Trans women ban in single sex spaces

[Cismyfatarse]

This was in the Times today. Do we dare to hope?

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

https://www.thetimes.com/article/68423de4-3325-4af8-b2f0-7c7f12900899?shareToken=f012cc8892c9e09b8980831f5adc89e6

Originally the stated aim was to stop transexuals having to "out" themselves to officialdom by having to show documentation that said male (or female, but let's face it, we know who this was for) when their appearance was so entirely feminine that nobody would ever guess. But that perfectly passing TS was a unicorn even then and now that body modifications have been (rightly) divorced from the concept of claiming a cross-sex identity, even that situation will never arise.
So yeah, I also struggle to see the point of a GRC.

I think the original aim was to turn men into women for all purposes, and the lobbyists didn't even want to give us the concessions that we did get (and which don't get used because of their constant misinformation and threats). Lesbian clubs, the lot.

I hope we win, because it would give a jolt to the system. But it would open up a conversation about whether women's associations should be allowed to exclude legal females if there's no safety angle. We might find there are lots of people who think not.

It doesn't help that the msm that are on 'our' side, mix up the two situations, so readers think it's all about safety etc, including Wednesday's decision. It's not.

Fingers crossed.

But not all purposes - primogeniture was specifically excluded, because it might have benefitted women if they were the eldest child, and heaven forfend any of this were to benefit women!

Yes it’s a start
Let’s hope it goes through

One of the cases that kicked off 'trans liberation' in the '60s was of a woman who managed to claim a baronetcy with some jiggery-pokery involving some bits of testicular matter she found down the back of a drawer in her groin. (She was a doctor, and she didn't want the baronetcy, just to keep her marriage legal and valid.)

They wouldn't want that happening again, would they?

Exactly. There should be absolutely no way a birth certificate can be amended except in extremely rare cases where necessary. I read an article with new parents whose baby had somehow been incorrectly registered (I can’t remember how) but weren’t allowed to have the birth cert corrected to reflect the baby’s actual sex.

Whereas men who have paid a fiver, got a doctors note and waited two years can change it on demand. In Australia they can change it every year as far as I understand. What an utterly ridiculous situation.

Along with all other official id that can be changed on a self id basis, it makes a mockery of whole concept of id and gives the general public a false sense of security.

Incidentally, this all started with creating a mechanism for people with DSDs who had been mis-sexed at birth, to correct their birth certificate. Sex was decided on the basis of physical characteristics, but not only the apparent genitals. Transsexuals - ie people who had not been mis-sexed but who wanted to live as if they were the opposite sex and probably had had, or were planning to have, GRS to some degree, pushed the idea of psychological sex as one factor in determining sex. That concept was resisted by the judiciary until quite late in the day but by the 1970s (I think) the idea that your sex was at least partly about how you "felt", was seriously entertained.

We can see how elements of a perfectly reasonable move to help people with an actual medical condition were subverted to the GII cause. One salient example being the "correction" of a birth certificate, which now actually means "falsification". How psychological sex became GI/gender and so on. The GI movement completely took over.

ETA: Partly in answer to BundleBoogie and Mumteedum

That concept was resisted by the judiciary until quite late in the day but by the 1970s (I think) the idea that your sex was at least partly about how you "felt", was seriously entertained.

I think it was the other way around. From about the 20s to the 60s, transsexuals were able to get their birth registrations 'corrected' with a doctor's letter, analagously to DSDs.

That system got broken when April Ashley's husband sued for nullification, and a judicial test (karyotype, gonads etc) for sex was created. This kicked off 'trans liberation'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CorbettvCorbett

I see I previously attributed trans liberation to the Ewan Forbes case! Well, it was all going on in the sixties.

I wrote this post on another thread that describes what happens if you correct an error in a birth registration, or apply for a new registration in the GRR (different processes):

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5313803-womens-rights-to-be-prioritised-in-equality-law-revamp?reply=143517327&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

The couple in the news story were upset because they couldn't get a clean certificate, not because the error was uncorrectable.

My understanding is that Ashley hadn't changed his birth certificate but he and Corbett got married abroad. When they came back to the UK and Corbett decided he wanted a divorce, his legal team used the argument that the marriage wasn't valid because they were both male so no divorce was needed (and therefore no payout for Ashley).

I haven't heard anything about transexuals being able to change their birth cert before that.

Ewan Forbes had certainly done so, with a doctor's letter, so that she could marry a woman.

On reflection, maybe it was the only one ever and she lied. But it's become part of the TRA narrative 🙄

I feel very strongly that birth certificates are a public record and, apart from trivial clerical errors, there should be a very high bar for getting them changed. It's not up to adults to change their birth records decades later to affirm some identity they've developed in the meantime.

If you do genealogy you come across oddities from time to time. I found a relative who I was sure was called James, known colloquially as Jim, and it turned out his birth cert actually did give his name as Jim. Maybe the registrar was having a dress down Friday.

The funny thing is that as an adult Jim converted to Mormonism and all his LDS church records refer to him as James. But he never got the original birth cert changed, nor do I think he should have been able to.

According to the wiki, though, Forbes claimed to have a dsd, although it's not clear at all which one, and the suggestion seems to be that Forbes lied in order to get a male birth certificate (and obviously there was the matter of the big fat inheritance to consider, because Forbes couldn't have it otherwise).

Ashley didn't claim a dsd. Corbett met Ashley in a sex club in paris that catered specifically for men who were sexually interested in men pretending to be women.

"Psychological" DSD was what was pushed. (Just going back to my earlier post.)

Destruction tested. Put in place -without consultation or proper thought and usually without considering those who are going to be impacted - out of a well meaning attempt to be kind, and left to roll. It's never ended in sunshine and roses and turned out to be a good thing. It has however proved why it was a really bad idea in the first place.

Some questions that really ought to be being asked by government at this point:

Are these little loopholes usually/always/never exploited by bad actors?

Do they form 'the thin end of the wedge' permitting more extremist/bad actors to force open doors to what they really wanted but would never have been permitted or considered reasonable to demand? Once that wedge is under leverage what is there to stop it being forced endlessly wider in pursuit of goals by the powerful?

When this forcing and leveraging is going on, who benefits and who loses under the law, justice, ethics, society, those kind of things? Whose legal protections get looser? Which of those losing groups needed those protections in the first place precisely to avoid bad actors/more powerful groups subordinating them?

How easy is it to turn around one of these well meaning little experiments when it's been destruction tested and has all gone horribly wrong? What kind of a mess will there be to clean up?

And with all that in mind, would it be a good idea for any legislator with a grain of sanity to ever bloody consider doing this again?

All a man needs is a certificate costing £5, and he’ll have free access to all women’s spaces. What misogynist or sex fetishist would not buy one?

Ah, thank you for clarifying.

Yes, but we also want to be able to exclude the men with F on their birth certificate as well.

We can see how this is being made extremely challenging.

At a personal level, obviously we have eyes and can see that it is a bloke stood in front of us. At an organisational level, said bloke will have all female id including birth certificate so short of a cheek swab to provide official verification, how can we exclude them in practice? A kind of ‘computer says yes’ scenario. Maybe we need proper biometric id?

Does anyone remember that the government also managed to change the law to benefit the small number of men of the right age who wanted to take advantage of the earlier retirement age for women? They were not able to sort anything helpful for WASPI women but men who wanted to retire 5 years early on full state pension - yes, law change no problem!

Yes, but we also want to be able to exclude the men with F on their birth certificate as well.

We certainly do, but PP meant that if you meet a man with a female birth certificate, you know he's got a GRC

Thinking about these problems is like thinking about getting the fox, the chicken and the corn across the river

It is. This is what happens when the legislature play games of fuck around and find out.

If you as a woman are faced with a six foot chap with stubble, full equipment bulging, and you're in a confined space where you planned to get undressed or he's in a job role where he's about to intimately touch you, are you going to predicate your response and your consent on whether or not he has a nice certificate at home, or that his sex has been properly and legally falsified on a birth certificate?

It's an even greater absurdity and insult than being expected to try to arrange your boundaries around what medication he might have taken, what cosmetic surgery he might have had, his chosen clothes and appearance, and how 'sincere' he might be.

If you build it, they will come.

Ah I see. It really does make a mockery of everything. Official id - women’s consent - reality. An absolute mockery.

The GRA has to be up there with one of the worst laws ever drafted.

Good.

The GRA has to be up there with one of the worst laws ever drafted

But Labour are "so proud" of it. And I don't see them saying, fair cop, we got it wrong, anytime soon.