Women who transitioned decades ago feel their safety and security has suddenly been removed
Last week’s supreme court ruling sent shock waves through the UK’s trans community.
The unanimous judgment said the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs).
That feeling was compounded when Kishwer Falkner, the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is preparing new statutory guidance, said the judgment meant only biological women could use single-sex changing rooms and toilets.
The UK doesn’t even have a written constitution, so everything, including “Rights” is really just one parliamentary majority (which with the country’s First Past The Post system can be had for as little as 34% of votes cast, which taking in account the typical levels of abstention means the approval of less than 1/4 of the population) or one Supreme Court decision away from being nullified.
Back when the UK was still a member of the EU (to be an EU member one MUST be a member of the European Convention Of Human Rights), this kinda stuff ended up in the European Court Of Human Rights (which is not an EU court, but instead is the court of last resort for members of the European Convention Of Human Rights), but nowadays maybe that’s not so (I’m not sure if the meanwhile after Brexit the UK has already left the European Convention Of Human Rights, but being able to leave it was one of the things the Brexiters claimed was a “benefit” of leaving the EU).
(Edit: it turns out the UK is still a member of the Council of Europe and hence the European Convention Of Human Rights, so maybe this can still be appealed to the European Court Of Human Rights)
I’ve lived in a couple of countries in Europe, including the UK, and found the UK the be the least Democratic of all (frankly I’m not even sure what they have is a real Democracy rather than a “managed” Theatre Of Democracy to keep the riff-raff thinking they have real power).
I had to avoid looking at this topic elsewhere because it made me so fucking angry. My best friend in the entire world is trans, and she’s coming for Christmas this year. I’m not sure what I’d do if someone harassed her for using the toilet, but I get the feeling my mugshot would be in the paper afterwards.
I hate it when European countries play “who can emulate the US the fastest”
From having lived in several countries in Europe, including the UK, I would say that Britain is the closest we have here to the US when it comes to being a deeply flawed Democracy, possibly worse than the US since unlike it, Britain doesn’t even have a written constitution, so just about everything can be changed with a law passed by a simple parliamentary majority (of 50% + 1) and as the UK has a First Past The Post electoral system said majority can be had with a mere 34% of votes cast (the current government has such a parliamentary majority with only 33.7% of votes), which given the typical level of Parliamentary Elections abstention over there is less than the votes of 1/4 of voters.
Britain has wonderful propaganda helped by some really weird elements like the local elites sending their children to schools were they learn the fine arts of “managing apperances” (learned behaviours which in many other countries would be considered dishonest and deceitful) plus a media industry which is World class (probably the best Theatre industry in the World, IMHO) often used to project a very good image of the country (its almost a joke how every couple of years, almost like clockwork, out comes a new film about WWII portraying Britain as a great country), so from the outside most people have a good impression of of that country, but if you’re living there and get involved in Politics and really learn about their system, the more you learn the less Democratic it seems.
Well, UK birthed the US after all. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Nah, that doesn’t apply in this case. The UK is a world leader in transphobia, acting not because the US does things, but because they’re entirely transphobic on their own.
They suck, but world leader? Some countries still stone you to death for such things.
I bet Rowling is ecstatic.
She donated £70,000 to the people that pushed to pass this bill.
In the words of Pedro Pascal, she is indeed a “heinous loser”
Her public celebration of the result was absolutely grotesque
Anyone speculate on why JKR is so anti-trans? Did something happen in her past that makes her so hateful on this issue?
radical feminist to trans exclusionary radical feminist pipeline, being completely isolated from other people due to being a billionaire, not respected by other authors due to not being very good at being an author, also potential black mold poisoning
Did something happen in her past that makes her so hateful on this issue
I can’t guess as to the full extent of her transphobia, but I can point to a couple of elements of it.
She did suffer domestic abuse of some sort before and around the time the first Harry Potter book came out. This was a cis man who did it, but I think in her mind there’s no difference between cis men and trans women.
There’s also a well-studied psychological phenomenon where people tend to double-down on their prior beliefs when challenged, unless those challenges come in a very narrow form. Her earliest transphobic comments may have been her being tepid about expressing her true beliefs, but they may genuinely have been the sort of misinformed casual transphobia that a much, much wider segment of the population has which may have gone no further if she were a normal person. But because lots of well-intentioned people—largely some of her most dedicated fans—tried to educate her and help her to be better, she may have doubled down and got into the reactionary feedback loop that so many transphobes, racists, and members of the alt-right got into. They perceive constructive criticism, especially when it comes in large volumes, as a personal attack, and the people who aren’t attacking them instead encourage them to double down on their beliefs, and reward them when they do.
Her books show a very strong liberal bias. Liberal in the sense that it’s not regressive per se, but it’s also strongly opposed to analysis of problems as stemming from systemic issues rather than One Bad Actor. SPEW is the easiest to point to, but the lack of systemic change in the governance of the Wizarding World post-Voldemort is more significant, in my view. The problem was one Minister of Magic who was just ignorant of the problem of Voldemort, followed by another who actively covered it up. These individuals are the bad guys who need to be defeated. It wasn’t, as the books tell it, underlying racism and classism of wizarding culture. So it seems that Rowling is not good at spotting systemic injustice. Such as the higher suicide rates among trans people (especially if they’re not accepted), higher rates of DV and other violence, and other problems faced are not factoring into her calculations. Which makes it so much easier to cast trans people as the bad guys.
But I find it hard for these to adequately explain either the initial spark of transphobia per se, or the rather extreme extent she’s gone to. So yeah, like you I’m a little curious if there’s more to it.
An excellent analysis. Thank you for a thought and highly plausible explanation of the JKR phenomenon.
I am also so curious. Maybe money and the idea of “I just subjugate anyone that isn’t like me” is the answer? Notch went though similar stuff shirt he got “fuck you” money.
Did she mean demonstrably?
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One day old account with nothing but bad takes. Go back to Reddit, troll
Uh, that varies wildly state to state and person to person here in the US. California even has division among acceptance, there are significant portions of people on LA and SF who’d love to see all these things repealed. Social media is a helluva drug.
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You’re talking out of your ass. Trans folk, and gender reassignment, have been a thing for decades. It’s only recently become a social topic in the wider push for inclusive LGQT+ rights and has been gained mainstream attention, which has conservative undies in a twist. It just used to be that trans people kept themselves to themselves out of fear of social rejection, which is what the wider push has been about.
Love this so much
Source: trust me bro
Surprise, it’s religious history.
Good on you for leaving the EU with at that fuss about “human rights” and “rule of law”.
You might be thinking of the Council of Europe, of which the UK is still a member (for now).
Well, that’s not so bad then as this case can still be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights then.
I distinctly remember how one of the “benefits” Brexiters claimed for leaving the EU was not having to be a member of the Euopean Convention of Human Rights anymore (which is mandatory for all EU members), so I’m pleasantly surprised the UK hasn’t left it yet (I was an EU immigrant in Britain and left the country just before Brexit and didn’t really keep up with British politics since).
This case specifically can’t be appealed to the ECHR since the scotland act doesn’t allow the devolved government to do so (IIRC), so we’ll probably have a few years of this until another case works its way up the ladder.
Yeah, I got the ECHR and ECJ mixed up.
For anyone else who didn’t recognize those initialisms:
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its European Court of Human Rights are part of a completely different legal system to the EU. The ECHR and its court are part of the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, including Russia and the UK. The EU, on the other hand, consists of 27 Member States.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is the body responsible for overseeing compliance with EU law within the EU. That said, the EU and Council of Europe systems are intertwined because the ECHR lies behind many of the general principles of EU law and its provisions have been used as a basis for the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. All 27 EU member states are also members of the Council of Europe.
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The Guardian shedding crocodile’s tears? Boohoo, we spend years vilifying trans people and now look what happened…
Would you prefer a more celebratory article? What’s your arguement?
The argument is that the guardian is a fucking piece of shit terf rag that platforms the worst of the worst while pretending to be left of center.
And any occasion is a good occasion to remind them to do better.
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passing of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, which allowed trans people to change gender on their birth certificate
this doesn’t make sense to me, if gender is a social construct then why is it on the birth certificate? shouldn’t it be the sex that’s on the certificate and can’t be changed?
When you transition, you in a very literal way change your sex. Chromosomes do very very little for sex differentiation. All a Y chromosome, or specifically the SRY gene, does is tell the gonads to develop into testes. From there on, everything is hormonal. Biological sex is largely determined by hormones, not genetics.
And moreover, very few ever actually have their chromosomes tested. If you think sex is chromosomal, well, you don’t actually know your own sex.
Birth certificates are also a social construct and so they have no logical consequence to the question
A better question is, why is the government administering it in the first place?
There should be no laws that depend on either gender or sex, so knowing it does not help the government fulfill its obligations. Therefore it is not covered by the public interest and official authority grounds of the GDPR.
There should be no laws that depend on either gender or sex
Ideally, maybe. In a future perfect society. But let’s remember that the court case that triggered this was about whether trans women count as women for the purposes of meeting laws that require gender quotas. Quotas that most of us should support because of their importance in combatting existing gender inequalities.
I would say the contradiction you’re showing in that hint at how you cannot genuinelly fight Discrimination by keeping on discriminating people on some characteristic they were born with but changing which “group” gets benefited and it should be instead done via fighting against any Discrimination (i.e. fighting explicitly for Equality for all).
It’s funny that the only place in the UK I worked in which had gender quotas was the most sexist of them all and women working there were assumed and treated as implicitly less competent than men and even, in some cases, as de facto little more than eye-candy for management (something which was fair for some but unfair for others). Meanwhile my experience in The Netherlands which is way more equalitarian than the UK was very different when it comes to gender discrimination (or discrimination of trans people or of people with minority sexual orientations).
Agreed. The only people that really need to know your biological sex are your doctor and people you’re seeking (sexual) relationships with.
For believing that the government has no business with my genitals and also believing that there’s nothing inherently wrong with trans people…does that make me a trans inclusionary radical feminist?
But biological sex is a critical part of our species, and our society, so you can’t just ignore it and say the government doesn’t need to know
How is it critical outside of reproduction? Why should anyone except for your doctor and partner care?
Reproduction including everything that goes along with it- including dating, sexual attraction, interactions between different genders/sexes is a critical part of our evolution both as a species and a society
Important for dating - yes, evolution - yes, government, administration and passports - no.
Trans women are biologically women.
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As far as I understand, trans people are still a protected class under other statutes on the UK, but basically just don’t count for any laws like “50% of company board members must be women to receive this tax break”.
Which, idk, seems reasonable to me.
but basically just don’t count for any laws like “50% of company board members must be women to receive this tax break”.
Which, idk, seems reasonable to me.
I have no idea how that’s reasonable. The point of such laws is to promote equality. And even if you choose to count trans women as a completely unique third category (which you shouldn’t…the word “women” in “trans women” is there for a reason), they are certainly a minority gender, so counting them for the purpose of pro-diversity incentives seems like a no-brainer.
Trans women experience misogyny. Most transphobia is rooted in misogyny. If you’re subject to misogyny, you should count towards female hiring quotas.
Only if you take it in a vacuum. Acting like this is a singular incident and not part a seires of events that have made trans people less and less safe in the UK is a poor judgnent call.
So how about the toilets and changing rooms mentioned?
Why would you say it’s reasonable unless you don’t consider them to be women?
The reaction is definitely blowing it out of proportion, but trans women should definitely count toward that.
It seems pretty unreasonable to me that laws like that exist in the first place, so my answer to the question how trans people should be counted for such purposes is “neither because such laws shouldn’t exist”.
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The centrism fallacy:
A: I want B to be erased.
B: I want to exist. Fuck off.
Centrist: Now now don’t be rude. Let’s find some middle ground. A wants B to stop existing and we must respect all opinions. B, do you have a compelling and reasobable counter-argument for your right to exist? Be civil.
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Except B here is the centrist position. If you actually look at political dialogue it’s more like:
A: I want B to be erased.
B: I want A to be erased.
Just look at all the guillotine-posting around here for examples.
So the binary is “trans people” versus “fascist oligarchs”?
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At what point did I say you as a centrist am saying that trans people don’t exist?
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When did I say I was talking about the definition of a woman?
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If their passport doesn’t match their appearance, would that be safe for travel in less welcoming countries? Would it allow them to travel at all, if it didn’t match their presentation? Isn’t that the whole point of a passport? There is no reason for this kind of legal ruling apart from offering a way for bigots to practice bigotry. Nobody will be safer, but trans people will be more at risk.
Someone can present anyway they want, that doesn’t change their biological sex. If some countries look at your passport and think you look like a gender that doesn’t match their biological sex, so what?
Why do you think sex is listed in passports? Do you think it is because it is important to understand the reproductive capabilities of the traveller or is it a data point that corresponds with appearance, like eye color?
I’m trying to imagine a scenario outside maybe immigration where a country a traveler visits would need to know your “biological sex” or “birth sex”.
Well I would think sex is more important to be on a passport because it is something that can’t be changed, like your birthday. So yes it is a data point, but not one related to your appearance. If you are using gender on a passport, it seems kind of pointless because you may identify one way but look like another.
But what is it for, why have sex on the passport at all? Why is it important to know the “biological sex” of a traveler? Have you been genetically scanned at a border crossing before?
Why have you birthday or place of birth on there then?
because these are the standard points of data that accurately identifies an individual: place of birth adds geography so you can look for local records, and birthdate is a “key” to separate individuals with the same name
name and dob is the standard identifier in medicine
place name is important because passports are related to geography and actual individual identity
now you answer the question
Ah go shove a pineapple up your ass. A big one.
So your middle ground is to not give passports to trans people that allows them safe passage. Literally, what passports were designed to do.
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“passports to trans people that allows them safe passage” - that’s what you wouldn’t give them. What is a passport good for if you cannot travel with it because the information it carries makes you a target in many countries?
But that is the fault of those other countries then. Maybe it would be best to have both sex and gender official documents
Passports are for traveling - that’s the hole point. They are a means of communication with the other countries and should help the holder to travel easily. If they don’t because of their design, it’s not the fault of the other countries. Passports are emmitted by our country to help us travel even ti stupid countries if needed.
That’s so unsafe, how is that a middle position?
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For literally anyone whose appearance doesn’t match their birth certificate regardless of if they are cis or trans.
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For one, it can get you thrown into a gulag by U.S. border patrol, or jailed in any of the states and countries that require one’s birth certificate to match a bathroom door sign.
For another, it’s all the evidence that bigots in positions of power need to assume someone is trans, and people who are thought to be trans face deadly levels of harassment for that alone.
US border patrol is throwing people in a gulag because they don’t present the same way as their biological sex? Huh? Isn’t that all trans people? As for the bathroom thing, well that should be based on gender, not biological sex as I already said. No one should be harassed- and those that do harass others are in the wrong
So you agree that it’s wrong, but you think it should be encouraged anyway?
Gee, I’ve never heard of trans people being assaulted for being themselves before
Who is looking at a person’s birth certificate before deciding to assault a person? And either way, any person who assaults any other person is a piece of shit and should face the full extent of the law
They aren’t, but they feel entitled to harass or assault someone they think is trans. Hell, did you miss the story a few weeks ago where a cis female was screamed at for using the women’s bathroom? Discriminatory laws embolden this behavior
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You can fuck off to storm front whenever you want
Can someone clarify, which rights? To use this toilet instead of that toilet?
Women being forced to enter men’s bathroom submit themselves to staring and danger of harassment
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Lockable stalls you cannot peek into
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What do you mean “what do you mean by woman”? The women who are the focus of this article and this comment thread.
Well it depends on the definition, which is the whole point of the article i.e. was defined by the UK supreme court as a biological female. So by that definition, who is forcing a woman to go into a man’s bathroom?
Besides maybe cases like intercourse and medical, “woman” and “man” are social roles formed by identity and perception, instead of genital-determined conditions (nobody sees your organs in public, i hope). Therefore, whoever identifies as a woman and is perceived socially like a woman, is a woman. That includes many serious trans women, who will be women in a men’s bathroom.
which is why bathrooms would be better suited by being separated by gender, not sex
Oh, you know, the right to being legally recognized as the gender on your official Gender Recognition Certificate, which cost money and was issued by the federal government (and was explicitly stated on government websites to be legally equivalent to being born the stated gender).
Federal government in the UK? The UK isn’t a federation, so doesn’t have a federal government.
Okay, well a national entity of some kind is the one issuing these certificates, from my understanding. If you lived in Scotland, it would be issued by the government of Scotland. In my country, we use the term federal because we are a confederation.
