A bit of a detour in the chronology of this work to comment on an illuminating bit of debate on the Gender Recognition Act in the House of Lords. An important element of this debate was that the GRA would introduce the right for people of the same sex to marry provided one of them had acquired a different legal gender via a GRC. A GRC did not require any hormonal or surgical modification, therefore an intact male could marry another male provided one of them had obtained a GRC, and this of course also applied to females. We have seen how the marriage issue is a recurring one, from Corbett v Corbett to Goodwin.
Here we have an all male group of people debating the issue. Homophobia, complete disregard for women, and for logic, reality and science, make for a toxic mix. When it is Lord Tebbit left to hold the flag for women, you know you are in trouble.
The exchange took place on 11 February 2004 and originated from a question by Lord Tebbit. Lord Tebbit asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they regard the marriage of two persons each possessing the chromosomes and sexual organs of the same sex as being a same-sex marriage.
This is an eminently reasonable question. Disregarding for a second the tiny percentage of people with DSDs affecting their external genitalia (not all of them do by the way) for 99.98% of the population, their external genitalia are in line with their chromosomal and gonadal sex. Thanks to this statistic the human race has managed to reproduce for millennia without as much as a thought.
Additionally, the LGB movement fought for decades to recognition of the right of people to same sex relationships, including sexual intercourse. Although we can safely assume this fight was not the inspiration for Lord Tebbit’s question, the right especially of lesbians to refuse male sexual organs in their sexual life has been fought over by them. Any lesbian will have a story about a man pressuring her for sex, telling her she just had not found the right cock yet (pardon my French, I am identifying with the pervert here). The less lucky ones, will have been correctively raped. So this is not a question any progrssive person who cares about LGB rights should wave away. But wave away they did. Here is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs (Lord Filkin):
My Lords, the Government believe that marriage should be possible only between people of opposite gender in law. The Gender Recognition Bill will enable transsexual people who have gained legal recognition in their acquired gender to marry someone of the opposite legal gender. Marriages contracted by transsexual people, once their change of gender has been legally recognised, will be valid marriages between a male and a female, not same-sex marriages.
Without a second thought, Lord Filkin reconceptualises sexual intercourse as a matter of one’s gender rather than one’s sex. Any individual can get a certificate that they are the opposite sex and have heterogenderal intercourse and a straight marriage with their same sex partner. As long as they are willing to renounce their gay identity, that is, and pretend they are straight. The law will pretend penis to penis sex is heterosexual sex as long as you are willing to play along. And if you are the male in a heterosexual relationship already, you can stay married if you want, as long as your wife agrees even if you are now in an same gender relationship. Are you still with me?
Lord Tebbit was not having it. Here is clearly a man who knows logic.
My Lords, the noble Lord did not quite answer the Question on the Order Paper. Is he aware that he was a little more frank in his Written Answer yesterday to the question of whether the Government would regard the marriage of two persons, each of whom is capable of giving birth to children, as being a same-sex relationship? His answer to that was "No". Is it not the case that, to be consistent, his Answer to this Question must also be "No"?
Imagine that. A government minister committing to paper that two women getting married is not a same-sex marriage because one of them pretends to be a man, and the State facilitates that pretence.
Lord Filkin answered with an arrogance quite inappropriate for someone talking, I believe the legal term is, “bullshit”:
My Lords, as I awoke this morning I had a slight sense of what it must be like to be Tantalus—to realise that one awakes each morning to answer Questions by the eminent noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, about sex and gender. We have addressed the issues many times before through the 21 hours that we have given to the Bill. It has been a privilege to be part of that process, in which the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, has been as redoubtable as any.
However, at heart, the Government's position is that it is right and proper for the state, after a proper process of testing, to give legal recognition to people who meet the tests as set out in the Bill. Unfortunately, those tests about which the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, argues do not hinge on issues of chromosomes or genitalia. The reason that they should not was made eminently clear by the noble Lords, Lord Winston and Lord Turnberg, at the Report stage. I could bore the House on that, but I shall not; however, I recommend that noble Lords read the report of proceedings. It sets out explicitly why the medical science on the issues is incredibly more complicated than the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, would have us believe.
It is complicated is possibly the stupidest answer you can give to the question ‘What is sex?’. It never was complicated to determine who should be a second class citizen. Lord Filkin was born in 1944. His grandmother did not get the right to vote until well into middle age, if she survived it. And nobody was in any doubt why she should not be able to vote. How casually these men ignore the history of their female relatives. What lack of respect they show for women’s history. Because in 0.002% of cases sex is not easily determined at birth with a simple visual inspection. Lord Filkin would have us believe gay sex is hetero sex if you get a certificate.
Here comes in a Lord Bishop. The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth:
My Lords, does the Minister not agree that one of the main cruxes of the issue is the difference between what marriage is and what views individuals or collective legislatures may or may not have about same-sex relationships?
Lord Filkin’s answer is another logic black hole.
I do, my Lords. It has been one of the toughest issues of the Bill as regards policy and humanity. We have taken the position, which has not been universally popular on all Benches, that marriage must be a union recognised by the state between people of opposite gender. That is why, as part of the Bill's process, we have said that anyone currently married who wishes to get legal recognition as being of the opposite gender must get divorced. That has been a tough element, but our position has been utterly consistent throughout the passage of the Bill.
We know that the duty to divorce in order to obtain a GRC did not make it to the final text of the Act which only provides the spouse with the freedom not to be forced to remain in a same sex marriage against their will (divorce is not always an option). But beyond the divorce clause, what Lord Filkin is arguing is that a man can marry a man if he gets a certificate that he is a woman. But a man cannot stay married to a woman if he gets a certificate that he is a woman. Even if the first marriage involves inevitably a gay sexual relationship and the second one a straight one.
Lord Goodhart reminds us of the bogus narrative of the oppressed minority suffering as no-one ever did before:
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Bill will make life easier for a small group of people who suffer severe distress and discrimination at present, and will cause no harm to anyone else?
This is the closest we get to the potential conflict between the rights of transsexuals (as they then were) and ‘anyone else’. Mentioned and dismissed. Allowing males to take on a female persona could not possibly affect women, could it? Lord Filkin is there to reassure us:
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, puts his finger on the essential issue. Throughout the important and detailed scrutiny of the Bill, noble Lords in many parts of the House have probably recognised that at heart it is proper that the state give legal recognition to the very small number of people who suffer seriously because of the condition that they have experienced. To the extent that there have been significant differences, the arguments have been about peripheral rather than fundamental issues. As attested by the five Divisions that took place, most noble Lords have affirmed exactly the position that the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, sets out.
The fundamental issue of how women’s rights are affected by replacing sex with gender as the significant legal category (and this debate makes it clear that was the purpose of the Act) are not mentioned. But our learned Lords are too busy being homophobic to worry about women.
Lord Renton:
My Lords, is not the expression "same-sex marriage" a contradiction in terms, in accordance with the traditions of our language? If two people of the same sex live together, should they not be described as being in cohabitation?
Lord Filkin:
My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. The concept of same-sex marriage is a contradiction in terms, which is why our position is utterly clear: we are against it, and do not intend to promote it or allow it to take place.
Lord Tebbit trying to bring back the debate onto reality, albeit unsuccessfully:
My Lords, will the Minister own up to the fact that his definition of sex is the legal sex of a person, as opposed to what most people would think is the definition; that is the sex of the body that they inhabit?
Here Lord Tebbit makes a distinction between legal sex (which refers to the acquired gender through a GRC) and the sex of the body one inhabits, i.e. biologica sex. I have here to disagree with him. In international law, sex and birth date registration are the crucial elements of one’s legal identity, and the right to an identity included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is nothing other than the recognition by the State of individuals’ sex and date of birth. This legal recognition is especially important for girls, to monitor practices such as female infanticide and lack f care of girl children.
The GRA is the most successful attempt thus far to conceptually disentangle sex from gender (up until then gender was mostly used as a polite synonym for sex or, in feminist theory, as the definition of the limiting rules affecting women and keeping them in a condition of subordination). It is dispiriting to see that even Lord Tebbit, who was so perceptive on the legal consequences of this Act, fails to appreciate the sleigh of hand operated by gender ideologists.
Lord Filkin:
My Lords, I seek to be full and straightforward with the House, and not to give simplistic answers. The Bill essentially focuses on by what process the state should give legal recognition to a very small number of people. Because our debates strayed into medical science and the question of whether it was simple and clear to define gender around gonads and chromosomes, we had the benefit of perhaps the most expert advice that this Parliament could have had—from my noble friend Lord Winston. I commend the House to read what he said. I quote: "Genetics is rapidly changing our understanding of where sex is determined. But to define it simply as genital, hormonal, or as the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, seeks to do, as gonadal, is a travesty of what really happens".—[Official Report, 3/2/04; col. 620]
The more one reads of the original debates that took place 20 years ago and more, the more one see that all the talking points that we now see being played out and challenged, were already there. How irrelevant medical conditions are used to dislodge the clarity of the sex distinction. How arrogant statements on the ‘rapidly changing’ understanding of genetics are bandied about to justify the legal change of sex in the absence of any genetic condition whatsoever.
And yes that is the same Robert Winston that in 2021 declared that sex cannot be changed, ridiculing Lord Tebbit in the House of Lords in 2004, for holding on to those same scientific facts on which he himself relied 17 years later.
I think readers here might get something out of this article out in The TransAtlantic…
"Ideology & Anxiety: What Can We Learn From Penis-Shrinking Panics?" – https://thetransatlantic.substack.com/p/ideology-and-anxiety-what-can-we