Scotland to reform Gender Recognition Act within next twelve months

Nicola Sturgeon announces plans to 'make life easier for one of the most stigmatised minorities in our society'

It’s official. The Scottish government will reform the Gender Recognition Act within the next twelve months.

Earlier today (7 September), First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced the Gender Recognition Reform Bill as part of her Programme for Government for the coming year. She said:

"It will make the existing process of gender recognition less degrading, intrusive and traumatic.

"In other words, it will make life easier for one of the most stigmatised minorities in our society. I think that is something any Parliament should feel a responsibility to do.

"What it will not do is remove any of the legal protections that women currently have."

Does GRA reform mean self ID?

It’s too early in the process to tell whether Sturgeon’s reforms include self ID but that is the stated aim of her government’s junior partners, the Scottish Greens. I doubt their co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater would have signed up to the recent partnership with the SNP if self ID had been off the table. After all, their views are well known.

Patrick Harvie 🇪🇺🌈 @patrickharvie

Dismaying that these basic points need to be restated, but... Trans men are men Trans women are women Non-binary identities are valid Billionaires shouldn't exist

If Sturgeon does introduce self ID, where any man can simply assert they are female and be legally considered as such, then her promise to protect women’s sex-based rights (such as single-sex spaces) is meaningless.

Under self ID, a women’s biological sex - a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 - will no longer have any true legal status as it will be over-ridden by a feeling of womanhood, by an essence. As Patrick Harvie asserts, trans women will be women, and without the need of a medical diagnosis.

A self-identified trans women with a male body will be able to enter women’s single sex-spaces such as refuges and claim, without fear of legal challenge, that they are entitled to be there.

And Sturgeon and her Green sidekicks will be able to assert that they have not removed any of the legal protections women currently have, simply extended them to include self-identified trans women.

Time to get organised sisters.

• For campaigning For Women Scotland

• For expert policy analysis MurrayBlackburn Mackenzie

• Labour women can join Labour Women’s Declaration

• Sign up to Sex Matters

• Plenty of resources at Fair Play for Women

• Let your voice be heard with FiLia

Let the people speak says Joanna Cherry MP

A few days ago, Joanna Cherry MP, called for a citizens’ assembly on the Scottish government plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). She said:

Like many people, I support reform of the GRA to make it less traumatic for trans people to get a gender recognition certificate. This reflects the SNP manifesto commitment. What I and many others, do not support is self-identification of sex for anyone, which would negate the importance of sex in the legal protections afforded by the Equality Act, in the Criminal Justice system, in medical research and in many other important areas of public policy.

“The Shared Policy Programme commits to reform of the GRA with a bill to be introduced in the parliamentary session which starts next week. Yet in relation to this most totemic and controversial legislation, the approach of the partners to the co-operation agreement has not lived up to the values they have now so clearly set out in writing.

"It’s not too late to reset the debate on this troubled issue and we need to find a way to properly facilitate a debate where the voices of all those affected by these proposed reforms can be heard respectfully.

Great review for Helen Joyce’s book in the New York Times

Helen Joyce’s fantastic book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality is published in the USA today. She doesn’t have a US publisher (so much for America’s fabled adherence to the First Amendment and free speech), but the book has attracted an excellent review by Jesse Singal in the New York Times, who writes:

Open conversation about such fraught issues is the only realistic path forward, and Joyce’s book offers a good, impassioned start.

Helen Joyce @HJoyceGender

Happy U.S. publication day to me! And even though no American publisher was brave enough to pick the book up (the U.K. edition is being distributed in the U.S.), I got reviewed in the NYT. So frankly, American publishers’ loss

nytimes.comTrans Rights and Gender IdentityIn “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality,” Helen Joyce argues that sex is not just a social construct.