Should the Gender Recognition Act be repealed?

Alessadra's is 100% correct; I think its extremely unlikely that the UK would ever be ejected even if there were multiple unresolved cases found against it.

But it would make it increasingly likely that a future government would pull out. (as Reform is already promising to do)

IMHO a future government that wanted to pull out of the ECHR might just as readily cite a wish to abandon the GRA as one possible justification for doing so. I am not sold on the idea that invoking post-Repeal non-compliance as a justification for leaving the ECHR would be more persuasive politically.

Alessadra's analysis is done as though the ECtHR's mandate and interpretive doctrine are stable and roughly the same as they were in 2000. I don't believe that's the case. Instead it's taken an elastic view of Article 8 (taking its cue from the US) and expanded its scope based in it. This is especially evident in trans decisions and seems likely to continue. If it does, it seems (to me) inevitable that it will bring the ECtHR into conflict with UK statute.

If, as you suggest, it is inevitable that the GRA as it stands will bring the ECtHR into conflict with UK statute then there is nothing to lose by repealing the GRA. That is, both the status quo and Repeal take us to the same place.

Alessandra says,
"there is no legal duty for UK courts to follow the jurisprudence of the court, especially if doing so would mean, as one could argue, disregarding women’s rights."

If the conflict with women's rights was the rationale for Repeal and an individual made an Application to the ECtHR (after exhausting domestic procedures) then this might be extremely helpful. Let's throw in protection of children as a rationale for Repeal too.

IF a case ever got to the ECtHR, assuming on Article 8, the UK Government would need to advance a case that defended women's rights and the protection of children. That would put the ECtHR judges on the spot. They would each have to distinguish between:

• the human rights of people who wish to be recognised by the State as members of the opposite sex and
• the human rights of women and children not to be subjected to indignity and danger by means of State-sanctioned deception

The UK Government could rely on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and, while proponents of Gender Identity cite the Yogyakarta Principles, the UK Government would be entitled to cite the Declaration on Women's Sex-based Rights, which has equivalent status, ie. activist advocacy.

https://www.womensdeclaration.com/en/declaration-womens-sex-based-rights-full-text/

But it's not just about allowing some trans people to update their IDs. It's about allowing males to be legally recognised as females-which clearly eradicates females rights to single sex spaces.
Women were never consulted on this-we cannot protect girls if men can identify into their single sex spaces.
I hope in the future Drs abide by their oath to first do no harm and therefore stop prescribing cross sex hormones and stop doing procedures such as facial feminisation surgery....

It was because same sex marriage wasn’t legal and parliament felt it was easier to stomach this legal fiction than to legalise SS marriage. It was designed to be for those mythical trans women who wished to marry a man and were indistinguishable from women. It was designed to protect the privacy of their undetectable trans history. Think Haley Cropper.

Yes, governments should not legislate lies - men cannot become women. Common sense as well as biological truth.

I know the pain. It’s a daily disappointment to me also

🤣

@POWNewcastleEastWallsend

Is this a realistic prospect given Alessadra's point that:
"No country was ever expelled for a minor procedural infraction (granting a document is at most a procedural breach). Only Russia was expelled for invading Ukraine."

Alessadra's is 100% correct; I think its extremely unlikely that the UK would ever be ejected even if there were multiple unresolved cases found against it.

But it would make it increasingly likely that a future government would pull out. (as Reform is already promising to do)

Are you suggesting that a new Application, based on some reason other than Article 8 in relation to the GRA as it stands, might go through the UK courts, reach the ECtHR and be held to be in conflict with the Convention on Human Rights?

This is really the essence of my post. Alessadra's analysis is done as though the ECtHR's mandate and interpretive doctrine are stable and roughly the same as they were in 2000. I don't believe that's the case. Instead it's taken an elastic view of Article 8 (taking its cue from the US) and expanded its scope based in it. This is especially evident in trans decisions and seems likely to continue. If it does, it seems (to me) inevitable that it will bring the ECtHR into conflict with UK statute.

Thank you for commenting 🙏

it would set the UK on course to eventually leave the ECHR if the UK simply refused to address the issue.

Is this a realistic prospect given Alessadra's point that:

"No country was ever expelled for a minor procedural infraction (granting a document is at most a procedural breach). Only Russia was expelled for invading Ukraine."

From your second reply:

it's probably only a matter of time before UK law is found to be in conflict anyway. If that's true, it's likely that that by the time the GRA was eliminated and a new case made its way through the court, that the UK would already have been found in violation for some other reason,

Are you suggesting that a new Application, based on some reason other than Article 8 in relation to the GRA as it stands, might go through the UK courts, reach the ECtHR and be held to be in conflict with the Convention on Human Rights?

Or is there some mechanism for the ECtHR to make a finding that UK arrangements (under the GRA at present) are in violation other than by Application of an affected individual to the ECtHR?

I should also add that the ECtHR continues to to move the goal post with respect to trans rights, so it's probably only a matter of time before UK law is found to be in conflict anyway. If that's true, it's likely that that by the time the GRA was eliminated and a new case made its way through the court, that the UK would already have been found in violation for some other reason, so the ECtHR concerns really are moot.

@POWNewcastleEastWallsend I appreciate Alessandra's reasoning here, but I do think she omits a line of argument - that while it's true that the GRA exceeds the requirements of Goodwin and that current UK law minus the GRA is a sufficient to remedy the Goodwin judgement, it's also true that the ECHR has moved on since Goodwin with respect to trans rights (E.g. L. v. Lithuania - 2007 ) and that removal of the GRA would leave trans people without adequate official recognition of their gender identity in the eyes of the present-day ECHR and in violation of article 8. So, while it wouldn't be in technical violation of the Goodwin judgement, it would precipitate a case that the UK would likely lose.

Her points that that losing such a case doesn't in itself affect UK law or necessitate immediate withdrawal from the ECHR stand. But it would set the UK on course to eventually leave the ECHR if the UK simply refused to address the issue.

I will risk another wall of text for anyone who did not read to the bottom of my previous post.

However, it is worth reading this article as well. Screenshots of relevant snippets of legislation are embedded in it as proof of Alessandra's assertions.

This is a copy and paste of the article - the only text that is mine is where I have indicted that a Screenshot is missing:

Of Myths and Misconceptions
What does international law really do?
9 Dec 2024 - Alessandra Asteriti
https://alessandraasteriti.substack.com/p/of-myths-and-misconceptions

It is an often repeated quip that international law is not law because there are few and weak enforcement mechanisms. You would not know this following the debate on Goodwin and its effects, and on the feasibility of repealing the GRA.
So here are a few myths busted. You may still disagree the GRA ought to be repealed, or think it will be too difficult to do it. But do not hide behind international law, because it will give you no cover.

1. The Court in Goodwin ordered the UK to pass a law for transgender people.

The Court could not have possibly done that, because the ECtHR does not have the power to impose this sort of remedy. According to the Convention, the Court can impose pecuniary damages on a State found to have violated one of the human rights covered by the Convention. There are several hurdles an individual has to go through in order for their application to be declared admissible and for a case to be heard. If the individual is successful, the Court will declare the State party to the proceedings to compensate the individual for the violation of their right. In the case of Goodwin there were no damages and the Court opined that just satisfaction may involve a change in legislation. But this is a change that the Court is not in the power to impose to the UK. All it can note is that the country may be found to have violated an individual’s rights if similar conditions were to obtain. It is within the sovereign power of the country whether it is willing to incur the cost of repeated violations.

[Screenshot]

2. Repealing the GRA will create immediately a breach of the Convention and/or force the UK to leave the Council of Europe.

As noted, the Court cannot tell a country which legislation to pass or repeal. It can only accept an application, once domestic remedies have been exhausted, detailing how a specific law or policy or act by a State constitute a breach of a right in the Convention. Speculative applications about how a repeal may constitute a violation of the Convention will be rejected, as well as applications that are not presented by a victim (and this has to be a natural person; legal persons only have rights under Article 1 of Protocol 1, protecting property rights).

By reason of the success of individual applications to the Court and the backlog thereby created, the Council of Europe passed Protocol 14, to streamline the work of the Court. In Article 12, applications to the Court are limited to applications that can prove that the violation of the Convention by the State constitute a significant disadvantage for the victim.

[Screenshot]

If the UK repeals the GRA there would be no immediate breach of the Convention. In fact such a concept is absolutely unheard in the context of the Convention. The consequences of repeal are strictly a matter of the domestic law of the UK and there is nothing in the British constitution to fetter the powers of parliament in such a speculative manner, i.e. forbidding the repeal of a law lest there would be a violation of some unspecified right contained in a treaty, albeit a treaty incorporated in UK domestic law, which means its provisions are directly enforceable in UK courts (this is the mechanism by which a country with a dualist system like the UK incorporates international law in its legal system). This brings us to the HRA 1998 and the myths around it.

3. Repealing the GRA is an immediate violation of the HRA 1998.

In 1998 the Blair government “brought rights home” by passing the Human Rights Act. By this Act UK nationals were given the right to raise an action against the UK government for violations of the ECHR as incorporated in domestic law through it. The Act had to take into account the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. In the British constitution, parliaments cannot be fettered. How to reconcile this with a UK court hearing cases on the basis of a foreign treaty, albeit incorporated in UK law? The solution found by the HRA is elegant in its simplicity. There are two moments in which UK law takes into account the ECHR. When legislating, a statement of compatibility has to be issued for all new legislative acts by a Minister of the Crown. Note that this is contained in the section of the act dedicated to parliamentary procedure, clarifying that this is a procedural obligation.

[Screenshot]

In the context of judicial proceedings, courts are enjoined to interpret, to the extent possible, UK law so as to be compatible with the Convention. This is an iteration of the well known Charming Betsy doctrine (when a case has a funny name like that it concerns a ship). This was a case in the US Supreme Court in 1804 where the Court said that “an act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the laws of nations if any other possible construction remains.” This canon of statutory interpretation dictates not that the courts have to interpret domestic law so that it is not in conflict with international law but that, faced with more than one interpretation, they ought to choose the one that is consistent with international law. Section 3 of the HRA contains this duty for UK courts:

[Screenshot here: Interpretation of Legislation]

Clearly there is no absolute duty to interpret UK law so that it complies with the Convention. At times UK courts will be faced with laws that cannot be interpreted in such a manner. Section 4 illustrates what courts need to do in that case.

[Screenshot]

Section 4(6) details what the effects of a declaration of incompatibility are and is very important.

[Screenshot]

This is the provision whereby parliamentary sovereignty is maintained. The Courts do not have the power to affect the validity of the incompatible law (the US Supreme Court has this power, thanks to the Marbury doctrine). Additionally, their decision is not binding on the parties to the proceedings. The effect of this section is that even a declaration of incompatibility of the Act of repeal of the GRA would not affect the validity of the Act.

4. A repeal of the GRA will automatically result in a declaration of incompatibility and/or a breach of the ECHR.

There are several things to be said in this regard some of which are not within my area of competence, but even I know that such a sweeping statement is legally illiterate. In the first instance it does not distinguish between a judicial review action and a claim of breach of Convention rights as domesticated in the HRA. It seems more likely that the government would not face a judicial review action. Nonetheless one would need to prove that repealing the GRA directly affected them and constituted a violation of their Convention rights. The content of the GRA would of course be of the utmost importance. Regardless of what has been claimed, the GRA is not an act of constitutional importance protecting a fundamental right to sexual/gender identity. The word identity in that sense does not even appear once in the GRA. It is true that the case law of the ECHR has developed in the last twenty years since Goodwin to incorporate the legally vague and imprecise concept of gender identity into its own case law. But there are two important provisos to this legal developments, one international and one domestic, which reflects the international rule.

5. Cases of the ECHR are “law”.

This is one of the most widespread myths, disseminated by legal scholars who really should know better. International law is not a form of domestic law modelled on UK law. There are two important consequences to this difference. The first is that there is no hierarchy in international courts, no “supreme court” and no court capable of binding lower courts. Each court is an entity unto itself, a creature of a treaty and bound by the rules therein contained. The functioning of the ECtHR is dictated by the Convention. The second one is that courts are not bound by their previous case law and can depart from it, though of course they need a reason to do so. This is not a lesson on the ECtHR so I am not going into detail on how and why. Suffice to say that they can “change their mind” and if they had not in Goodwin, reverting almost twenty years of previous case law, I would not be writing this piece. Finally, the only ones bound by the decisions of the court are the parties to the proceedings, which normally means the State party to the proceedings (the Convention provides for inter-State cases, but these are rare). This brings us to the most important conclusion: cases are not law in international law. The so-called sources of law are contained in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. There is no need to consider the difference between what is law and what is the applicable law in the context of international judicial proceedings.

[Screenshot]

Article 59 states that decisions of the Court are only binding to the parties to the case. But, you may add, what does the Statute of the ICJ have to do with the applicable law in the ECHR? Well, it is considered customary law (see Article 38(b)) so it matters. In any event, the ECHR contains a specific article on the jurisdiction of the court, quite limited to matters arising under the Convention.

[Screenshot]

As I said, international courts are creatures of treaties and bound by the rules they contain. Previous case law is not law and the court has to consider questions of facts carefully in order to determine whether the individual applicant’s facts preclude them from relying on previous case law to come to a finding of violation of a specific right.

6. Gender identity is protected under the ECHR and repealing the GRA would force UK courts to rely on the law of the ECHR.

I think by now you can see the misconception. The ECtHR does not make law as we just said. Gender identity is not protected under the Convention and repealing the GRA has not an ipso facto breaching effect. The Convention, written in 1950, does not contain naturally any reference to gender identity, a term that had not even been invented yet. All the cases concerning transsexual/transgender people (the language changed with the times) arise under Article 8, right to private and family life. The closest one comes to the incorporation of gender identity in the text of the Convention is Article 14, the non-discrimination article.

[Screenshot]

Gender identity can be included in the “other status” category. All the same, normally the Court will not find a free-standing violation of Article 14, but only in relation of another protected right: in the case of transgender individuals, this has been Article 8. There is a lot to be said in the reconceptualisation of the right to privacy, which Justice Brandeis (who invented the concept of privacy) defined as the right to be let alone, so a classic negative right of no interference, into a positive right, whereby the State has to recognise your delusions about your sex. Be that as it may, UK courts do not have to comply with the increasingly deranged jurisprudence of the ECtHR on this matter. The HRA has specific rules on this. Section 2 is titled “interpretation of Convention rights” and it states as follows:

[Screenshot]

Take into account does not mean apply or comply with (in law every single linguistic choice is important, one of the reasons why the meaningless gender is so infuriating to good lawyers, and I stress the word good). In short, there is no legal duty for UK courts to follow the jurisprudence of the court, especially if doing so would mean, as one could argue, disregarding women’s rights.

7. Repealing the GRA would force/compel the UK to leave the ECHR/Council of Europe.

Here one word really suffices. Bullshit. No country was ever expelled for a minor procedural infraction (granting a document is at most a procedural breach). Only Russia was expelled for invading Ukraine. Several countries do not have anything approaching the GRA and, ironically, the UK has been criticised for having such outdated legislation as the GRA. The requirement of a diagnosis of gender dysphoria goes against the latest ICD (International Classification of Diseases) by the WHO, ICD-11, which replaced it with gender incongruence and moved it from the section on mental health to the section on sexual health. Whoever claims the Council of Europe prevents the UK from repealing the GRA can thereby be dismissed as incompetent.

8. International law effectively prevents the UK from repealing the GRA or would force the UK to follow self-ID as the standard.

Here we get to higher level misconceptions and myth, caused by a basic misapprehension of how international law works. Article 38 mentions customary law, as “evidence of a general practice accepted as law”. What does that mean? General practice means an almost universal coherence and consistency in respect to a certain behaviour. But this is not enough. No country offers a dinner of fish fingers when a foreign president makes a state visit. But this is not enough to make it law. The practice has to be “accepted as law”. So countries have to follow the practice because they believe they ought to follow the practice out of legal obligation and not, for example, comity among nations or simply good manners. This is called opinio iuris and is a necessary element in the formation of customary law. What constitutes practice for the purpose of customary law is equally important. Practice refers to State practice, so everything States do and crucially, States say. The judgments of international courts are not practice for the purpose of customary law, but the submissions of States in the proceedings are. Confusingly treaties, the main source of international law, or better, international obligations (at this point I am quite aware only international lawyers are following me) are also an example of practice for the formation of customary law. You may ask why do we need customary rules if we also have treaties covering the same subject matter, and what the difference is. If I was still teaching international law, you would get a whole lecture on why (I loved teaching what I called “the grammar” of international law and structured all my introductory courses around it). But here I want to focus on something else. As I said, what States say is crucial to the formation of customary law. This is why the complaint that international law is just States making statements is so misconceived. Making statement is actually States making, or developing, the law. And when States do not want the law to develop in a particular direction, they ought to express this directly, otherwise their silence could be taken for consensus (what in law is called acquiescence). So to try to gag States from making statements, or passing legislation, that openly contradicts the developing consensus around the idea that gender identity trumps sex or replaces sex, is particularly invidious. Even when a consensus does develop around a new rule, States that consistently object (the so-called persistent objectors) can avoid being bound by the new developing rule. In the Draft Conclusion on Identification of Customary International Law of 2018, the International Law Commission puts it like this:

[Screenshot]

Basically, States ought to have unfettered freedom to object to emerging rules of customary law, except for what concerns peremptory norms (stuff like genocide and torture). To the extent that a concerted attempt is made to smuggle in gender identity as a form of customary rule (though by no means there is a universal practice as of yet), States ought to be able to object as loudly and clearly as they see fit. I find this attempt to moderate the debate and silence the dissenters who could be making the very arguments States may rely upon to make their position known extremely disturbing. After all, “the most highly qualified publicists” (international lawyers) are, according to Article 38(d) are a subsidiary mean for the interpretation of international law.

++++++

IANAL and I hope some of the lawyers who post on FWR will be able to comment on Alessandra's take on this.

Of course it should

It needs to be thoroughly looked into, because the present position is a mess. The GRC itself is absurd; how can you satisfactorily define a category of people by them claiming to be "intending" to go through a process at some unspecified time in the future? I can see what the drafters were assuming here, (ie. that applicants would either have had surgery or would be definitely in the pipeline towards surgery), but you could drive a bus through it. It only covers a subset of the people who might become victims of genuine transphobia; and the sex-is-unmentionable thing protects hardly anyone because most people's sex - even trans people's - is obvious whether it's mentioned or not.

I'm a little sceptical about this ruling, tbh.

It's fairly standard that if people have some condition or characteristic that gives them access to some special treatment or service or whatever, they need to be able to identify themselves in some way as qualifying for that thing.

Basically, n order to access whatever the special thing is they potentially need to be willing to give up their privacy, at least in a limited context.

That makes no sense. Anyone can post on MN for all you know I am a professional assassin.

Luckily, I can't assassinate posters I don't like through the internet so it's a low risk scenario.

This is an administrative problem. All administrative problems have solutions.

Well this seems very sensible.

Absolutely not. I’m referring to clothing choices reflecting desires.

a man should not be discriminated against at work because he chooses to wear clothing that is traditionally female-coded ie gender identity/gender expression/gender belief as a Protected Characteristic.

V

the man who chooses to wear female-coded clothes at work in order to enjoy his fetish around unconsenting women ie fetish-play that is potentially one or more of the offences of Public Decency etc

How could you draft legislation which permitted one man to wear a skirt, but not a other man? ie How do you differentiate between the two?

I don't want to derail to a discussion about Goodwin but his daughter Clare clearly adored him, working with him for many years (15? 17?) to prepare his case for the ECHR and was with him in Strasbourg. His son Antony seems to have been similarly devoted and both children remained in contact with him throughout his life, referring to him as "daddy", "father" and "grandfather" and stressing that there was no pronoun nonsense.

There were four children and I have no idea what the other two thought or think about this.

I know nothing about his wife other than that they divorced when Clare was 14 and Goodwin (aka Anthony Allington) left the family home to go to live in London and undergo surgery at Charing X. Both she and Goodwin appear to have been private, family-oriented people who did not court publicity so I doubt we will ever know what his wife made of all this.

From what his daughter says, Goodwin had little help from anyone other than her. He remortgaged his house three times to pay over £100K on the case (2002 prices); was opposed by the then Labour Government in private correspondence; was dumped and memory-holed by Press For Change asap after the case while PFC luminaries picked up OBEs etc.; in later life he regretted having had surgery surgery; worked until he was 77 and died unable to afford private surgery to repair damage to his urinary tract, the NHS having ballsed-up (!) previous attempts. A crowd-funder by his children to try to raise money for that surgery when he was 76 raised only £300 and all attempts by his daughter to gain support from "trans allies" and "trans celebs" fell on deaf ears.

I have got links to what his daughter has said about Goodwin but I don't think this is the right place to share them as it would only encourage derailing from discussion of the GRA itself.

++++++

RELEVANT TO THE ECHR AND THE GRA:

It is obvious from photos and video of Goodwin that he never remotely "passed" as a woman. His daughter maintains that he fought to the bitter end for "privacy" of documented information about his sex as an act of altruism, ie. not for himself but for "others who came after". I have not found enough information to clarify whether Goodwin's altruistic intention was:

a) to protect the confidentiality of "others" who did pass and would be "outed" by official documentation disclosing their sex, or

b) to protect non-passing post-op transsexuals from being "outed" as having a fake vagina (Clare thought that her father would be raped if placed in a men's prison) or

c) both of the above.

The GRA went further, of course, affording "privacy" to anyone who claimed to be intending to apply for a GRC at some point and without any requirement for surgical intervention. This is the now familiar Stonewall mantra of, "going above and beyond the law".

Alessandra Asteriti argues that:

• reforming the GRA to apply only to post-op transsexuals would mean the the UK would be in compliance with Goodwin, rather than "gold plating" the Legislation by "going above and beyond" what was required
• the UK is entitled to repeal the GRA and replace it with whatever legislation it likes, or none
• the POC of "Gender Reassignment" should be removed from the EA2010 because the EA already includes all the protection against discrimination needed for "transgender people" and its inclusion is both redundant and the result of a "category error"

The case for repealing the GRA
A category error cannot solved by exceptions
17 Jan 2023
(The arguments above stand despite the judgement in For Women Scotland.)
thecritic.co.uk/the-case-for-repealing-the-gra/

From Cambridge Scholars sample of
Gender Identity in International Law
A Certain Inconvenience
By: Alessandra Asteriti, 2024

"The legal theorist Ronald Dworkin compared judicial law-making to a “chain novel.”19 According to Dworkin, judges work in a continuous dialogue to create a legal narrative that has to follow its own internal logic and coherence. It is a powerful metaphor, and evocative of the work of judges, especially in common law systems. However, I believe it may have a fatal flaw: once an element is incorporated into the logic of the chain novel, it becomes very difficult to dislodge it. The element acquires legitimacy and status at each new chapter of the novel.
Each judicial iteration, and each legislative and administrative recognition, makes the removal of this element more difficult to accomplish.

Gender identity constitutes the perfect case study for this potential flaw. After having entered the case law of the ECHR in Goodwin v UK20 with little or no scientific evidence, it acquired authority and legitimacy, so that each following chapter of the novel just referred back to Goodwin in a validation exercise. The Goodwin case is fetishised beyond any reasonable judicial approach to previous jurisprudence, on the basis of poor legal reasoning and a very flimsy factual basis."
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-0550-2/

Again on Repealing the GRA
Some theoretical considerations
7 Oct 2024 - Alessandra Asteriti

"There is an argument to be made that the GRA seriously overstepped the criteria imposed by the Goodwin decision to limit the recognition of an “acquired gender” to post-operative transsexuals, and this alone would warrant its repeal."

"the ECHR is not a domestic court operating under English law and, as all international courts, is not bound by the rule of precedent. Simply put, the ECHR is not bound by the Goodwin judgment."

"There are no legal consequences to its repeal, except the possibility of an application by an individual who claims that its repeal affects his or her rights under the HRA and therefore the Convention, if, after having exhausted domestic remedies, they have their application accepted at the ECHR. It is important to remember that the Convention requires an actual victim. Failing an individual application, there are no other legal consequences, least of all the UK being forced to exit the Council of Europe. The fact that the ECHR is an international court, not a court of appeal, also means that there can be no “appeal” to it, but only an application."

"Arguing that the GRA can be repealed is not a political position. It is a legal one. As a matter of law, the GRA can be repealed just as any other law. All the more so because its original purpose has largely been overcome by other legal developments, such as the possibility of same sex marriage and the equalisation of pension rights between men and women. It is true that there remains a residual right to privacy which has been included in the GRA. This right has no legal basis. It can more correctly be described as a right to confidentiality of information held by the State. The information consists in the application to obtain, and the conferral, of a GRC. If the GRA were to be repealed, no GRCs would be given and there would be no need to maintain any confidentiality about their existence. The GRA contained the device for its own ultimate demise because this “privacy” is only relevant when a person has so successfully undergone a sex transition that revealing their birth sex would potentially be a stressful experience. But, since the GRA does not require any such transition, how would it be stressful to be recognised as a male by your ID documents when your appearance is clearly and unadulteratedly male? To anyone claiming that the GRA cannot be repealed because of this residual right to privacy simply ask, privacy of what?"

"I am only interested in how gender ideology is corrupting the law and affecting its proper functioning, to the point of endangering the rule of law. My argument is strictly legal. The political challenges of repeal are not my concern. But it is disingenous to present these political challenges as legal ones. They are not."

alessandraasteriti.substack.com/p/again-on-repealing-the-gra

Of Myths and Misconceptions
What does international law really do?
9 Dec 2024 - Alessandra Asteriti

Please read the article to see how these Myths are dispelled - this wall of text is already too much:

1. The Court in Goodwin ordered the UK to pass a law for transgender people.
2. Repealing the GRA will create immediately a breach of the Convention and/or force the UK to leave the Council of Europe.
3. Repealing the GRA is an immediate violation of the HRA 1998.
4. A repeal of the GRA will automatically result in a declaration of incompatibility and/or a breach of the ECHR.
5. Cases of the ECHR are “law”.
6. Gender identity is protected under the ECHR and repealing the GRA would force UK courts to rely on the law of the ECHR.
7. Repealing the GRA would force/compel the UK to leave the ECHR/Council of Europe.
8. International law effectively prevents the UK from repealing the GRA or would force the UK to follow self-ID as the standard.

alessandraasteriti.substack.com/p/of-myths-and-misconceptions

Unfortunately this next article is partially pay-walled but IMHO it is worth taking out a Subscription to read everything on Alessandra's Substack "Gender Dissisent" - or buying her book or asking your Library to stock it.

What does Goodwin really say?
Why the GRA can be repealed
14 April 2025 - Alessandra Asteriti
https://alessandraasteriti.substack.com/p/what-does-goodwin-really-say

Alessandra Asteriti -The genealogy of gender identity in international law
WDI Conference July 2024

Yes and I’d also like the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the Equality Act to be repealed as well, it is inconsistent with women’s rights

Yes.

No, policing isn't secondary - laws do have to be workable, unworkable laws get repealed.

I think the problem is people being allowed to identify as things they are not. I would be fine with self ID, GRCs etc if a man could identify as a transwoman rather than a woman. Someone can officially be transgender, recognised and protected as such. Then sensible conversations can take place about protection as we wouldn't be fudging the issue pretending trans= opposite sex.

If that paperwork would then entitle him to get a driver's license that doesn't state sex, for example, so it's essentially redacted for documents and situations where sex doesn't matter so much. Not anything relating to medical records, as that would be/is so stupid, but the day to day potential outings. That would be a sensible solution, much better than him getting an F on the license.

I cannot see us ever being in the situation where legislators will be willing to differentiate the law in terms of surgery/ no surgery or passing/ not passing. Therefore, the protected characteristic of GR is likely to be defined without reference to appearance and guidance based on all eventualities. Some trans people do pass, and so this needs to be a consideration when it comes to privacy.

I am more frustrated to the pandering around this issue and the appeals to think about all the gender non conformity biological females who are now at risk. Anyone saying that they accept the guidance should be stating that everyone is expected to follow it - not witter on about it being impossible to police. Policing is the secondary action, following the law is the primary one.