Icing on the cake - ref the GRA in 2004. A few points.
The Hansard debate shows doctors then predicted - based on the entrance requirements agreed - that about 5000 transsexuals would qualify. In a population of about 63 million or so. As of when the self ID consultation occurred in 2018 the actual number who had obtained one was about 4900. It has never changed much at all over the years. Showing the doctors had exactly identified the numbers the law was going to cover and the claim it was too traumatic actually means for transgender it was a barrier BUILT IN on purpose. Not one they had never thought of.
I am amazed no politicians ever notice let alone talk about this obvious discrepancy. But then the truth is they know it blows wide open what they are doing today.Not just tinkering with the act to make it less traumatic for those who need it but totally changing the rules to let in a much bigger and wholly different cohort.
They can only be either unaware of these facts or are willfully ignoring them and, obviously, the only 'trans' people who are ever going to point this out to them are the very ones largely not out there demanding they stop the non existent oppression of trans people.
Well non existant if you behave like a normal, decent human being instead of a whining, screaming, angry person like most trans people seem to think defines their gender identity.
Either way the numbers show that the act was doing exactly what was intended.and ought to have been a big red flag that many others - ten times as many at the very least and probably even more than that worryingly now - had not even been applying in the past two decades - because they knew they would be gatekept out unless and until the gatekeeping was removed.
If you ever needed a red flag waved in your face the surely that was it. But I have never seen a politician mention this.
By the way the GRA was also applicable to transmen. Not just transwomen. And there have always been around a quarter of the 5000 with a GRC who were transmen. Long before the ROGD concerns of recent years that are very real and I am not minimising.
Also the original plan was to insist upon surgery but it was prevented by human rights act concerns because it would have disadvantaged older transsexuals who could not go forward with this due to ill health. I think that was a mistake -as do many others I have talked to about it - though understand why it was done as numbers without surgery were going to be small given the gatekeeping.
But nobody then will have foreseen the idea that the terms of the act should be entirely redrafted to include people who by no definition are transsexual or who have never had or ever intended to have any medical intervention, let alone even quite willingly being entirely intact males with a big phobia about seeing doctors about their issues as these are both traumatic and inhumane - so Nicola Stjrgeon ridiculously stated last week .
This move is very recent and pressurised by bodies like Stonewall who saw this as an opportunity to widen the cohort to what we used to call cross dressers and which we have to now call transgender because they know full welll how that changes perception of them.
Why you see the trans activists anger at transsexuals seeking to point this out and claims of elitism and silly names such as truscum for peopke like me. Once anyone starts calling other people names it is usually a sign that they are losing and the ones being name called have the moral high ground, Women will recognine the tactic as it has been aimed at them too with the invention of deliberately maligning words they go through somersaults to justify.
imo there has been a big influence from cross dressing groups and I would even suspect more than one male politician has an interest in this directly. In the 80s I was involved in something that saw me invited to go into Westminster to brief MPs and members of the Lords. It had nothing at all to do with sex or gender. But it was eye opening and I got to see the old boys club that place then was in action - from which by the way even years pre GRA I was excluded and had to be escorted into certain areas by a man.
It was an incredibly stuffy and sexist environment and very uncomfortable and so it has never surprised me that they pass laws with men up front and women at the back of any thinking process and that the GRA is too lax even befre self ID as loopholes were allowed on purpose. Such as the outrageous right of iheritanceof titles NOT allowed to transmen but not allowed to be removed from transwomen.
An outrageous move several of us I know told the consultation 3 or 4 years ago had to go. But rather tells you the mindset of those writing these laws is built less on equality and fairness than it should be.
