights to be prioritised in equality law revamp
Radical overhaul follows concerns about trans people using single-sex spaces.

Hopefully this will actually happen!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/bb5759c652081aa3

Women: £5 subscription and a lifetime viewing and using!

I predict a tsunami of fake GRCs and GRC sharing.

whoever decided “legal sex” is a real term with meaning has a lot to answer for. GRC holders have an “acquired gender”. If that has no legal meaning then why’s that been twisted into legal sex and why’s it become our problem? Who’s allowed it to ride roughshod over reality and safeguarding?

Exactly, when assessing if SSE are needed, we look at sex. If men can be included for having a GRC, and women excluded for having one, it makes a mockery of the orginal assessment. Holding a GRC based on having a diagnosis of gender dysphoria- feeling as if you want to be the opposite sex, not being the opposite sex. Where feeling is determine by the therapist and the patient.

It seems like the fudge we are suppose to accept is that, statistical speaking, there is unlikely to be a man in the female space - few men are legally female and of those few will be in womans spaces at any given time.

But its still in mens control which spaces are female only and which are not. Thats the power the state has given to these men.

I am waiting to learn if I disappear as a recognised sex and legal class on 16 April.

That article is helpful but, in line with PPs, I am very apprehensive. Who knew that the way to destroy women’s rights was to remove our legal and biological existence. Remember that prescient, “Enjoy your erasure”?

archive of OP’s article

https://archive.is/oImKG

I really can’t bear to read another “The tide is turning” declaration while we’re facing this.

The practical issues are obvious.

If women wanting to hold a lesbian support group or a miscarriage group for example cannot refuse men with GRCs being there to enjoy the atmosphere and meet their own needs despite the impact on those women?

Then a GRC grants men legal power over women. Sex based power, that can only be held by a man over women.

That would effectively prove (against all Labour's waffly burble) that women's right to single sex anything is gone . Regardless of the impact on women, the men's right to it is enforced over them.

It would be utterly pointless to try to argue that it's ok so long as it's only the men with GRCs who have been through a bit of a process and paid £5 - how many men can have GRCs before it reaches farcical levels of pretending it's all lovely and fine? How badly do those men have to destroy and prevent women's resources working for women before it smells too much to ignore?

If this is the proposed solution, it's another nice bit of feng shui with the Titanic deckchairs, but the ship is still going down.

Totally agree. It’s scary shit.

Trouble is Labour promised in their manifesto to make it easier for men to buy their lady certificates so if they follow through on this we will be back to square one in a heartbeat.

Labour said that they wanted to modernise the process. That could mean anything.

But i cant see them anouncing a 'LGBT+' policy and it benefiting women and safeguarding.

“Labour will overhaul an “outdated” law to make it easier for transgender people to transition while maintaining protections for single-sex spaces, the party’s chair and shadow equalities secretary has said.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/24/labour-vows-to-modernise-simplify-and-reform-gender-recognition-act

I was trying to be fair to the Government! And it is the headline said easier, not Dobbs.

But its all just words that mean nothing - she said “Changing gender is not a decision anyone makes lightly,” wrote Dodds. “The process is intrusive, outdated and humiliating. So we will modernise, simplify and reform the gender recognition law to a new process. We will remove invasive bureaucracy and simplify the process.”

The process is getting a diagnosis of GD, and either before, during or after changing id to reflect the new identity, then sending an applications with documentation to a panel. I would question where the complexity or humiliation is in that process.

The government do seem committed to keeping the diagnosis element, which would suggest that everything else is bureaucracy?

I think their intention was to issue a GRC on diagnosis with a time to reflect and revert back to their sex.

And have a conversion therapy bill that stops anyone questioning the patients own diagnosis.

So yes, it would be easier, or modern, or less bureaucratic. And make it even harder to maintain single sex facilities and opportunities.

Are we really going to get a ruling that says a GRC gives men the legal right to be treated as women, everywhere, except in sport, because really, old chap, that's not quite fair.

And the peerages. Don't forget the peerages.

It's going to be a bit embarrassing for the government to be talking about the 'intrusive' and 'humiliating' process of beaurocracy for this group of men when they're in the process of making disability and SEND support considerably worse in process than it already is.

There is no point in talking about 'equality law' when the people doing the talking make it very clear that they believe in what is essentially a caste system.

I honestly don't believe this lot descended from Labour.

There’s so much going on it feels muddled.

The only course of action should be dropping the GRA. Maybe we’ll get there when Labour are voted out.

Rather telling that over on trans reddit this has been classed as 'bad news'

The headline talks about revamping equality law, but what I read in the article seemed to say they want to change guidance for service providers (and later employers) to be as pro-women as possible as current law allows.

What the government have in front of them is a proposed new Statutory Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations to the Government. I think this is about emphasising that organizations must use the single sex exemptions that are available within the current law in order to provide women with equality.

The seeing a GRC certificate may be about allowing those with a “legal sex” to use SSS in all circumstances, but that seems unlikely as the law clearly states that GRC holders can be excluded from SSS where it’s LAPA. So it may be about some SSS where an organization wants to include trans people who have adopted a different gender identity but where there isn’t a need for privacy and dignity (e.g Membership of the WI, maybe? Or women’s pricing to get into a club? Which could still fail women on some level, but not as badly) or it may be about ensuring that they can’t change their sex marker on official documentation without one.

I share people’s fears that it also indicates a negative ruling in the FWS case, but I think that’s more my fears coming to the fore. Since I learned that some players are given advance notice I’ve been reading into every article and news story that involves those who might have had a heads up! But a document like this must have been in the making for a long time and not just cobbled together in a few months because of the ruling.

If the parties to the Supreme Court case know the outcome at this point, then it would be contempt of court and a serious criminal offence to disclose the outcome - or even hint at it.

My guess is that the EHRC has been working on this advice ever since, or before, they submitted their position in the FWS case. Their position is that the law is unclear, and so they are providing advice to government on how guidance can improve matters, based on their current interpretation of the law (which is the same as the Scottish government's).

This is pretty much my thoughts too. I am trying to cling to the thought that Sunday’s Times is generally more pro GI than the weekday edition, but it’s not bringing me much comfort.

I’m slightly less worried that Swinney will reintroduce self-ID though. Despite his public pronouncements, he must know it won’t fly. And even if FWS lose, serious politicians will be hesitant to do Stonewalls bidding.

What does an amended full birth certificate of someone with a GRC look like? The government website suggests that if there’s a change in registered sex due to incorrect records the full birth certificate will be amended (e.g. someone with a DSD that’s observed and registered incorrectly at birth) but in the case of a GRC it just says the change will be noted in the margins of the record of the register. It’s not clear though how this is reflected on the birth certificate itself. I know for a “name changed after birth” the full certificate shows the original name in the name section, and new name in a box at the bottom but only the new name would show on the short version. Is it similar for registered sex changed via a GRC?

The GRA & GRCs are now redundant. The legal fiction of a person "changing sex" was only introduced so that those who "changed sex" were able to marry. There was no same sex marriage at the time so this fudge was introduced. The GRA is no longer required.

A birth certificate extracted from the Gender Recognition Register is indistinguishable from any other. The entry on the GRR, on which the certificate is based, is copied from the original birth registration on the main register (which continues to exist), changing only the name and sex marker.

The original registration is 'marked' to show that a corresponding entry on the GRR has been created, but I do not know whether the mark is for the benefit of Registry employees only, or members of the public. If the latter, that seems inconsistent with the GRA requirement for 'officials' to treat the existence of a GRC as private personal information.

According to recent news articles, it's no longer possible to obtain a 'clean' birth certificate following the correction of an error in the original birth registration. In other words, the correction is written in the margin of the registration, and the extract (certificate) shows both the error and the marginal correction, instead of being rewritten to incorporate the correction as if the error had never been. The stories were about clerical errors, but this would presumably also apply in the case of a late-diagnosed DSD, which seems unfortunate. Who wants to advertise their medical history every time they show their birth certificate?

Corrections of errors do take effect ex tunc though, so can truthfully be said to be the information registered at birth, in law.

I am not sure why everyone is thinking the article is about giving men with a GRC acess to women's single sex services.

The current situation is that in invoking the use of the single sex exemptions no man, with or with out a GRC can acess the services.

The court case is not about the SSE.

At the moment a man with a GRC is a "legal woman" for all purposes EXCEPT when a service or job ad invokes the SSE.

The court case is about whether the word sex in the EA can and should only mean a biological female.

So even a man with a GRC could then never be a woman, and would always be a male with a certifcate saying the identify as a woman.

If the EA says sex always mean biology they anything that is advertising as women only, ladies or whatever, can only be used by biological females.

If the court decides that the word sex in the EA does mean biology then I think they will also have to say in law that the word woman is about biological sex, and the same for the word female.

The comments from the EHRC are about how GRC are the only time a protected characteristic is imposed on, negated by another characteristic (gender reassingment). They are saying this is unfair and should not happen.

Maya is on Free Speech Nation talking about this v soon.

For a judgment this big and important usually only the counsel team knows what it is in advance (sometimes even solicitors aren’t allowed to know). The parties to the litigation usually find out right before the judgment is handed down.

The current situation is that in invoking the use of the single sex exemptions no man, with or with out a GRC can access the services.

It's been explained to IWTR repeatedly that this legal "analysis" is wrong - and I doubt she's going to pay any more attention now - but just for the benefit of anyone reading it:

The SSE are what make women-only services legal; they are a key part of balancing fairness and discrimination; and they existed before GRCs were even a thing.

Whether a man with a GRC is considered to be a woman for the purposes.of the Equality Act is the whole point of the FWS court case.

According to this, it IS giving men with GRCs access to our stuff. Who agreed this??

“A source said of the guidelines: “The upshot [of the guidance] means it’s not lawful to have a self-ID service. The fact is that if you let a man in, it’s no longer a single-sex service, and that includes trans people without GRCs [gender recognition certificates].””

Trans people who self-identify as women face single-sex space ban

https://www.thetimes.com/article/68423de4-3325-4af8-b2f0-7c7f12900899?shareToken=d05e58bd8243ca40dd7f90a048f8c65e

If the solution is that a man with a GRC is a woman so long as he proves he has a GRC, its a compromise no one will be happy about.

Women are promised single sex services, and men are promised that they become women and their trans status is a private matter between them and the state.

In this situation no one gets what they need and are promised.

We can either have SSE, or the GRA, but not both.