Thread by @LucyHunterB

I keep being a witness to discussions in the Parliament or in court predicated on an assumption that a person with GRC (or who might want one) somehow acquires a cloak of sex-invisibility to everyone else.

It reveals someone either isn't paying attention or isn't trustworthy.

And, in case this is the only thing that might cut through, it makes them unkind. You cannot mandate, through law or social pressure, that other people become sex-blind, or perception-switching, based on an act of speech, cosmetic changes or state certification.

It is plain cruel to tell anyone otherwise.

And if you know in fact that people don't become sex-blind/perception-switched in this way, but your political position is that women, esp, should be forced into pretending they do, in any context where other people's sex matters to them, there's a phrase for that.

It's coercive control.

Whatever gymnastics your mind is doing to manage your cognitive dissonance here is irrelevant.

If you will not support a woman's freedom to identify and care about the sex of another person, *whenever* it matters to her, you're a coercive controller.

We can argue about when and how providers should respond to women's sensitivity to other peoples sex. But if you don't accept the principle that all women are always entitled to *notice* another person's sex, without having to provide special justification or be subject to abuse/

then that's coercive control at the social level, and *if* your support for any legal measure is underpinned at all by a desire to suppress women's ability to set boundaries based on sex for the purposes of privacy, dignity or safety, then you are mobilising the state coercively.

Own it.

Privacy, dignity, safety or *sanity*, I want to add. We need to talk more about the psychological detriment to women from being forced to suppress their long-learnt, *rational* ability to determine another person's sex, particularly *but not only* those who have trauma responses.

When legislators, courts, or the international "human rights" community (important here), stray into the territory of forced perception suppression for women, regarding sex, they are making a choice about the lower status of women's psychological integrity than something else.

Again, own it.

Right now, in Scotland, where this debate crystallises is in whether or not a gender recognition certificate makes somebody a different sex under the Equality Act. Because that step is the one that makes the biggest difference for workable boundary setting on the ground.

It's a red herring that there is no issue here because a GRC is "not necessary" or "even GRC holders can be excluded".

SG was in court this week to argue that it was important a GRC changes somebody's sex under that Act. The Equality Network put in a supporting submission. Labour's lead MSP on the bill has said in the Scottish parliament she believes a GRC does (should, by implication) do this.

Supporting this position, at the same time as making GRCs available to a much larger group, chips away at sex as a usable, functional boundary in services on the ground. If you do that as a conscious effect, that's a coercive control move via the state.

If you think that it doesn't matter to think this through and it's not a big deal, then you are at best reckless.

None of the amendments down to the Bill on the relationship with the Equality Act are as clear as they need to be. Pam Duncan Glancy's is, as you would expect, given her position on the principle and the amendment's likely construction in negotiation with SG, no help here.

Foysol Choudhury's (no 104) potentially has the right effect in law, but the drafting leaves it vulnerable to being disputed in day to day use (Rachael Hamilton's similarly).

If have a few minutes this weekend, email your MSPs, and ask them to subscribe to amendment 104, to safeguard against this bill being used as an instrument for chipping away at women's right to notice sex and set boundaries based on it, for reasons of safety, privacy and dignity.

This is @ForWomenScot reflections on this week's case on the effect of a GRC under the Equality Act, including some of the powerful closing comments from their counsel. forwomen.scot/12/11/2022/jud…

Criticisms made of the Scottish Govt and the EHRC here will also be legitimate criticisms of Scottish Labour, if the Duncan-Glancy/SG-approved amendment represents its position rather than Choudhury's - this remains to be seen. (And the Greens and Lib Dems, already, of course.)

Here's the story that makes any "no conflict of rights" people look unfit to make law: this is a conflict they cannot duck, right here. It only ceases to be a conflict if you believe women's accurate perception of sex does not matter. thetimes.co.uk/article/scotti…

Also, the reference to the GRA in the health board comment indicates that GRCs are not (as some advocates of reform argue) irrelevant to decisions being made here. Here's immediate evidence GRCs are being factored into policy-making on women's single sex spaces.

Though the term was developed for other settings, if you are told to respond like this to a woman from a position of authority, knowing full well what she meant when she asked, your employer is asking you to commit an act of coercive control.