Discussion on Gender Identity and Law

So let's go away from toilets to begin with

and let's just go on to, this

is just all about politeness and making people happy

and surely if you have the chance to make someone happy

by calling them what they prefer to be called,

their preferred pronouns and their preferred name,

then surely that would be a better thing,

the world would be at a better place and

you're a very polite person, surely you would agree with that?

I don't disagree with that at all,

I'm not in favour of making people unnecessarily uncomfortable

but I just see a contradiction in this,

that you have one set of rules that says that

single sex spaces must be reserved by law for birth sex

and then you're not allowed to misgender people but

therefore how do you implement the law that you've got from the Supreme Court?

Well, the thing is the Supreme Court only looks at one particular law,

so I have a gender recognition certificate,

and so in all the other laws, every other law in the UK,

I am legally female,

except now, because of the Supreme Court ruling,

the Equality Act 2010. So there's a misnomer there,

and it is being challenged, and I'm sure in time it will be overturned,

because it actually went against Hansard, which the Supreme Court judges didn't actually look at when they made that ruling.

Looking at Hansard by courts is a complicated area of law,

because the courts aren't allowed to consider what is said in Parliament.

They have to look at what the ultimate law says.

They can only look at parliamentary debates to explain something that's unclear.

They can't look at it if it's different from what the law says,

and it's very hard to overturn a Supreme Court judgment unless you get primary legislation.

Ond hefyd, nid oedd unrhyw bobl trans yn cael cyfraniad i roi'r cyfraniad.

Roedd ddau bobl trans sy'n cyfraniadu i greu'r cyfraniad hwnnw,

felly Stephen Whittle a Dr Victoria McLeod.

Roedden nhw i gyd yn cyfraniadu i roi cyfraniad,

ac roedden nhw'n cael y cyfle hwnnw. Felly,

maen nhw'n gwneud yr ymddiriedolaeth hwnnw am ni, ond heb ni.

Yn siŵr, dyna'r ymddiriedolaeth dda, Jacob.

Well, I don't think that's right.

I think the Supreme Court is looking at what the law says.

It's not looking at personal experiences. It's not the criminal court.

It's a court that is looking at the details of Acts of Parliament,

and it ruled that single-sex spaces must be maintained for biological sex.

And I think this therefore clashes with the civil servants' guidance that we've seen come out today,

and that seems to me to be a problem.

So accepting your first point, that you want to be polite to people,

and you want to be called Katie Neves, that's your business, that's fine by me.

That is my name. I changed it by deed poll eight years ago.

And that's your name, and you want to be called that, that's absolutely fine,

and that's what people I'm sure will call you.

On the other hand, if you're working in the civil service,

somebody would have to say to you, you cannot use that facility, because it is for biological females.

And how would it be policed?

Well, that's the difficulty, is that if you're having two contradictory rules, how do you make these things happen?

You can't. There's no way of policing it.

The guidance from the EHRC came out that is actually all about service providers.

And the onus is on them. But

then also they said that you can't police it because there is no way of policing it.

There is no way of knowing.

So if someone challenged you and said you prove that you're a man, how would you do that?

It's not something that's very often come up. It

has to be said.

Are you a man? Do you prove it?

How do you do that? I think there are all sorts of things that give it away,

including Adam's apples and the depth of one's voice.

Anyway, I've got to move on to my nib,

but thank you so much for joining me.

It's been a very jolly conversation.