The distinction between the sexes is real. And the Government must uphold it.

Jul 16, 2020 by Jill

by Danny Kruger, Conservative Home:

The politics of sex and gender is a minefield, made more dangerous by a great confusion of language. But at root the issues are straightforward, and the Government should gently but clearly assert the truth. Two facts need stating.

First: gender is no business of the state. Gender is the complex, psycho-social construction we build on the foundation of our immutable sexual biology. For most of us, our gender conforms to our sex. A small number of people, however, feel uncomfortable in their biological sex, and adopt a different gender. This is their right. If biological males wish to live as women, or biological women as men, in a free and tolerant society they should encounter no objection.

Second: sex is the business of the state. The distinction between maleness and femaleness, the essential qualities written into our biology, is a fundamental building block of society. For someone to cross the border between the two, formally to assume the legal status and the rights of the opposite sex, is a big deal, properly requiring the permission of government.

This permission is available through the (misnamed) Gender Recognition Act 2004, which allows people to be recognised as legally belonging to a different sex (nothing to do with gender) from their biological one. Recognition consists of the award of a (misnamed) Gender Reassignment Certificate (GRC). To get a GRC you need a diagnosis of the medical condition known as gender dysphoria, defined as acute psychological discomfort arising from the sense of inhabiting the wrong sex, plus a period of living as a man (if a biological woman) or vice versa.

Some trans activists, backed by the LGBT lobby group Stonewall, are conflating these two facts, by seeking a change to the GRA to let people change their legal sex as easily as they can change their gender. They argue that people should be allowed to ‘self-identify – to receive a GRC simply on the basis of asserting their desire for one, with no need for a gender dysphoria diagnosis or a ‘lived identity’ period.

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