Thread by @MForstater

The McConnell case shows the tension between individual & societal consistency when self-perception bumps up against reality.

The High Court last year said after giving birth to a child, McConnell must be registered as the mother.

judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…

The central issue, it said is whether the Gender Recognition Act dislodges the common law position that a person who gives birth is a "mother"

The High Court said no and reconciled this by saying that being a gestational mother was not something limited to females but could also be done by males. 🙄

So it said McConnell is the mother, and gave birth while male.

The Court of Appeal upholds the decision that McConnell is the mother, but says that this does not mean that parliament has "de-coupled" the concept of "mother" from gender

(they mean sex: it would clear up so much confusion if they just said sex)

judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…

Rather they say for most purposes McConnell is regarded as male, but "where an exception" applies they are still to be treated as having "their gender at birth" (they mean sex)

Or, as common sense and material reality would suggest - if you are giving birth you are female

Despite attempts to try to treat people as if they have modular "sex characteristics", people are nothing like Lego.

Someone who *gives birth* is not just female that day, but on the day they were born w eggs inside, when they went thru puberty, when they recognised their sexual orientation, every time they ovulated & menstruated, worried about getting pregnant, thru lactation, menopause etc..

The Equality Act includes the concept of "sex", "opposite sex" and "same sex" (in the definition of sexual orientation and in relation to single sex services).

So the question arises does the GRA "decouple" these concepts from sex?

(what would that even mean? )

The tangle of all of this is caused by a law which tried to avoid leaving a person who wants to live in identity as if they are the opposite sex "in limbo", through a legal fiction which allows self perception to dislodge material reality.

For McConnell to be a man for all purposes requires that mother, father, male, female lose consistent meaning & interrelationship.

In this case the consistency of self perception had to give way to the consistency that only women give birth, & people who give birth are mothers