The Dentons Document, Part 3

The Demands

Concluding @STILLTISH’s deep dive into the Denton’s Document.

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The demands.

The section on ‘good practices’ highlights the legal aims on Gender Recognition. 

Firstly, a swift and cheap process for gender recognition which is entirely self-determined. No diagnosis, no surgery, and no legal oversight. 

Secondly, they wish to extend the process of gender recognition to minors and remove parental rights to withhold authorisation. Presumably, this could also extend to preventing parents from delaying access to medical interventions such as puberty blockers.  They don’t make this explicit but this would be my concern.  They also recommend that parents are subject to state sanction if they withhold any authorisation.

Historically, some countries required sterilisation prior to Gender Reassignment treatment.  I think we can all agree this is a breach of human rights.  No similar qualms are on display about children put on puberty blockers; who invariably progress to cross-sex hormones and they will therefore be sterile.  This following entry is rank hypocrisy.

Next, we come to the impact of changing your legal identity on others.  They wish to remove the right to exit the marriage prior to legal sex change. This clause is named the “spousal veto” in U.K. legislation.  Transwidows argue the more accurate term is spousal exit clause. No spouse can halt any treatment. They are merely allowed time to divorce prior to a significant alteration in the marriage contract. 

They also wish to have the right to change documents, even other people’s, to reflect the legal identity.  This could be a male who wishes to be, retrospectively and dishonestly, recorded as the mother.  

Another aim is the removal of the requirement to record sex at all on birth certificates.  Here people with disorders of sexual development are instrumentalised to garner sympathy but, make no mistake, this is a tactic and not designed to accommodate “intersex” people at all. The U.K. govt has already funded a project to look at erasing legal sex from public records, for everybody.

Next up the campaign. to allow for a “third gender” category which would allow the eradication of sex-based data and would, undoubtedly, have the impact of making it impossible to defend sex-based rights and same-sex spaces. 

The seventh demand is for unlimited access to medical treatments referred to as ‘gender confirmation’ procedures, all without any diagnostic criteria. This is interesting in the context of the simultaneous demand that nobody need have any treatment to declare themselves the opposite sex...oops “gender”.  

Finally, the ideal law would include sanctions for anyone deviating from the idea of legal ‘gender recognition’.  I doubt anyone would wish anyone to be subject to discrimination in the way it is used below. However, women do need the right to ‘discriminate’ and exclude persons of the male sex from female spaces.  Discrimination is not a negative practice when it comes to protecting women and girls. 

Finally, after these modest proposals, the document ends with a disclaimer.  An unaccountable group of lobbyists work to change laws away from press and public scrutiny but also disavow any liability for the contents of the report. 

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Thanks again to Tish for her hard work on this. Please do what you can to boost knowledge of the Dentons Document by writing to your MP and asking them where they stand on its contents and its implications. Also, I hope Irish feminist groups can use Tish’s work to demand a fresh debate on Self-ID in my home country.

‘In plain sight’ scandals like Saville and Rotherham happened because people were too scared to speak. You’ve seen what happened to JK Rowling, to Rosie Duffield and others who challenged this deeply ideological soft coup that aims to fundamentally reshape society. Don’t let the harassment they’ve faced deter you from speaking up. There is safety in numbers and they can’t cancel us all.