I thought you needed a GRC to change the sex recorded on a passport

So I'm not permitted to double barrel my DC's surnames and add mine without the permission of their decade long absent abusive father. But it only takes a GP's letter to get your sex changed. FFS.

Why am I even surprised.

Depends on what you're trying to achieve.

If you're applying for a job role that involves handling sensitive and personal data, you will require all sorts of background checks which might include listing all the names and addresses you have ever used.

If you're going to sign up for a new mobile contract, as long as your licence, bank card, utility bills etc all show the same name and address then you're good to go.
How are they going to make sure that's really your name? You aren't required to provide a birth certificate or deed poll.

In many instances 'verifying' your identity is an admin / tick boxing exercise.

Sex is relevant for specific areas but I can't see how it is required on a day-to-day basis.

Your name, date of birth and address along with a recent photo are really all that's needed to verify you are who you say you are. Sex or gender doesn't come into it.

Names and addresses vary throughout people's lives, and are very easy to change. So how can they reliably verify you are who you say you are?

The only things about a person that are independently provable and are unchangeable are their date of birth and their sex.

I think - I don't know - that after the GRA, when GIRES et al were quietly pressuring the police, the NHS, the EHRC, to introduce self-ID policies ahead of the forthcoming equality act, they probably successfully lobbied the DVLA and passport authorities also.
And, like the other institutions, they happily folded, because an abject lie is unfortunately palatable to lots of people so long as

1. They can tell themselves the ends justify the means (the numbers will be so tiny that we can ignore the aberration)
2. They lack the insight to understand ALL the ramifications (this means that everyone has to have gender instead of sex, so that some can have gender instead of sex)
3. There is some personal benefit to making changes (look how woke, give us a cookie, Stonewall award)

My guess would be these changes happened circa 2009. If the NHS and police are the template.

You can change markers on any identity document (except birth certificate) without a GRC.

How did this happen? (Genuine question, not rhetoric). Have you always been able to put whatever you want on passports and driving licenses - was it just a convention that you didn't lie? Or did something change? If so when, and who made the decision, and how?

That's correct about the passport - a gp letter saying you are serious about transitioning and you can change the 'sex' on your passport.

But if any 60- 70 year old men (maspis) want to identify as women in order to get an uplift on their state pension if labour wins the election,
I expect a GRC might be asked for, until self-id comes in.

You can change markers on any identity document (except birth certificate) without a GRC.
None of which changes affect your legal sex, which remains whatever is on your birth certificate.
A GRC changes the legal record of your birth.
And no, that will never stop being insane.

When I say that gender has replaced sex on all documents regardless of if they purport to have 'sex' on them, it really is true. Millions of us are assumed to have a gender, and it's on all our ID, in the place where our sex used to be, purely for the benefit of the people (of the opposite sex) who want to be documented as matching us.

The litmus test of whether a marker is sex or gender isn't what you are told it is.
It's much simpler.
Can that marker be changed from M to F or vice versa?
If yes, it's gender, not sex.

There are no markers left on official documentation that I can think of, that are not permitted to be changed to something opposite to ones biological sex.

Ergo, sex is no longer being recorded. Anywhere.
Gender is in its place.
People just haven't realised.

Agree Nonny. Especially if sex is now taken to mean gender-identity, which is essentially just a personality trait. Would be like if my passport also said ‘likes chocolate ice cream’ or ‘optimist’. Totally useless. If there weren’t all these ‘validating’ documents that tell people of the opposite sex that they are REALLY a woman etc, maybe some of the problems would go away. It would mean that ‘of course I should be in the women’s toilets because my passport says I’m a woman’ would no longer work.

But while sex is recorded, it should be recorded truthfully. There is an awful lot of rolling back that is going to need to be done, for all these things that are "ahead of the law"

RealityNotEssentialism good point that a lot of official documents and paperwork have a number of redundant or unnecessary info as it has accumulated over the years and no one has had to think about it or question it until now.

I'm in favour of re-evaluating passports, driving licences and other forms of identification and having a transparent public consultation on whether we actually need these sort of markers for sex or gender to be displayed if they serve no purpose in the process of assessing someone.

Your name, date of birth and address along with a recent photo are really all that's needed to verify you are who you say you are. Sex or gender doesn't come into it.

Nonny I think it’s something that has always been done so we haven’t questioned why we still do it. And I guess in the days before passport photos, it would be used to show who you were (age, sex etc). I can’t see any need for it now.

Pretty certain LM doesn’t have a GRC but that LM does have a very liberal relationship with the truth and a very loose grip on reality.

So why have sex at all on passports if it's completely unnecessary to confirming the person is who they say they are?

GRCs are pointless anyway. No one can define what committing to “living your life as a man/woman” means, and so no one can be held accountable to such a definition and the panel aren’t going to pursue you. Exhibit A: Freddie McConnell getting pregnant within weeks of committing legally to “live as a man”.

Except LM did at one point say LM had a GRC. But that never got mentioned again, along with several other interesting claims.

It’s not a document to verify what sex you are, just that you are the person on the passport.

Exactly, the fact that the sex marker can be changed without a birth certificate, original or amended with grc, proves this.

TRA like to claim otherwise.

LM put up a photo of LM's passport a while back showing F. LM did not at that stage have a GRC or the whole world would have known about it.

I am actually moving more in favour of not having sex on ID documents. Yes, there needs to be a record of sex somewhere official but why does it need to be on my passport or drivers license. I am female because I am female, not because it says so on my passport. The fact that you don’t need to be female for it to say female just shows how meaningless it is. The passport is just there so that immigration authorities know that I am who I say I am and for that I don’t see why they need to know my sex. There’s a photo of me on there and it uses iris recognition software. Doesn’t also need M or F, especially as they could now mean a member of either sex.

I think it's allowed because it's part of the proof that the person is "living as a woman/man".

To obtain a grc, someone has to show commitment to the role therefore let employers and family know, and change id where possible.

As far as I can see, its supposed to be a means to obtaining a grc, not an end in itself. So I'd question why someone would change their passport and driving licence, but make no steps to obtain a grc.

I asked about this when I renewed my passport.

The online form asks for gender, not sex. So I called the passport office and asked if a could leave it blank as I don’t have a gender. They said no, you have to complete the whole form, but in any case, it doesn’t matter because they convert what you put as your gender to sex on the actual passport. So someone who ticks female for the gender question gets sent a passport with F as the sex.

When I said but this is a document that is used to identify you their answer was that it still is. It’s not a document to verify what sex you are, just that you are the person on the passport.

But then they can’t wave their passport in your face in a daily basis to prove their status.

And when I say identity I don’t mean the feelings in your head.

SexnotGender that gave me a grim laugh!

Nonny yes which is why only a tiny fraction of trans people bother getting a GRC

I want to change back to my birth name on my passport and that appears to be harder than changing sex 🤦‍♀️