The Gender Recognition Act 2004 is the law that ensures that trans people can acquire a birth certificate that matches their gender, because using the birth certificate that they were given at birth would out them as transgender.
It DOES NOT affect whether trans people can use particular toilets, changing rooms or gendered services. (That’s the Equality Act 2010, which aims to prevent discrimination based on binary sex/gender and perceived trans status.)
~
THE CONTEXT
Obviously many trans people out there are men or women, and they will be fighting for improvements that affect them specifically. In last year’s LGBT survey, of the 100,000+ people who took part 13% were trans - and over half of them (~7,500) were nonbinary. This is a lot, so we potentially have a very strong voice in this conversation. The scope of this consultation is quite narrow and the government have already stated that the needs of nonbinary people should be more fully investigated and they have committed to that, but we still need to get as many nonbinary people in on this consultation as possible.
~
WHAT WE’RE FIGHTING FOR
The three main points of necessary change in the longterm are:
Reform of the Gender Recognition Act to allow for statutory declaration of legal gender through an administrative process.
The inclusion of nonbinary genders in this process.
For nonbinary genders to be explicitly named in the Equality Act or its guidance.
So in the consultation we’re trying to work in those three things.
Obviously if there are other things that are important to you then you should include those too! Detail and personal experience are very relevant to this consultation.
~
CAN YOU GO OVER THOSE IN MORE DETAIL?
Yes!
Reform of the Gender Recognition Act to allow for statutory declaration of legal gender through an administrative process. What this means is that instead of having to prove your gender with evidence to a hidden panel of strangers with no refund and no appeal, we would be able to fill in a form and pay a fee to have our gender formally and legally changed. It would be much easier and cheaper, and lying about your gender for an ulterior motive would be illegal. This system is already in place in Ireland, where they’ve had no problems. Your passport’s gender marker and choice of public toilets would be unaffected, because those are already fairly easy to change.
The inclusion of nonbinary genders in this process. Currently if you’re nonbinary there is no way to have your gender legally recognised. When you’re nonbinary and you put your case to the gender recognition panel, even if you ask them to change your gender marker to the other binary gender they turn you down because it is clear from your evidence (that you are nonbinary) that you’re not fully committed to your target gender role. An example of this would be that if you were assigned male at birth and you are a nonbinary woman, if you ask for legal recognition of your womanhood you will be turned down if your title is Mx and you say that your gender is nonbinary, even though F is more accurate for you in every way than M. A nonbinary gender option should be added to the gender recognition process, so that nonbinary people have the opportunity to amend their birth certificates to say X or N. M or F should not be the only options.
For nonbinary genders to be explicitly named in the Equality Act or its guidance. Originally the Equality Act was intended to allow for interpretations that included protections for nonbinary people, but in practise nonbinary people are not mentioned in the Act itself or in the guidance, and so when nonbinary people call on the Equality Act for its protections we often lose. If the Equality Act itself named us specifically that would help a lot, but because laws are very difficult to change it may be easier to amend the Equality Act guidance to explicitly name nonbinary genders, so that it is clear that we are protected under the “sex” characteristic without one of us having to take it to court to set a precedent, which may fail. (It may help to know that in UK law sex and gender are the same thing. For example, you can get a gender recognition certificate to change the sex marker on your birth certificate without changing your physical characteristics at all with hormones or surgery. You can change the sex marker on your passport with a note from your doctor, which doesn’t need to specify medical treatments.)
~
WHAT ELSE?
Reblog with your ideas and tell us what you’ll be writing in the consultation! The more ideas the better.
~
Edit: Question 20 is all about non-binary genders! It’s a long survey but it’s worth sticking it out, it has some good and important questions.
The Government is aware that there seems to be an increasing number of people who identify as neither exclusively male nor female. As with all other trans people, we want people who identify [as non-binary] to be able to live discrimination-free lives in accordance with who they believe their true selves to be.Question 20 of the UK Government’s Gender Recognition Act consultation, July 2018.
I’ve collected here the notable parts relevant to trans people, and every part relevant to non-binary people.
It’s not easy reading, but at over 100,000 responses and with 7,500 non-binary respondents it’s an amazing resource with the potential to be used to effect great change.
How do I save the world? Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, rot - in that order. [Cue Instagram voice] Buy glass jars for your food supplies and leftovers. Buy a takeaway cup for your coffee. Buy a cloth bag for when you go shopping. Buy a reusable straw to save your lipstick and the planet. Buy a nice refillable fountain pen and a jar of ink.
That sounds expensive. What can I do that’s free? Buy second-hand. Say no to disposables. Grow some food.
UGH that sounds boring, and takes forever. Right! The problem is that things that get you the hit of dopamine involve spending money (boo) and fuelling consumerism (ouch, counterproductive). Waiting until it’s time to buy something second-hand doesn’t feel the same, somehow.
So what can I do that gets me that sweet world-saving dopamine but is also good for the planet? This is an excellent question. :)
~
Here’s some ideas that I enjoy.
Turn unwanted landfill rubbish into something useful and get it into the hands of people who want to use it. Start saving paper that has stuff on only one side, and when you have enough, stitch notebooks from scrap paper. Unravel jumpers full of holes, wash, dry, skein it up and sell it online to knitters. Ask around for fabric scraps and turn them into reusable shopping bags. Turn your dead clothes and towels into pads for your menstruating friends. Just grab some landfill or recycling rubbish and turn it into something someone can use.
Cook too much food on purpose and store the extra in the freezer. Cooking much more food for only a little more energy, and saving future-you some time. Be sure to look at all the food in all the tubs and go “HAH” triumphantly and feel proud while it’s cooling down, and feel smug while putting it in the freezer. Extra points if you’re making soup from leftovers from the fridge.
Gameify your world-saving. Find a thing-tracking app for your phone or something, and give yourself a point every time you keep something out of landfill. Make a mark on a chart every time you use a reusable bag or reuse a piece of paper or buy something second-hand or eat something you grew yourself. The goal is to get into the habit of approaching all obstacles with the “can I reuse something to solve this?” mindset.
Do favours for your friends. Mend clothes, share a lunch or dinner, help each other.
Reblog this post with your ideas. If it’s free and it inspires someone else then it totally counts for half a point - ripples you caused have helped the planet.
~
The cheap/fast/good triquetra totally applies here! The saying goes, “cheap, fast, good - pick two.” The idea is that anything that is all three is a unicorn, extremely sought-after, probably doesn’t even exist.
I honestly always find the term ‘spinster’ as referring to an elderly, never-married woman as funny because you know what?
Wool was a huge industry in Europe in the middle ages. It was hugely in demand, particularly broadcloth, and was a valuable trade good. A great deal of wool was owned by monasteries and landed gentry who owned the land.
And, well, the only way to spin wool into yarn to make broadcloth was by hand.
This was viewed as a feminine occupation, and below the dignity of the monks and male gentry that largely ran the trade.
So what did they do?
They hired women to spin it. And, turns out, this was a stable job that paid very well. Well enough that it was one of the few viable economic options considered ‘respectable’ outside of marriage for a woman. A spinster could earn quite a tidy salary for her art, and maintain full control over her own money, no husband required.
So, naturally, women who had little interest in marriage or men? Grabbed this opportunity with both hands and ran with it. Of course, most people didn’t get this, because All Women Want Is Husbands, Right?
So when people say ‘spinster’ as in ‘spinster aunt’, they are TRYING to conjure up an image of a little old lady who is lonely and bitter.
But what I HEAR are the smiles and laughter of a million women as they earned their own money in their own homes and controlled their own fortunes and lived life on their own terms, and damn what society expected of them.
Just wanted to add that the suffix -ster was originally specifically feminine, a means of denoting a lady known by her profession. Spinster = female spinner, baxter = female baker, webster = female weaver (webber), brewster = female brewer. If one of the ladies named Alys in your village was known for selling her excellent weaving, you might call her Alys Webster (to differentiate her from, say, Alys Littel who was rather short, and Alys Bywater who lived near the pond).
This fascinates me for many reasons, but especially in the case of modern families with last names like Baxter or Webster or Brewster. What formidable and well-known ancestresses managed to pass on those very gendered names to all their descendants, when last names were changing from personal “nicknames” into indicators of lineage among the middle and lower classes? There’s a forgotten story of a fascinating woman behind every one of those family lines.
To everyone who has ever told someone that they’re too young to know their gender/sexuality:
Yeah, but cis people know they’re cis from the start. Heterosexual people know thy’re hetero from the start.
You never thought, “I just haven’t met the right person. I could still be gay/bi/whatever.”
No one ever told you that you’re too young to be SURE that you’re a boy/girl.
To everyone who has been told that they’re too young to know:
Yeah, you could change your mind. But more likely your right. And no matter when you figure it out, you matter and your gender/sexuality is legitimate.
