First police force changes search guidelines for trans women in wake of Supreme Court gender ruling

www.lbc.co.uk

A British Transport Police spokesperson said: “Under previous policy, we had advised that someone with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) may be searched in accordance with their acquired sex, however as an interim position while we digest yesterday’s judgement, we have advised our officers that any same sex searches in custody are to be undertaken in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee.
“We are in the process of reviewing the implications of the ruling and will consider any necessary updates to our policies and practices in line with the law and national guidance.”

114 comments

The BTP jumped on this almost instantly as they'd been under fire because trans women on the force could strip search those AFAB.
I'm waiting for next shoe to drop when someone AFAB complains because they get strip searched by a big hairy bloke because he was also AFAB. At no point does anyone seem to have considered the effect this law will have on trans men now having to go into women-only spaces. I don't think JK Rowling cares about the messy fallout from her War on Trans Women.
- But beforehand an assigned-big-hairy-bloke-at-birth could claim to be female one day and strip search an afab woman the next day.
  So either way, women are going to be strip searched by big hairy blokes
  
  someone with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC)
  could claim to be female one day and strip search an afab woman the next day
  okay
  
  Not as far as I'm aware - The Guardian says it was only officers who trans women with a GRC who were allowed to search those AFAB. So officers couldn't pick and chose to suit them.
  
  No.
But hey, trans people have totally not lost any protections because of this ruling. The Supreme Court can only interpret the law, which is, as we know, an apolitical, amorphic force of nature and not a deeply political process informed just as much by a person's perspective and bigotries as any other.
- In an immediate, visceral experiential sense they’ve lost protections, but in a legal sense those protections never existed, and the first legal challenge showed they were like smoke in air. hopefully this will shake things up and get some proper substantial protections into law.
  
  And yet the people who wrote the legislation say this ruling is at odds with their intentions:
  [Melanie Field] said that treating trans women with GRCs as women in relation to sex discrimination protections was “the clear premise” of the policy and legal instructions to the officials who drafted the bill.
  The supreme court’s ruling on Wednesday that the legal definition of “woman” referred only to biological women was “a very significant” reinterpretation of parliament’s intentions when it passed the Equality Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004, she said.
  “There are likely to be unintended consequences of this very significant change of interpretation from the basis on which the legislation was drafted and considered by parliament,” Field said in a post on the social media site LinkedIn.
  “We all need to understand what this change means for how the law provides for the appropriate treatment of natal and trans women and men in a whole range of contexts.”
jk rowling funding a lawsuit to make it legal for the police to sexually assault women - including cis women - is yet another reason why she's a terrible human
- It absolutely bewilders me.
  If I had anything approaching her levels of wealth, I'd be on a beach sipping cocktails, going rock climbing, getting railed by goth girls, or trying all kinds of new hobbies that the normal person wouldn't have the time or resources to try.
  She spends her time doing this, and sitting on twitter trying to get retweets from people with swastikas in their profile pictures.
  Time is the one thing that's finite for her, and she's choosing to spend it on this bullshit. I can't wrap my head around it.
  
  You don't see Enya pulling this shit.
So now, if you're a woman and some pervert cop takes a fancy to you all he has to do is say "I reckoned she looked trans so I did the search myself" and he can touch you up as much as he feels he can get away with
- Even better, he can demand her to strip naked for him. Purely theoretical of course, the bobbies would never abuse their power.
  
  Goodness no, perish the very thought. This fucking country...
- Not sure. I think this is specifically about the sex of the peeler, not the subject of the search.
  
  we have advised our officers that any same sex searches in custody are to be undertaken in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee.
  It's absolutely about the person being searched.
The damage these people are doing is unimaginable.
God, I'm tired
- Me fuckin' too.
  Just existing has been exhausting lately.
The UK keeps circling the same drain the US fell through
As an American Transwoman I'm worried America is looking at the UK and taking notes.
I'm new here and it seems just as left leaning as Reddit but there going to be teething problems. The percentage of Trans people in the country and those that will actually be affected by this is negligible.
- As I have said to another person. You need to take a Utilitarian approach. You can't appease everyone, we don't live in a utopia. So you are saying the 50% of the Human race or 49.9998% of Women are less important than your 1/10% .
  Unfortunately yes that is the case. The 0.1% of the population is not the priority, and the decision clearly and explicitly shows that is so.
- except there have been plenty of cases where masculine presenting cis women get accused of being trans and either assaulted or abused verbally or otherwise
- Counterpoint: if it negatively affects one person it's bad. You actually don't need to "well actually" this, especially when your "well actually" amounts to "it won't be as bad as it could be"
  
  Counterpoint to your counterpoint.
  Women have been negatively affected as well. Somehow do you square that circle. The world is not a utopia. So taking a Utilitarian approach the benefit would be in the positive towards women. Which is the greater number of those affected.
- As someone who lives as a minority Japan and is very obviously not ethnically Japanese, lemme tell you that being a small portion of the population does not make ANY discrimination or assault OK and impacts you in ways you may not predict.

114 comments