This case is from 2003. It concerns a post-operative transsexual who had managed to go through a marriage ceremony, prior to  the legalisation of same sex marriages.  There were no issues of consent here. Both parties were aware of the sex of the “wife”.  The registrar, however, was not made aware.

There were earlier cases, involving this couple,  and this went to an appeal. Of all the cases I have read this one seems to have a better grip on the implications of the legal judgement.  It is a very comprehensive case and, based on my previous cases, this one has a much better understanding of the issues at stake.  You can read the original case here Bellinger 2001  Lords judgement is here : Bellinger

It’s worth noting that if same sex marriage had been legal this case may not have  been brought. I have,however, no insight into whether this was a trans-activist’s  test case, or just an ordinary person trying to regularise their relationship.  {A significant issue in the enactment of laws in this area. A lot has been achieved, by stealth.  Laws have been passed that turn out to  have much wider implications, particularly for women’s rights, than is apparent at the outset. Always bear this in mind when law makers tell us they wish to make an innocuous change to any law impacting women}. 

This case examines, in some detail, whether or not it is possible to literally change sex. Spoiler Alert: It is not.  In 2019 this statement is controversial.  Back in 2003  it had to be clearly established in the context of a country that did not have legal provision for same sex marriage.

The parties to the marriage were, as far as the evidence presented, both aware of the sex of their prospective spouse. There is no suggestion of any fraud perpetrated on the husband.

The case makes it clear that Mrs Bellinger was a biological male. In every sense. There is no confusion even the XY karyotype test is evidenced. There is some evidence presented that relies on the notion of a mismatch between biological sex and “brain sex”. This is the often cited notion that a female brain may be, wrongly, present in a biological male. A highly speculative claim. 👇

As is made clear this assertion remains “speculative” and indeed it is a significant area of contention, relying on the regressive notion of #LadyBrain.  There are studies that show similarities in the brains of homosexual males and females.  One theory is that this is due to “neuro-plasticity” and that the brain responds to commonality of experiences, when navigating the world as a woman or a “feminine” gay male.  There is no definitive answer but any study that does not control for homosexuality, in transgender subjects, is flawed.  Certainly if it was settled science then, presumably,  an MRI would be the standard diagnostic criteria, for transsexuals,  not a psychiatric assessment. You can read more research here: Lady Brain

The striking thing about this case is the amount of time spent on establishing biological reality, without which the court could not invalidate the marriage.  In a pre-gay marriage era there may also have been an intention to make sure same sex marriage was not allowed in, by the back door. {This seemed  to be  a feature of the debates about the Gender Recognition Act in the U.K.  Here is a thread on the UK debate by @HairyLeggedHarpy   UK GRA Parliamentary Debate }.The gender identity arguments were subject to, relatively, rigorous scrutiny. Certainly the analysis, in this case, is more extensive than we have seen in  English Law, and policy, especially post the (2004) Gender Recognition Act.

Another prevalent feature of this case is the willingness to debunk the conflation of intersex with “trans” this excerpt makes it clear that a distinction must be made. Key  intersex  advocates are keen to highlight that disorders of sexual development are not an “identity” and have no place in the Transgender “debate”. People who are intersex , sufferers of disorders of sexual development (DSDs),  do not have a transgender “identity”. They have a medical condition that, for some, can be quite distressing. This case makes a clear distinction; which activists have tried to blur for political reasons  You can read more about this here, by Claire Graham, who writes from her own experience.  There is no I in LGBT

The case also makes it clear that a literal sex change is an impossibility. All of these facts are now casually disregarded by many trans lobbyists.

The case also recognised that transvestites are distinct from transsexuals.  Transvestites are now included under Stonewall’s Transgender umbrella. My own council allows cross-dressers to, formally, register, with a gender identity, in respect of all council amenities.  (I did this myself, on-line, to register my part-time cross-dressing self: Patrick). Stonewall definition of Trans below 👇

The sexual gratification that some men gain from cross-dressing is explicitly addressed here:

A cursory review of literature on paraphilias should have alerted our naïve political class that at least some, cross-dressing men, are fetishists.  Not only are they sexually aroused, by dressing in “female” clothes, this gratification can be heightened in female only spaces.  Breaching women’s boundaries can form part of the fetish and  our politicians have just validated the perpetrators as a “gender identity”.  Note that the aim is to validate “Gender Identity” in law.  This is the policy of all the major political parties in the UK.  These self same males are already being granted access to women’s spaces, which forces women to  be, unwilling, participants in a male paraphilia.   Yes they are distinct from many, maybe even most, covered by the trans umbrella, but women have zero way to determine which males will do us harm.  This is why single sex spaces exist.  Not because of “all men” but to strategically reduce the risk by giving women respite from “men” to exclude “those men”.

In an irony, not lost on me, older transsexuals, who have been quietly using women’s spaces, now feel driven out by the excessive demands of trans activists.  I don’t see how we can row back from this. In an exchange, with one of those transsexuals, replete with black humour, we reached common ground when we agreed we would both end up in the male toilets cos all the predatory males would end up in the women’s! I take no pleasure in the impact on the homosexual transsexuals with whom I interact.   That is the tragedy of the “woke” trans allies.  They have hurt, not only women, but the community they purport to serve.  I won’t be the only woman who never gave this a second thought until the Trans Activists/Male Rights Activists made me look, in more depth, at what lay under the Trans Umbrella.  I had idea of the many paraphilias that co-exist in the wider T community. Autogynephilia , menophiliacs, shemales, sissyporn, etc etc.  I no idea that post-op transsexuals may be heterosexual and fetishise women’s lives, bodies and spaces.  Once seen it can’t be unseen.  Woke Blokes made me look. I have lost my innocence.

Put simply, when transgressing women’s boundaries is a known male paraphilia there is a real risk in enshrining legal rights to access female only spaces.  Sexual paraphilias are pretty much 100% male. Our political class are wilfully blind,woefully naïve or complicit.

Another aspect of this case which is worth mentioning is the compassion shown by the Judge to , on the face of it, a couple in difficult circumstances. The judge has obviously done due diligence on the nature of “gender dysphoria” and that, for some people, therapeutic resolution of an identity disorder can be  unsuccessful.He is right to show such compassion.  However kindness does not override the need to make legislation that is workable and, crucially,  doesn’t dismantle protections for another vulnerable group.  The judge does go on to raise the difficult judgements this would lead the law to make. Here he asks the burning question now dividing opinion in the UK. “Should self-perceived gender be recognised”. 

Would that our current law makers were as well informed as this judge. Already he notes the varying degrees of surgery in the Transsexual community and the spectre of a male bodied person being redefined as a “woman” ; as is now the case in U.K. and Irish Law.

I suspect this would have been dismissed as the “slippery slope” argument.  Well its not a slippery slope now. We are skiing down the slope like Eddie The Eagle without his glasses.  (I do hope I got the pronouns correct).  Yet here we are.  Male bodied people i.e. men, are identifying as women and housed in female prisons and, we now know, allowed to demand to be on female wards in our hospitals. NHS policy on Single Sex Wards

The above NHS policy, published September 2019,  contains this delicious nugget below 👇making it quite clear that sexual characteristics have absolutely no bearing on who ends up in which “single sex” ward.  This is where we have ended up by trying to accommodate a tiny percentage of the population.  It is a wholesale disregard of female people. We are so utterly dismissed by the society we live in as if we have no embodied reality.  Well this Uturus-Haver has had enough!

As the above shows a definition of what “sex” means has much wider ramifications than on the small minority who are “Transsexual” .  The legal case made it clear that such a significant change requires just the sort of societal debate we are now being denied in the U.K. The slogan used, by Trans advocates, #NoDebate was one of the earlier warnings that a debate was exactly what was needed.  The “widest possible public consultation and discussion” the judge called for has in fact been suppressed. I can think of no other reason for this silencing except that it is known that the wider public will NOT agree with this redefinition of what it means to be a woman.   In the end the Lords  ruled against the appellant. Parliament were just about to legislate for Gender Recognition to be decided, in law. Sadly they seem now to have disregarded this  astute advice. “Self-definition is not acceptable. That would make nonsense of the underlying biological basis of the distinction”.  In practice the policy capture is so widespread that single sex spaces are not being protected because the law, which allows this, is not being invoked.  Remember this when you see organisations lying about the law. Women’s Legal Rights to Single Sex Spaces.

Whether or not sexual reassignment surgery will, eventually, be deemed the wrong “treatment” the fact remains that society has colluded in the development of a “transsexual” community. Society now needs to resolve how they are accommodated.  Gender Reassignment also needs a more critical evaluation. Is it a mechanism to sidestep the central issue: Why are so many men are in flight from masculinity? Why are males so threatened by feminine men? Why are we allowing men trapped in male bodies to redefine what it is to be a woman? These are big questions and few of our media are covering in any meaningful way.

There are a whole different set of questions for the females in flight from womanhood. It seems clear many are simply Lesbians. Others, now de-transitioned, say they had untreated eating disorders, a history of sexual abuse or were in flight from a society that hyper-sexualises women.  The Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist slur (Terf) is inaccurate. Trans men remain under the female umbrella, though many “Transmen” will , ideologically reject this. They are still deserving of our support. They still need protection from sexual discrimination and share the vulnerability to male violence common to our sex.

Trans identified males remain of the male sex. The answer, as I have said many, many, times is not to make transsexual males  a “woman problem”. Refugees from masculinity (to quote Miranda Yardley) exist.  They are a problem for males.  It is not women’s job to place ourselves at risk and run the refugee camps.  Once again the blame for this lies squarely  the door of the activists who have stretched women’s tolerance to breaking point.  Female socialisation conditions women to compassionate responses but we are not bound to place male people’s interests above those of our sex.