Should the Gender Recognition Act be repealed?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Basically, it's a lie and the government should not be in the business of falsifying official documents.

But on top of that:

• It reduces trust
• it perverts stats and analysis
• it reduces protections based upon sex
• People start to think sex really is changeable, or worse, just a piece of paper, when it's not, it's binary and immutable
• All sorts of issues in the NHS with sex based healthcare

The EHRC guidance ties itself in knots trying to deal with the fact we don't reliably record sex, the most basic of information.

A humane society can treat people with courtesy without falsifying reality. Trans people should not be treated differently to others, they should have every right to an existence free from abuse. But these legal fictions are no good for anyone.

You cannot become female at the stroke of a pen.

Totally agree.

I've seen various discussions that say having the GRA protects the UK from European Human Rights Court actions as it provides a mechanism for legally recognising gender. If that's the case I'm not sure it should be repealed.

Since the SC judgment it really only affects certificates - birth, marriage and death. I don't like the fact it allows false birth certificates to be issued but retaining it may be the lesser of two evils

Why do we need a “mechanism to recognise gender”?

It should. The concept of a 'legal sex' which is not one's biological sex is not just a failed experiment, it has proved to be damaging to society in all sorts of ways, as OP says.

It has brought the law into disrepute - not that the law is anywhere near perfect, but this was intentionally introducing an unnecessary nonsense into legislation, which was thoroughly criticised at the time, and its nonsensical elements revealed.
Wilful beclowning.

To stop people taking legal cases to Europe. It also means that people can't cite Goodwin as a legal precedent as that was dealt with by the GRA

I don't actually believe we do need legal recognition of gender but if it cuts off one channel of legal action then the GRA may have some use.

No it shouldn't be repealed because something much worse may replace it.

One reason the gender critical pushback has been successful in UK compared to some countries is because the GRA was very specific and limited on the rights it allowed trans-identifying people.

Other major legislation such as the Equality Act 2010 was left untouched.

Critics of gender ideology should be very grateful for the way it was done.

There may need to be a fourth option:
Retain GRC to avoid legal challenges
Amend it as necessary to make quite clear it is about gender not legally changing sex.
Documents should add gender but not alter sex.
Altered documents already issued should be replaced with a corrected real sex plus chosen gender version.
Lawyers: would that work?

Yes agree. It was a mistake to legislate.

This. ^^

Not considered that - so a new birth certificate that still said Biological Sex - Female but added a field of Gender - Male ?

Doubt that would be acceptable to the users, but it seems like a reasonable compromise to me

Yes, it should. It’s a lie that has been used to usher in the attempts at self ID.

I have a friend whose son decided he was trans and wanted her to basically agree that she had given birth to a girl. She didn't want her medical history to be wiped and replaced, so she applied for her own copy of his birth certificate.

Later he got his birth record changed. So they now hold one each for the same person - hers says he was born male, his says he was born female.

My friend maintains that the birth of a baby is an experience shared by both the mother and the child and that's it's not ok to change her records to show that she birthed a female child when she knows full well she birthed a male child. She said it felt sinister and gaslighting for the government to ask her to say 2+2=5

I can understand that.

Idk why the state has legislated on sex in particular, we wouldn’t on age. We wouldn’t say it’s fine to change your birth date to 8 as a 36 year old man. Why this?

The fundamental problems the GRC was intended to to solve were the issues raised in the Goodwin case: marriage and privacy. The marriage issue was finally solved once and for all with same-sex marriage.

The privacy issue, however, is fraught. Christine Goodwin is unmistakably a man. No one seeing him would imagine otherwise; so idea that paperwork could inadvertently reveal his transgender status is laughable. (Notably, the court case was conducted without him ever actually appearing in person.) Yet it's quite possible that Goodwin himself truly believed he passed and in fact would be 'stealth' except for the official sex markers.

That's the crux of the problem: the legal premise of the GRC is sound - the ability to treat biological sex as private information to be disclosed only in situations where it matter (e.g. single sex services), and to keep it private otherwise. But it feeds into an expectation that one will be able to go stealth and use single single sex services of the opposite sex once one passed well enough. And for some individuals it feeds into a delusion of changing sex.

That said, I think that repealing the GRC would probably not be a good idea - up until now it really is the case that trans people have lost no rights and privileges. Instead the law has been clarified and activist over-reach and misinformation has been pushed back. But to repeal the GRC really would result in loss of official recognition and would dramatically reframe the debate.

I agree with your friend. It's the register of a birth not the register of an identity.

Fame - I think - https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1tkpqtv/terfs_are_now_trying_to_get_the_gra_removed/

If only we were that powerful…

Totally agree with your friend, it’s a lie to change a birth certificate and should not be possible

Wow. That’s brilliant. Something I’ve never thought of.

If only! Let's all go back to the the year 2000, won't it be strange how normal all was then.

As long as the supreme court ruling is upheld and the Equality Act followed as intended, I believe the GRA 2004 is more of a platitude to those wanting a gender certificate. The issue of changing historical records ie. Birth Certificates is something I fail to understand how anyone thought a good idea.

They are especially emboldened after yesterday and they are now calling the GRA “Lying about sex” and are seeking their options. And of course in 2026 Britain with a weak transphobic Labour government they’ll probably get away with it.

If it wasn't for those pesky kids...

That's an interesting suggestion, thank you. Thanks for your post too PeppyHam. Good points, and they made me re-think.

The separation of 'sex' and 'gender' in law would be an improvment - defining them clearly would help! So yeah grand off you go knock yourself out, change your gender, but you remain legally in the sex you were born into.

That's what the SC said, but only in relation to EA2010, and possibly workplace regs, acc to Justice swift?

Here in Ireland the word 'sex' in old equality legislation has been re-interpreted as gender, [I'm not sure how that is legally permissable!] so that avenue is not open to us. Anywhere sex is mentioned in laws or regulations, it applies 100% to a man who self-IDs as female or vice versa.

It would be a dream come true if a FWS-style case came to the highest Irish court, with the same outcome, i.e. that 'sex' means biological sex, and being transgender does not change your sex.

But I don't see it happening here - the momentum isn't there, we don't have the numbers of GC activists here, and although I believe genderwoo has never really taken root in the general population, I don't think it impinges enough on most people's lives to have a big movement opposing it.

I suppose we could repatriate Helen Joyce and Róisín Murphy, and both Naomi Cunningham and Maeve Halligan would qualify under the Irish grandparent rule - dream team, eh?

In time, most likely yes........but for me it is not an urgent priority now.

Given time the fad will fade, as many detransitioners and others will come forward and talk of their experiences; and some will bring legal actions.

My feeling is that there is now always likely to be a "transgender" contingent of some kind, i.e. people who are clearly presenting and identifying very atypically for their natal sex. And if so, they are likely to be in some danger of genuine transphobia. Not "she misgendered me and said I couldn't use the Ladies' " but the real thing - nasty old-style "no Blacks and Irish"-type attitudes over housing, jobs and other actual basic rights.
So they will need to be in the Equality Act in some shape or form, but not in a way that tramples sex-based rights or any other protected characteristic's rights. I.e. protected as transgender rather than as a fictive member of the opposite sex.

I’m pretty sure you can get the details on a copy of your birth certificate changed until the cows come home, but the actual birth register doesn’t get changed . I will have to dig for an actual source though…

Not sure if it’s because someone somewhere has the fear of messing with a primary source with a tippex, is future proofing genealogy, or just is engaged in reality