THE GENDER RECOGNITION ACT: TEN YEARS ON. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

 THE GENDER RECOGNITION ACT: TEN YEARS ON.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

On the fifteenth of July, 2015, the Irish Oireachtas passed the Gender Recognition Act. This meant that any adult in Ireland who wished to legally change gender could do so simply by filling out a form.

I had a small child at the time and didn’t spend hours watching news and following the activities of government via the Oireachtas television channel as I do nowadays, but surely I couldn’t have missed something so important, an act of government which would impact all women’s lives in so significant a fashion?

Anyone you ask about it will tell you that this was one of those ‘under the radar’ laws that didn’t receive a huge amount of debate on television. ‘Under the radar…?’ Why would it have been ‘under the radar?’

And why were the people whom it would ultimately impact the most- women- not asked their opinion in a country-wide referendum? Were we asked and I’d missed it, maybe, caught up as I was in motherhood and in parenting a child who was at this point edging ever closer to an autism diagnosis? Nope. I checked.

Initially, changing gender through the acquisition of a Gender Recognition Certificate was meant to be signed off on by the medical profession, but then the Tanaiste and Minister for Social Protection of the day, Joan Burton, TD, announced on the third of June, 2015 that the medical sign-off was not going to be necessary after all. People wishing to avail of the certificate could just self-declare.

The Act was passed by a Dail that was eighty-four percent male at the time, and it was confirmed by the Department of Social Protection that having a criminal record wouldn’t disbar a person from either applying for one or receiving one.

Were there detailed studies done beforehand on the possible impact of such an Act on society as a whole? I haven’t been able to source one. Was it therefore a recipe for disaster? Well, that’s how we ended up with men in women’s prisons, men and boys in women’s and girls’ sports, men attempting to access women’s spaces and children being taught gender ideology in schools.

Vulnerable women in prison, and I think we’d all agree that women in prison are vulnerable, having frequently come from impoverished or abusive backgrounds, should not have to share spaces with men who ‘identify’ as women. This system is surely wide open to abuses.

What’s to stop a male criminal with a Gender Recognition Certificate stating that his ‘true’ gender is female from preying on female prisoners who won’t have his superior physical strength or bulk?

Female prisoners in this situation could be forced to endure physical or sexual attacks and where is their redress? They might even be accused of ‘discrimination’ or ‘transphobia’ if they try to speak up for themselves.

Men and boys in women’s and girls’ sports have an obvious physical advantage. The notion of men in women’s boxing, in particular, is a monstrous unfairness, as we’ve seen in recent times. Women have been injured by ‘trans’ boxers because these ‘trans’ boxers are men.

Is it fair that a biological male, no matter how many Gender Recognition Certificates he possesses, should be able to take medals and honours away from a woman who may have worked her whole life to be this good at her sport, just by virtue of his superior strength and endurance?

The whole ‘men in women’s spaces’ thing really upsets me. I know I personally, speaking as a biological female, do not want men in women’s toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards or anywhere I might be required to undress and make myself vulnerable. I think most normal men understand this need and they have no desire to over-step those boundaries. They probably don’t want us in their changing rooms either and that’s fine.

Both my kids are adults now so I no longer have a child in school in Ireland, but it’s my understanding that school children are being taught that you can change your sex if you’re not happy with the one you were born with.

I honestly wouldn’t want a child of mine to be taught something that’s biologically untrue and impossible. Neither would I want them to be encouraged to ‘trans’ before their bodies had finished growing and changing.

We can’t change our sex, however much we might want to. There will probably always be people who tell us we can, however, because there’s big money in it for medical professionals prepared to carry out the various operations and procedures.

There are plenty of horror stories out there, though, told by people who ‘trans-ed’ and then realised it wasn’t what they wanted after all. The physical and hormonal effects can be far-reaching and, if you change your mind after you’ve ‘trans-ed,’ you may never get back to what you were before, with your sexual function gone and your head wrecked.

I was interested to notice some marchers at the recent Trans&Intersex parade in Dublin holding up a banner that said, ‘Us being trans doesn’t affect your life negatively, ya thicko!’ Well, please don’t call non-trans people ‘thickos,’ for a start. If a non-trans person calls a trans person a name, it’s seen as discrimination and might even result in the Guards being called.

Secondly, we’ve already gone into some of the negative effects of the Act on women and girls. No-one is denying that trans people have rights. When the Supreme Court in the UK ruled in April of this year that ‘trans-women’ are not women, they are men, the trans community was assured that it still has the right to live free from harassment and malice.

But trans people having rights shouldn’t be a reason for women’s rights to be eroded. Trans people who genuinely just want to ‘exist in peace’ and ‘live their lives’ will be happy with Unisex toilets and changing rooms and won’t wish to invade women’s spaces where the law, in England at least, says explicitly that they are not allowed to enter.

The best thing the Irish government can do for Irish women today is to repeal the Gender Recognition Act, an Act which is harmful to women and girls and which, not alone did we not ask for, but on which our opinions were never sought. Women asking for their sex-based rights to be respected is not ‘hateful’ or ‘transphobic.’ It’s what we’re owed by the people paid very well to lead us.