Show Hide image The Staggers 24 July 2017 Changing the Gender Recognition Act won't solve discrimination There is an urgent need to re-establish the status quo, ensuring that transsexual people can be correctly identified and their rights supported and reinforced. Sign up to the Staggers Morning Call email * Print HTML The Government's recent announcement of a review to the current Gender Recognition Act - the right to legally change gender - has been given the full support of the the leader of the Labour Party with his proclamation that to comply with the act requires "invasive" medical treatment. Like many people, Jeremy Corbyn has not read the 2004 Act nor understands its consequences, or the reason for its existence, particularly in relation to discrimination, which in essence the 2004 Gender Recognition Act does very little if nothing to fight. To clarify, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for any surgery or treatment, as some people are not fit nor able to undergo any form of medical intervention. When we come to discrimination there is a blatant failure by organisations to educate their workforce about the rights of transsexual people. This is made worse by the perpetual use of the word "transgender" - originally a derogatory American slang word, which fails to differentiate between individuals who wear clothes of the opposite gender for whatever reason and those who genuinely feel they were born in the wrong bodies. Close examination of any discrimination legislation reveals the only word used to describe people born in the wrong body, that is, "transsexual". So widespread is the use of the word transgender by the media, including the BBC, that the public, as well as parliament, insists on using it. Yet "transgender" is not in legislation for a very good reason. Transgender has no legal definition, even being used to describe people who are not transsexual but transvestite (people who wear the clothes of the opposite gender). There is an urgent need to re-establish the status quo, ensuring that transsexual people can be correctly identified and their rights supported and reinforced. The public is confused, parliament is confused, the media is confused. All of them assign rights that belong specifically to a small minority of people, widely persecuted and discriminated against, to people who have no specific right to protection and do not suffer the same levels and degrees of discrimination a transsexual person does.This adds to the woes of a very small group whose voice is hardly heard, if it is listened to at all, instead being drowned out by cross-dressers, transvestites, drag kings and queens, gender queer and non-binary people and a plethora of others claiming all sorts of gender difference, which are difficult if not next to impossible to define. The publication by the BBC of details of pay to the men and women it employs has highlighted a difference in our society that should not exist but does. The vote to leave the EU has also brought about a meteoric rise in racism, which everyone thought had been dealt with by legislation. It has not. Clear legislation needs to be reinforced by action. These are two examples where legislation has failed and has detrimental consequences for individuals. The issue is no different for transsexual people; the law needs to be followed by actions. The key mover in changing our society to accept difference is education, yet governments consistently fail to ensure either that a compulsory policy of Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) is implemented. Discrimination at all levels is allowed to continue. Ofsted staff have no clear understanding of the nine protected characteristics in the 2010 Equality Act; like many organisations they confuse "gender" with "gender re-assignment" by omitting the latter entirely. In Wales the compulsory policy is not implemented because the Welsh Government is too afraid of parents' reaction to compulsory SRE. If the Labour party and the governments in the UK want to effectively help transsexual people then they need to speak to those people directly, not organistions claiming to represent all and sundry about the issues transsexual people face in society. Politicians should also stop tinkering with something which successive governments are not effectively policing and supporting in the first place. The writer is a transsexual woman living in Wales. A pseudonym has been used. › Public bodies are vulnerable to hacking – government needs to step up to protect them More Related articles Jeremy Corbyn's opponents are going down a blind alley on tuition fees My son is shivering – precisely the response you want from a boy newly excited by drama What Jeremy Corbyn gets right about the single market Subscription offer 12 issues for £12 + FREE book LEARN MORE Close This week’s magazine
Show Hide image Brexit 24 July 2017 Why we can't let Liam Fox negotiate post-Brexit trade deals behind closed doors MPs have little control over agreements struck with the US and others. Sign up to the Staggers Morning Call email * Print HTML Today Liam Fox will start discussing a trade deal with the United States. We don’t know who will attend or what’s on the agenda, and neither do our elected representatives in parliament. Nor do MPs have the power to guide the talks, to set red lines, to amend or to stop an eventual deal. International Trade Secretary Fox is acting with regal powers. And that should scare us all. What we do know is that this deal, if completed, will affect pretty much everyone in the country. Like most modern trade deals it won’t be primarily about tariffs. Far from it, it will be about our environmental and consumer protections, about how we’re allowed to spend taxpayers' money, about how we run our public services and the power we give to big business. We also know that those feeding into these negotiations are overwhelmingly big businesses. New analysis of ministerial meetings published today by the Corporate Europe Observatory and Global Justice Now, shows that 90 per cent of meetings held by trade ministers in the last six months are with businesses. Most of these are massive companies including Starbucks, Walmart, Amazon, BP and HSBC. So businesses have nine times the access of everyone else. In fact, it’s worse than it appears, because “everyone else” includes pro-big business consultants from the Legatum Institute and the Adam Smith Institute, together with a handful of campaign groups, trade unions and public institutions. We can guess from Donald Trump’s approach to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations, which start in a couple of weeks, what the US agenda will look like. Corporate courts – which give big businesses power to sue states for decisions they don’t like – are fine, but state-to-state resolution isn’t. That’s because the US sometimes loses in the latter, but not in the former. Trump is also pushing Canada and Mexico for one-sided access for US companies to bid for government spending contracts (Buy America is allowed, but not Buy Canada or Buy Mexico it seems). He also wants better access for US financial corporations and further liberalisation of energy markets. This is “America First” in practice. With Britain, it’s highly likely that access to the NHS and the UK’s higher food standards will be on the agenda. After all, Fox is likely to agree with Trump on those issues. Indeed, this is big politics for Fox. He knows that outside the EU, Britain must choose whom to align itself with – the US or Europe. Fox’s preference is clearly the former, because that would push us down the path of lighter regulation, lower standards, and “the market knows best”. That’s why failure to secure an EU trade deal while agreeing a US deal has enormous implications for our society. Finally, we know that this is only the first of ten trade working groups with 15 countries which will meet in coming weeks and months. Others involve Saudi Arabia and Turkey, hardly human rights bastions, where we have a big arms market. It also includes countries such as India, where Britain is desperate to increase intellectual property rules to help big pharmaceutical corporations clamp down on generic medicine provision. The long and the short of it is that none of this should be discussed behind closed doors. This is not a game of poker involving tariff levels. Huge issues of public policy are at stake. Yet even the most basic information about these meetings is apparently so sensitive that it is exempt from Freedom of Information laws. And don’t accept the assurance of Fox, who has form in this area. He promised a parliamentary debate on the Canada-EU trade deal last year. The debate never came. Fox simply signed the deal off on behalf of this country with no scrutiny or discussion. MPs should refuse to accept his assurances a second time. Anyone who suspects this is a Remoaner making up scare stories about Brexit should remember the process is the exact same one that will be used to agree our trade deal with the EU when we leave. That means our MEPs will have more power over that deal than our MPs. As will the MEPs of all other EU member states, and their national parliamentarians. In fact, the parliamentarians of the Belgian region of Wallonia will have more power than British MPs. Taking back control it ain’t. But don’t despair. We have 18 months in which the government is not allowed to sign off any trade deals. We have a Trade Bill which will be introduced to parliament in the autumn. And we have a hung parliament. And a cross-party motion has already been tabled calling for scrutiny of trade deals like this. There is every chance we can overturn this archaic method of negotiating trade deals. But the clock is ticking. Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now More Related articles Jeremy Corbyn's opponents are going down a blind alley on tuition fees Changing the Gender Recognition Act won't solve discrimination What Jeremy Corbyn gets right about the single market Subscription offer 12 issues for £12 + FREE book LEARN MORE Close This week’s magazine
