Sarah Phillimore and Robin Moira White interviewed by Andrew Doyle

If instead same-sex marriage had been legalised alongside a law which said that people shouldn't be discriminated against if they chose to present in a non-standard way for someone of their sex, we'd be in a much better place now.

Yup, that's what we need.

Thing is, the discrimination trans people face is not discrimination by the lae. They have all the rights we all have, plus the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

What they do suffer from is social prejudice, as do women (aye, 51% of the population!) gay men and lesbians, brown & black people, and so on ...

So the push by Stonewall for "Trans rights are human rights" is redundant. And we need a much more wholesale focus on breaking down gendered stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, rather than putting people in even smaller boxes.

The logical follow through on trans rights are human rights is that we can all pick our own prisons!

Briefing Note: Impact of Gender Recognition Reform on Sex Based Rights
Rebecca Bull
This briefing note concerns the way the Equality Act 2010 (“EqA 2010”) and the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (“GRA 2004”) interact. It is intended to accompany the slides presented in the Scottish Parliament on 29 January 2020
mbmpolicy.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/impact-of-gender-recognition-on-sex-based-rights.-r-bull-11-feb-2020.pdf

I have just been reading through this and it seems to me that all those proclamations about, “All that a Gender Recognition Certificate changes is being able to get a marriage licence …. ( I can’t remember the other thing)”..couldn’t be more wrong, or more utterly misleading.

It changes everything. It makes sex based provisions on the basis of excluding someone with GRC so daunting, because so open to some sort of litigation, that it is easy to see how any ordinary service provider or association might find it more or less impossible.

The situation is bad enough already with Gender Reassignment which is more or less undefined.

As for testing it in court who has time and money for that?

You just know that the "only birth and death certificates" rhetoric would swiftly change to "you knew what you were signing up for" the second the legislation got assent.

Lady Haldane's judgement kind of let the cat out of the bag on that one, with an extra helping of "but common sense would say that no-one really thinks it's ok for a male to mean a female when it comes to intimate examinations and prisons". Bless you Lady Haldane that you think that common sense comes into it.

The Equality Act 2010 rolled around 116 acts into one.
Most of the Equality Act 2010 was already in place in the previous anti-discrimination laws that it replaced. This includes the Race Relations Act 1976, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

Rather than continually using the phrase 'women and girls' or 'men and boys' exactly the same key as used in the 1975 act was provided for the Equality Act that 'woman' means a female of any age and 'man' means a male of any age.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/65/enacted

From the 1975 Act

"Being a man is a genuine occupational qualification for a job only where—
(a)the essential nature of the job calls for a man for reasons of physiology (excluding physical strength or stamina) or, in dramatic performances or other entertainment, for reasons of authenticity, so that the essential nature of the job would be materially different if carried out by a woman ; or
(b)the job needs to be held by a man to preserve decency or privacy because—
(i)it is likely to involve physical contact with men in circumstances where they might reasonably object to its being carried out by a woman, or
(ii)the holder of the job is likely to do his work in circumstances where men might reasonably object to the presence of a woman because they are in a state of undress or are using sanitary facilities; or
(c)the nature or location of the establishment makes it impracticable for the holder of the job to live elsewhere than in premises provided by the employer, and—
(i)the only such premises which are available for persons holding that kind of job are lived in, or normally lived in, by men and are not equipped with separate sleeping accommodation for women and sanitary facilities which could be used by women in privacy from men

Sex in the 1975 Sex discrimination act is based on physiology, not identity or legal fictions.

"Physiology is the science of life. It is the branch of biology that aims to understand the mechanisms of living things, from the basis of cell function at the ionic and molecular level to the integrated behaviour of the whole body and the influence of the external environment."

It is, literally, laughable to pretend therefore that the Equality Act's definition of woman as 'a female of any age' (when replicating the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act definition) actually was meant to mean not exactly that but 'a female of any age but also including some men who call themselves women and who have a GRC and are legally 'female', some men who call themselves women and don't have a GRC but may or may not have requested to change the sex marker on their passport, not that you can ask to see a GRC anyway oh but not including those females who call themselves Men (with or without a GRC etc).

I'm so exhausted with the bullshit from trans activists DESPERATE to validate themselves with this.

The law needs to be clarified, which is insane in itself, but there we are.

Lady Haldane's judgement kind of let the cat out of the bag on that one, with an extra helping of "but common sense would say that no-one really thinks it's ok for a male to mean a female when it comes to intimate examinations and prisons". Bless you Lady Haldane that you think that common sense comes into it.

That made me think of this article.

www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2023/02/10/sensible-people-and-the-law-going-bonkers/

Giving evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee last week about the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, Lord Falconer was dismissive of fears that the Bill would make it easier for voyeurs, exhibitionists and violent sex offenders to access supposedly women-only spaces. He said “What you’re talking about is the law going bonkers” and assured the Committee that “the law is sensible people…courts will be sensible”.

That would be more reassuring if the law had not already been very bonkers indeed for some years.

Yes, I think we've destruction tested the jolly good chap principle.

The fact is, given a third of a chance to be bastards, some people will grab it with both hands.

Giving evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee last week about the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, Lord Falconer was dismissive of fears that the Bill would make it easier for voyeurs, exhibitionists and violent sex offenders to access supposedly women-only spaces. He said “What you’re talking about is the law going bonkers” and assured the Committee that “the law is sensible people…courts will be sensible”.

The law has already been used as a lever to push harmful self id policies into many organisations. If there wasn’t the idea that a man can get a certificate that says he’s legally a woman (with all the potential disclaims that facilitates), it would have been far harder to convince these organisations to write these policies.

In fact, they were told to ‘get ahead’ of the law by Stonewall as according to them, self id for GRC was inevitable (thanks Theresa May and chums).

It is extraordinary that Lord Falconer is advocating to introduce such a poorly drafted law with such fundamental flaws and rely on the courts to be ‘sensible’ in their interpretation. Laws need to be defined and clarified as far as humanly possible to avoid huge and expensive legal arguments. It is absolutely shoddy work to push through a law you know is hugely flawed and expect the courts to do the work.

His attitude is similar to the debates about the GRA - sensible people raising sensible issues and having them waved away by people desperate to push it through. Now, every negative scenario anticipated (and more) has happened to the detriment of women.

Re: OldCrone’s post about what Lord Falconer said here:

“What you’re talking about is the law going bonkers” and assured the Committee that “the law is sensible people…courts will be sensible”.

Apart from other considerations, how does he expect, for example, some poor woman prisoner to take the prison to court about men being in her prison in the first place - to see how sensible, or more likely not, the court will be?

How much did Maya Forstater’s court case cost, which had to be paid for by ordinary friends and supporters helping as they could? And she still needs money to get her compensation.

Great, no need for the courts of appeal - now that we're sure the law will always be applied correctly, and courts will always be sensible🙄

This has been such an informative thread, both legally and, um, in other ways ...

It was started deliberately when the words “sex” and “gender” were used in the GRA to be interchangeable when it suited, but different when it didn’t suit.

A bit off-topic, but I saw this ChatGPT thing and it very much reminded me of the way TRAs talk about sex and gender being different but also the same...

Please would anyone who has not yet signed the Sex-Matters petition to Parliament, to update the Equality Act to make clear that characteristic ‘sex’ is biological, not sex as modified by a Gender Recognition Certificate, please consider doing so. You can find it at Sex-Matters, or the petitions board here. Apparently no one is allowed to put a petition link anywhere other under ‘petitions’.

100,000 signatures are needed by 20th April to get Parliament to have a debate.
About 15,000 more are needed. This goal will be missed on the present trajectory.

Perhaps Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation has slowed it down.

Also, on the petition site there is the Government’s initial response saying the Equality Act allows sex based spaces- which is nothing to do with what they’d been asked in the petition, or the obvious point that Lady Haldane’s recent judgement ruled that if sex meant biological sex it would have said so.