Should gender reassignment remain a protected characteristic?

[toyl9876]

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

The Equality Act is not intended to cover all groups that might potentially suffer from discrimination, far from it. There are plenty of groups that suffer real discrimination by society that we do not expect the law to create a special privilege for.

I don't think believing you are the opposite sex is deserving of special protections. The corollary of "pretty privilege" is that ugly people suffer significant discrimination. The same for class, the same for how fat someone is, what regional accent they speak with, body odour, countless others. Even ginger hair!

These groups also suffer real, verifiable discrimination but it is not, amd should not, be the law's job to negotiate every interation between people.

No special protections for "being trans" (whatever that means) not for "gender reassignment" which is a personal choice.

People with gender dysphoria seem to think that they're actually changing sex, therefore should be entitled to be in opposite sex facilities.

Being protected under their actual sex would protect them in the same way, but make it clear that they haven't changed sex.

If men were not trying to get into spaces designed for women and girls, it may be different.

Please explain how leisure centre staff can not discriminate against one man in the female changing rooms over another man, if we don't know whether they are '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.'?

How do we know what a man is proposing to do?

But they are not changing sex and women should not be required to have their single sex spaces diluted to accommodate men. It erodes safety, dignity and comfort for girls and women.

Thankyou, OP. It's a tricky question because e.g. repealing the GRA would produce howls of rage about removing 'rights' from trans people. But including in the EA2010 a group of people whose characteristics are so diverse, nebulous and without empirical evidence (so that they make 'religious and philosophical belief' look positively grounded, evidence-based and totally recognisable in all situations) thrusts a spanner in the workings of the law. The SC judgement did not only clarify the law, it said out loud the problems and pitfalls that recognising 'legal sex' instead of biological sex (as had been going on for about a decade) could legally cause e.g. that TiFs would be ineligible for maternity rights because they were 'men' and that it would impinge greatly on the rights of the disabled and the aforesaid religious-philosophical group as they could not object to male bodied people as intimate carers and persons of the opposite biological sex intruding into spaces meant to give safety, dignity and privacy e.g. to women (but also to men) because they were segregated by 'gender'.
Removing GI from the statute would clear up those problems. Trans could be included in the religious-philosophical section (where it belongs).

I'm interested in this, which is how you responded when asked to define 'trans'.

Are you saying that all transgender people have gender dysphoria?
And that all people with gender dysphoria are trans?

Taking the NHS definition:
Gender dysphoria is a term that describes a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

I think that covers a lot of people, including myself, and a I suspect quite a few other women on this board.

My way of dealing with my 'unease' because of the mismatch between my biological sex and my gender identity was to challenge and reject the socially constructed gender identity attached to my biological sex.

Fortunately I didn't try to change my biological sex to match a different socially constructed gender identity, because I'd have got myself into a whole world of problems- medical, social, legal, personal - given that it is impossible to change sex.

So are you saying that trans people are a subset of people with gender dysphoria who think that they can solve their 'unease' by pursuing an impossibility, i.e. 'reassigning' their sex?

The vocabulary around gender, transition, reassignment, dysphoria, etc etc are just too vague for rational discussion, and as is becoming more and more clear, enshrining vague concepts into law is building up a store of legal and social problems.

Can you set out where this is stated please. Not true AFAIK

If you want the “Feminism” board, it is here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism

This board was set up so that women could have a safe space in which to discuss the impact of gender identity ideology on some of our legal protections and female only spaces. Because it is a topic that others do not want to allow discussion about. Not sure why; there seems to be a tone-policing, ‘silencing others’ rather authoritarian tendency among those who unquestioningly support the right of trans identified people to access services and facilities intended for the opposite sex.

We prefer to have the difficult conversations on this board rather than silencing people. Bring your arguments by all means, but leave the judgemental tone policing.

And if you don’t like it, as I said, the Feminism (non-controversial topics) board is linked above.

Because the provision of single sex services isn’t challenged because of the GR. As they are single sex the men should use the men’s. This is the Law and always has been.

The problem is that the GRC enables men to obtain the legal sex of female, which has allowed entry to women’s single sex spaces.

There is a legitimate aim to single sex provision which segregates only based on sex. Everyone receives the same treatment.

The man who feels he is a woman, is not discriminated against by being asked to change with other men, nor because they are trans.

If in your scenario, the staff ask for ID to ascertain sex, that ID needs to reflect birth sex. The GRC enables people to change this information and obtain new ID reflecting an untruth. The GR doesn’t discuss legal sex at all.

if they were refused access to healthcare, employment, Housing, benefits or public services because they are ‘trans’, that is discrimination and should be treated as such as a protected characteristic. Same as if you are pregnant, homosexual, disabled, black etc

@toyl9876 At the end of the day, there is only one reason to lobby for the removal of a specific protection: to make the actions that protection forbids legal again. If you aren't planning on discriminating, you don't need gender reassignment remove

Not true. One can make a perfectly good argument for removing any legislation on the grounds that it is incoherent or superfluous.

It’s not special treatment to ask for the same legal protections as any other protected characteristic.

I don’t think you understand how sex discrimination works in the Equality Act. For sex discrimination to take place you have to be treated differently to someone of the opposite sex. A employer that doesn’t hire trans people of either sex wouldn’t be discriminating on the basis of sex because the treatment of men and woman is equal.

I voted yes. I absolutely back women’s rights and single sex spaces. Trans people do get discriminated against (in work, in housing, in the areas the main trans charities don’t seem in the slightest bit interested in because they are too busy depriving women of their rights). Of course trans people have the right to wear skirts/grow beards/ live peacefully in society.

I would also make a pragmatic point that, if trans people don’t have rights to not be discriminated against then the ECHR really would take an interest.

I haven't voted because I want to hear all the arguments first. For those voting to keep the PC of GR, I'm interested as to why you think this needs to be a protected characteristic (in addition to any disability or belief protections) as opposed to all the other non-protected characteristics that get discriminated against eg being very fat or poor

@Igmum

Of course trans people have the right to wear skirts/grow beards/ live peacefully in society.

But do they have more of a right to do these things than any other person? Or I suppose should they?

I'd argue we allow everyone the right to grow a beard or wear trousers. The point is whether someone deserves this privilege arising from their gender reassignment status. They don't deserve it specifically; everyone does.

I’ve explained why making trans people to rely on disability or sex discrimination would leave them open to discrimination. You haven’t explained how removed gender reassignment wouldn’t weaken protections.

Please explain how it would be discriminatory to refuse housing to one man but not another on the basis that one of them might be '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.'?

Just trying to work out how anyone on earth knows if someone 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.' and if they do know what discrimination is allowed and what is not.