Thread by @fairplaywomen

Scottish Minister Shona Robison has now introduced the Gender Recognition (Scotland) bill for scrutiny by the Scottish parliament /1

She claims the bill gives "no new rights for trans people". This is untrue.

It introduces the right for people who identity as transgender but WITHOUT gender dysphoria to change the sex on their birth certificate. /2

Reforms will increase the number & change the type of people able to change their sex, in law. The minister says international evidence suggests applications will increase ten fold.

Based on the estimated number of trans people in the UK it could be in the region of 100-fold /3

The minister said GRA reform will not impact single-sex spaces for women and girls. Legal provisions will remain that allow trans people to be excluded from female-only spaces when justified, even if they have a GRC. That doesn't change.

So why are women concerned? /4

A GRC doesn't just allow a trans person to get a birth certificate saying they were born a sex they were not. It makes it a criminal offence for an official to reveal a GRC holders birth sex. It allows birth sex to be hidden /5

It is the legal right to conceal birth sex that becomes problematic for single-sex spaces. We need to know someone's birth sex if we want to guarantee a space exclusively for one birth sex. This is already a problem, but giving out GRCs on demand will make that worse /6

Clare Baker MSP raised this issue when she mentioned concerns about Section 22 making it more difficult for service providers to use the Genuine Occupation exception (to reserve a job for females only) /7

Shona Robison was unable to give any meaningful reassurances. It was unclear whether she even understood the question. The same was true when we raised the issue in a meeting with her last month /8

There is not acknowledgement that new provisions allowing *anyone* a new birth certificate would complicate matters at all. How can decisions based on birth sex not be affected if we take away the meaning of a birth certificate /9

The truth remains, that this bill allows any man, for any reason, to change their birth certificate on demand to say they were *born female*, and to hide the fact they were born the male sex at all /10

This bill is about SEX not transgender status. But the word "sex" doesn't appear even once.

Trans people can already self-ID as trans. The question now is whether they should be able to self-ID their birth sex too. /11

Transwomen no longer want to be just transwomen.
They are now asking to actually BE female, and for their trans history to be a secret.

They want to be identical to the “cis women”. Indistinguishable from the female sex /12

We are no longer being asked to treat a man ‘as if he is woman’.

We are no longer even being asked to consider a transwoman to be a ‘type’ of woman.

It is now being demanded that all transwoman are literally the female sex too /13

If we can’t talk freely about the material reality of sex we can not discuss, monitor or uphold our sex-based rights.

This is why GRA reform is bad law and why it is right why demedicalisation of the GRA must be opposed /14

Trans people already have a mechanism to change legal sex status.

A robust medical gatekeeping process is in place.

Unregulated access to birth certificates is a step too far /15