• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Fair Play For Women

Fair Play For Women

  • Prison
  • Sport
  • GRA
  • Language
  • Changing rooms
  • Resources ▼
    • Take action! Here’s how
    • Key facts
    • UK law
    • Science
    • Sex vs gender
    • Consultation submissions
    • Materials
  • About Us ▼
    • Review of 2022
    • Our aim
    • Our beliefs
    • Our spokeswoman
    • Our history and achievements
    • Our supporters
    • News
      • Newspapers
      • TV Interviews
      • Radio interviews
    • Contact
    • Donate
You are here: Home / Scottish GRA reforms / Meeting the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Meeting the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

8th May 2023 by FPFW

Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, is known for his enthusiastic promotion of self-identification of sex. This includes an intervention to the Scottish parliament in late 2022 in support of their Gender Recognition Reform bill which would have made it a simple matter for anyone to rewrite their birth certificate. Victor sees no issues with this. Another UN expert, Reem Alsalem the Special Rapporteur on Violence and Women and Girls, made an intervention expressing concerns about the GRR bill and its likely impact on those of us born female.

In early March we wrote to Victor asking to meet him on his planned visit to the UK from Monday 24 April to Friday 5 May. We explained why we wanted to meet, what we wanted to discuss, and that we had previously responded to two of his consultations. We heard nothing until 21 April, the Friday before the visit began, when we received an email inviting us to a 45 minute meeting in London at a set time on 4 May. Five groups were on the same email, and we discovered that a sixth was also invited. We were told only one representative per group was permitted. Fortunately one of us was able to make the date and time offered. Fair Play For Women accepted the invitation but asked for a longer meeting, which was not granted. One of the other groups, Lesbian Labour, did the same. No response. Fair Play For Women asked again, explaining that the various groups had different concerns as we represent different constituencies (women, children, same-sex attracted people, political and non-political groups, a human rights group). No reply. We emailed again, and on our third request the meeting was split into two 45 minute sessions, separating out three groups representing lesbians and gay men, so that our meeting was for four groups instead of seven.

We shared our meeting with Labour Women’s Declaration, Safe Schools Alliance and Sex Matters. Given how little time we had, each group prepared a one-page briefing (here’s ours) saying what we wanted Victor to know, and to consider for his visit report. In our introductions we each talked through the main points. Ours were:

Key points for the Independent Expert’s report on his UK visit

Sexual orientation and gender identity are separate characteristics which need to be addressed separately in order to create good policies and to tackle discrimination.

Gender identity cannot be treated as if it were sex. Sometimes sex, male or female, is what matters. In those cases, self-identification of sex based on gender identity is not an acceptable option.

Single-sex spaces, services and sport are important for both sexes, but especially for women and girls. Trans-identifying males (transwomen) do not belong in female-only spaces. This is not because of their gender identity but because of their sex, which is male.

Inclusion of trans-identifying males leads to exclusion and self-exclusion of females.

There are intersectional issues. Some religious and cultural groups do not permit females to be in mixed-sex spaces. When a trans-identifying male is in a female space, those women self-exclude.

Lesbians are disproportionately affected by male inclusion in the women’s category in sport because lesbians are over-represented in team sports.

Self-ID of sex is not compatible with safety, privacy, self-determination and fairness for females.

The discussion was cordial but it was clear that Victor starts from a different position, one he defended in the meeting, saying “my evidence is different” and “I have met lesbians who disagree with you”. We did not expect a meeting of minds. We did see some interest, particularly when Tanya of SSA spoke about the experiences of young lesbians being bullied and encouraged to consider males as lesbians, and when Lynn of LWD spoke of older lesbians being frozen out of political life.

We regard this as the beginning of a process. We have to raise our concerns, in writing and in person when the opportunity arises. That may not take us far, but it is the necessary first step. Even when it seems not to change anything, we know that keeping quiet is worse. We were glad to have this meeting. We hope to continue the dialogue with Victor.

Filed Under: Law, Scottish GRA reforms

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Biological sex
  • Children
  • Gender Identity
  • Male violence
  • Scottish GRA reforms
  • Silencing women
  • Policy guidance

Our materials

  • Our factsheets
  • Our short films and animations
  • Our memes
  • Our research

Our latest articles

  • British Cycling bows to the inevitable
  • Meeting the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
  • A sign of the turning tide in sport
  • Males can be lawfully excluded from female-only jobs
  • Athletics and swimming restore fair competition for women and girls

Archives

Footer

Prisons, crime and protecting women

  • The facts about transgender prisoners
  • Prisons timeline – how did we get here?
  • Karen White & prison review
  • Sex attacks in female prisons
  • Refuge shelters deeply worried
  • How do women in prison feel about sharing with transgender prisoners?
  • Can you believe what you read about sexual and violent crimes?
  • The judicial review of prisons policy
  • Factsheets

Sport and the human body

  • A progress report on the fight to restore fairness in female sport
  • Sport timeline: how did we get here?
  • Biological sex differences
  • Chromosomes, sex and gender
  • The science and statistics behind the transgender debate
  • Testosterone suppression in “elite athletes” – what do we know?
  • Safeguarding in sport still matters
  • Male inclusion leads to female exclusion
  • What you can do

Making policy and the law

  • Scottish government is forcing sex self-ID on whole of UK.
  • The Equality Act 2010 and women’s rights
  • GRA reform
  • Advice and guidance for policy makers
  • Changing room policy advice
  • What can I do now?
  • Take Action: Say NO to letting Sex Self-ID in through the back door.
  • Public opinion on the tension between women’s rights and trans demands

© 2023 · Fair Play For Women

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt out if you wish. Read More

Accept Decline Cookie Settings
I consent to the use of following cookies:
Cookie Declaration About Cookies
Necessary (2) Marketing (1) Analytics (4) Preferences (0) Unclassified (4)
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
wpl_user_preference fairplayforwomen.com WP GDPR Cookie Consent Preferences 1 year HTTP
YSC youtube.com YouTube session cookie. 52 years HTTP
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE youtube.com YouTube cookie. 6 months HTTP
Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
_ga fairplayforwomen.com Google Universal Analytics long-time unique user tracking identifier. 2 years HTTP
_gid fairplayforwomen.com Google Universal Analytics short-time unique user tracking identifier. 1 days HTTP
vuid vimeo.com Vimeo tracking cookie 2 years HTTP
IDE doubleclick.net Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. 2 years HTTP
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
We do not use cookies of this type.
Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
_gat_UA-109881507-1 fairplayforwomen.com --- Session ---
GASessionCookie fairplayforwomen.com --- Session ---
rtc linkedin.com --- Session ---
_wpfuuid fairplayforwomen.com --- 11 years ---
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. This site uses different types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.
Cookie Settings