Views from a transsexual woman

The UK Government is carrying out a public consultation on possible reforms to the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

Here is a link to it :

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reform-of-the-gender-recognition-act-2004

Excellent! Kristina Jayne Harrison is certainly a champion in sticking her head about the parapet to make such a brave speech, when there are those who would shut down opinions such as hers. Well worth hearing, as FarNorth has already stated, just over 20 minutes, but keep listening because the speech gathers momentum as it progresses, Kristina covers all the relevant points of the argument and very much taps into concerns around the implications for women regarding any prospective legislation.

Thank you for the link FarNorth

My thanks too, FarNorth. This is too serious to ignore.

I wish there had been a link to this during a previous GN thread on the subject. She speaks a lot of sense.

I found this neglected thread while looking for that previous thread, where transwomen in prisons were mentioned. I was hoping to add to that thread a link to an article on How many transgender inmates are there? which has some intersting facts and conjectures. At one point in her speech Kristina Jayne Harrison touches on men who use pseudo or assumed transgendering as a means of gaining access to women. So a fear of the possibility is not just hysterical paranoia.

We are often told there is no evidence that people claiming to be transwomen are more likely to commit crimes, particularly sex crimes, than anyone else.

That could be because (going by that BBC report) the Government and the Ministry of Justice seem to be remarkably lax about collating figures which could provide evidence on that, one way or the other.

The article states that the figures used by Fair Play For Women are likely to be inaccurate so I think it would be nice if officialdom could start keeping accurate figures, rather than sleepwalk into a situation where women prisoners are put at the mercy of male predators and sex crimes are increasingly recorded as being committed by females.

NB- I am not saying transwomen are likely to commit crimes.
I am saying criminal men are likely to take advantage of a situation where they can claim to be women and everyone goes along with it.

When women know that male police forces for decades (centuries?) were reluctant to take action on claims of rape and harassment, it is not surprising that there are suspicions that statistics are unreliable.

Women suspect too that some unscrupulous men will take advantage of the apparent freedom of transwomen from contradiction, and present themselves in female-only locations as though they are now women, when they are no such thing and are only there for the thrill. With the onus on others to take them at their word or face charges of abusing them they can assume the moral high ground, whatever their motives.

FarNorth I have started a new thread telling people in the title that their views are invited on the subject - before October 19th 2018.

www.gransnet.com/forums/news_and_politics/1251335-Your-views-are-invited-on-the-Government-consultation-on-reform-of-the-Gender-Recognition-Act

James Kirkuk demolishes that BBC Reality Check article and also the news item about the transgender councillor in Dundee in an article.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/is-the-bbc-scared-of-the-transgender-debate/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

A debate has views from a variety of people, from a variety of standpoints and expessing a variety of opinions.

James Kirkup does a good job of showing up the BBC's failure to report accurately in those two instances.
In particular, the BBC's report on transgender prisoners seems, to me, to be deliberately trying to obscure some fairly obvious facts.

James Kirkup wrote :
"The overall impression given is that someone at the BBC set out with the hope of debunking that Fair Play for Women calculation, but uncovered evidence suggesting that calculation was perfectly reasonable, then made significant efforts to avoid saying so or telling anyone that, yes, a lot of male-born offenders who identify themselves as women are in jail for sexual crimes, including crimes committed against women."

I read that Canada published new immigration rules on refugees based on sexual and gender identity and expression. And now it's easier to get political asylum if you are persecuted in your own country. What do you think about it? Canada approved 69 percent of asylum claims classified as “sexual orientation and gender minorities” last year, compared with an average of 61 percent in the preceding four years.