Nika
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nikavia.bsky.social
Nika
@nikavia.bsky.social
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nikavia.bsky.social
I just marked this year's Trans Awareness Week in the best way I could think of.
An HRT vial next to a syringe.
November 18, 2025 at 9:57 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Why are you fearmongering about "nearly a fifth" of the group when the study in question shows that 87% of the trans kids studied began some sort of medical treatment, and only 3% stopped?
Puberty blockers suppress the physiological changes brought on by endogenous puberty, while gender‐affirming hormones cause the development of secondary sex characteristics associated with the other binary gender (e.g., facial hair growth in transgender boys, breast development in transgender girls). The majority of youths in the Recruited as Transgender group started puberty blockers (86%) and/or gender‐affirming hormones (68%) at some point during the study. Within the Recruited as Transgender group, 16% started blockers and continue to use them without having begun gender affirming hormones, and 66% started both blockers and gender‐affirming hormones and continue to use gender‐affirming hormones (roughly one‐third of these youths have stopped using blockers). The remaining youths who medically transitioned started blockers and then stopped (1%), started blockers and gender‐affirming hormones and stopped both (1%), started blockers and gender‐affirming hormones but stopped the latter (1%), or never started blockers but started hormones (1%). The mean age at which youths in our sample began blockers was 11.18 years (SD = 1.15, range: 8–14.5 years), and the mean age at which they began taking gender‐affirming hormones was 13.21 years (SD = .99, range: 10.5–16 years). More details about this sample's experiences with gender affirming medical care are reported in Olson et al. (2024).
September 21, 2025 at 8:54 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
girl, same
Justice Kagan with a look of utter contempt on her face
June 18, 2025 at 9:42 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
IOW, the government thinks it's right and proper that trans people be excluded from "hospitals, refuges and sports clubs", and intend to make sure that stays the case. But don't worry, everyone, they hear our concerns! They're just not going to address them in any substantive way.

Fuck Labour.
The Government welcomes the Supreme Court’s clarification of the meaning of sex for the purposes of the Equality Act, and the confidence and clarity it provides for women and service providers such as hospitals, refuges and sports clubs regarding single-sex services. Single-sex services based on biological sex are protected in law and will always be protected by this Government.
June 18, 2025 at 4:05 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
3) statutes which do not fall into either of the above categories. Under these statutes, the legal sex of a trans person with a GRC is unknown until a court rules on the matter. At the time the GRA was being debated in parliament, there were over 9000 references to "a man" or "a woman" in law. [8/n]
Amendment No. 18 proposes to take care of that problem in relation to sex discrimination law. However, the law includes references to sex in many other places; there are literally thousands of other references. For example, in reply to the points raised by the hon. Member for Daventry, some provisions require certain tribunals, such as social security appeal tribunals and disability appeal tribunals, to have at least one member of the same sex as the claimant. A number of provisions also require a person to disclose his or her sex or to give information in relation to another person's sex—for example, section 92 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and section 11 of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. A search of legislation showed that there are 2,288 references to ''a woman'' and 7,061 references to ''a man''. That may have something to do with the advances that women have made since the 1960s for all sorts of historical reasons. That is what we have sought to deal with by establishing gender and sex in clause 9. Clause 9 makes it clear that, wherever it is necessary to decide the sex in law of a person who has an acquired gender, or to say whether that person is a man or a woman, male or female, the question must be answered in accordance with the person's acquired
June 13, 2025 at 2:10 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
As to other statutes, the court stated that "...the
effect [of a GRC] on the very many statutes referring to men and women, whether enacted before or after the GRA 2004, must be carefully considered in the light of the wording, context and policy of the statute in question". In other words, 🤷🙃[5/n]
108. This court also does not express any view on that issue. We note only that the effect of the rule in section 9(1) on the very many statutes referring to men and women, whether enacted before or after the GRA 2004, must be carefully considered in the light of the wording, context and policy of the statute in question. It is likely to be unhelpful for the coherence of the law to impose a stringent test for the application of section 9(3).
June 13, 2025 at 2:10 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
It decided that the words "any other enactment" applied to both past and future statutes and therefore that past statutes could carve themselves out of the GRA. It further decided (wrongly, for multiple reasons, but that's another story) that the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 did just that. [4/n]
103. We also reject the submission that the carve out in section 9(3) only operates in respect of future legislation and not legislation, such as the SDA 1975, which was already enacted at the date when the GRA 2004 was enacted. Ms Irvine submitted that the GRA 2004 itself made exhaustive provision for how the rule was to apply to existing statutes. We do not accept that; section 9(3) refers to “any other enactment” and those words have a clear meaning.
June 13, 2025 at 2:10 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
The relevant section of the GRA is 9(3), which states that the effect of a GRC "...is subject to provision made by this Act or any other enactment or any subordinate legislation." It was the clearly stated intent of parliament that 9(3) be engaged only by statutes passed after the GRA. [2/n]
(1) Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman). (2) Subsection (1) does not affect things done, or events occurring, before the certificate is issued; but it does operate for the interpretation of enactments passed, and instruments and other documents made, before the certificate is issued (as well as those passed or made afterwards). (3) Subsection (1) is subject to provision made by this Act or any other enactment or any subordinate legislation.
June 13, 2025 at 2:10 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
This is an excellent article, but I disagree with the excerpt below. In my reading, the supreme court's decision has done far more damage to the Gender Recognition Act than many people have realised, rendering it fundamentally unfit for purpose.

CAVEAT: not a lawyer, this is just my opinion. [1/n]
The Supreme Court ruled on one issue: the definition of the words 'man' and 'woman' in the Equality Act. They decided that man meant biological man and women meant biological woman. In other words, a trans man is a woman and a trans woman is a man. But this is only the case for that one piece of legislation. In every other piece of legislation, a trans man is still a man and a trans woman is still a woman. This is because the Gender Recognition Act states that someone with a gender recognition certificate has changed their sex "for all purposes".
June 13, 2025 at 2:10 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
And here O'Neill is either demonstrating very poor reading comprehension, or just lying, because that is not remotely a valid interpretation of the quote in question.
95. Simon Edge then states, “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the rapidity of all this. I look back to five or six years ago when this was all quite new and people hadn’t really heard of any of it, and you could have open conversations, saying, “this is all a bit daft isn’t it?” If you could see it coming. And we fast forward to now. The world is captured by the crazy.” 96. Dr O’Neill’s evidence was that she believed in saying, “all a bit daft” he was referring to the idea that those with gender critical beliefs could not talk openly without being shut down or being reported in their workplaces. It had become very prominent in the public sphere that they could not discuss the issues. He was saying that they could have had an open conversation which is the point he is trying to make and the idea that such cannot now be held was quite daft.
June 9, 2025 at 5:16 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Well that's a hell of a thing to admit to a tribunal. "No, see, our film was about *spreading* transphobic lies, not *fact-checking* them!"
89. Professor Phoenix states in the Film, “We know that of those who declare themselves to be trans gender, with or without a GRC, that they have a hugely disproportionate rate of sex offending.” 90. She states she is relying on the Ministry of Justice’s own statistics. 91. Dr O’Neill gave evidence that this was in the context of trans women in prison and that there is a disproportionate rate of sex offending amongst that group. In the context of the Film she felt it was quite clear what was being spoken about. Dr O’Neill accepted there was no discussion in the Film as to how trans women came to be in prison, nor an analysis of the statistics as that, she said, was not what the Film was about.
June 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Is...is this a thing? Because to my non-lawyer eyes it reads like the kind of transparently sophistic horseshit a debate club nerd throws out when asked to defend an untenable position and is hoping to at least score some points for cleverness. It reads like "the card says Moops" cranked up to 11.
103. We also reject the submission that the carve out in section 9(3) only operates in respect of future legislation and not legislation, such as the SDA 1975, which was already enacted at the date when the GRA 2004 was enacted. Ms Irvine submitted that the GRA 2004 itself made exhaustive provision for how the rule was to apply to existing statutes. We do not accept that; section 9(3) refers to "any other enactment" and those words have a clear meaning.
May 21, 2025 at 4:09 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Gosh, if only parliament had had the foresight to consider matters such as how the GRA would affect car insurance. Oh, well.

Unrelatedly, here's an excerpt from a parliamentary debate on the GRA:
The absence of legal recognition is no mere technicality. For example, a person who is now living as a woman may take out motor insurance in her new name. That would seem the natural thing to do. If, however, she has an accident, she risks prosecution for driving without insurance and for fraud, as her legal status is still determined by her gender at birth. She is therefore faced with little choice but to take out insurance under her previous name, in the gender to which she no longer feels she belongs. She then has to explain, every time she has to produce her insurance documents, why there is a discrepancy between those documents and the reality of how she presents to the world. These are extremely personal matters. Yet transsexual people, because of the disjuncture between their birth gender and the gender in which they are now living, have to describe their gender history to complete strangers. The Gender Recognition Bill will ensure that this intensely private matter can remain private.
May 21, 2025 at 9:30 AM
nikavia.bsky.social
omg
a closeup of the face of stag. Its expression is hovering somewhere between "oh god, what now" and "get a load of this asshole". It appears to be belching steam.
May 19, 2025 at 2:59 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Good news: numbers are now correct. Bad news: tooltips are now showing only the last datapoint.
May 14, 2025 at 2:28 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Looks like you've got an off-by-one error in there somewhere.
May 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
alt text part 2
A search of legislation showed that there are 2,288 references to ''a woman'' and 7,061 references to ''a man''. That may have something to do with the advances that women have made since the 1960s for all sorts of historical reasons. That is what we have sought to deal with by establishing gender and sex in clause 9. Clause 9 makes it clear that, wherever it is necessary to decide the sex in law of a person who has an acquired gender, or to say whether that person is a man or a woman, male or female, the question must be answered in accordance with the person's acquired [gender]
May 1, 2025 at 10:24 AM
nikavia.bsky.social
The government explicitly addressed this point during the committee stage. The speaker here is David Lammy, and the word "gender" was clipped off the end of the last sentence. Too many laws to name all of them, and they were of the opinion that the existing text was clear. More fool them, I guess.
The basic principle of the Bill in clause 9 is that the issue of a gender recognition certificate will mean that a person's gender will become, for all purposes, the acquired ''gender''. For example, an applicant who was born male would in law become a woman. There are many places in law where the word ''sex'' is used rather than gender. Clearly, it would be ludicrous if a person were treated as being a female whenever the law referred to gender, but male whenever it referred to sex. The Joint Committee on Human Rights highlighted the potential for uncertainty as to what a transsexual person would be considered to be in law. In response to that, the Government inserted an explicit mention of sex as well as gender in clause 9. Amendments Nos. 14 and 15 would remove that reference and could then lead to a situation that the Joint Committee feared—that is, a person being treated as male for some purposes and female for others, depending on whether the law refers to ''gender'' or ''sex''. Amendment No. 18 proposes to take care of that problem in relation to sex discrimination law. However, the law includes references to sex in many other places; there are literally thousands of other references. For example, in reply to the points raised by the hon. Member for Daventry, some provisions require certain tribunals, such as social security appeal tribunals and disability appeal tribunals, to have at least one member of the same sex as the claimant. A number of provisions also require a person to disclose his or her sex or to give information in relation to another person's sex—for example, section 92 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and section 11 of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984.
May 1, 2025 at 10:23 AM
nikavia.bsky.social
with alt text:
EM4 This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term 'woman' with respect to the Equality Act as being based on 'biological sex', which they refer to as a person who 'was at birth of the female sex', as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical. We recognize as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects on the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people. As such this meeting: i. Reiterates the BMA's position on affirming the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals to live their lives with dignity, having their identity respected. ii. Reminds the Supreme Court of the existence of intersex people and reaffirms their right to exist in the gender identity that matches their sense of self, regardless of whether this matches any identity assigned to them at birth. iii. Condemns scientifically illiterate rulings from the Supreme Court, made without consulting relevant experts and stakeholders, that will cause real-world harm to the trans, non-binary and intersex communities in this country. iv. Commits to strive for better access to necessary health services for trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people.
April 27, 2025 at 12:43 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Just came across this in the earlier case of B v France, 1992. So it seems the supreme court is simply ignoring more than 30 years of EU law.
60. The Commission agreed substantially with the applicant’s arguments. In its opinion the applicant, as a result of the frequent necessity of disclosing information concerning her private life to third parties, suffered distress which was too serious to be justified on the ground of respect for the rights of others.
April 26, 2025 at 12:58 PM
nikavia.bsky.social
Not often I have a better excuse to pull this one out:
the cover of a book titled "Vampire Landlord". The subtitle reads "this blood sucking beast from hell is also a vampire". Above the title is an image of a vampire's fangs. Below is an apartment building.
April 26, 2025 at 11:46 AM