Women's prisons and the Gender Recognition Act (2015)

From the same article:

Since I “came out” as “gender-critical” four years ago, a number of friends have stopped speaking to me, and this year I was dropped from a university’s summer programme.

Ah, you have to admit though Jack, it's a good one, isn't it?

What I want is not just a human right. but a fundamental human, right. What they have is a mere contract ! … 😀

That is the UK though. In fairness, I don't think many people in this country, given the marriage equality referendum would describe marriage in such .. commercial .. terms. But, you never know. Eaten bread is soon forgotten.

I'd happily admit it's a good one plodder (I presume you mean interesting at least), if I thought it was a good one. I don't find it remotely interesting though, for several reasons, not the least of which is the author strikes me as a drama queen using women's rights as a proxy for trying to deprive people who are transgender of their entitlement to be recognised and protected by the same law as those who are not transgender. It has little to do with it being the UK either, though the author does include the anecdote where he claims to have attempted to explain the spousal exit clause to one of his students (he calls it 'the "spousal veto" under UK law', oddly enough) -

“I explained that spouses didn’t sign up to a same-sex marriage, so their consent is needed before they are made part of one.” A trans man in the audience objected. “I talked about needing to consider the rights of others and said that trans rights don’t trump everything else. The person became angry and stormed out of the room.”

But the views of many people in this country in any case would have no bearing on how marriage is recognised either in Irish or UK legislation as a contract; it's not a description in commercial terms (I know what you mean), but in civil terms, as in it is distinguishable from religious marriage - marriages which are not recognised by the State (more on that in a minute).

Also from the same article:

One woman asked if I had read Principle 31 of the 2017 Yogyakarta Principles (in which I did not participate). I had not done so and was shocked when I read it.

It boldly claimed that every country in the world must remove sex from birth certificates and, until then, allow change of legal sex based on self-identification (without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria).

If you believe this stuff then it's a fundamental human right, that every country removes sex from birth certs (at least they know what it is) and base identity instead on subjective gender. And as we know fundamental human rights override all other (eg democratic) concerns, don't they?

The answer to your question (certainly I cannot be included in the 'we' there), is no, fundamental human rights do not over-ride all other concerns, democratic or otherwise, I've always made the point that rights and responsibilities are a balancing act, and in that sense, they are not a zero-sum game either - extending rights which pertain to a particular social class, to everyone in society, does not diminish or take away or even conflict with that class which has those rights. Now whether Principle 31 of the Yogyakarta Principles amounts to a fundamental human right, there's quite a bit in there, some of which is already recognised in Ireland and the UK already as fundamental human rights, so for the Professor of Human Rights Law to be shocked by such proposals, comes off a bit… well, a bit of a drama queen, and certainly suggesting that anyone else would be shocked by it, or as you suggest find it even remotely interesting… frankly, I just don't.

A good example of circumstances where competing interests arise in terms of balancing fundamental human rights apart from this one which I already presented, is this one, in the UK, where it was made clear by the Courts that religious communities are not a law unto themselves, that they must comply with civil law. That case is also a good example of the use of the spousal exit clause where an application can be made for a marriage to be annulled in circumstances where due to their religious convictions, opinions around concepts like divorce and gender can vary considerably, depending upon whom you ask!

In short, it simply appears that you have a much lower bar for what you find interesting than I do, but I don't imagine we'd fall out over it, unlike the author and his former friend -

To an LGBT-rights activist I had known for just as long, I wrote: “I hope that we can still be friends!” He replied that he wanted “to take a break for a bit” (now four years and counting).

I wouldn't even have bothered dignifying that sort of arseholery with a response tbh.

Ahh plodder you left out the first part of that sentence -

I don't find it remotely interesting though, for several reasons, not the least of which is the author strikes me as a drama queen using women's rights as a proxy for trying to deprive people who are transgender of their entitlement to be recognised and protected by the same law as those who are not transgender.

Which he is -

All of which has informed my book, Transgender Rights vs Women’s Rights, in which I reach conclusions that will shock many supporters of the transgender-rights movement.

In writing it, I realised that I had been wrong to assume, for many years, that anything the movement proposed must be reasonable. The escalation of demands I belatedly noticed made me go back to the start and ask myself: was change of legal sex ever justifiable? I concluded that it was not, and that Sweden made a mistake in 1972 when it became the first country in Europe to allow the practice. That mistake has of course been replicated by many other European nations since.

The spousal clause itself applies in the case of either spouse, not just a husband or wife (here’s an odd one though if you have an iPhone - on the Relationship tab when setting up the Medical ID - there’s no option for husband or wife, only spouse!). In any event, a spouse could not be compelled to remain in the marital relationship - they had the right to divorce their spouse, ending the marital relationship. The idea behind the spousal exit clause was an unnecessary measure intended to introduce a delay period for a person who wanted to have their preferred gender recognised in law. It didn’t and doesn’t do anything to protect the rights of the person who does not wish to remain a party to the marital contract.

I’m not forgetting at all that most people were married before the law was passed which gave people the right to enter into marriage regardless of their sex (in Ireland) and gave people of the same sex the right to enter into marriage (in the UK), I remember it well the sneering that they were already entitled to enter into marriage (just not to a person of the same sex), and I do know of people who entered into marriage on those terms when divorce was not permitted in Ireland, and later divorced and married a person of the same sex when the right to do so became available to them.

The burden looms just as large on the person who has to inform their spouse that the nature of their relationship has changed, if their spouse hasn’t copped that much for themselves already. They often do, which is why a piece of paper in the door notifying them of the change in their relationship status six months later, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. If the marriage is annulled, they lose the rights they had as a married person.

To be fair, you asked me did I find it interesting. What I do find interesting is your attempt to suggest trans activists are at fault for campaigning to overturn laws which were passed before they were even born, as though they are somehow at fault for being excluded from consideration when the laws were first being passed by people who are long dead.

Indeed, the spousal veto does apply to both men and women. But, this seems like a good time to ask where are all the middle aged women coming out now as trans? It seems to be mostly men. It's that observation that informs the arguments that:

a) being trans means different things to different cohorts, and

b) that social influences play a big role among teenagers who say they are trans, but never showed signs of it before that

I dunno plodder, maybe they're all in prison being subjected to illegal strip searches while being deprived of their right to vote?

Wayhey, we've come full circle!

That's not what I said. It was that the couples got married before the law was changed not that it was before trans people were born. The spouses understanding of what they were getting into was radically different at the time.

The paragraph above is a good example of the point he was making. You're looking at it solely from the pov of the trans person. He was saying - what about the spouse (the wife for all intents and purposes)? What about her rights?

I know that's not what you said, that's why I said i found your attempt to suggest it, interesting. I'm certainly not looking at anything from the POV of the trans person, nor is he saying what about the spouse, the use of the term 'life partner' didn't cut any ice in the Austrian Supreme Court either (Karner himself was dead by the time the ECHR ruled), he's claiming that his awakening came when he listened to women (just not to the biological female whom he acted towards like a complete bell end!), and because of the passage of marriage equality legislation, the question of what about wife's rights (or even transgender widows rights), does not arise, they remain the same as they always were, even when that issue was raised 25 years ago in Lydia Foy's case (divorce was introduced in 1995 in Ireland, before then there were no divorcées… how odd, not.) -

Dr Lydia Annice Foy (54), a dentist from Athy, Co Kildare, formerly Mr Donal Mark Foy, told Mr Justice McKechnie that Mrs Ann Foy had never accepted the witness's status as a person with a gender identity disorder.Dr Foy said she could understand why her wife might think this way. When she had told Mrs Foy of her intention to take hormones, Mrs Foy had replied: "Don't be daft."

Ex-wife never accepted husband was woman, court told – The Irish Times

There are three notice parties to the proceedings: Dr Foy's former wife and two daughters. They are opposing Dr Foy's application and claim that altering the birth register to describe Dr Foy as female would have an adverse effect on their succession and other rights.

Dentist in new court battle to be called a woman | Irish Independent