Gender again. Sorry!
- Thread starter theclaud
- Start date
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Bromptonaut
Rohan Man
- Location
- Bugbrooke, Northants
The correct term is Gender Dysphoria. If you want numbers do some research of your own.
OP
OP
theclaud
Reading around the chip
Correct. Gender Dystopia is the collective name for the states of AR, MO, TX, SD, ND, ID, WY, UT, OK, LA, MS, TN, and KY as of last week.
dutchguylivingintheuk
Über Member
I did and they all show a very small percentage or they show crazy number because they are being sponsored or hijacked by activist.
Which brings me back to the point why should we change to way we view gender if only a very small percentage is born in thw wrong body? Why not instead invest more in how to detect things like that earlier and help poeple suffering from it?
OP
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theclaud
Reading around the chip
I recommend reading it. Under current legislation, black people don't need a certificate to say they are black in order to be recognized as experiencing racial discrimination/harassment/victimisation, and the regressive consequences of having racial categorization as part of your legal identity are obvious. Similarly, one might be guilty of homophobic abuse of a person who is, objectively, straight - it's clear that this is a widespread problem for gender non-conforming, boys, for example. The suggestion is that we understand these things as social phenomena with a context, not as arising from the nature of individuals.
OP
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theclaud
Reading around the chip
It's not very confrontational by your standards,TBF.
Let's say someone is sexually harassed and catcalled by men as she walks through a public space. That, broadly speaking, is a function of misogyny. It might (probably most commonly) happen to someone born female and presenting and identifying unambiguously as a woman. But it might also happen to someone born male who is read as female by the men (they are harassing in the belief that she or he is female), to someone who identifies as female but is read otherwise by the perpetrators or doesn't count as a woman in law (eg a trans woman without a GRC who doesn't 'pass' as female), to a trans man who doesn't 'pass' as a man, to a butch woman who is being punished for challenging the men's requirements of feminine behaviour, or to a gay or an 'effeminate' man for transgressing the perpetrators' requirements of masculine behaviour. It's rarely going to happen to a man (or trans man) who is read by the men as unproblematically masculine. All of these scenarios are to do with gender, and all of them should arguably be recognized as similar and addressed by the same legal framework.
Data collection is a complex issue, but it's addressed explicitly in the report, and is currently subject to botching and inconsistent method. It can't hurt to address it.
AuroraSaab
Legendary Member
Let's look at the suggestions:
P37:
"Legal registration of sex and gender is abolished. Sex and gender status would no longer be legally established or assigned (for instance by registering sex on birth certificates). Sex observed at birth could
continue to be recorded, in aggregate, for planning and statistical purposes, but would no longer form part of an individual’s legal status."
"The current grounds of ‘sex’ and ‘gender
reassignment’ in the Equality Act 2010 would
be merged to form the ground of ‘gender’ as
a ‘protected characteristic’ for discrimination, harassment etc. ...."
"Gender-specific provision, activities, and membership criteria would remain
legally valid where this is done to address
social subordination, unfairness, violence,
or harassment (for instance, women’s domestic violence shelters, women’s sports, community provision for nonbinary and agender young
people etc).....
That sounds OK, but then they say:
"Decertification introduces a presumption of self-identification in determining ‘gender’ category membership.."
So, yes, you can have a rape crisis centre that excludes men - but it only excludes men who self identify as men. It can't legally exclude men who self identify as women.
This is self ID. It replaces 'sex' with 'gender' in law. It replaces the material reality of sex with the nebulous concept of gender, which can change on a daily basis.
Under this proposal it would be gender discrimination to exclude biological males from women's single sex spaces because it's your self-identified gender that counts, not your actual sex.
The oppression that women face is based on their sex, not their gender. And it's why we have single sex spaces in the first place.
AuroraSaab
Legendary Member
No they don't. But if someone white claimed they were discriminated against for being black it would be considered not just unacceptable but offensive. Race is a material reality, like sex, you can't opt in and out if it at will, like gender.
How do you feel about Rachel Dolezal? She identifies as black. Why is Rachel Dolezal's self ID as black unacceptable, but Eddie Izzard's self ID as a woman fine?
dutchguylivingintheuk
Über Member
That's just everything stays as it currently is but some expensive paid consultants are gonna rename it, what could possible go wrong?
They did the same with council housing is now called affordable, is more expensive and just as hard to get, but hee hoo let's go who gives a f*ck anyway?
OP
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theclaud
Reading around the chip
I don't recall saying either was fine - you're doing the imaginary opponent thing again.
I presume you don't actually want people to have to have an official certificate declaring that they are black or white, or categorizing them by race? Race itself isn't actually a material reality, BTW - it's a system of differences - but racial oppression is.
OP
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theclaud
Reading around the chip
Maybe stop combing through it for shibboleths.
You are confusing the concept of gender, which is both complex and essential to feminist analysis, and of which I have pasted the report's extremely cogent definition above, with the idea of 'gender identity' (someone's internal sense of what gender they are), which some people think should replace sex as a protected characteristic within the existing framework - a proposal not supported either by me or the report.
AuroraSaab
Legendary Member
What does this mean then?
"Gender-specific provision, activities, and membership criteria would remain
legally valid ... (with) .... a presumption of self-identification in determining ‘gender’ category membership.."
You are keen to present this as a solution for those who don't feel comfortable being called a man or a woman, but seem a bit short on the details of how this will affect women and girls.
Under this reports proposals what would happen in these scenarios:
A male teacher identifies as non binary and wishes to sleep in the girls dorm at school camp.
A male offender identifies as female and wishes to serve their sentence in a women's prison.
As far as I can see, they are free to self ID into the female category and any exclusion would be illegal because (self chosen) 'Gender' is now the protected characteristic not material Sex.
What's the difference between gender and gender identity? Unless by 'gender' you actually mean 'sex', of course.
"Gender-specific provision, activities, and membership criteria would remain
legally valid ... (with) .... a presumption of self-identification in determining ‘gender’ category membership.."
You are keen to present this as a solution for those who don't feel comfortable being called a man or a woman, but seem a bit short on the details of how this will affect women and girls.
Under this reports proposals what would happen in these scenarios:
A male teacher identifies as non binary and wishes to sleep in the girls dorm at school camp.
A male offender identifies as female and wishes to serve their sentence in a women's prison.
As far as I can see, they are free to self ID into the female category and any exclusion would be illegal because (self chosen) 'Gender' is now the protected characteristic not material Sex.
What's the difference between gender and gender identity? Unless by 'gender' you actually mean 'sex', of course.
AuroraSaab
Legendary Member
Why would they need a certificate? The cases of people claiming to be black, or another ethnic minority, in order to gain advantage or engage in dodgy behaviour are fairly few in number because there's little to be gained by white people opting into the black community. There's no advantage in sport for a white male cyclist to identify as a black male cyclist. The same cannot be said for men who are allowed to opt into the female sex category.
OP
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theclaud
Reading around the chip
It means what it says, but is followed immediately by this:
[Decertification] recognises that: a) unlawful
discrimination may relate to physical embodiment and/ or others’ perceptions in ways that diverge from self-identification; b) taking up gender-specific opportunities or benefits through affirmative action may also require demonstrated evidence of disadvantage based on gender or a capacity and readiness to represent subordinate
and marginalised gender experiences; c) gender-specific provision may draw on alternative or supplementary criteria to self-identification in relation to selecting staff, users, and volunteers.
No, I am keen to explore it as a possibly better framework for addressing gender equality for women and girls than the current one, and as a way out of the current impasse. Feel free to suggest others.
It's a long time since I was on a school trip, and it was a comp, but there were definitely no teachers sleeping in our rooms. Is that a thing?
In the case of prisons, nothing proposed in the report prevents such a request being denied on grounds such as the offender having a history of sexual violence against women, or having apparently made an opportunistic declaration of identity in order to access more favourable conditions. However it is right in my my view that transgender prisoners are not subject to a blanket regulation that they must always be housed with prisoners of their birth sex. We can address the issue of what to do with people like 'Karen White', on which we probably don't disagree, but should also think about what happens to someone like Deborah in Louis Theroux's San Quentin doco. I also think that conditions in prisons, and the carceral system more generally, are important subjects for feminists to think about, irrespective of the problems of accommodating transgender people in the current system.
It's a bit much having to repeat this kind of thing so often, to be honest, but gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender - 'I am a woman' - whereas gender is 'a
complex social phenomenon that produces and organises the categories of women and men, and feminine and masculine, to shape the lives of people, laws, rules, systems of exchange, interactions, and other processes in ways that create difference and inequality.'
It is current legislation that conflates sex and gender - the report which is the subject of this thread does nothing of the kind. I'd have thought you might regard that as progress.
AuroraSaab
Legendary Member
"gender-specific provision may draw on alternative or supplementary criteria to self-identification in relation to selecting staff, users, and volunteers."
How could this work though when what the authors want is that self chosen gender is the legally protected characteristic rather than physical sex? It would be illegal to exclude a biological male from say a women's rape counselling group if they say their gender is female because you can only discriminate on grounds of gender, but not on biological sex. Presumably you would have to prove the individual was a safeguarding risk rather than excluding them just on the basis of being male. Again, that would be fine if men weren't responsible for the vast majority of abuse and violence towards women. At times women need spaces away from men, all men, regardless of how they identify and regardless of whether they are lovely individuals or not.
What do I suggest instead? I suggest we get serious about eradicating gender differences. I suggest we address male attitudes and male violence first before we start letting people self ID into oppressed groups. When the crime stats for perpetrators of sexual assault are 50/50 male and female, I'll give serious thought to letting male bodied people into women's prisons.
By that definition, gender is just a load of stereotypes then, isn't it? Sex is why women are oppressed, gender is how they are oppressed. Doing away with the language women use to describe themselves and allowing anybody to opt into the female sex category won't get rid of gender. It's putting the cart before the horse.
This report isn't progress. It's magical thinking that seems to suggest that if we ignore sex somehow gender stereotypes and discrimination will disappear.
How could this work though when what the authors want is that self chosen gender is the legally protected characteristic rather than physical sex? It would be illegal to exclude a biological male from say a women's rape counselling group if they say their gender is female because you can only discriminate on grounds of gender, but not on biological sex. Presumably you would have to prove the individual was a safeguarding risk rather than excluding them just on the basis of being male. Again, that would be fine if men weren't responsible for the vast majority of abuse and violence towards women. At times women need spaces away from men, all men, regardless of how they identify and regardless of whether they are lovely individuals or not.
What do I suggest instead? I suggest we get serious about eradicating gender differences. I suggest we address male attitudes and male violence first before we start letting people self ID into oppressed groups. When the crime stats for perpetrators of sexual assault are 50/50 male and female, I'll give serious thought to letting male bodied people into women's prisons.
By that definition, gender is just a load of stereotypes then, isn't it? Sex is why women are oppressed, gender is how they are oppressed. Doing away with the language women use to describe themselves and allowing anybody to opt into the female sex category won't get rid of gender. It's putting the cart before the horse.
This report isn't progress. It's magical thinking that seems to suggest that if we ignore sex somehow gender stereotypes and discrimination will disappear.
