Lord Falconer
Imagine the outrage if, after the discovery that yet another rapist had been found amid the ranks of the Metropolitan Police, the Commissioner had told women to calm down. “The vast majority of officers,” he might have told protesters, “are likely to be safe.”
The thought is preposterous. Yet it is the very argument made by those defending Scottish legislation that would allow people to change their gender in law without existing safeguards. Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor under Tony Blair, dismissed the complaints of those concerned about the privacy and safety of women, saying, “The vast majority of [applicants] are likely to be genuine.”
No skin off his noble ass, is it. It’s only women who are put at risk this way, so [yawn] who cares?
It is not difficult to see the risks. Already, a Scottish judge has ruled that “the meaning of sex for the purposes of the [Equality] Act … is not limited to biological or birth sex, but includes those in possession of a GRC…stating their acquired gender, and thus their sex”.
In other words, trans women with a certificate must always be treated as women: allowed into single-sex spaces, such as changing rooms, prisons and schools; permitted to provide intimate care to female health patients; sanctioned to participate in women-only domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centres. With no meaningful safeguards stopping men acquiring the necessary certificates, and with them the right to enter women-only spaces, the scope for abuse is clear.
And what’s also clear, horribly, is the complete indifference to women on the part of The People In Charge. Tough shit, girls, you’ll just have to suck it up; now on to important stuff.
Heartbreaking. Can’t these privileged people see that a new law which makes it easier for even one rapist or other abuser to get to potential victims is a bad law. And it isn’t even necessary for the men who aren’t abusive (if there are any); what difference does it actually make to the lives of these hypothetical non-abusive men to be able to change the sex marker on their official documents? They’re not trying to transgress boundaries in the first place.
There is absolutely no way that Sturgeon’s distinction discovered at the stroke of midnight is going to hold up in court.
I am sure most of the commenters on this site won’t find it too awful of me to say I don’t think people should receive a “Gender Recognition Certificate”. If men want to put on woman face, the government should not be recognizing that, even if they jump through all the hoops, even if they are known to be no threat to women (and how can we know that? I ‘know’ my husband is no threat to women; can I be 100% sure? No, only 99.99%. And other women can’t be that sure).
If I want to be recognized as the Empire State Building, there is no one living that is required to agree with me. I am not the Empire State Building. Though above average height, I am not even abnormally tall, and I have not got a pointy top or a lot of windows.
Rewarding people with a certificate for playacting in public does seem a bit excessive, even without the legal ramifications.
Whenever I’m accused of fear mongering and creating a problem out of nothing because transwomen are no more violent than other women I always try to point out that they’re tacitly admitting that if transwomen WERE more violent than natal women, then they must believe that there’d be cause for alarm. So — what’s the figure and remedy?
If their level of violence were — oh, let’s say it’s hypothetically the same as men — would that be enough to put safeguards in place? What would those safeguards consist of? What if transwomen were more likely to be violent than males in general? In their view of things, is there a particular percentage increase where some solution is proposed? Would transwomen at any point cease to be women?
They don’t answer, and explain it’s because I’m asking hypotheticals that haven’t and won’t happen. But that shouldn’t matter. They ought to be able to think it through anyway. They can’t think it through because “transwomen are just like other women” isn’t and can’t be a conclusion. Conclusions can be falsified. Instead it’s a fundamental assumption which can’t be falsified with any evidence— and they don’t want to see that.
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Excellent point. It’s a fundamental assumption and it’s a mandate. It’s a mouthwash AND a stain-remover.