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.

  • ikt@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    1 day ago

    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?

    • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      16 hours ago

      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.

    • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Birth certificates are also a social construct and so they have no logical consequence to the question

    • vzq@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      24 hours ago

      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.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        23 hours ago

        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.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          15 minutes ago

          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).

      • ReiRose@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        23 hours ago

        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?

        • jfr634@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          24
          ·
          22 hours ago

          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

          • angrystego@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            16
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            21 hours ago

            How is it critical outside of reproduction? Why should anyone except for your doctor and partner care?

            • jfr634@feddit.uk
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              16
              ·
              20 hours ago

              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

              • angrystego@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                14
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                18 hours ago

                Important for dating - yes, evolution - yes, government, administration and passports - no.