Exactly! Even cervical screening doesn’t qualify as a service that only one ”sex“ has need for, because AMAB people occasionally have one (because of e.g. PMDS and a few other rare conditions).
Well any sex characteristic that a service provider could actually observe in practice is dissociable from sex assigned at birth and hence from “sex” according to the FWS judgment. The only exceptions seem to be medical services. This isn’t the only part of FWS that shoots itself in the foot.
So a prohibition on Thlimmenos discrimination is already baked into the Act, interpreted correctly (and in line with human rights law). The lazy interpretation that “you were treated the same way as the comparator, so there is no discrimination” is just wrong.
The brand of “feminism“ that thinks little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice; whereas little boys are made of slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.
I think it’s the same analysis: they have a clear wish to be perceived as and treated as female (one which is fulfilled in practice) coupled with a second order desire that they’d been born differently (with both a male body and a corresponding wish to be perceived as and treated as male).
Then I’d say you have a first order desire to be female (and cis female at that) but a second order desire not to have that first order desire.
It’s just that doesn’t work. You can’t get rid of your first-order desire no matter how annoying it is, so you have to try to satisfy it as best you can.
It’s hard to dismiss a desire as delusional or claim someone is lying about such a desire. Also it’s non-circular because the wish to act and be treated by others in a certain way (e.g. using your pronouns) implies something definite.
After that, the transphobe can only say “It’s a sinful or ….
You need a different response depending on which way they go.
A subtler approach is that gender identity is how someone *would like* to identify themselves *and be identified by others*, even if that’s not actually happening for practical reasons (in the closet, being misgendered).
I think one of the problems here is definitional. Your gender identity is simply how you identify your own gender: male, female, or something else (including both or neither). Transphobes have to agree that exists, but argue trans people are lying, delusional, or the concept is circular.
It’s also smart politics. By being so firmly pro-trans he’ll help the Greens pick up a lot of disaffected Labour voters (and quite a few Lib Dems too who are fed up with their MPs ducking the subject).
