volver
This, I believe is a discussion about self id. That's what the bill is about, isn't it?
So we have people who have concerns about men in women's toilets, men in women's sports, safe spaces etc. Fair enough, that needs to be addressed.
So, when we get into gender re-assignment surgery or, puberty blockers or medicalisation like that, isn't that what the bill is meant to be avoiding? The medicalisation of gender id? Am I missing something completely? Or is all the shouting something to do with the "thin end of the wedge?"
I've tried asking this before on another thread and I was told I'm disingenuous, people can't change sex, yada yada. That's not debate, its invective.
Do you really not know what has been happening, Volver ?
Sex as male/female categorisation in DNA and/or as production of large or small gametes for reproduction is fixed biologically, and despite what Stonewall frequently tells us, it is only a very small minority who are intersex or affected by malfunctions in their biological sexual development. They say 1.7 % are intersex, (nearly 1 in 50) but if you look further into the statistics and subtract those whose syndromes don't affect their male/female categorisation, those affected enough to need "re-assigning" are more like 0.018% - that is 1.8 people in 10,000. The vast majority of people wishing to transition are not intersex, and were not wrongly observed as male or female (by the way, sex is not randomly "assigned" at birth - doctors and midwives don't go "This one male, next one female, now one male, now one female, now I think we'll have the next three male . . ")
Occasional people have been living by choice as the opposite sex since time began, sometimes openly (usually if they had enough money and clout for their idiosyncracies to be overlooked) or in disguise. They have been variously considered to be prophets, seers, shamans, devils, nutters or weirdos, sometimes venerated, sometimes tolerated and sometimes persecuted.
The current mood is that all variations of living and all sexual arrangements should be included in the mainstream of society - nothing is to be considered weird - ,so there has been a push for transitioned people to be legally the sex that they feel internally that they are, in all respects. This has been strongly (even aggressively) supported by organisations like Stonewall, which has set up a kind of "approval register" for organisations that meet their (Stonewall's) criteria of trans-friendly governance. Stonewall was rather running out of causes (and income) once gay and lesbian homosexuality was accepted. In return for support, they offered their seal of approval in the PR and publicising/marketing of those organisations.
"The Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme gives organisations access to PR-friendly brandingin exchange for their instigating - to put it frankly - certain measures of social control. Current members of the scheme include ble-chip companies, political parties, local authorities, government departments such as the Department of Education, schools, most Universities, newspapers and broadcasters, police and armed forces, arts organisations, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and many other major national bodies. Effectively, Stomewall seems to be aiming at the removal from member organisations of any public reference whatsoever to sex that might offend a trans person. . . . Stonewall defines transphobia as "the fear or dislike of someone based on the fact that they are trans, ^including denying their gender identity or refusing to accept it" And, of course, Stonewall famously says that trans women are women and transmen are men. So if you "refuse to accept" that, say, having a female gender identity makes you a woman, or make any other difference in your speech or behaviour because of the sex of a trans person, you are "transphobic" from Material girls,by Kathleen Stock p 196
This is far too much power for an organisation such as Stonewall.
This bill is an adjustment of an earlier Act. The original required those who wanted to "change their sex" to undertake to do (as near as possible) just that if they wished the "change of sex" to replace their birth sex on all their paperwork and for them to be legally that sex in all respects. - The requirement was for them to take active steps toward being the sex which they craved (through taking medication to alter their hormone production and/ot to have surgery to alter their genitalia. They were also expected to have a "dry run" of two years of living in their desired sex before their application for a legal change was considered.
This proposed update does indeed ease those requirements, removing the medical input and shortening the "dry run" to three months. - so far, so good, at least for the trans people - but it does mean that someoneof 18 can leap into legally changing their definition into the opposite sex ^without demonstrating that being in what they feel is the wrong category is causing them such mental and psychological distress that transition is the only way forward. The proposal to lower that age to 16 will mean that even more young people, with even less experience of the adult world, will take a precipitate decision that they could regret bitterly.
Also, it does absolutely nothing to address all the questions that have been raised about the effect of the Act on other adults, and on the many pre-pubescent children who (as they often do) have interests or attitudes usually associated with boys (if they are girls) or girls (if they are boys), and think that they would happier as the opposite sex. Worried parents take their children to gender clinics, where the ethos is always to affirm this and not to investigate alternative reasons - which can include unsuspected sexual abuse. Such is the abhorrence of the forcible aversion therapy once given to homosexuals that any suggestion of this being a phase, that any other treatment except the prescription of puberty-delaying drugs is rare. These drugs are not licensed for use on children, and can cause permanent sterility and bone damage.
This update to the original Act was a chance to calmly consider a lot of things that have become apparent seince it was passed, but it has been missed.
PS - Volver You are an intelligent person, and accustomed to reading and analysing work by intelligent people - and you are (presumably) now retired from doing so in connection to your work, so can I urge you to take the time to read "Material Girls" by Kathleen Stock. She lays out the background to this issue and its effects on society and individuals in a very readable way.
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