What legal rights
I asked OJ what he meant an hour or two ago. It’s a futile exercise, because he has too many followers to answer questions, but I did it anyway.
OJ and people like OJ want to insist (and do insist) that it’s about bad women wanting to “abolish” the legal rights of trans people, while feminist women counter-insist that we’re seeking to protect our rights, and that some claimed “rights” of trans people are not actually rights.
As far as I can tell the issue is that [some] trans people want it to be a “right” to be accepted as, even “validated” as, whatever sex one says one is, regardless of any actual fact of the matter, while women want to continue to have the right to get away from men in some circumstances, and to have promotions and scholarships and prizes and jobs and sporting competitions intended for women that go to women and not to trans women. The issue is that [some] trans people consider their “validation” more important than women’s rights to privacy and safety and promotions, scholarships and the rest. The issue is that women see this as insultingly indifferent to women’s real needs. The issue is that we’re fucking tired of seeing the gains we’ve made over the past 50 years grabbed back.
Trans legal rights are rights that were assigned privilege at birth.
The rights to terrorize and harass feminists out of their jobs and positions. Fecking pronoun twerps.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9g9XeRMZM0
The unfortunate men who wish they had been born as women, and have pretensions to match, seem to me to be on a hiding to nothing to lose this one.
A very simple example would be the right to change one’s gender(sex) marker on legal documents such as driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates and to change one’s legal name.
Without that right, trans people are often unable to freely access public services and employment. This also impacts their right to privacy (their trans status would be divulged whenever they are required to use such documentation).
Another right would be the protection from harassment on the basis of gender identity / trans status in the workplace or in interactions with the government (currently protected).
Another right would be access to (in the UK with caveats that mostly don’t come into play in practice) appropriate gender-segregated facilities.
In general in the UK, these are rights ensured by the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and Equality Act of 2010.
If the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights achieved its goals, those rights specific to trans people would be abolished.
Additionally the DWSBR would mandate that all legislation and therefore all state authorities and representatives consistently and intentionally misgender trans people and parents, which contravenes their general right to human dignity, as well as removing all mention of them in legislation, denying them equal treatment under the law.
The DWSBR also rejects the international medical consensus on appropriate care for trans children and youth, banning puberty blockers and in the UK would reject the principle of Gillick competence for HRT. Since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (to which the UK is a signatory) grants “the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health” – which for those with gender dysphoria is currently gender-affirming care, that would strip trans kids and youth of their right to necessary healthcare.
Of course banning puberty blockers would also impact cis children with precocious puberty, but in a different way.
Adding to that it would prohibit *any* recommendations of trans-related care for minors, or for anyone to even advocate on a child’s behalf in communication with their parents, thus depriving trans children of access to information and appropriate care.
Owen Jones is talking about currently legally recognised rights according to UK and international law, which the document Kathleen Stock signed wants to abolish, irrespective of whether someone thinks “some claimed ‘rights’ of trans people are not actually rights.” (their recognition by the state is the point of contention).
Cheers.
=8/-DX
Ah. I see. If the issue is a right to privacy, does it apply to everyone? Should I have the right to have my name removed from my passport, and leave just a picture? I mean, I have a right to privacy — why should the state have to know my name?
Simple maybe, but is it a genuine right? Legal documents need to be accurate.
What do you mean “freely access”? If you mean freely access women’s public services when you’re a man then that’s the conflict. For some kinds of services that could be harmless, but for others it couldn’t.
Why do trans people have some special right to privacy about their sex or gender?
At least that’s clear. There is no such “right.” Men can’t have access to facilities for women without violating women’s rights.
Gender? Or sex? Please be clear; they are not the same thing. A transwoman’s sex is by definition male.
Why does the right to access gender-segregated facilities trump the right to access sex-segregated facilities?
Surely by now there must be some biological females who are “identifying” as transwomen.
And what about the right to hold an opinion that differs from others without being harassed, hounded, driven out of employment, or beaten up? To say that Dr. Stock signing that petition is to arrogate the rights of trans people, it means that she does not have the right to hold an opinion different from that of the trans lobby.
And, of course, what about the right of women who are the victims of domestic violence or rape to have female-only spaces, to be treated by female counselors? What about the right of women who are stopped and frisked to be frisked by a woman?
What about my right to go to work and use the restroom without having a panic attack because there is a large male body in there, and I have been physically, sexually, verbally, and emotionally abused by men. What about that? Must I have no right to access bathroom facilities?
And sorry, but the right to gender affirming care is ridiculous. Doctors aren’t supposed to affirm who you think you are. That isn’t their role, and can have dangerous outcomes. That would be like anorexia affirming care. “Oh, yes, dear, you are too fat, by all means don’t eat.”
You speak of rights that are not rights. Trans people should have the same protection of employment rights as any other group; no one here is denying that. They should have the same rights to safety and protection as everyone else; no one here is denying that. They should have the right to free speech and free religion and free association. No one here is denying that. What we are denying is that they have the freedom to demand that we see them as they see themselves. That is a right no other group of people has, and is a right no one should have.
No gender-critical feminist is calling for anyone to be denied their rights. We are asking that they recognize women’s rights, and that they cease demanding special privileges for themselves under the auspices of rights. I have worked and donated for trans rights in the past, but I did not mean the right to tell me what to think.
Maybe add T to the M or F on those documents, then at least they would get the proper medical help if necessary, in case they ‘pass’ as the sex they are not. “…their trans status would be divulged…” — Isn’t that the whole point? How can they fulfill their portrayals of opposite sex stereotypes if they don’t get out there and ‘divulge’? Isn’t that what Judith Butler’s “performative” means?
These are interesting points 8DX, but the question I would have is how can special trans only rights be implemented without trampling on women’s rights? It seems like they already have laws specifying equality of opportunity (as much as any legally protected group) without displacing women from their women only spaces and endeavors, and how they are bullying people to try and get their way (whatever that is) is unacceptable.
ikn @9 Very well said indeed.
I’m guessing this is just one of OJ’s Reply Guys that get alerts when his name is mentioned somewhere doing a drive-by.
Nice try, but as you clearly know, those documents record the person’s sex. And only their sex. Governments have an interest in noting the sex of people because that is a highly relevant datum for demographics, statistics, and identification. Gender identity is not of any interest to governments, and so there is no need to record it.
Also, people already have the right to change their legal name. Restrictions on which name a person may be given – either at birth or later in life – are fairly non-intrusive generally speaking. Unless you are from e.g. Tajikistan?
I would like to see an example of this. I have seen many trans people claim this, but on further questioning they reveal that they were perfectly able to obtain e.g. a driver’s license, but they elected not to because they disliked the fact that it displayed their sex rather than their gender. Their ‘inability’ was thus more of an unwillingness.
I would agree with this, as people should not be harassed for any reason, but far too often I have seen a trans person claim that they were harassed when really all that happened was someone disagreed with them on some matter of gender theory. In the eyes of many trans activists, failure to capitulate is all that is required for a harassment complaint.
Blood Knight @ 12 I don’t think so, I think it’s someone who used to comment here (or maybe not here but Pharyngula).
Ah, in fact it’s someone who has commented here a few times over the past couple of years, despite a melodramatic “you’ve gone full TERF” back in 2017.
the right to change one’s gender(sex) marker
Gender and sex are two different things. You can’t change your sex like you can change gender identity and there’s no right to lie about a material fact. Women have rights that are based on the fact of their sex, and that’s compromised when males can self-ID as females.
I’m just curious about why there aren’t any battles between transgender people and genderfluid people, those who would be at the DMV frequently to add or remove their Gender X from their driver’s licenses. They make the transgenders’ demands look capricious.
Re right to change name: I suspect what’s being requested is more than a name change. It’s a removal of all references to the old name, and prosecution of people who dare to use the old name.
Re employment rights: I suspect that what’s being referenced is the right to be employed in a sex-restricted job (such as a nurse or therapist in a rape crisis facility or women’s health facility.
If either of those guesses are correct: no, I don’t think such rights exist. In particular the second one: if it is legal to restrict a job to members of one sex, that restriction is not countermanded by someone claiming to be that sex but who is not.
Government documents that lie about sex are no better than ones that lie about age or blood type.
Hope the blockquotes work.
8DX: It’s a right in the sense “the law in the UK allows you to do this instead of prohibiting it.” Currently in the UK, trans people can apply for a gender recognition certificate and request such document changes. Under current UK law if you have such a certificate you are legally your recognised gender, so yes that means accurate under the current UK legal system.
8DX: I wrote this separately because these are much more mundane situations: buying alcohol, applying for a job, at a traffic stop, etc. In our current society if you show an ID which has “M” on it, while presenting, being dressed as and/or having secondary sex characteristics that make you appear “F”, many people will assume you’re using a stolen/fake ID and refuse to sell you goods, throw out job applications, police may bring you in for questioning. This is a practical issue that trans people report prevents exercising their general right to access public spaces regardless of any philosophical concepts of gender/sex.
Because that’s how the Gender Recognition Act works and you asked about rights in the UK specific to trans people. Currently trans people in the UK have the right to be free from discrimination which includes the right not to divulge their trans status (for example it would be seen as discriminatory for an employer to screen for trans employees, similarly to asking about pregnancy / health information / membership of an ethnic group on job applications).
A mismatched marker on your ID tells everyone you’re trans, it would be similar if there was a “hetero/homosexual” marker on IDs that outed gay people.
8DX: The current UK guidance on the Equality Act 2010 does not allow providers of public services including voluntary and community organisations, to discriminate on the basis of “gender reassignment” (meaning any trans people, regardless of transition) specifically concerning “Separate and single-sex services” it states:
You may call trans women men, but under UK law they are to be considered “the gender role in which they present”.
There is an exception:
In practice the vast majority of such organisations in the UK have not made use of this exception and are trans inclusive – changing the law to prohibit that across the board would remove trans people’s rights under the current law.
On the subject of public bathrooms or changing rooms, afaik there has never been any law in the UK prohibiting trans people from using whichever bathroom they feel is appropriate (where they are least likely to be harassed), i.e. they currently have the right to choose which to use like anyone else, so a law prohibiting them from any and all “single-sex spaces” would in fact be removing that right.
UK legislative guidance: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/85024/vcs-gender-reassignment.pdf
The reason I’m commenting here is because I like to see what various left-wing trans-exclusionary people are actually saying and I was genuinely baffled that you did not understand what rights trans people have in the UK today that they would lose if the law was changed. Yes I also sometimes comment/read pharyngula.
=8/-DX
Thanks for clarifying.
So a man dressed as a woman might be seen as having a fraudulent ID card. Perhaps that’s the problem that needs to be addressed, instead of demanding that the ID card be inaccurate.
If the assistant clerk is supposed to have access, and the guards don’t let him in, it isn’t a solution to modify his ID card to say principal clerk.
If the drinking age is 19, and the bartender won’t serve people under 21, it isn’t a solution to change the listed age of a 19-year-old.
Re the UK rights, those are for people who meet the criteria for a gender recognition certificate. Much of the discussion is more related to self-ID, and there is division among gender critical people about what to do in regard to people who have had surgical changes. Among the people who don’t agree with the Gender Recognition Act even as it currently exists is Debbie Hayton, a transwoman who has never obtained a GRC and who wrote here about why he thinks such things are dangerous:
https://debbiehayton.com/2021/02/23/why-do-we-need-more-consultation-on-the-gender-recognition-act/
What is there to be outed as? If TWAW then transwomen can’t be ‘outed’ as not being women, because they ARE women. So to be outed, to have a ‘secret’ revealed, means that they don’t want anyone to know that they are in fact trans, and not a real woman. But of course this implicit contradiction is obvious to all GC people, and I suspect, to many trans activsts as well!
Of course there is the situation of the transwoman who is really convincing as a real woman, they wouldn’t want to be outed:)
@19 “A mismatched marker on your ID tells everyone you’re trans, it would be similar if there was a “hetero/homosexual” marker on IDs that outed gay people.”
Not really, sexual orientation is not that obvious, and mostly none of people’s business. Again, if trans is performative, then why would they want to keep it a secret? Trans is all about being considered the opposite of the sex you were born as, and much of that is from visual cues and those visual cues being mostly stereotypical. It’s about how others perceive them, otherwise why all the effort to appear different? It’s a bad analogy.
Also, are there trans-exclusionary commenters here? I hadn’t really noticed the regulars here being illiberal?
8DX @ 19 –
Hmm, I did, yes, but I didn’t exactly mean to. I meant to ask about legal rights in general (or in the abstract) rather than legal rights i.e. the law in the UK.
At any rate, I think the UK has created some “legal rights” that shouldn’t be rights. Invading women’s spaces is probably top of the list.
It’s illegal in the US to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy, too, but there is nothing that prevents someone from looking at a woman and noticing that she is pregnant. Similarly, membership in certain ethnic groups is at least partially discernible from looking. A person who brings a partner or spouse to a gathering has at least given some evidence as to his or her sexuality. HR documentation of emergency contact information and health care coverage often indicate spouse or children, and some of that is known to people who deal with the documents. All these bits of visible evidence need to be consciously ignored in order to abide by non-discrimination laws; we don’t require people to hide their pregnancies or their spouses.
I maintain that it is at least difficult to distinguish a cross-dresser from a trans person. A cross-dresser should not be thrown out of a bar or denied sex-appropriate access to jobs or facilities. I do not see any reason that a trans person should be granted any different rights on the basis of gender identity claims. A man dressed as a woman is a man dressed as a woman, regardless of what he thinks of himself. The rest of society should not be forced to pretend that this man is actually a woman.
Surely the legal document issue could be handled by recording (actual) sex plus any necessary additional information (for example a “/TW” to indicate that a male person identifies as a trans woman.)
To the argument that this outs trans people I say, so what? We all agree that trans people should not be discriminated against as trans people.
What other protected group demands the “right” to hide their identity as a member of that group?
8DX, It may still be the clinical consensus, but it is not a scientific one. If you look into it you will find that the affirmative model, in particular the use of puberty blockers, beloved by activists though it is, is not supported by the evidence we have. Clinicians around the world are questioning it. This includes the Dutch clinicians who started it all:
https://4thwavenow.com/2021/03/16/dutch-puberty-blocker-pioneer-stop-blindly-adopting-our-research/
–and no less a famous practitioner than Dr. Marci Bowers:
https://news.yahoo.com/transgender-doctors-warn-against-sex-144300599.html
I fear that a certain amount of distortion of the law is being put forward here, perhaps under the influence of the false propaganda being disseminated by Stonewall. It is not the case at the moment that someone without a GRC counts as being transsexual, and no amount of lying about it is going to make that true.
There’s a distinction between a ‘right’ in the sense of something you are entitled to do within the law and a ‘right’ in the sense of something that may not legitimately be denied to you.
For instance married couples in the uk can have their income tax liabilty evaluated so that some of the money earned by the higher earner is considered for tax purposes to have been earned by the lower earner, which often means it’s exempt from income tax as it falls below the tax threshold. This is a right in the sense that married people are perfectly entitled to claim this tax deduction. However, if the rules were to change so that this option were no longer open, married people wouldn’t be being deprived of their fundamental rights in the way they would be if they were no longer entitled to a trial if accused of a crime.
The right to have your gender identity displayed on legal documents is a right in that first sense – the law allows it. It’s not a right in the way that being able to come out as trans without being fired or evicted is a right. The slogan ‘trans rights are human rights’ is deliberately seeking to conflate these two senses of the word right, encouraging the listener to infer that
the rights under threat are fundamental to trans people’s dignity as human beings, rather than being the sort of legal boundary setting that legislatures carry out as a matter of course.
There is no right, formally or fundamentally, to choose to use whichever bathroom feels appropriate. That isn’t the rule for anyone, trans or otherwise.
tigger_the_wing @25, I’m afraid I don’t understand your point. Is this in regard to Debbie Hayton or to confusing self-ID with GRC?
Hayton is transsexual, by reasonable definition, and is not recognized as such under law, because of the lack of a GRC. Hayton refuses to get a GRC for reasons described in the article earlier.
Stonewall at al are pushing for self-ID for transgender people. If I recall correctly, “transsexual” is a term transactivists consider inappropriate, and they like to lump all trans people, with and without any or all medical interventions, into a single “trans” category. (“Transgender” may also be going out of favor, replaced just by “trans”, but I’m not certain of that.)
Hayton likes to use the term “transsexual” anyway, to distinguish those who have undergone “reassignment” surgery. I think that’s reasonable way to use the term. I believe Miranda Yardley advocates the same usage.
Djolaman @ 26 – that. That’s what I keep trying to say.
[…] a comment by Djolaman on What legal […]
Waht about me.? I choose to self-identify as a giraffe. But only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, mind. I’m conservatively inclined.
But are disphoric children actually “trans”? Saying that a child is “trans” or “transgender” is making a claim about the nature of reality, and at the same time, a recommended course of treatment. It’s smuggling in a truth claim about the cause of the child’s discomfort, asserting a conclusion at the start of diagnosis. This is no different than ascribing ailments to imbalances of the four humours, witchcraft, or demonic posession. The patient’s problems are real, but the diagnoses, and the “appropriate care” that comes bundled with these supposed explanations (bloodletting, burning the witch, exorcism,) is bullshit, and potentially lethal bullshit at that. If most disphoric children desist with “watchful waiting,” and the completion of puberty, then the source of their discomfort must have been something other than being “born in the wrong body.” If nobody is born in the wrong body, then anybody treated as if they were is being medically abused.
With many jurisdictions being persuaded to brand and essentially outlaw “watchful waiting” as “conversion therapy”, you can expect to see more cases like that of Kiera Bell. In the name of “necessary healthcare” disphoric children, who would have otherwise desisted and grown up to be healthy, whole gay men and lesbian women, instead get Turbanned or Harroped into a lifelong path of needless, unhelpful, debilitating, medicalization, resulting in mutilation and sterility.
It is a bit amusing to have an emissary from the trans-cult here to make poor assertions (i.e. “A very simple example would be the right to change one’s gender(sex) marker on legal documents such as driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates sex(gender)…”
It’s also revealing that this person asserts, in no uncertain terms, that women’s sex-based rights must be abolished to please the trans. Yes, abolition of women’s rights (and gay rights, and children’s rights) is something many of us would like to prevent the trans-cult from accomplishing.
Thanks, 8DX, for bring more attention to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights.
https://www.womensdeclaration.com/en/
It’s a shame that this is what we have come to, but this declaration seems entirely necessary at this point, and I also recommend others read and consider it.
I expect 8DX and his ilk are very busy persecuting the signatories, so I do appreciate his taking some time off to spill some weak tea over here. (Apologies if his 8DX’s sex is misconstrued, but the choice of icon suggests a male (chauvinist) pig).
I signed on the 14.09.2021 :)
Bruce, this point of yours is very important, and deserves its own discussion:
For me as well, this “transgender child” is one of those epithets that stops the flow of dialogue. As you say, it holds a remarkable assumption in it. It may roll off the tongue nicely for some, and the circumlocutions required to avoid it may be more cumbersome: “Children who identify as trans,” “Children who experience gender dysphoria,” etc., but in its essentialism it embodies a dangerous, harmful lie.
We see, in longer studies, that the proportion of children whose gender dysphoria persists past puberty is relatively small. How small we don’t know with certainty, but unless children are medicalized or otherwise interfered with, the majority of children experiencing gender dysphoria or wishing to identify as trans will eventually move past that and come to accept and love their own bodies. That means that, as you suggest, the term “trans children” has violence inherent in it, social and medical violence, against this majority of dysphoric children who will, in the absence of intervention, mature into their own bodies and find their own way to live as their true sex.
This word, “sex,” is important to remember and to use in this context. “Sex” reminds us, when we’re talking about children, of the history of sexual abuse of children by adults, and how this new form of abuse fits into that tradition. Adults should not be having sex with children – this has long been what is meant by “interfering with” children – and, by the same token, adults should not be interfering with the sexual development of children in a medical or social way. These two types of interfering have much in common. Children should be allowed to develop into their sex, and into their sexuality, without adults always lurking about, pushing them in one way or another. The trans groomer is no better than any other groomer, not even with an MD.
#19 8DX
This will gradually go away as the cultural clothing expectations are eroded. If we get over the idea entirely that men aren’t ‘supposed’ to wear dresses, then a male (whether he identifies as man or woman) wearing a dress will simply be a male wearing a dress.
But even if we ignore the culture expectation element, there is the fact that official documentation such as ID is recording an objective fact about that person: their sex. Not their gender, as this is something that is impossible to check even if it were well defined.
And to answer the question that is usual at this point – “but why does the government want to know what is in someone’s pants in the first place?” – the government has an interest in maintaining demographic information about its population for multiple reasons. Statistics provide insight into patterns in the population, making visible trends and patterns which might indicate problems or are otherwise relevant to allocating public spending. And yes, identification, even though identification can have those moments of awkwardness you mention.
Given that the M or F is a physical parameter about a person that the state has an interest in knowing, why does someone’s – desire to be the other sex / wish that they had been born the other sex / feeling that they are the other sex – than the one they are, give them freedom to have misinformation on their documentation?
Papito @35
Yes – the ‘flattening’ of a complex array of issues into a single idea (the child born into the wrongly sexed body) is really worrying in clinical terms.
I’ve just read ‘Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults’ by Marcus Evans and Susan Evans. (Marcus Evans is one if the therapists who resigned from GIDS over concerns regarding affirmative care.) It’s worth a read because the authors use case studies to show how children presenting with ‘gender dysphoria’ are actually suffering from a range of different problems eg. dissociative disorders similar to anorexia and self-harming, reactions to the trauma of sexual/physical abuse, poor attachment due to chaotic parenting, and anxiety about emerging sexuality.
It’s very clear from reading these studies that the therapy is hampered from the beginning as the kids (and/or parents) have already self diagnosed as ‘trans’. They are not approaching therapy with an open mind and have often been encouraged to regard it with deep suspicion or hostility, or as conversion therapy.
I apologise for not being clear. It’s a confusing thing to write about. It is not yet the case that people who merely claim to feel as if they’re the opposite sex must be given access to sex-segregated spaces, jobs etc. intended for the opposite sex; whatever Stonewall is telling anyone.
#23
That clarification makes sense, but I think that also makes it obvious how your OG tweet in response to Owen Jones was confusing. Owen Jones was talking about rights (or liberties, freedoms, what the law allows and does not prohibit, however you want to frame it) trans people currently have in the UK, that the Declaration Kathleen Stock signed would abolish. Denying those are “real rights” in some general humanist framework or that they are in conflict with the rights of other groups (presumably those of cis women in the UK or worldwide) and that there is a good case to remove them is an argument you can make, but at least your questions “What exactly are ‘trans legal rights’.” and “What legal rights are specific to trans people and no one else?” have been answered. That was my initial goal and there’s no point arguing further (people have been very clear in their comments, what positions they take and how we disagree).
The only last thing worth noting is that the UK also protects cis people from discrimination “if they are perceived as having gender reassignment” (as may happen to cis people who are gender nonconforming / those without conventional body types or presentation), something removing the relevant provision of the law would also abolish.
Have a nice day everyone.
=8/-DX
What’s an OG tweet?
Ok, my tweet to OJ was confusing. I had in mind the endless rhetoric about “trans rights” and the endless failure to spell out exactly what they are and how they are derived. He was talking about rights that are spelled out, so my tweet was confusing. It happens. It wasn’t a peer-reviewed article, or a column, or even a blog post, it was just a tweet. (An OG one at that.) I didn’t waste any of his time, because he didn’t answer (and I didn’t expect him to).
There’s no such thing as “cis people.” Lots of people who don’t call themselves “cis,” perhaps most of them, perhaps all of them, feel that the conventional wisdom about how their sex behaves and thinks and feels doesn’t fit them perfectly. “Cis” is stupid jargon.
What’s on a government-issued identification is sex, not gender. The trans lobby might advocate for an additional, and separate, gender marker. E.g., Sex = M Gender Identity = TW.
Using dual markers would obviate the problem of putting the wrong sex on identification documents. The ID says M, and it also says TW. No confusion about it being a fake or stolen ID. Everything is up front and above board, instead of sneaking and lying about who you are.
Nobody has a right to lie about their sex. That’s not a right.
Changing legal name is fine, although there are limits. When the name change is fraudulent, that is sufficient reason to deny the petition for name change. Trying to bury a criminal record via name change is at least arguably in the ambit of improper purposes for a name change.
Such as what? Trans identified people can access public services and employment, just the same as anyone else. I don’t believe that’s true.
Why shouldn’t it be (i.e., trans identity divulged)? There’s nothing wrong with claiming a transgender identity. Besides, what are all the days, weeks, and months of transgender visibility for, if not to divulge and be proud of trans identity? What are you trying to hide? People do get to look at other people, after all.
AFAIK, gender critical people are affirmatively in favor of such protections for transgender people.
That’s not a right that the trans lobby is actively seeking. If that were what they wanted, they would advocate for parallel gender-segregated facilities in addition to the existing sex-segregated facilities. Third/fourth spaces have been proposed, but trans advocates reject such proposals. No, their agenda is to do away with and dismantle sex-segregated facilities. That hurts women, primarily. The vehemence of the insistence that gender matters, and sex does not, reveals the true agenda: to let men take over anything and everything that women have.
No, they wouldn’t. Trans people could be perfectly well served by identification that includes the correct and accurate recordation of sex, as well as a marker for gender identity, if desired.
Transgender people are already fully able to access public services and employment. There is no barrier to those.
Protections against harassment and discrimination on the basis of gender identity — properly defined, and not treated as identical to sex — are proper and would not be abolished. Gender critics fully support anti-discrimination protections in employment, housing, and access to services in the same manner as the public generally.
There is no right to privacy in the sense of preventing people from knowing what they know when they see you.
Correctly sexing is not “misgendering.” That is why including markers both for the objective fact of sex, and any claimed gender identity makes sense. Sex and gender remain distinct.
It’s not at all certain that mutilation or complete amputation of healthy body parts,
stunted growth and bone density loss, or permanent deprivation of reproductive capacity — inflicted on children — is “necessary health care.” It looks a lot more like child abuse, and the opposite of the “highest attainable standard of health.”
There’s no such thing as “cis” people, adults or children.
Naturally, there are actually therapeutic uses for puberty blockers. The legislation can easily be drafted to prohibit only non-therapeutic, off-label uses of puberty blockers. Of course, that is precisely what is contemplated, not a blanket prohibition with no subtlety. That’s a strawman argument.
@39 So according to Owen, if Kathleen Stock signed the declaration she somehow deserved the abuse? Any you 8DX agree with this? Really, you seem to know what that dipshit was on about, so tell us.
I’ll preemptively take your silence (and your pronouncement that there is no point in arguing further) as your inability to answer such questions to my “cis” and “trans exclusionary” satisfaction. You seem to have us identified and prejudged anyway, which supports your pronouncement.
Let me just say that if any single one the “trans rights” involves the abuse of women in any way, then they are not human rights of any description.
I see today how Owen is banging on about “anti-trans activists” like there is such a thing. His dipshittery is epic. False descriptions and mischaracterizations are part of the dogma, twaw, cis, terf, all of it. I call bullshit.
Just a few clarifications:
@Ophelia Benson #40:
Oh sorry, OG just means “original” (as OP means original post, OT can be original tweet, etc.). I understand you don’t like the reference to “cis”, but as it is generally used it says nothing about a person’s acceptance of gender roles, it’s just a category designation of “not trans”, similarly calling someone “straight” (i.e. “not-gay” or “not-queer”) says nothing about them accepting heteronormative and patriarchal social structures.
@maddog1129 #42
The DWSBR rejects the notion that legislation should include the category of “gender identity” (in the UK this is “gender reassignment”).
If legislation even referring to the concept of “gender identity” is “discrimination against women”, clearly in the UK context that is asking to repeal the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, that would lead to the result I stated. If you don’t think that law should be repealed, fine. But you’re agreeing with Owen Jones and disagreeing with the DWSBR.
In the UK, trans people are currently already able to make use of the vast majority of “sex-segregated facilities” based on self identification (although discrimination ofc exists). For example women’s wards of hospitals. This is currently one of the focuses of the UK “trans panic”, but that’s how the law is at the moment, trans people are fine with that staying the same, they don’t want special “trans wards”.
I of course don’t agree with any harassment or threats of anyone and reject them outright. However many people have criticised Kathleen Stock’s opinions on trans people and are well in their rights to do so. Or call her a transphobe for signing a transphobic (asking for the removal of trans rights and demonising trans people) declaration.
I’m also against having sex/gender markers on public documentation in general. It serves no practical purpose and is just another avenue for discrimination.
Cheers.
=8/-DX