Should the Gender Recognition Act be repealed?

I don't disagree with you, but the words 'A campaign to repeal the GRA/remove the PC of GR' conjure up images of smashed windows, smoke bombs, arson attacks, accusations of toxicity and 'literal genocide', punched TERFs, threats of rape with added details, and even death threats.

In the current climate where the tiny % of transpeople can rely on a large number of parliamentarians to prioritise their rights privileges over the rights of women, it's going to take a lot of courage to campaign to repeal the GRA, with so much stacked against us.

And I can already imagine the celebs queuing up to denounce any such campaign as cruel, fascist and hate-fuelled, and how they stand with their trans etc etc brothers and sisters...

'Courage calls to courage' and all that, but I confess that I would not have the courage to take on such a widely supported movement that has shown it is not beyond using aggression and even violence against anyone who resists it.

I hope there are braver women/people than me out there who have the courage and the resources to take it on.

I understand the arguments on both sides. I just don't know why those who want to repeal the GRA/ remove the PC of GR don't get on with organising to do that, instead of criticising the organisations that are taking a different approach. I'm guessing they don't have the skills, or the numbers (meant respectfully).

I wonder if campaigning for repeal would be outside Sex Matters Charitable Objectives as an organisation?

https://sex-matters.org/sex-matters-charity/

@SingleSexSpacesInSchools Hi, I saw this exchange on X and thought it might be of interest re this discussion. It's between Clare Page and Mr Menno where Clare details her view that Sex Matters' approach is unhelpful and why the GRA must go. I found it very interesting.

Apologies I haven't read all of the thread, so sorry if this has already been covered!

https://x.com/NoSecretLessons/status/2060824461184475473

@POWNewcastleEastWallsend Press for Change and the Parliamentary Forum seized the opportunity to craft a policy document for the Home Office. Its author was More, the leading British proponent of queer theory who co-edited the newsletter Radical Deviance: A Journal of Transgendered Politics .

Oooh would you look at that. 'Deviance' being used by a queer theorist to describe transgender politics. Wonder if that would be fun for Sex Matters to use when they defend against GLP, for using the word 'deviant'?

Yes, that definitely is the case in Scotland.
And of course a castrated man can still sexually assault someone

Yes, that was the thin end of the wedge. The thinking being that they cannot inconveniently rape and impregnate a woman prisoner = "no risk".

I think perhaps the operative words are "previously undergone genital surgery"; I don't think it was expected in the 1980s that intact males with meat and two veg between their legs ought to be put into women's prisons just because they said "waah, but I'm a girlie" (or had had surgery to give them massive boobs even though they were still starting fights in pubs and breaking random men's faces in their spare time, something women so often do....)

The UK has been putting men in women's prisons because they claim to be women since the 1980's. Part of the history:

Queer Theory and the Transition from Sex to Gender in English Prisons
Michael Biggs
Journal of Controversial Ideas 2022, 2(1), 2; doi:10.35995/jci02010002.

"In England, by the 1980s, males who had previously undergone genital surgery could be placed in a women’s prison. Gloria Greaves was convicted of living off immoral earnings and sentenced to eighteen months in HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison) Holloway, a women’s prison, even though only a man could commit that specific crime. 30 Such cases were so rare they could be left to the discretion of prison officials. The first public statement of policy came in 1994. The Director General of the Prison Service told Parliament that ‘the principal criteria is [sic] the most obvious physical characteristics of the person concerned and their ability to integrate with other inmates. A male-to-female transsexual who has undergone surgery and hormone treatment would therefore be more appropriately allocated to a female establishment’. 31 The nature of this surgery was not specified, and so it is not clear whether orchidectomy would have sufficed, or whether vaginoplasty was also required. There was no corresponding exception for female-to-male transsexuals, who would always be placed in the women’s estate. 32

The Director General’s statement was a response to activism that emerged in the early 1990s. Press for Change was founded by Stephen Whittle and others to campaign ‘for the legal rights of transsexuals’. 33 The Parliamentary Forum on Transsexualism was created by Lynne Jones, a Labour MP. The main point of leverage was the European Court of Human Rights, to which transsexuals brought a series of cases (e.g., Rachel Horsham and the person known as ‘I’, both cases registered in 1994) demanding the right to change legal sex. Prisons were only a minor element in these cases, but perhaps the Conservative government hoped that explicit codification of prison policy would bolster its argument that transsexuals were not unfairly treated. Press for Change and the Parliamentary Forum seized the opportunity to craft a policy document for the Home Office. Its author was More, the leading British proponent of queer theory who co-edited the newsletter Radical Deviance: A Journal of Transgendered Politics . This exuberant magazine propagated novel ideas from France and the United States: ‘once upon a time TSs needed to learn and create medical jargon to progress our culture, now that TS and TG politics has come of age, we need to talk of hegemonies, Queer, and Post-Modernism’. 34

When Butler visited London, she gave an interview to the magazine. 35 Despite such radical theoretical commitments, More’s proposals for prison were modest. The document suggested that prisoners who identified as transsexual should be kept in the prison’s hospital unit, and after clinical diagnosis should be moved to a specialist unit which ‘could be attached to a women’s prison’. 36 This fell short of the demand made by Jones, to ‘house pre-operative transsexuals in the gaols of their new gender if they have had two or more years of hormone therapy’. 37

Labour’s accession to power in 1997 created a more favourable climate for transsexual activists—or transgender activists, as they began to prefer. 38 The Home Office commissioned research on prisons from Whittle, who had become law lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. 39 Whittle had also taken up queer theory, perhaps due to More’s influence; they edited a book together. 40 For Whittle, who had come out as a lesbian before identifying as transsexual in the 1970s, the new ideas promised emancipation from feminist traditions that viewed transsexuals as either predatory or deluded. ‘No solution could be offered to this impasse until Judith Butler made her huge contribution to Queer theory by compressing all gender into performativity.’ 41 Whittle eventually recommended that all prisoners ‘post-transition but prior to completion of all desired surgical procedures’ must be ‘housed in facility of appropriate gender role’. 42 This proposal, however, was ignored by the government. The official Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People emphasized ‘problems in placing a [‘pre-operative’] male-to-female transsexual person in a female establishment, where she may not be accepted by other prisoners, many of whom may have suffered violent or sexual abuse from men’. 43

The exception for transsexuals who had previously undergone genital surgery applied to very few, of course. Besides Greaves, Stephanie Lloyd spent three months in HMP Askham Grange, a women’s open prison, for selling transgender-themed adult videos; 44 another transsexual was sentenced to eight years in HMP Holloway for blackmail. 45 These were not violent crimes. Crucially, prisoners were not eligible for genital surgery. By the late 1990s, at least one male was pursuing legal action on this point. John Pilley had been sentenced (in 1981) to life for kidnapping a woman at knifepoint. In prison he took the name Jane Anne and was prescribed cross-sex hormones. Pilley then argued that it was unfair for the service to deny genital surgery—which would enable transfer to a women’s prison. 46 Pilley prevailed in 1999, after a legal decision in another domain. Three patients launched a judicial review against their local health authority for refusing to fund genital surgery. They won the case in the High Court in 1998. The prison service was already committed to providing healthcare equivalent to that provided by the National Health Service (NHS), and therefore it could no longer refuse to provide genital surgery. 47 Pilley thus underwent surgery and was eventually transferred to HMP Holloway. A Liberal Democrat MP from the Parliamentary Forum on Transsexualism, Alex Carlile, declared this to be an ‘important step towards giving transsexuals proper civil liberties’. 48 There was apparently no concern for the impact on the civil liberties of female prisoners.

The 1999 decision enabled prisoners serving lengthy sentences to transfer to women’s prisons. For the NHS to approve genital surgery, the patient on cross-sex hormones would have to pass the ‘real life’ test, to ‘live and work in their female role for two years’. According to the consultant psychiatrist Russell Reid, who advised inmates, this test ‘is very difficult, though not impossible for them to fulfil’. 49 One candidate who passed the test was Douglas Wakefield, sentenced to life (in 1974) for beating and stabbing his uncle to death. In prison he strangled and beat to death another inmate, and attempted to kill a warden. To experience life as a woman, Wakefield took the name Tai, decorated the prison cell with lace curtains and flowers, and wore earrings. Genital surgery subsequently enabled Wakefield to relocate to a women’s prison, HMP New Hall. 50

3. Legal Sex

Press for Change’s crowning success was the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, which enabled anyone to apply to be recognized legally as the opposite sex. A medical diagnosis was needed to obtain a gender recognition certificate and thereby an amended birth certificate, but endocrinological or surgical intervention was not required. It was the first law in the world to divorce legal sex from the physical body. As Whittle declared, ‘the Gender Recognition Act is performative (see Butler 1990), in that as a form of speech-act, what it “does” is make gender into sex in law’.51 When the bill was debated, a Minister told the House of Commons that prisoners ‘can apply and … will be subject to prison arrangements for their new acquired gender’.52 Press for Change therefore argued, quite logically, that male prisoners who obtained a gender recognition certificate should be transferred to a women’s prison.53 The prison service, however, ignored the new Act, and continued to use the criterion of genital surgery.

Change in policy came about, as in 1999, as the unintended consequences of a decision taken outside the prison system. Mark Jones had served a sentence for manslaughter, for strangling his boyfriend. A few days after release from prison, Jones attempted to rape a woman who worked in a shop selling transgender accoutrements. (The shop was owned by Stephanie Lloyd, mentioned above as an early transsexual prisoner.) Jones, now using the name Karen, was sentenced to life imprisonment. In prison, Jones was given cross-sex hormones and laser hair removal, and obtained a gender recognition certificate. But the NHS Gender Identity Clinic would not approve genital surgery, on the grounds that Jones could not pass the ‘real life’ test in a men’s prison. This was a policy reversal, of course, because at least twelve male prisoners had undergone genital surgery while in the men’s estate. 54 And the Clinic would soon approve a female prisoner’s phalloplasty while the prisoner remained in a women’s prison. 55 One wonders if the reversal in policy reflected embarrassment that the first prisoner to be approved for genital surgery, Pilley, subsequently renounced his feminine identity and required a phalloplasty in order to return to a men’s prison. 56 Whatever the reason behind the reversal, it placed Jones in a double bind: ‘They will not consider me as a female until I have my penis removed ... Yet they resist moving me to the female estate which would enable the surgery to be arranged’. 57

Jones contacted Whittle who helped orchestrate a judicial review, held in 2009. 58 The judge, David Elvin QC, viewed the case through the lens of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights: ‘Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence’. The landmark 2002 decision by the European Court of Human Rights—which precipitated the Gender Recognition Act—had interpreted this article as creating a right to change legal sex. Elvin noted that the Act required Jones to be treated as a woman ‘for all purposes’. 59 Because the prison service had provided insufficient justification to retain Jones in the men’s estate, Elvin ordered Jones to be transferred to a women’s prison. The argument that Jones would be hard to manage in the women’s estate was dismissed on the grounds that Jones would pose still greater difficulties if thwarted, due to what the consultant forensic psychologist described as a personality with ‘narcissistic, compulsive, aggressive, violent and sadistic elements’. 60

The rights of the women who would share facilities with such a person were ignored. James Barrett, lead psychiatrist at the Gender Identity Clinic, had concern only for the welfare of Jones: ‘There will probably always be a small number of prisoners who will choose to make an issue of the matter because they are the sort of women who enjoy conflict. If this patient is able to cope with protracted close proximity [with] women of that sort I would judge her able to cope with the less prolonged, more avoidable, travails of the civilian world’. 61 Attempting to rape a woman did not detract from the claim to be ‘a woman trapped inside a man’s body’, because Jones’ legal team had appealed against the length of the second sentence by using gender dysphoria to justify the crime. 62 Apparently it was ‘more inspired by feelings of frustration and jealousy than sexual desire’. 63 After the verdict, Jones was transferred to HMP Holloway.

As a result of this judgment, in 2011 the prison service drafted the first official regulations for The Care and Management of Transsexual Prisoners . The criterion for placement shifted from genital surgery to legal sex. ‘A male to female transsexual person with a gender recognition certificate may be refused location in the female estate only on security grounds’. 64 Such a person was thus treated identically to a woman, as exceptionally dangerous females are held in special units within men’s prisons. Even without legal certification, a transsexual who was ‘sufficiently advanced in the gender reassignment process’ could request to transfer to the estate of the other sex and was promised a case conference. 65 In the following years, incidentally, NHS clinicians became more reluctant to approve genital surgery for prisoners. At a clinical meeting in 2014, Barrett and others agreed that time in prison—even in the women’s estate—‘would not often constitute proper lived experience’ as required for surgery. 66 But this no longer mattered. As the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman later declared, ‘a person’s gender is a legal rather than an anatomical question’. The Ombudsman took up the case of a prisoner held in the women’s estate, due to the possession of a gender recognition certificate, who wished to transfer to an open prison. This request had been refused on the grounds that a prisoner with penis and testicles was not suited for this establishment as its showers were communal and accommodation was unsupervised during the night, and many of its female inmates had experienced sexual abuse. The Ombudsman supported the prisoner. ‘She has a GRC and is therefore a woman, under UK law’. 67

The shift from genital surgery to legal sex in the 1990s and 2000s was most immediately caused by unintended interactions between the health system and the legal system. The changes were brought about piecemeal by judges and psychiatrists; if their actions were informed by theory, it was the liberal individualism of human rights. Queer theory was nevertheless crucial for shaping the Gender Recognition Act, which one of its authors—Whittle—viewed as the implementation of Butler’s ideas. The Act legislated dramaturgical performativity, because it required someone to have ‘lived in the acquired gender’ for two years as a precondition for changing legal sex. This mysterious phrase was not specified, nor did advocates like Whittle explicate its meaning. Presumably it originated in the real-life test required for surgery by the Gender Identity Clinic, which also spanned two years. According to Barrett, success ‘is achieved if the patient is treated by most others as if they are of the assumed sex’.68 In Goffman’s terms, an individual maintains face insofar as other participants in an encounter act to support it, regardless of their actual beliefs.69"

(That is not the end of the story - link to full article)
https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/2/1/183/htm#fn030-Controversial_Ideas-2-2

What Biggs calls "legal sex" is now "certificated sex" as per the Supreme Court judgement in the case of For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Ministers, April 2025.
https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042#judgment-details

For Women Scotland's case against the (vile, misogynistic) Scottish Prison Service for continuing to incarcerate men, often violent sex offenders, with women:

https://forwomen.scot/category/prisons/

Yes, I forgot to put the word "muddleheaded" in there somewhere.

I think what they wanted was some sort of "sex offenders against women ought not to be put in women's prisons" ruling, and they had the mistaken impression that a man had to have a GRC in place for them to be put in the women's estate. Or something. There was so much bullshit going on that them getting it wrong might even make sense of a sort.

I can actually remember when it was a shock and totally counter intuitive that a man who had committed a violent crime could be moved into a women's prison, the reason given being that the poor little fellow was afraid he might be hurt by the nasty men he would otherwise have been imprisoned with. It was some time this century that the first one happened, possibly 2014 or 2015?

Men without GRCs were put in women's prisons. I think there more more men without GRCs in womens prisons then men with GRCs

I suppose that if they have a GRC and their crime was a sexual offence against a woman, it might be an idea not to put them into the women's estate, even so.

And I think that was the object of the amendment: if they can't have a GRC when they have been convicted of having committed a sexual offence against a woman, then they can't be (or at least ought not to be) put into a prison cell shared with a woman.

I have to disagree. Sex offenders can use the GRC loophole to escape their previous charges. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to close down that loophole

So it seems your take is just because so few of those crimes lead to a conviction it does matter that it didn’t pass?

I didn't know this at the time, but from some of the articles I looked at to refresh my memory it seems some people were worried (or pretended they were worried) about incompatibility with the ECHR.

Simpler amendments intended to limit access to GRCs by those accused of sexual offending were put forward by Michelle Thomson and Russell Findlay. The Scottish Government rejected these. These amendments would not have written onto the face of the law a necessary acceptance of potential for harm. They were rejected on ECHR grounds which were never adequately explained .

https://murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2023/09/08/grcs-sexual-harm-and-risk-following-the-logic-of-amendments-to-the-gender-recognition-reform-scotland-bill/

You just wonder how it was possible not to think it wise to pass that amendment. It just shows how all thought can stop where the trans gendered exceptional people are concerned.

Yes, and that amendment not passing was the last straw for so many women in the public gallery that grim day.

So what is living in a different gender all about? Is it really only about changing a name to one which is typical of the opposite sex, or is there any more to it?

Although the proof of living in the "acquired gender" relies on documentation of Name + Title + Sex Marker, the GR Panel expects that these changes reflect a change in "social role", ie. social transition of some sort.

Minutes of 2018 Gender Recognition Panel User Group Meeting

Judge Bennett: "Applicants will need to show some evidence that they have been living In their gender for the two years required by the Act. Letters from an employer. a manager, a doctor or school/college could be suitable to show that even though an applicant had not officially changed their name they were living In their gender."
https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GRC-user-group-minutes-2005-2018.pdf

The GR Panel seems happy to bend over backwards and break the rules to accommodate someone who wants a GRC but they are less than helpful when it comes to detransitioners.

Gender Recognition Panel User Group Meeting minutes ,for the 9 November 2011 in London

"The Panel was asked if a patient reverts back to their original gender should the doctor inform the panel. The answer to this is no. If a person chooses to revert back to their birth gender then they could make a fresh application for a new GRC.They would need to be able to meet the requirements of the GRA."

https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GRC-user-group-minutes-2005-2018.pdf

Then what happens when detransitioners attempt to make a fresh application? They can't because they need a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria aka Transsexualism.

The NHS still uses WHO ICD-10

F64.0
Transsexualism
A desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by a sense of discomfort with, or inappropriateness of, one's anatomic sex, and a wish to have surgery and hormonal treatment to make one's body as congruent as possible with one's preferred sex.

https://classbrowser.nhs.uk/#/book/ICD-10-5TH-Edition/vol1/block-f60-f69.htm+F64

Suddenly their sex is no longer their GRC-certificated sex, it is their biological sex.

WPATH SOC8 has moved away from recommending "Real Life Experience" as part of Assessment/Self Assessment for hormones and surgery and instead waffles on about Social Transition, including this suggestion:

"Social transition can be extremely beneficial to many TGD people although not all TGD people are able to socially transition or wish to socially transition (Bränström & Pachankis, Citation2021; Koehler et al., Citation2018; Nieder, Eyssel et al., Citation2020). Consequently, some TGD people seek gender-affirming interventions after social transition, some before, some during, and some in the absence of social transition."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644#d1e4275

Which suggests that a diagnosis of gender dysphoria could be based entirely on assessment of mental state with no behavioural change required. Would the GR Panel accept such a diagnosis?

Who knows? I don't know why I am expecting consistency and clarity from WPATH, an activist organisation posing as beacon of medical expertise, and a Tribunal Service (GR Panel) with an activist User Group that appears to function as a Steering Group.

So the bottom line is that "living an a different gender" might in some cases mean no more than change of Name + Title + "Gender Marker" on documentation.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23206439.msps-vote-to-allow-sex-criminals-change-gender/

Conservative Russell Findlay and SNP Michelle Thomson.

I asked AI and got this response quoting articles from the Telegraph and Sex Matters. Somehow when you copy and paste that links dont copy!(?)

Recent NHS Surgical Figures

• Masculinising Chest Surgery: Between 2021 and 2023, the NHS referred 3,490 women for this procedure. The procedure volume has increased year over year, with 1,237 referrals in 2023 alone.
• Masculinising Genital Surgery: Over that same three-year period, NHS surgeons sent more than 780 women for genital reconstruction (e.g., phalloplasty or metoidioplasty).
• Feminising Surgery: Hundreds of feminising genital reconstruction (e.g., vaginoplasty) procedures are performed across NHS-commissioned centres, such as the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. 1, 2, 3]

Long-Term Context
Historical figures show that state-funded surgeries in the UK have steadily grown over time. While the lifetime total is estimated in the thousands, many patients face prolonged waits. Recent data indicates that nearly 10,000 people are referred to adult gender clinics annually. 1, 2]

Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) do not match the number of gender reassignment surgeries. The two numbers are entirely independent of one another. 1]
A GRC is a purely legal document used to change the legal sex on a birth certificate. It does not correlate with medical procedures for several distinct reasons: 1, 2]

1. Surgery Is Not a Requirement for a GRC 1]
Under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, there is no requirement to have undergone any surgery or hormone treatment to receive a GRC. The core requirements are instead legal and administrative: 1, 2, 3, 4]

• A formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
• Proof of living fully in your affirmed gender for at least two years.
• A statutory declaration to live in that gender for the rest of your life. 1, 2, 3]

2. Most Trans People Do Not Apply for a GRC 1]
Government estimates place the UK transgender population between 200,000 and 500,000 people. Because only around 10,000 GRCs have been issued, the vast majority of trans people in the UK do not hold one. This lack of application is due to several factors: 1, 2]

• Day-to-day ID doesn't require it: You do not need a GRC to change your name, title, or gender marker on your passport, driving licence, workplace records, or NHS medical files.
• The process is viewed as bureaucratic: Many find the administrative process of compiling years of historical paperwork and medical evidence invasive or overly complex.
• Limited daily impact: A GRC primarily impacts marriage certificates, taxes, pensions, and what is written on a death certificate. For day-to-day life, many trans people find it unnecessary. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

If this is accurate, or close to, then that is somewhere between 200,000 - 500,000 out of the entire population of around 69.5 million who are taking priority over everyone else.

Not that good at sums, but doesn't than mean less than 1% of the population?

When Scotland passed their bill for Self ID, am I right in thinking someone (Scottish Conservative) tried but was unsuccessful in adding an amendment to say that a sex criminal ( any kind of criminal?) should not be allowed to get a GRC?