Draft Conversion Practices Bill - published

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

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

You’ve made a lot of claims, not all of them strictly relevant to this draft bill.

But being male or female isn't an "internal sense" - it's a physical reality. A male person can't claim to be a woman just because he has an "internal sense" and the rest of us shouldn't be forced to believe that he is a woman, which is what some are trying to force us to do, including through this proposed law.

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.

I think you'll find you're wrong about this, there are certainly people who believe being gay is unnatural and not innate and that gay people are misled, mistaken or corrupted in some way. But there's no reason the lawmakers have to actually pay attention to those people, any more than they have to pay attention to people who believe the same about trans people.

There's nothing disingenuous about pointing out that the law relies on people to self-report their sexuality, this is precisely how it works, and it can't really work any other way, unless you want to argue that gay people should have provide material proof that they had sex and enjoyed it before they can be protected in law.

The reason I’ve entered into this discussion @Zoonosiswas your straw man contention of gender critical feminist beliefs around gender identity. Gender identity is not what I understand as “gender”. Gender is simply the social framework based on sex stereotypes. I wholly refute that it’s an uncontroversial fact that we all have an innate sense of gender identity that goes any further than knowing what sex we are.

"This proposed law" doesn't force you to believe anything at all, it just requires you not to force your beliefs upon others with the intention of trying to change their sexuality or gender identity.

You're entitled to your opinion. That doesn't make your opinion fact, nor does it change the accepted understanding or definition of terms, nor does it influence what the law says, and nor should it.

Your definition isn’t the “accepted definition”. The law doesn’t cover “gender” other than the legal fiction of the GRA. However as you are well aware that definition doesn’t extend to the Equality Act or the workplace regulations.

Nobody wants to see extreme and cruel practices imposed on trans people either.

No one decent, anyway.

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

Many women have always argued against women's rights and prefer rule by men. They have a right to their (dumb) opinions, but that doesn't mean they are going to win in fact they consistently have lost over time.

As for the gays, the actual gays, a solid number our our side, many others don't care that much actually. Then of course we also have a solid number of secret "trans" supporters too who don't care about being misgendered, or what toilets they use. They just are self sufficient. They don't need state authority to give them validity in fact they are suspicious of it.

I agree with you in as much I don't think people with a deep seated sense of gender confusion are ever going to disappear. What is going to be defeated is the type of person who bursts into tears because JKR says things, whose identity is dependent on everyone on the planet recognising it and needs the government to enforce it and also is desperate to ensure that a free pass given to male sexual predators who label themselves as some form of LGBTQ. Instead we are going to have actual conversations.

Anyway we will see what happens. The genderists have academia and huge chunk of the media plus a lot of corporate power on their side. When you are up against that amount of corporate authoritarianism and sexism defeat is always possible.

The great thing is we get to talk about it. That is the the real threat to this thinking long term.

I'm answering points as they are presented to me; I agree some are not strictly on topic, including your foot-stamping about your beliefs, which are irrelevant to this law which does not impact your right to your personal beliefs, and is not obliged to incorporate them.

No, I responded to your irrelevant point, not the other way around. You chose to proclaim the ideological tenets of your fringe belief system as settled fact.

With the GRA Labour legalised lying, now Labour with this Conversion Therapy Bill is going to make telling the truth an illegal act.
Gender identity is an entirely invented doctrine, a belief system stitched together from vibes and wishful thinking and they’re elevating it above evidence, biology, and basic common sense.
Apparently, we’re all expected to nod along while fantasy is upgraded to 'protected truth', and anyone who declines to play pretend gets treated like a public menace.
It’s a remarkable achievement, dismantling reality while insisting it’s progress, dismantling the foundations of civilisation and calling it compassion,
If this isn’t the threshold of a dystopia, it’s hard to imagine what is.

This is false, there are multiple pieces of legislation which engage with the concept of gender, including the Equality Act, which explicitly protects people with the protected characteristic of "gender reassignment".

You haven't answered this one, @Zoonosis

I was asked by a different poster to define gender identity, which I did - if you think that was irrelevant, take it up with them. You then responded to me announcing that you didn't have a gender identity therefore you've concluded no one does, which is a bit like assuming because you've never seen the Arc de Triomphe no one else has. Honestly I've given you far more time and energy than your contributions have deserved.

It’s only ever linked to sex, as something (which doesn’t actually change their sex under equality legislation) a person can do to “reassign” their sex. That’s why “non binary” isn’t protected. The framework is around transsexualism” not “transgender”.

I disbelieve in your ideology.

I don’t have to believe in the concept of innate gender identity any more than I have to believe there is an all powerful being who created the earth.

I did, I pointed out all the available scientific research consistently shows regret rates are low. Your anonymous and probably rather biased personal anecdata doesn't counter this.

I think it was handwaved away with “there aren’t that many of them”.

I don't care. None of this thread is about your personal beliefs, much as you keep repeatedly trying to insist that it is for some reason.

And your evidence of this?

Lesbian here. And woman. No survey has ever reached me. These grand statements are meaningless and will remain so without a referendum.

This bill is a sledgehammer to crack a nut that is in doubt anyway, will be full of unintended consequences and cause many issues and expensive court cases to no real purpose, and arguably achieves nothing anyway in terms of protections that is not already protected in law.

Excellent set of quotes, thank you. Agree with all of them.

The newest cult and religion carries on.
It's amazing how many of the ruling class are so indoctrinated with suicidal empathy and weaponised kindness that they can come up with this and feel they're making the world a more caring place.

Zoonosis, the problem is that desistance/detransition is very easy to undercount.

In the German insurance study of nearly 8,000 young people with an F64 gender identity diagnosis, only 36.4% still had the diagnosis five years later. Persistence was under 50% in every age group, and only 27.3% in 15 to 19-year-old females. So the idea that adolescent gender distress is normally fixed for life is not supported by that data. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11539877/]

Older follow-up studies of pre-pubertal children also found high desistance. One large follow-up of boys referred for gender identity disorder found only 12.2% persisted, while 87.8% desisted. Across earlier studies, persistence averaged about 17.4%, meaning roughly four out of five did not continue with gender dysphoria into adolescence/adulthood. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8039393/]

And the reported detransition rates are almost certainly undercounts, because people vanish from the system. Reuters noted that in one Dutch clinic study, 36% of patients did not return after several years and were simply lost to follow-up. In a UK adolescent referral review, 8.3% no longer identified as gender-diverse, but the authors said that may be an underestimate because another 5.4% moved away or did not follow up. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/]

There are obvious reasons people do not report it. They may feel embarrassed, ashamed, stupid, or trapped by what they have already said publicly. They may have changed name, pronouns, friendship groups, school identity, online identity, community, politics, clothes, hair, documents, or even body. Walking that back is not neutral. It is socially costly.

There is also pressure from within queer/trans communities. Reuters reported detransitioners being told to “shut up” and even receiving death threats. That will obviously discourage people from saying: “Actually, this was wrong for me.” https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/]

A survey of detransitioners found only 13% got help from LGBT organisations during detransition, compared with 51% who had support while transitioning. Over half said they did not feel supported during detransition. Their common reasons included realising the dysphoria was about other issues, health concerns, and transition not relieving the distress. https://segm.org/first_large_study_of_detransitioners]

A JAMA Network Open qualitative study also found people discontinuing or reversing treatment often disengaged from care, avoided clinicians because of shame or anticipated stigma, and described lack of follow-up from clinics as a consistent theme. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9315415/]

So no, I don’t think we can honestly say detransition is vanishingly rare. We can say the true rate is uncertain, and probably under-reported because of poor follow-up, bad definitions, social shame, community pressure, and the fact that many people who stop identifying as trans no longer appear in “trans” datasets at all.

That is why I think the sane position is exploratory, whole-person therapy. Not “you are definitely trans”, and not “you are definitely not trans”, but proper therapy that looks at autism, trauma, sexuality, puberty, family dynamics, anxiety, depression, social influence, body image and everything else before anyone gets pushed down a path they may later struggle to leave. Somethign this bill - prevents - do you see?