Draft Conversion Practices Bill - published

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-conversion-practices-bill

They don't. All the available research shows regret rates are low.

But, once again, we don't and can't legislate for something so subjective and without any quantifiable evidence for its existence other than self reporting. Which is why 'Sex' in the equality act refers to biological sex ( which is objective and measurable) and not assumed 'gender identity'.

People who have the protected category of 'gender -re-assignment' already have protections from discrimination, yet this still doesn't give them the protections afforded to people based on their sex, if the person with the GRA is not of that sex. ( in spite of how they feel or identify)

This fact establishes that, on one hand, you can believe something to be true about yourself, but you don't necessarily have the protections afforded to those that actually do have that characteristic.

Nope.

I’m talking about kids who have thought they were transgender. Not ones who have taken medication or surgery so nothing to do with ‘regret rates’. We know most desist. From my experience as a teacher most desist.

Why is that?

Your gender identity is your internal sense of what sex you are.

Your internal sense of what sex you are is more correctly defined as a 'sex identity'. In some academic literature on child development you'll find the term 'gender identity' used for this. What they are talking about is the stage of development where a child understands that they are a boy or a girl and that this can't be changed.

If you give it a moment's thought, you'll realise that it's nonsense for a boy to have an internal sense of being a girl, or vice versa. Your internal sense of who or what you are can only align with reality, otherwise it is more correctly defined as a delusion.

To put it another way, if you're going to say that a man can have an internal sense that he's actually a woman, you'd have to accept that he can also have an internal sense that he's Cleopatra or Napoleon or a cat.

They don’t have to stop existing. They just need to respect women’s rights to our own single sex spaces, and stop talking down to us and over us about our own lives. Hope that helps.

How do we build a robust law around someone's "internal sense?"

The same way we build law that protects people's sexual orientation (an internal sense) and religious beliefs (an internal sense). If we can't build a law around "an internal sense" then gender critical beliefs certainly can't be legally protected, is that what you're arguing for?

The questions yesterday ( Women and Equalities) about what is the point of a GRA are important......because it has been established that self definition does not necessarily have an objective existence that can be universally recognised. Yes, you exist as a human being that imagines oneself in a certain way...but your imagination does not trump measurable or physical reality.

People with, or without,a GRA, cannot acceess the provisons that have been set aside on the basis of sex - unless they are of that sex.

This bill doesn't have anything to do with what spaces someone can access.

No, but the underlying establishment of what exists as a protected category and on what basis was important.

'Gender identity' is not mentioned in the Equalities Act. It is not a protected category. It has no firm definition that is universally recognised - aside from subjective, self reporting...unlike all of the other categories.

The available research is clearly very flawed. People have not been monitored for long enough. Many gender surgeons, especially in the U.S, do not even provide follow up care. There are countless accounts of people who have regrets about their trans identification, especially if it involved invasive drugs/ or surgery.

It doesn't need to be a protected category for the purposes of this legislation. Protected characteristics are a function of discrimination law; this legislation isn't about discrimination law, and there is no explicit or implicit requirement for something be a protected characteristic to be covered by it.

Self-reporting

"Self-reporting" is exactly the same mechanism by which we know who is gay. We can't "see" it, we can't prove it, we just generally understand is it reasonable to accept that people know their own sexuality - and we continue to accept this even though we know that sometimes people might be mistaken about what their sexuality is.

"The research doesn't say what I want to it to so it's flawed"

Gender is a social construct..That means all its different facets it is always going to be contested.

The thing is with forms of neogender ideology is it can't accept that OTHER ways of thinking about gender exist and always will. That is why it needs government laws to enforce it.

Are we going to stop this bill? Possibly not however I think we can defiantly water the bill down and amend it seriously. The thing is we are not fighting alone and we are prepared this time. Women's groups plus gays are decent number of people. We have a bunch of supporters inside Labour. We have the Tories too, and Reform.

Key to this is that the Muslim bloc are going to put huge pressure on Labour and the left it is very difficult for them to defy them because the left are reliant on their votes hence the whole Gaza thing. Plus Black evangelicals as well.

Anyway we can look forward to months of open debate on the topic. Which is long term poison to gender absolutists.

Same sex attraction can be a case of self reporting that is otherwise unmeasurable ( and sometimes denied even to oneself), but it does become measurable, and observable, once someone becomes involved in same sex relationships and finds that they are only/or mainly attracted to people of their own sex.

Gay marriage equality recognises this fact. In fact the GRA was originally established to allow people of the same sex as each other to marry - before gay marriage equality was established. It is something of a relic.

The thing is with forms of neogender ideology is it can't accept that OTHER ways of thinking about gender exist and always will. That is why it needs government laws to enforce it.

Nothing about this legislation prevents you from holding your personal beliefs, or affects you at all unless you are a conversion therapist.

Women's groups plus gays are decent number of people.

Most women and most gay people do not support your movement.

Can you define how gender identity was discovered? What scientific experiments were conducted that discovered the existence of gender identity?

Do some people have a Ford identity whilst others have a Ferrari identity?

I don't have a gender identity, not because I'm some nullsexual (or whatever term you're going to create), but because it doesn't exist.

And before you start with your next argument trans people exist. Denying the concept of gender identity does not mean that a physical person who is defined as trans suddenly doesn't exist.

Yes, it’s reasonable to think people know their own sexual orientation. It isn’t reasonable to impose a worldview of “innate gender identity” on people who don’t believe in it.

Same sex attraction can be a case of self reporting that is otherwise unmeasurable ( and sometimes denied even to oneself), but it does become measurable, and observable, once someone becomes involved in same sex relationships and finds that they are only/or mainly attracted to people of their own sex.

But legal protections don't kick in only when someone has had sex, gay people who have never had a sexual relationship and even people who never will have a sexual relationship are still legally protected from discrimination. Judges aren't asking gay men for proof of their body count before they'll hear a discrimination case from them.

And we can't actually even "measure" someone's sexuality even if we observe them have sex, because we know gay people can have heterosexual sex and that straight people can have gay sex. If you look at the glossary of terms accompanying this legislation it defines sexuality as "emotional, romantic or sexual attraction." You can't observe someone's emotional or romantic attraction and realistically you probably haven't observed them have sex either, because why would you have, so how do we know who is gay for the purposes of the law? We have to just believe what people tell us. (and that's not even getting into the fact that discrimination law is often based on "perception" meaning it doesn't actually matter how the person views their own sexuality, it just matters how the person discriminating viewed them).

This legislation has nothing to do with "imposing a worldview" on anyone, in fact it's supposed to stop people "imposing their worldview" on other people. It you are neither a conversion therapist nor a victim of conversion therapy this legislation doesn't affect you at all and you don't actually have to worry about it.

But we don’t have to believe a man is a woman just because he says he is, or that he’s any different to any other man. We have a protected right to disbelieve in gender identity ideology. Forstater v CGD 2021.

Why do most kids who think they are transgender desist?

There are loads who never even make it to the gender clinics let alone any waiting lists or medication or surgery to regret. Why do they change their minds?

Not at all. I've personally met, and also read the personal accounts of, many detransitioners and regretters. And they themselves say, that destransition or expression of 'regret' is taboo in the 'Queer' community; and that people who 'leave' are often completely cut off and unsupported.

At issue was your disingenuous example of “self reporting” gender identity as nothing more or less than when someone says they’re gay. Being gay isn’t a disputed concept, in that people might think it’s wrong, but they don’t actually deny that the concept of innate same sex attraction exists. Many people completely reject the suggestion of innate gender identity and have other explanations for people’s claims.

No one's saying you have to believe anything. Forstater vs CGD does not conflict with this legislation, especially given that the judge in Forstater made it explicitly clear that a "protected belief" does not give a person the right to harass or discriminate against others.

We're discussing the problems inherent in trying to include 'transgender identity' in such a bill.

Nobody wants to see the extreme and cruel practices often imposed on same sex attracted people if their particular community cannot acceopt their sexual orientation.