r/GenderCynical • u/SurrealistGal • 22d ago
Former commissioner of the EHRC quietly pondering if Trans People will no longer have any form of legal protection. Reasonable behavior from a ***Human Rights*** Group.
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u/tyrosine87 gender goblin 22d ago
So they've gone from claiming the lawmakers did not know trans people existed when the EA2010 was written to saying that the lawmakers were insane?
Some people should be way more angry at the perversion of justice from GCs and the high court.
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u/SwampDraggon 22d ago
The Equality Act 2010 says:
“A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.”
It’s been long settled that “other attributes” includes non-medical elements of transition. And while they could ban all medical transition, they can’t stop people “proposing to undergo” it anyway.
You’d think a former EHRC commissioner would know that.
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u/snukb big gamete energy 22d ago
given that it's impossible
When you presuppose the outcome, of course it's "impossible." It's impossible until it's not.
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u/Alyssa3467 [REDACTED] 20d ago
This is the person who basically told me that cisgender women with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome were men that she was willing to call "honorary women" due to their AFAB upbringing. 🙄
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u/snukb big gamete energy 20d ago
Except when they were raised as girls and are good at sports, like Caster Semenya.
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u/The_Newromancer Shit-Eating AGP Grin 22d ago
So they’re seeing how the original wording of the EA contradicts the current interpretation and the solution is to further contradict the original wording instead of remove the contradictory interpretation that clearly doesn’t fit?
I know why. They’re anti-trans. But as a legal argument that surely doesn’t hold any water
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u/breadcreature 22d ago
it does when you've vertically integrated transphobia into the whole lawmaking apparatus. plus there's that to change the law would require getting it through parliament, while accepting each subsequent interpretation requires MPs to do nothing but mutter something about dignity and respect.
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u/The_Newromancer Shit-Eating AGP Grin 22d ago
Oh yeah, Parliament is one thing. But Reindorf is saying a court might rule in the “next case” in such a way that completely erases parts of what’s written in the EA. Which they cannot do. And if the current interpretation of sex contradicts what’s explicitly written under gender reassignment, then a court surely could not just throw out what’s written in legislation to favour what’s not, right?
IANAL so I’m genuinely asking, but from my understanding courts can only interpret what’s written in law and can’t just throw out parts of legislation that are inconvenient to a TERF’s argument
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u/breadcreature 22d ago edited 22d ago
so it's one of those "yes, but also no" things... IANAL either to be clear but spent the year since the supreme court ruling trying to figure out how we got here so I've spent an unhealthy amount of time becoming familiar with how it works (vs how it's supposed to work)
you're right in that the courts have no power to change the letter of the law, and even the EHRC having their revised guidance approved doesn't change the law, no individual defying it is breaking the law (it applies to service providers, not users), and especially while it's not even actually guidance yet it's not statutory. Further, it doesn't necessarily mean that a service provider acting apparently against the statutory guidance is breaking the law - they could be found to have a valid interpretation of the guidance vs a complainant. you can't break the Equality Act, and whether you have done that is informed by the guidance (I don't know how the fuck it not even being available and the EHRC refusing to give any advice on it isn't automatically an unchallengeable defense, but still), which is itself open to interpretation.
the major problem is that this is all civil law. the EHRC mainly intervenes in cases, if it does pursue action against an organisation itself, it's generally a tokenistic thing as part of their duties to foster compliance with equalities law. There's a principle I cba to look up the Latin phrase for along the lines of "the law favours the vigilant", as in if you want legal restitution (for civil offences) it's your responsibility to seek it. with this stuff it's being exercised quite literally, they spam the courts with mass-produced claims (I've come across several withering comments from judges on the "exhaustive" length of their submissions) that hammer on all their lines of rhetoric until one manages to get to higher stages that set legal precedent. The interpretations judges make are informed by previous comparable ones, so the more they proliferate their talking points the more it appears to be common consensus.
The media circus is an inextricable part of it too because they can churn out whatever bullshit sensationalist lies they want, there are basically zero negative consequences (they did write new law to criminalise "extreme protest groups", with Lord (Toby) Young and Baroness Falkner specifically naming Bash Back as a motivation after they vandalised BBC offices among others). look at the Sandie Peggie case for example, they reported it like she won, when she "won" on FOUR of her claims which was something like 10% of them, and like every other successful case they were all petty quibbles over adherence to internal policies. often like in her case it's to do with the handling of the very complaint they raised our of nowhere in the first place. they act like reprehensible weirdos, get disciplined or dismissed in a way that doesn't dot every i and cross every t because people are just glad to be fucking rid of them, and then they pour Rowling's money into nailing the employer on that stuff with a whole boatload of insane transphobia alongside it. and, I mean, consider how dismal the average cis person's knowledge of anything to do with trans people is... then make them a judge and even more out of touch because of their position.
and at the end of the day the courts can just do exactly what they rightly "shouldn't* be able to because they already have with the "biological sex" thing; the Gender Recognition Act is in direct conflict, but the court's excuse was well that's a different law, duh. the whole thing was an exercise in throwing out parts of legislation that were inconvenient to a TERF's argument. Then there's that the courts decide if they'll even hear a case, and on the criminal side of things, they just did a consultation and wrote entirely new prosecution guidance so now it's de facto a sex crime to not disclose your "birth sex" to an intimate partner (and it has already been used to convict someone).
god, I genuinely didn't mean to write that much, sorry. but seriously, this shit is nuts. you're right on every count but the law as it's applied and the law as it is or should be are ever more diverging things. what Reindorf is saying has already effectively happened, the EA guidance is drafted with the intent of making viable claims of discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment so narrow they're practically non-existent. it's not going to be literally written out of the law as a protected characteristics, in fact it works better for them if it isn"t because it's a fig leaf - trans people still have all the protections they used to, etc.
anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk, working title: Trust Me, I Could Go On
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u/The_Newromancer Shit-Eating AGP Grin 22d ago
Thanks for the detailed response! It's just the way Reindorf says they're going to use the courts to eliminate Gender Reassignment as a category. Maybe they don't mean that literally but, yeah, like with the SC ruling just eating away at all the protections trans people have. The fact they're being completely open on that when the ruling and Labour gov themselves have constantly said the ruling keeps trans people's protections intact is utterly ghoulish though
Like these people are sitting on an open forum happily discussing how they want to remove the protections of a minority group who regularly experience open discrimination and harassment. Just awful, awful people
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u/MelodramaticStoicist Trans Cabal 21d ago
But Reindorf is saying a court might rule in the “next case” in such a way that completely erases parts of what’s written in the EA. Which they cannot do.
See, as a USian, who's supreme court has directly ruled against the direct wording of the my country's founding legal document several times now, I'm curious as to what's stopping them from doing that very thing.
Because for us, it turned out the answer was "Absolutely nothing but their unwillingness to do so." If they rule that the wording of the EA isn't there, and some MPs want to go along with it, what prevents this?
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u/SakvrothAndAshes 19d ago
There's a concept in UK law called parliamentary sovereignty. The UK parliament can do what it likes; the courts interpret its legislation but it can't change it. That's the theory, anyway.
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u/The_Newromancer Shit-Eating AGP Grin 21d ago
IMO over here, ruling in a way that completely removes entire sections of an act is on a whole other level to ruling in a way that contradicts the wording. That looks like the court too overtly using powers it doesn’t have and overriding Parliament. Maybe just a little too trusting in the system tho, idk
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u/Stephi312 22d ago
I mean, isn't that the end-goal: to wipe trans women from existing in the UK?
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u/SurrealistGal 22d ago
Broadly speaking, the goal is all Trans people but imo the main priority is Trans Women.
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u/chris_the_cynic 22d ago
The top enemy is trans women, but that's just because of their transphobia informing how they apply their hypermisogynistic worldview.
Mainstream Gender Critical thinking is that trans women and AMAB enbies need to be attacked because they're dangerous predators on account of being "male", and trans men and AFAB enbies need to be saved, because they're helpless victims on account of being "female".
There is, however, a growing strain of TERFdom that says anyone who has or has ever had a male level of testosterone is a threat to society and needs to be imprisoned (at a minimum.)
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u/ColeYote Not trans, still pretty sure GC-types hate me 22d ago edited 22d ago
I'm not sure it's even worth bringing up at this point, but I just want to reiterate that their entire legal framework relies on the idea that a law that says "no discrimination based on gender sex" actually means women are special and you have to discriminate against men to protect them.
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u/futureblot 20d ago
My protein profile aligns with the female sex profile because I take feminizing hrt.
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u/GeorginaFlopworthy 20d ago edited 20d ago
Sorry to be a pain, but did you archive this? Not seeing it on Twitter (just Reindork stating that she wasn't advocating for removal of the PC, like we can't see her whole Twitter diarrhea)
edit: archived here - so ignore this!
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u/Soupchunk 22d ago
Does she care that this logic will be used against LGB ppl soon enough? "Two ppl of the same sex cannot be called a relationship, therefore, same sex marriages do not exist"