Should gender reassignment remain a protected characteristic?

[toyl9876]

Should gender reassignment be a protected characteristic? If no, why?

Even for mumsnet users you won't get a representative answer here. I hid the feminism topic years ago because discussion on GC/trans rights is so toxic and dominates the feminism board. I only saw this because I've just moved to a new browser so my settings were all removed.
The fact you have so many 'no's on your poll shows how far people have moved from an academic discussion of whether sex or gender should have primacy to just open hatred and disgust for (primarily) trans women. The emotional basis of it is a mix of fear of men and internalized misogyny IMO.
The pile on I will (and you are) likely to experience now is the main reason I pretty much never post on this topic.

No, of course not. It’s meaningless. At the moment anyone could simply state that they have the characteristics on the basis that they feel like the opposite sex (which is itself impossible).

People who are mentally ill should obviously be treated with kindness, but that doesn’t mean they have additional rights.

I don’t know. I’d like more objective information both ways

Why do we need to have a distinct category called 'gender'? On what basis?
It is a relatively recent fad/invention - unlike 'Sex' 'Religion' 'Disability', 'Sexual Orientation'.

Because it’s a legal requirement as per council of Europe and I don’t see the U.K. moving away from that any time soon.

I just don’t see us leaving the council of Europe any time soon therefore it will remain.

What you are calling a "pile on", is simply people responding to a question. When you come onto a board on which you already know the majority perspective and that yours is different, what else might you expect?

No because it is a meaningless term. If a term can be dredged up that means something, then that would be fine but that would mean dismantling the whole of gender ideology.
Agree with a PP it should come under religion/belief.

That's not a great reason. We're sharing philosophical talking points.

Im being practical. Im sorry that you feel im not contributing to thr discussion.

I don't want any man treated less favourably than another man just because he wishes he was a woman, no. (Vice versa for women). So on that basis I'm fine with it remaining a protected characteristic.

However I do wonder why it is picked out. It's a mental health condition/belief/religion (depending on the cause for the individual involved) so why is it picked out of other mental health conditions or beliefs?

If we must have protected characteristics (rather than just treating every person fairly) how about for a) mental health problems, such as depression or gender dysphoria, and b) non-religious beliefs, such as gender identity or veganism. I don't want people with depression, or vegans, treated differently either.

If we consider the homosexual transsexuals (mainly men, but perhaps the occasional woman) wouldn't they be covered adequately by the PC of sexual orientation? Isn't 'presenting as a woman' just the far end of the effeminate gay man spectrum?

It’s as evidenced as an invisible friend or psychic powers…

Reasonable for it to apply to people with enduring gender dysphoria. Not reasonable for it to apply to to the AGP fetishists. So Stonewall’s widening of the umbrella has been unhelpful to all, particularly including those with enduring gender dysphoria.

Just as gender critical beliefs are protected, so should too people's (albeit wrong) beliefs that they are actually different from the sex they actually are. As long as you're not pushing those beliefs on other people or demanding people belive what you believe, or demanding unreasonable accommodations in order to practice your belief, we're all good.

So I guess what I saying is that "gender reassignment" is already a protected belief under the equalities act whether it is specified or not bc it is a belief. One only believes they have been "reassigned" a new gender.

You are free to answer what 'gender reassignment' actually is. The OP certainly isn't able to apparently.

Sorry, I didn’t think I had to Google for you. Under the Equality Act, a person has gender reassignment if “the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.”

That doesn’t actually tell us what ‘gender reassignment’ actually is. Does it mean taking cross sex hormones, or does it need to involve surgery, or does it simply mean dressing as the opposite sex?

It doesn't need to remain bc afaik it is a belief and is already as protected as gender critical beliefs. Gender reassignment is a euphemism for plastic surgery and hormone injections. That one has actually changed their gender by doing these things is a belief, not an immutable characteristic that warrants the same protections as race or SEX.

I personally would be fine with the definition be narrowed to people actually undergoing medical transition or it being restricted to those with an actual diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

If you were to post that opinion on Reddit you would be swamped by screams of ‘transphobia’ and, no doubt, face some creative attempts at doxxing.

Why couldn't gender dysphorla be covered by the PC of disability? Why does this particular condition need a PC of its own?

I know, but I don’t think it should be controversial to say you must have gender dysphoria to have protection. That’s literally what being trans is. Trans Reddit is pretty insane and I find myself feeling more and more unaligned with the community

I don’t think it’s necessarily a disability, but it could cause one if the impact on someone was severe enough. But the problem with it just being protect under disability is that gender dysphoria is transient and a condition needs to have a significant impact to be covered under the Equality Act. That would mean someone who transitions and doesn’t experience gender dysphoria anymore would no longer have protection.

It begs the question: what exactly is being protected? Is it the belief that people can change sex, or be neither sex, or both? Is it the right to dress in clothes typically worn by the opposite sex? Is it behaving in a way that is stereotypically associated with the opposite sex?