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Transwomen are not Women - Part 15

p0lka said:
Yeah the equality act refers to man/woman which was a massive error in the first place, it should have referred to male/female then none of this would have been an issue as you can't change your biological sex.
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Given that the GRA says "the person’s sex becomes that of a man" and "the person’s sex becomes that of a woman," legislative references to male and female would have been reinterpreted just as references to man and woman actually were (e.g. by the Scottish Ministers); the operative question would still be when GRA 9(1) is overridden by subsequent legislation.
 
d4m10n said:
Given that the GRA says "the person’s sex becomes that of a man" and "the person’s sex becomes that of a woman," legislative references to male and female would have been reinterpreted just as references to man and woman actually were (e.g. by the Scottish Ministers); the operative question would still be when GRA 9(1) is overridden by subsequent legislation.
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Yeah it's a minefield, whoever made these gra and law definitions should have thought about it a bit more. No one can change their sex as it's physically impossible at this present time, so a government legislating for 'the person’s sex becomes that of a man' etc is denying biology.

It should be
gender =whatever role you want in society
sex = biology
then make your laws about sex, instead of complicating everything.
 
p0lka said:
Yeah it's a minefield, whoever made these gra and law definitions should have thought about it a bit more. No one can change their sex as it's physically impossible at this present time, so a government legislating for 'the person’s sex becomes that of a man' etc is denying biology.

It should be
gender =whatever role you want in society
sex = biology
then make your laws about sex, instead of complicating everything.
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That is to a large extent what the judgement says. A lot of trouble was caused by using the word gender in various contexts with various meanings and then playing bait-and-switch with the results. Gender means nothing. Personality, style. Sex is, on the other hand, both extremely important and immutable.
 
Rolfe said:
Bear in mind the reason the GRA was enacted. Pressure was being put on the government by human rights actors to deal with the fact that a man who had full "sex reassignment surgery" was unable to marry a man, because same-sex marriage was illegal. At the time the government was adamantly opposed to making same-sex marriage legal. Rather than do that, they came up with this fudge whereby the man who was pretending to be a woman was given the status of "woman" as a legal fiction, so that he could then marry his boyfriend.

Then history overtook the whole thing, same-sex marriage was made legal, and the entire exercise was pretty much redundant.
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I'll bet that lead to a number of gay men who were not at all transwomen, and didn't even have any girly feels, getting GRCs to bypass the law so they could marry.
 
No idea. It was a possible course of action I think, but there were quite a lot of hoops to jump through.
 
Rolfe said:
That is to a large extent what the judgement says. A lot of trouble was caused by using the word gender in various contexts with various meanings and then playing bait-and-switch with the results. Gender means nothing. Personality, style. Sex is, on the other hand, both extremely important and immutable.
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I agree with you, apart from the gender means nothing as it obviously means something to the many people out there that don't want to/or can't conform to traditional gender roles.
 
It may mean something to them, but it doesn't have to mean anything to anybody else, and it shouldn't mean anything in law. There's nothing in our law to mandate that anyone at all has to "conform to traditional gender roles" whatever that might mean. Non-conform away, nobody is going to stop you. Nobody stopped David Bowie or Boy George back in the day. They didn't need or ask for legislation to allow them to wear eyeliner.
 
smartcooky said:
I'll bet that lead to a number of gay men who were not at all transwomen, and didn't even have any girly feels, getting GRCs to bypass the law so they could marry.
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I'm not so sure. The Gender Recognition Act came in in 2004. Same sex marriage became legal in 2013, but also in 2004 Civil Partnerships were introduced for same sex couples. I would have thought most gay couples would have opted for a civil partnership rather than having one of them living as the opposite gender for two years.

There was no obvious drop in GRC applications when same sex marriage became legal, in fact they've been increasing slowly. https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...gnition-certificate-applications-and-outcomes
 
Rolfe said:
It may mean something to them, but it doesn't have to mean anything to anybody else, and it shouldn't mean anything in law. There's nothing in our law to mandate that anyone at all has to "conform to traditional gender roles" whatever that might mean. Non-conform away, nobody is going to stop you. Nobody stopped David Bowie or Boy George back in the day. They didn't need or ask for legislation to allow them to wear eyeliner.
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Yes, that's what confuses me. Why people seem to feel the need to put themselves in boxes, and then expect everyone else to go along with these new labels, rather than just being individuals.
 
Rolfe said:
It may mean something to them, but it doesn't have to mean anything to anybody else, and it shouldn't mean anything in law.
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If a manager is known to play favorites based on gender identity or expression (regardless of natal sex) there should be some legal recourse, no?
 
zooterkin said:
Yes, that's what confuses me. Why people seem to feel the need to put themselves in boxes, and then expect everyone else to go along with these new labels, rather than just being individuals.
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If you were being called a woman everyday, are you sure you'd feel all cavalier about it?
 
This is a very good way of putting it. "If it is lawful to exclude men, it is lawful to exclude transwomen."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1912492007483670798

The next tweet reads "Blanket bans are not merely not discouraged; for lawful single-sex or separate-sex services and spaces, they are compulsory."

I think this is a very clear way of looking at it. If men are not excluded then neither are transwomen. Obviously. However, if it is proportionate and legitimate to exclude men, then transwomen are also excluded. There may be some arguments about whether particular situations are indeed legitimate and proportionate, say a women's reading group or a women's hillwalking group, where women simply want to socialise without men present. But toilets, changing rooms, showers, dormitories and so on are a done deal.

Lesbian associations are also a done deal, because the judgement specifically dealt with that. Maybe the reading group should brand itself as a lesbian group or something like that!
 
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zooterkin said:
Yes, that's what confuses me. Why people seem to feel the need to put themselves in boxes, and then expect everyone else to go along with these new labels, rather than just being individuals.
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The reasons are complex and varied, and trying to discuss them on this thread invariably incites abuse.
 
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