Make Parliament answer The Staniland question

graphic by Jebrux

Sex Matters is asking people in the UK to sign an official petition calling on the government to fix a dangerous ambiguity in the Equality Act 2010. The aim is to make clear that the protected characteristic of “sex” means biological sex, and is not modified by the holding of a gender recognition certificate.

According to a report in the Telegraph, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also intends to “look to review the Equality Act to make it clear that sex means biological sex rather than gender”.

Sex Matters is calling on the government to do this by using the power written into the GRA to modify the operation of the Equality Act 2010 to put it beyond doubt that the terms “sex”, “male”, “female”, “man” and “woman”, for the purpose of sex discrimination laws, mean biological sex and not “sex as modified by a Gender Recognition Certificate”.

Just a few hours after the petition was launched on November 2nd, it passed 10,000 signatures. That already guarantees that the government will respond. In less than a week, it has gained over 30,000 signatures – a clear sign of the strength of feeling in the country about the ongoing erasure of biological sex in life and in law.

But the total needs to reach 100,000 for the government to consider a parliamentary debate. Then, for the first time, there will be a chance to force lawmakers to answer the question they never even considered in 2004, when they decided to allow people to falsify the sex on their birth certificates – in the immortal words of our own Helen Staniland:

Do you believe that male-bodied people – people with penis and testicles – have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?

I don’t know about you, but I would very much like to see parliamentarians forced to answer the Staniland Question. To make it happen, click here to sign!

·      The petition is open to British citizens and UK residents.

·      You have to give your name, email address, location and postcode.

·      You will receive an automatically generated email, to which you must respond in order to confirm that you wish to sign.

·      Your name and email address will not be published.

Sex Matters is also running a campaign to sign up people willing to commit to find five, ten or even more other signatories.

Sign up below to be a Sex Matters petition champion and please share with as many people as you can.