7 Comments

Point made. Nicely done again Andrew.

Titania would be proud of you :)

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WTF has happened to our country? I wish we could just have biological reality of sex, male or female, and forget all this "gender" and "assigned at birth" nonsense.

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Considering how ignominiously her Commons career ended, Baroness Smith of Malvern probably can’t believe her luck at being in a government position. I met her when she was MP for Redditch (I assume it was about the same time she was making bogus expenses claims and her husband was using public money to buy porn videos), and I found her to be fairly down to earth. I’m sure she knows gender identity is claptrap, but she’s not in a position to say so because she’d lose her job. Those who gave her the job knew that when they did so.

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Hi Andrew, excellent piece as always! Thanks for taking the time to set out the issue so clearly. f I could add my tuppence worth to the various "definitions" you cited it would be as follows. I worked in preparing legislation most of my career so I understand the fundamental importance of a definition to the nature, scope and purpose of a Bill/Act. Any person involved in drafting legislation knows that definitions must be as clear as possible on what is intended so that (i) those involved in implementing the Act, (ii) those affected by it and (iii) those who must make decisions on it are all collectively and consistently certain as to what words mean. If there is no clear definition of a key concept it is because (a) no one is really sure what it means or (b) they are sure but don't want to define it in case their definition is likely to be politically problematic or (c) they want judges to define in case law so that if the judges "get it wrong" (so to speak) the politicians can shrug their shoulders and blame the judiciary. As you know, we had a wonderful example of that recently in Ireland where "hate" is defined as "hate" -there you go, nothing could be simpler, Squire!!!!!!

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Well said! This is also something that is not at all well understood. In law, definitions are foundational, and it is therefore essential for them to be as clear and precise as possible. Thank you for noting that.

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My employer asks us to record many personal details on their records, many of which make good sense. Interestingly they don't require us to record our sex or gender, just "gender identity", which as you have said, is not (well) defined. As they don't ask for sex or gender, I am not sure how they comply with legal requirements such as gender pay gap reporting. Obviously, I don't have a gender identity, so I had to choose the "prefer to self describe" option and write "none".

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You must feel exhausted having to write about this garbage, but it needs to be said, so, well done.

Irrelevant but, my surname is actually Wellspring, and I get a little kick out of reading it 😄

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