Amid myriad crises, Stormont is spending three days debating if someone can invent their own gender

[IwantToRetire]

NB - extracts only

... The bill would place “gender identity” in Northern Ireland’s criminal law for the first time, but doesn’t define it beyond saying that it is “what the victim considers it to be” and “what the [defendant] considers it to be”.

Essentially, the bill leaves the issue of gender wholly subjective. As well as male and female, an individual could claim to be anything under the sun, and if someone sought to “suppress” that, they could be in trouble with the law.

In relation to gender identities already in use, DUP MLA Brian Kingston claimed there were 72 genders. Party colleague Deborah Erskine said she believed there could be more than 100. Buckley said it could be 136.

The most extraordinary aspect of the Assembly proceedings was an attempt to shut down debate on this aspect of the bill. When Tennyson was asked how many genders it would cover, he wasn’t allowed to either answer the question or refuse to answer.

Instead, principal deputy speaker Carál Ní Chuilín interjected to block the question. The veteran Sinn Féin MLA said that “to pre-empt a raft of questions”, she wanted to make clear that the bill defined gender as “what the victim considers it to be” and so “it is not for Eóin Tennyson or anyone else to talk about how many genders there are”.

This is a deeply problematic way in which to make criminal law. If someone is potentially going to be jailed for two years — as they could be under this bill — they surely have a right to know what gender even means.

If gender involves something amorphous which is beyond definition, then do we want the courts to be jailing people in this area and can the courts realistically enforce such legislation? Suppressing such questions in a legislature is indefensible. ...

To read the article in full go to https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/amid-myriad-crises-stormont-is-spending-three-days-debating-if-someone-can-invent-their-own-gender/a/162151085.html

And also https://archive.is/i4R8O

I thought humanists were supposed to be evidence based?

It's our old friend Forced Teaming again. Northern Ireland has seen some 'high profile' cases of gay conversion therapy in the recent past and it is understandable that people want to push back on that. The forced teaming of transgender issues into LGB issues distorts things because the sets of issues are so different and because there is an unfortunate overlap in the form of 'transing the gay away', which is an invidious form of gay conversion therapy. Particularly because young gay people will often start to feel aware of a sense of 'difference' before they feel a sense of themselves as sexual beings. If pre-pubescent 'gayness' is mistaken for 'transness', and there is no scope for asking 'are you sure you're not gay, because that's perfectly normal - why not wait until you are a bit older (i.e. a sexual being) to see how you feel then?' without that becoming condemned as trans conversion therapy, then we risk ending up with some damaged people who may (wrongly) think they're trans instead of some healthy normal lesbians and gay men. [I know everyone knows this on here.]

Nah, the humanist and sceptic movements have basically turned into vibes-based, #BeKind movements that only acknowledge 'nice' science that they agree with. It's quite depressing to see so many of them being swept along by their peers and ideology.

I haven't seen or had time to search for it, but what was the conclusion of the discussion about how many genders.

Will this be, or is it written into the act?

I'm not even writing this to be funny, but seriously want to know how they resolved this!

When the Scottish Govt. was preparing to introduce gender self identity in the early 2020s (the bill that was blocked by Westminster) it was going to recognise 3 gender identities, male, female, & non-binary, which was all other gender identities & dissidents who said they had no gender. This was because gender identity was going to replace sex in all areas as an organising category, & they could see it wouldn't work if you had infinity genders.

I wonder how long it'll be before the Welsh Government follow suit, like the good little Gender Idiots that they are.😡

England will keep leading the way in the rational direction of compassion, mutual respect and safeguarding. English media will report on the stories that the countries captured by misogyny and genderwang refuse to report, such as Barbie Kardashian. More and more ordinary people in those nations will peak through being made victims of legislated coercion and through reading English media, and eventually demand that their laws revert.

I hope.

It pains me to say this but I'm pretty sure a certain sort of Irish GenderWang-er will go to their graves yelling "West Brit' at any other Irish person who thinks that England might be a smidge more rational on this issue than the Celtic nations 🙄

You're right.
Some Irish [or Irish-resident, we have attracted some British trans 'refugees' from Terf Island🙄] TRAs reacted to the UK SC ruling that sex=bio sex by saying that thanks to our hard-won independence, decisions in British courts are completely irrelevant to us.

Which is true, strictly speaking. But disingenuous, because when Ireland became an independent state it kept the system of British Common Law which had been in force [and by 'force' I mean force!] for centuries, and said that any British laws which did not contravene the Constitution of the new state were adopted as Irish law. Eminently sensible.

Our legal system is closer to the British system than the European, and I wouldn't be surprised if the legal community in Ireland were interested in a professional way to see how the the UK SC ruled on the meaning of sex.

I dream that one day a bunch of Irish legal eagles will get together to challenge the status of sex in Irish legislation - early equality legislation used the word 'sex' and 'man' and 'woman', but everything is retrospectively interpreted as 'gender', and 'gender' not 'sex' appears in our Protected Characteristics.

I don't think we have the numbers or the momentum here for that to happen though😞

For anyone wanting to follow this - YouTube Assembly TV Stormont - if you google for the Hansard records of Conversion Bill NI you can narrow down dates - at least 15 hours of debate I think across 3 days.

They said oh this will all get resolved in Committee stage - which is where some edits and amends are made. So they didn’t address it or accept a change was needed.

Tennyson said they’d consider it.

Total intellectual incompetence and if not changed will get a JR for breach of ECHR 7 - lack of certainty of crime committed.

The new sectarianism.
🙁

Oh yeah, they're absolutely right there. I'm sure the discussions will be much more productive and not at all acrimonious in Committee stages - that's always been the case in Stormont 😏

/ExtremeSarcasm

Thanks - hadn't registered that.

Can only imagine the conversations the Committee will have to have.

Not just does the word gender mean, let alone sex. Can they even be sure there are only 2 sexes, and wouldn't ti be discriminatory to try and define a list a genders based on the assumption that what we know now should limit the future!

There is always the petition of concern option - where either green or orange say this has to have the support of both sides.

None of the Unionist parties will have any truck with this nonsense so likely get defeated in the end.

That’s if Stormont doesn’t collapse over the Drumcree march etc.

Free Speech Union & Genspect did an event in Belfast on this:

Had Sex Matters, Transgender Trend,
Sara Morrison, Gay Men’s Network and others

Worth a watch.

For those who want to watch debates

https://niassembly.tv/

There were 3 debates - over the last few weeks. Worth googling for dates to narrow down.