Surely the overriding issue is about safety and control. Correct me if I am wrong here, but currently in the UK you can't just get a GRC. You have to provide medical reports from two different medical professionals and evidence that you have been living as your new gender for 2 years or more.
Now I believe that there are campaigners that want to get rid of this safeguarding. At present biological women are safeguarded to a reasonably high degree as obtaining a GRC is not simple or easy and the process ensures that only those who genuinely suffer gender dysphoria and for whom the only solution to their mental health struggles is to pretend to be a different gender can do this and legally present themselves as that chosen gender.
At the same time, there are campaigns to remove the medical requirement and reduce the 2 year period living in your new gender to a much shorter period. That appears to be somewhat incompatible with the idea of safeguarding women.
As has been pointed out in the long running gender thread, it's a complicated subject and many people question whether the approach is sensible givP1en that this issue affects a relatively small number of people. If we flip it on its head, what does the legal definition do for transmen and women that they are currently being affected by?
P1 Correct.
P2 Not quite correct. The GRA contains the promise of adequate resources. I acknowledge that the level of demand increased, but that does not remove the promise. One can accept that funding can take a year or two to catch up with demand, but one has to remember that this promise comes from law made to satisfy the directive of the ECtHR. The Blair government defended that action, and Blair himself was know to have a strong opinion and opposition to accepting the directive.
The rights of individuals to trans healthcare have diminished to be tantamount to nothing with waiting lists for even a first appointment now at something like seven years.
Campaigners want this issue resolved. Two all party parliamentary select committees were convened to consider the problems. Their decision may rest on a number of factors and opinions; however one primary consideration was the cost to the taxpayer of fulfilling that promise, and after consideration decided that self-Id would reduce the cost to the state. To be honest while that decision was taken as favourable by many, it smacked of the usual thinking, that cost savings were king. As it happened Theresa May accepted the recommendations and promised to implement them, but then the ever opportunist Johnson managed to get her removed to his advantage.
P3 Despite penis panic, there isn't the evidence that trans women become offenders enabled by a GRC. There is some evidence that some people have claimed to be trans once caught for offences. The important point is that they don't have a GRC. Section 20 of the GRA deals with this. In these circumstances of gender specific offences, there is disapplication of the 'for all purposes' clause even for those with a GRC.
The number of trans women with a GRC in prison is thought to be a maximum of 4 from the available data. They have been risk-assessed, are accommodated in the female prison estate without incidents of harm being recorded.
P4 The small number of people is used to argue both ways by the same campaigners. Too few to qualify for human rights while being too many for women to feel safe.
The number of GRCs issued is some number between 8000 and 8500. This number includes trans men and trans women. The number of trans women with a GRC is likely to a number in the magnitude of say 4500 to 5000. Of these 4 are serving prison sentences for undisclosed offences. Hence there is little evidence to support the wild claims that women's prisons are overrun with trans women. Further there is zero evidence in the bogus claim that men transition with a GRC to get access to women.
It's simply inconceivable that men would either subject their bits to atrophy or go through surgery to sexually assault women. It is a nonsensical argument.
Also examination of the result of self-id in other countries does not show a harmful effect. What has been proposed in Scotland was not a system of instant self-id without checks or with the opportunity to just decide on different days what sex /gender you would be presenting. The one day Arthur, next day Martha narrative was designed to be destructive without containing any truth.
