Norman Tebbit was not alone in raising reasoned objections and foreseeing many of the problems that have plagued us. Vulvamort aka HairyLeggdHarpy's Twitter/X threads are a wonderful if horrifying repository of prescient quotes from Hansard:
https://x.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1177699186361458688
Hilary Armstrong's characterisation of the GR Bill as a "trivial subject" shocked me but it is part and parcel of how the Bill was introduced by stealth and then steamrollered through by the Labour Government. I will come back to Hilary but first to Baroness Blatch, who opposed the Bill.
There is a long post here about other objections that were raised in the Lords during the passage of the Gender Recognition Bill, including a quote from Baroness Blatch about the unparliamentary, underhand way that the Bill was introduced in order to avoid alerting the public and press. This suggests to me that the Government was aware, or at the very least concerned, that the public would not support the Bill:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5129872-new-video-akua-reindorf-maya-fortstater-and-helen-joyce-on-the-equality-act?reply=137206179
Baroness Blatch raises the point that the Bill was not listed in the Queen's Speech but was introduced into Parliament the very next day following the Queen's Speech:
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 resulted in the Bill not being picked up by the Press.
Pilfering some content another Mumsnet post, this time about the paucity of press coverage of the Gender Recognition Bill:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5015686-5015686-gender-recognition-act-2004?reply=133344042
1 Jan 2003 - 1 Aug 2004
The Guardian: nothing
The Independent: nothing
The Times: nothing
The Telegraph: nothing
Daily Express: nothing
The Mirror: nothing
The Sun: nothing
Evening Standard: nothing
ITV: nothing
Channel 4: nothing
The BBC: one mention in the last paragraph of a review of the film "Boys Don't Cry"
The victims of prejudice - BBC News
Chris Summers
26 Dec 2003
First and last two paragraphs:
"On 26 December 1993 a young transsexual was shot and stabbed to death in the United States in a crime which later became the subject of the Oscar-winning movie Boys Don't Cry. Ten years on, her family are still seeking justice and dozens of transsexuals continue to be murdered every year."
"Gwen Smith said many US states had now introduced legislation to combat discrimination against transsexuals - the UK is set to introduce its own Gender Recognition Bill next year.
But she said: "Changing people's attitudes is a slow process. It's an evolutionary process and it will take time."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3219591.stm
How about the Daily Mail - which I would not have touched with a bargepole back then! The earliest mention is 29 Jan 2004.
Ephraim Hardcastle
29 Jan 2004
"The Government has consulted sporting bodies about its Gender Recognition Bill for transsexuals. Among them: the British Disabled Fencing Association, the English Ladies Golf Association and the British Weightlifters Association. It's possible to imagine that men who've changed into women might outperform other members of their chosen gender in disabled fencing and ladies' golf, but weightlifting?"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-229405/Odd-conclusions-Lord-Hutton.html
Widdecombe's grunt was a fair impression of a truffle porker
Quentin Letts
24 February 2004
Scathing commentary on Parliamentary proceedings in terms that would see this post deleted. First and last paragraphs:
"YOU can always spot ' em. It' s something to do with the hands, the feet and the voice. Really, it's impossible to disguise."
"Everyone is so ( properly) concerned about being kind to transsexuals that they presume any related new law, no matter how mad, must be passed."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-259590/Widdecombes-grunt-fair-impression-truffle-porker.html
Something amiss? It is if this lunacy is not halted
Jeff Powell
01 March 2004
Jeff despairs at the future of women's sport. To avoid the Ban Hammer, just first and last paragraphs again.
"TAKE heart Dwain Chambers, all is not yet lost. There may be a way back into the Olympics after all - through a loophole in a woman's dress."
"There is nothing some of these guys won't do to win a gold medal."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-230424/Something-amiss-It-lunacy-halted.html
The sexual identity free-for-all
Melanie Phillips
28 April 2004
I think I might get away with the first paragraph and then the last few but the whole thing is worth a read.
"Almost without notice by the public, an astonishing proposal to falsify sexual identity and make criminals out of people who tell the truth about it is on the way to being approved by Parliament."
"The Bishop of Winchester has been a lonely voice speaking out against it.
Yet no bishops voted on the third reading in the Lords, because they were at an official dinner instead.
Even more startling, the Synod devoted the very next day to debating issues of human sexuality - yet managed to ignore the Gender Recognition Bill, the greatest challenge ever made in this country to sexual identity.
The Government presents this Bill - which has been forced upon us by the European Court of Human Rights - as an issue of rights and privacy.
But no one has the right to expect public servants to promulgate a lie. And it is hard to imagine a more public matter than redefining what it is to be a man or woman.
More profoundly, this Bill continues the systematic attack being mounted upon all moral and social norms, to the extent of challenging what it is to be a human being.
It illustrates how our society is unravelling through the substitution of irrational feelings for demonstrable facts. For the arguments behind this Bill are no more reasonable than saying that, if someone believed sincerely they were a chicken, they should have a birth certificate declaring they had been born a chicken.
The general silence and acquiescence in the face of this are simply astonishing. It's as if the nation is anaesthetised.
The outcome will be a sexual identity free-for-all and a further descent into a moral vacuum."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-259516/The-sexual-identity-free-all.html
That's it for the Daily Mail until the next article in 2010.
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Before I get back to Hilary Armstrong: one of the objections raised during the passage of the Bill was the "privacy" aspect. I had not realised until listening to Michael Foran's podcast yesterday that Goodwin's main case was NOT about marriage but about "privacy" of his transsexual status.
Goodwin was a hulking male so nobody could have failed to notice that he was a man. However, he was not only delusional about his appearance but also paranoid. He imagined that his employer had found out from a previous employer that he was male and that his current employer had then told his fellow employees and that, as a result, they were "gossiping" about him.
THIS is the effin basis of the nightmare that we have not yet escaped - the paranoia of a delusional man; and this is why Press For Change championed Goodwin - not marriage rights but secrecy!!
Keeping Sex Private (Part 2) - Michael Foran
20 Sept 2024
"One of the central issues that has arisen in terms of the relationship between trans rights and women’s rights is whether trans people have a legal entitlement to keep information about their biological sex at birth private.
In this episode, I’m joined by Tim Pitt-Payne KC, one of the UK’s leading privacy and information law barristers to discuss the law in this area. This is the second of three episodes on this topic. This episode applies the general legal principles discussed in Part 1 to the case of Goodwin v United Kingdom. It then explores whether there is a legal right for trans people to keep their biological sex or information around their gender history private and, if so, in what contexts."
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/keeping-sex-private-part-2/id1754957520?i=1000670154256
Alastair Campbell
We all know that Campbell still considers the concerns of women in this matter "trivial" even irritating.
From 2000 - 2003 he was Downing Street's director of communications and spokesman for the Labour Party. So Campbell would have been responsible for the omission of the Gender Recognition Bill from the Queen's Speech in 2003 and the subsequent dearth of press coverage.
(Keeping the next part brief, I know all this stuff and more through involvement with the trade unions and TUC in the North East from the mid 1980's - mid 2000's.)
Hilary Armstrong
Hilary was the MP for North West Durham from 1987 - 2010, having lost out to Tony Blair when seeking selection for the Sedgefield seat in 1983. She was made a life peer in 2010.
She and Tony Blair worked closely together.
Tony Blair and his Transvestite pal
Both before and after the Labour victory in the 1997 General Election, Blair roamed around trade union, TUC and Northern Labour meetings trailed by his entourage or sometimes accompanied just by Cameron and/or a very large man in a big hat, dressed like a "stately as a galleon" grande dame from a Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple mystery.
It bugs me to death that I cannot remember this person's name.
Well before 2003, Blair once turned up unexpected at our Regional Women’s Committee (Union meeting) with matey in tow and introduced him to us. When Blair had done chatting and was making his leave, matey went to take a seat, clearly pre-planned. The Women's Committee Chair was having none of it and sent him packing.
All staged by Blair to get his mate installed in the Women’s Committee. Long before the GRA.
I do not know if Blair's pal was connected with Press for Change. I have searched the PfC archive and dug as deep and as wide as I can on the internet but cannot find hide nor hair of him.
However, until proved otherwise, I am left wondering if the coordinated stealth, steamrollering and "gold plating" of the Gender Recognition Bill owes something to the friendship between Blair, Cameron, Armstrong and that Mystery Transvestite.