34 Comments

Wow just wow! Beautifully articulates where we are, I am saving this and will shamelessly quote and share this.. thank you xx

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Fabulous. It’s so useful to me to read essays like this to reinforce sanity. I love the clarity of her words and her stance.

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I read the debate and got the impression of naive MPs thinking about a harmless minority. I understand there were only about 6k trans-identified people back then. They didn't anticipate an entire cult of them to spread like wildfire through Tumblr and enter society via Stonewall et al. It's not fit for purpose, especially with phrases like female psyche. "Psyche" and other bollocks like "gendered souls" have no business being in legislation.

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The GRA does not mention "psyche" or "gendered souls".

It does not define "gender" or "gender identity", but it does define "gender dysphoria" in S25 as a disorder - in order to give GD sufferers the right to treatment on the NHS. I have attacked the GRA on the basis that it legitimizes the conflation of sex and "gender" and that this is the main thrust of the GRA. This is a carefully drafted law which is designed to hide a logical flaw - the conflation.

The GRA must be repealed because it is a bad law.

It is also possible to offer all the same protection to gender dysphoria sufferers using the protected characteristic of "disability" in the Equality Act 2010.

Just repeal the GRA, remove "gender reassignment" from the list of PCs in the EQ, and make consequent changes to hate crime legislation. Again "disability" is recognised as the basis for hate crime aggravation and is sufficient to address the mischief. Vulvamort is quite right that gender dysphoria is apparently a very peculiar and special mental disorder, one which is lifted above all others by the GRA. Repeal the GRA!

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I agree. The GRA is a badly drafted, inept piece of legislation foisted on well intentioned but naive politicians by the trans activists. The 2010 Equalities Act supercedes it and renders it it an absurd article of law, forcing statutory bodies to hide someone's birth sex even when they don't want it to happen. My GP couldn't see my previous medical record because the practice manager was compelled to entirely replace my NHS record with a new one, history-less, despite my objection that the GP would be bamboozled by it. It is stupid legislation. Repeal it. Birth Certs MUST not be changed. They are a matter of historical record. Update passport and driving licence with a different sex marker as a compassionate fiction. That is sufficient for almost all purposes. Don't believe these devious activists. They do not speak for anyone but their revolutionary activist cadre.

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I wasn't aware of that about past medical records getting disappeared because of this stuff. Unbelievable, and surely dangerous for the patient? If that's typical practice, it needs to be far more widely known.

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It will be available to authorised users BUT they have to know it's there and the GRA prevents advertisement of it.

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I've read first-hand accounts that TIMs get GP letters calling them in for smear tests - they akshully turn up and the nurses are told to shove a speculum thingy up their arse-hole, to #BeKind 🍆🤢🤮

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That's ridiculous We all have arses. The speculum must be forced up a TIM's penis, surely?

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Wtf?!

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This is an exceptional piece of writing.

The legal concept of self ID (and the GRA) is not only offensive for the claims it makes about natal sex. It's a never ending, never still box of tricks; like an Escher staircase you think you are going one way and end up somewhere you didn't expect, invariably back where you started. It's designed to frustrate and an attack on empiricism and rationalism.

If anyone ever needed proof that patriarchy exists it's this. No group of women could ever hope to have pulled off this sleight of hand.

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“So. If anyone should wish to weigh up the unhappiness of any man who wishes he was a woman? Don't forget to do this too: Weigh up the distress, anger and anguish of women, girls, and generations of girls not yet born, who have had an entire Act of Parliament written that has redefined us into a grotesque lie purely to please men. Men who refuse to surrender the hideous stereotypes they worship.”

My god. Pure white-hot rage.

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This is wonderfully well-argued. The perspective of how we think about distinct groups with distinct characteristics and how women are the tacit, unexamined exception, should really open some eyes. The attitude that is dearly held by many men -and unrecognized by them, for what it is- is "but a man is just more important than you, what he thinks is more important than what you think, and if he thinks he's a woman then he's right and you are wrong".

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what a powerful way to argue the case! for what is needed is tough love; men who would be women need to be restrained from the temptation to try to become woman. to be a woman is never easy, not physically, not workwise, not educationally, not in relationships, and forever juggling, it is no kind of escape from 'masculinity'. it's just hard work a lot of the time.

i wonder if mary shelley's imagination hadn't been so acute whether her anti hero frankenstein wouldn't have inspired so many medical minds to 're-create'/manipulate bodies into new shapes/sexes. unhindered by a deference to religion (and playing god) these modernist men plowed ahead creating new technologies to alter and enhance with aesthetic surgeries, and enabling reproduction in the infertile. still ambitious and seeking new challenges doctors and desiring men moved to bring new life into the world without the complications of women's bodies - (with even womb transplants into men a possibility?) Or was shelley only warning us against such ambitions, for she was a close associate of the aristocratic poet and libertarian byron, who unrestrained and with revolutionary tendancies could not contain his desires.

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She was warning us about human hubris.

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Very well said... Couldn't agree more NO just NO!

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Exactly .. when I saw this thread on twitter I thought, this is it, this is the core of what is so wrong. It is Identity theft on a grand scale. I don't recognise women in these men, I just see stereotypes. Each one an idea in their head as if acting a part.

There us nothing women share with these men, except if you are into accessories.

Well done Vulvamort. Bookmarking this one.

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Vulvamort, your writing is fantastic. I hope one day you will be able to claim it publicly in your own name.

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Men are all over the public sphere, falsely claiming women's names. And women who disagree with them, cannot use their own names because they will be threatened with violence, social ostracisation and job loss.

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I'm willing to bet TRAs will focus on the "there is no such thing as trans people" bit near the end. Do we need a different word then for people with genuine dysphoria? Something that separates those in need of help and compassion from the narcissistic piss-takers?

This will continue to be an uphill battle as long as so many institutions are captured by the idea of trans being the most oppressed minority of our time. I think the LGB alliances are the way forward, to uncouple the T&Q+ from equality and protection that lesbians, gays, and bisexual people still very much need.

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Magnificent. Deserves access to Parliament to read this speech to the land.

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Powerful stuff!

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This needs to be read in a court of law. Gender is bollox.

Sex is real.

#sexnotgender

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Gosh ,that's so powerful and I absolutely agree with every word . If only our puppet government ,controlled by Stonewall ,would listen to us and realise how much they're endangering women and children ,even democracy itself , by following the completely unscientific agenda of an unelected cult masquerading as a charity (aka Stonewall )!!

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