Should the UK have a simple, clear legal definition of sex, male and female?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

To follow on from https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5533120-5533120-should-the-gender-recognition-act-be-repealed?page=6&reply=152596360 where 96% of voters said the Gender Recognition Act should be repealed

However, repealing the GRA alone could leave a legal gap. The GRA is not the only source of confusion. Some of the problem comes from older case law too.
There is already case law with the phrase "woman for all practical purposes" in it. This comes from a 2004 House of Lords case involving a transsexual police applicant. The applicant was male, had undergone surgery, and wanted to be treated as female for the purposes of police work. The issue was whether that male could be excluded from the job because police officers sometimes had to carry out same-sex searches. Before the GRA, the court decided that a post-operative transsexual person could be treated as their acquired gender for some practical purposes, including same-sex searches.

That is exactly the kind of ambiguity that needs fixing. Parliament should not simply repeal the GRA and leave older “practical purposes” arguments sitting there as the fallback position.

Whether the GRA is repealed, amended or left in place, we need legislation that clearly and unequivocally states the legal definition of sex, male and female.

The legal definition should say something like:

• for the purposes of any Act, statutory instrument, public function, policy, data collection, sex-based rule, sex-based exception, sex-based service or sex-based protection, sex means biological sex in human beings, being male or female
• male means a person whose body developed along the male pathway, organised around the production of small motile gametes, sperm
• female means a person whose body developed along the female pathway, organised around the production of large immobile gametes, ova
• man and boy mean male
• woman and girl mean female
• sex is observed and recorded at birth, not assigned; a birth record may be corrected where there has been a genuine recording error, but sex is not created by paperwork
• actual fertility is not required; a person does not stop being male or female because of age, infertility, miscarriage, menopause, hysterectomy, vasectomy, injury, difference or disorder of sex development, medical treatment or surgery
• people with DSDs are still male or female; DSDs are variations in the development of male or female bodies, not a third sex, and people with DSDs should always be treated with dignity, privacy and respect
• sex is not determined by chromosomes alone, hormone levels, height, strength, appearance, clothing, hairstyle, voice, breast size, genital appearance, personality, social role, stereotypes, brain claims, feelings, belief or identity
• sex is not changed by a Gender Recognition Certificate, passport, driving licence, NHS record, deed poll, self-identification, social transition, hormones, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgery, certificate, document, administrative record, or any other document or procedure
• non-human examples, such as clownfish or plants, do not alter the legal definition of sex in human beings
• gender reassignment remains a separate protected characteristic
• trans people remain protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation under the Equality Act; this is about defining sex clearly, not removing ordinary legal protections from trans people

This would not stop anyone living as they wish. It would not remove ordinary protections against discrimination, which should always remain. It would simply stop the state and public bodies from treating sex as a paperwork exercise.
Sex is real, binary and immutable. Most of the time, sex does not matter. But in the contexts where it does matter, it matters profoundly: safeguarding, privacy, dignity, data, sport, prisons, healthcare and single-sex services.

A proper legal definition would cut through years of ideological confusion and make the law clear again.

I'm going to withhold my vote for the moment; because this seems to beg the question, i.e. I would contend that the UK does have highly effective and robust statute for determining what 'biological sex' is. (much bigger is the problem of paperwork that is authoritative on biological sex.) Trying to get an act passed that defines it 'once and for all' would seem to provide little benefit and opens the risk to TRA to pass bad legislation. But I'm curious to see what the actual arguments are for modern codification in one place. Perhaps there are problematic cases I'm not aware of.

Yes but we already do (from the EqA2010 supported by the Supreme Court).

In Croft (not the Police case - Royal Mail I think) there were some obiter (aside/in passing) comments from the judge that a TW might get to a point in transition when he could use the ladies but that isn’t what happened in Croft and when the GRA was brought in they chose not to differentiate between different points of/actions to transition and the EqA2010 followed the GRA’s lead.

So we do have sex very clearly defined in law. Many TRAs might wish it weren’t, or were defined differently, but it’s still there.

(Note, IANAL so don’t take this as gospel)

No, everyone knows what male and female means in terms of sex.

It could be attempted, but I am wondering if that ship has sailed. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, or that it wouldn't be a worthwhile position to eventually get to; but I think it would take a generation of lobbying and would likely take the rollercoaster route that the Assisted Dying bill has taken.

We have perhaps a generation and a half (generalizing, all of Gen Z and half of Millennials) of people who believe that anyone should be able to live however they want and do whatever they want, even if it's illegal but "morally right". Especially if the people who are doing it are not affecting them personally.

I think, to them, saying everything that you wrote in your post would be akin to proclaiming that we are going back to "marriage is between one man and one woman", Trumpism, and on the WSOH. I honestly think that a lot of the younger generations don't want to really understand the issues, avoid conflict whenever they can, see "kind" and "unkind" in very black and white terms, and don't want to see anything on paper that disturbs them or makes them have to think unpleasant thoughts. Or anything which makes them have to do anything resembling hard work, such as spending 20 years campaigning against something they don't want to have to deal with.

Like it or not, the younger generations will be in charge someday, and they will be in charge of what they created.

It seems like a straightforward and logical thing for the older generations, that a man is male and a woman is female, and that sex is immutable (because it is). But putting this into law for everyone to see, I think, would appear to younger people to be just like laws enacted against LGB people in countries like Belarus, and like laws restricting reproductive rights in states in the US.

Just my opinion. I'm very cynical about all this, for personal reasons as well as from seeing how easy it has been recently to nearly do away with women's rights completely. I think your idea is necessary, and I would welcome it. I just don't think such a bill would ever pass.

After FWS, the Equality Act position is more clear: sex means biological sex for the purposes of that Act, and a GRC does not make a male person a woman for Equality Act purposes. Great

But I don’t think that is the same as having a simple, once-and-for-all, unarguable definition of sex, male and female across UK law. Because TRAs keep digging legal holes

The Equality Act says a woman is “a female of any age” and a man is “a male of any age”, but it does not spell out in plain biological terms what male and female mean. We have clarity now because the Supreme Court interpreted the law correctly. That is excellent, but it is still clarity achieved through litigation. Basically any hole a legal worm can get through, they will

And yes, Croft was Royal Mail. The “for all practical purposes” phrase I was thinking of is from A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. Croft matters too, though, because it shows the same old problem: courts and employers being left to work out when a male person in transition might be treated as female for facilities purposes.

Thats the weird ambiguity we need to address, ambiguity Parliament should now remove.

We need a clear, unarguable statement on the face of UK law: sex means biological sex, male means male, female means female, and no certificate, document, identity, hormones or surgery changes that.

Then it's settled in law, for as long as possible

We don't need any more discussion about this. Male and female humans have existed forever. We know what those terms mean. We need to move on, not have inarguable statements, which will be argued over anyway.

Get over it.

I'm afraid it's a NO from me. I think that the current crop of politicians would be just as likely to make the current situation worse, through ignorance or misogyny or incompetence.

We already have a clear definition of sex in law. It was decided in Corbett vs. Corbett, in 1970, when Mr. Justice Roger Ormrod (later Lord Justice Ormrod) said that sex is determined by a combination of three things - gonads, chromosomes and genitals, as they exist at birth, when those things are congruent. Where those three things are not congruent and there is doubt a court will make a decision based on medical advice.

That seems perfectly watertight and beyond argument.

We don't need any new laws to weigh in. It's already established.

I mean I don’t disagree. Clearly. But the fact people keep arguing about it means we clearly DO lack a shared definition?

I don’t disagree with the material reality.

but in law. Things are very very different and it

keeps
getting
Argued
about

so let’s define it?

How is this still being discussed?
There’s male and female. That is it.

Look I don’t disagree. But it seems the law disagrees quite a lot.

@SingleSexSpacesInSchoolshow??

The people that keep arguing are those that just refuse to accept any definition that separates males from females, no matter how you define them.

But it is defined. In law. It was defined in Corbett v Corbett. It has been defined in law since 1970.

It's only argued about by people who are ignorant of the fact that it has already been defined. That's a problem of ignorance, nothing else.

Do I think the definition needs to be more widely known, especially by those people who think it hasn't been defined? Definitely. Does it need defining? No. It's already defined, and it's a very good definition.

For some folks, there’ll never be a shared definition unless it includes men. And for the rest, the definition is pretty clear.

I agree with @MyAmpleSheep we already have law. And it’s good and makes sense. The problem is that some individuals dont accept that, and that will still be the case regardless.

They are not arguing in good faith. Playing chess with pigeons springs to mind.

But you have males claiming to be female. Are you saying they are just batshit and deluded?

I think the Supreme Court judgment settles the matter. As it should have been years ago, which would have saved a lot of heartache.

I think that passing a new law with an explicit definition of sex is unnecessary. The case law seems to be adequate, now that we have the SC judgement. And any remaining legal pushing and shoving around the issue just reflects a real set of social tensions. It isn't the business of Parliament to erase social division by pre-empting any remaining skirmishes in court.

It also isn't the business of Parliament to state material reality as extensively as suggested in the OP. That would seem authoritarian, and might even place some legitimate researchers in the same situation that Galileo found himself in. After all, scientific definitions are meant to be open to testing and revision. As obviously true as the components of the OP's definition are, it isn't right to take them away from science and give them to the law.

I think that in the US there have been some instances of legal overreach, such as defining sex and creating criminal offences relating to wrong toilet use? When unnecessary laws like this are passed, it seems ideological and persecutory. It would create some basis in truth for the TRA claims of being victimised.

For NAL nice analysis.

Everyone knows what the words means.

Tthe illegality of the trans movement alleged to change terms. But did not.

Any legislative change would be dangerous. It opens the door to the unknown.

Also you’ve ignored NI, how EU sits and how any significant change can be challenged.

We know what’s what, people will get in line.

The trans delusion will wane.

You’ll be left with the odd old man prancing around in a skirt.

There will be a wave of now teens suing in next 10 years when they realise drugs have rendered them asexual or surgery has rendered them infertile.

I think the UK should have one and now it does with the Supreme Court Ruling.

In each instance where people want rights outside of that, for example the man who says he is a woman and not getting a job because that role will involve the rights of women to same sex treatment not being met, then that is clearly a good reason to not get that job. We need to go back to the original reasons why single sex treatment or spaces and if there is good reason, that reason needs to stand.

I agree with PPs that we already have a definition of sex, from Corbett v Corbett.

It's what's on your original birth certificate. Case law such as W v W has given us robust guidance on what retroactive changes the Registrar can make in case of a DSD.

It would be useful to confirm that every reference to sex in law means this. I believe this will follow logically from R on app. GLP et al v EHRC, where Swift J elegantly demonstrated that a sex-relevant instrument that lies outwith EA2010 by virtue of Schedule 22 must have the same meaning for sex as EA2010 does.

ID needs sorting.

DBS needs sorting too.