I'm going to tweet out a few of the illuminating comments from the debates that led to the GRA 2004, to save you all ploughing through Hansard.
One of the primary motivations (if not the foremost) for the bill was to avoid legalising same sex marriage. This featured VERY heavily in the discussions.
#GRA2004
It was, in the Govt's eyes, FAR preferable to convert a same sex couple into a heterosexual couple via 'sex change' than it was to make same sex marriage legal:
#GRA2004
Note how it was supposed to be only a 'small number'
And the justification of "if we allow sex to change we can sidestep same sex marriage" appeared over and over again...
#GRA2004
and again
#GRA2004
One of the obvious flaws in the entire process was the deliberate confuscation of sex and gender. The govt admitted that the two concepts were NOT THE SAME
#GRA2004
Note the NO.
And then note the utter balderdash that follows. In this order: 1. Gender is not sex. 2. Govt will legally recognise gender 3. Gender should be legal sex 4. Acquired gender = legal sex 5. Something unexplained about man, woman and male and female 6. Sex = Gender
To recap, sex and gender are not the same, govt acknowledges, but we'd like to create a law that pretends they are, whilst still knowing they are not. Cool.
This paved the way for what we've now seen evidence for: that 'female' people with penises can commit rape.
As we now know, this happens
Tebbit anticipated it, and the Govt acknowledged this would happen.
#GRA2004
(What is even more disturbing is that long before the EA2010 was created, the Police were recording 'female rapists' by their preferred gender identity without them having a GRC. The Met started doing this in 2009)
It's like the GRA was just a foot in the door.
The govt doubled down on every opportunity to confirm that yes, criminals could compel everyone to pretend they were the opposite sex. It's not like nobody thought this through. The Govt saw the consequences and accepted them.
#GRA2004
(although again, this was ONLY EVER supposed to apply to that tiny number of legal transexuals that the GRA was meant to create)
How's that working out, do we reckon?
Several members pointed out that sex and gender were being hopelessly conflated and confused. They received answers like this one.
Nope, makes no sense to us either.
Each time someone raised concerns about prisoners and gender, they'd get a response like this one from Lammy.
Tiny number, hardly ever gonna happen, only certificated transsexuals.
Right.
Ann Widdecombe asked a pertinent question about what happens to children affected by the legal lie. Does a mother who becomes a man render a child motherless?
Check out the superb bodyswerve in this answer.
Anyone any the wiser?
Nor me.
There's one particular mention that stopped me in my tracks.
Read this comment from Tebbit. He references how easily Ian Huntley dodged justice by changing ID. Urging caution with the GRA.
This comment was made in 2003.
14 yrs *before* Huntley 'transitions'.
So much contradiction from Filkin, speaking for the govt.
"All I would point out is that the law is not seeking to change an individual's sex"
What happened to acquired gender becomes sex etc?
"we are not seeking to bring about a gender change as a consequence."
WHAT?
"That change of gender is, however, prospective only. The Bill does not rewrite history."
Tell that to the litigious lobby busy chucking harassment charges at citizens who reference that 'un-rewritten history'. @Glinner might have a few words on this.
Lets move on to sporting issues, shall we?
Prepare your hollow laughs....now
Yeah, that never happens
Lord Moynihan was an absolute trooper in making the case that this was a VeryBadMove for Sports.
In fact, Moynihan WARNED everyone that resorting to 'testosterone levels'instead of SEX was a truly crap idea
He makes the point that the numbers don't matter as much as the fact that it is BAD LAW.
The level of foresight was impressive.
Even he didn't anticipate that this would all be extrapolated way beyond his worst fears. Not just the GRC holders...everybody.
Moynihan really, really tried.
#GRA2004
Seems like a good point to remind ourselves that the govt kept telling everybody to cool their jets, because, seriously people, this was only ever going to involve 5000 people!
No Biggie!
Have some sense of proportion, folks!
#GRA2004
But Moynihan got it. He knows that this will change forever the definitions of male and female, affecting everyone.
He attempts to get an exemption for sports.
Thanks for trying.
Oh, and look. One of the precursors of Self ID.
"My gender is what I say it is".
He understood.
A few other opinions from this particular day's debate (18/12/2003)
Lord Goodhart: "Of course, there are problems with the bill, some of which are relatively minor. The most substantial problem relates to existing marriages."
#GRA2004
Baroness Cathain got it.
She knew this would be a legal fiction.
#GRA2004
Cathain also realised that since you can't ask to see a GRC, you can't prove your entirely valid position of refusing someone on the grounds of sex. Leaving you open to being sued.
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When I was in 6th form, a girl in the year below me was in a secret relationship with the deputy head of 6th form. He was 26, my maths teacher, friendly, likeable. It became one of those open secrets that we all knew.
And as teenagers, we 'knew' we were old enough, cool enough, mature enough and adult enough to handle such relationships if we chose them for ourselves, right?
I mean, you're practically an adult at 16, and this teacher was young and nice. Parents can be so square.
Right?
I remember my older brother and I being coy about our knowledge of the relationship when our mum, who was a school governor, quizzed us. We didn't want to get anyone into trouble.
They went on to marry eventually. As far as I know they're probably still together decades later.
Let me 'unrohypnol' this for a second. I'm almost completely sure this thread won't be seen by him, and can't possibly hurt his feelings, so I'm going to use the name Gavin to see if it clarifies anything.
Are people being 'needlessly cruel' to Gavin? Has he been gracious?
I think not on both counts.
Gavin's a grown man. He's not a child, and he's not even a young adult. He's in his forties. A middle aged man. Old enough to have a strong concept of fairness.
He's led a charmed, millionaire's life. He's had his identity shielded by a judge after he caused life changing injuries for a man and woman through reckless driving. The justification for that anonymity was that he was training for the Olympics. The punishment was trivial.
About NHS single sex wards.
Let me explain something.
The 2010 policy which is called "Eliminating Mixed Sex Accommodation" (MSA) is based upon Gender, NOT sex.
It's CALLED sex.
That's the PR.
But it is based on gender.
And it involves financial fines for breaches.
What this means is that a true single sex ward IS AT RISK OF BEING FINED if a patient declares a 'gender' that differs from sex.
We have the astonishing situation that the hospital are financially penalised for preserving a single sex wards.
Because 'gender', not sex.
All the other patients who haven't yet declared an identity, blithely assuming that they are being accommodated by their sex?
Nope.
Their 'gender' is assumed of them.
Of you, as an NHS patient.
That is what is on their medical records. "Current Gender".
A short while ago I visited Primark with my teen, and she tried on some clothes. It became apparent that their changing rooms were also mixed. However, when you entered the changing area, there was one room with cubicles to the left, and another room to the right.
And the assistant was carefully and without commenting why, directing one sex left, and the other sex right, whilst loudly warning us NOT to come out of our cubicles undressed or to show outfits whilst in the changing rooms.
She also was urging mothers and daughters, or girl friend groups to share family cubicles, presumably to free up as many individual cubicles on each side at a time, so that she wasn't forced to direct girls over to the side with a man already in it.
@TomasBogardus If you're looking for real life objections to using pronouns that accurately reflect the subject's sex, the true essence of what I really encounter distills to this:
You verbally acknowledging the reality of my sex breaks the social contract I expect you to obey.
@TomasBogardus My expectation is that you will elevate my fantasy over reality. The impact of that on others is that they will follow suit, reassured that the assertion of reality is permissable, and thus my fantasy is diminished. This act of defiance by you breaks the illusory power I hold.
@TomasBogardus I want the power to compel what may and may not be said. The only thing sustaining societal compliance with an obvious untruth; "call me female, though we both know I am male" is the communal belief that I have the power to compel this.
Dissent must therefore be crushed.
We do not have an Act to recognise racism - for it would indeed be racism - to 'identify' as a race we are not, based upon racist stereotypes we treasure of race 'psyche' or race aesthetics.
We would understand it is demeaning to people of genuine ethnicities were we to ratify false, stereotypical, racial characteristics into law about them, as a means to facilitating entry of an imposter into their group.