Apparently self-certification used to be a thing

[MsTiggywinkletoyou]

Trans people used to be able to get their certificates by turning up at Somerset House to ask for one: according to Twitter, according to a speaker at today's LGBT conference (the big one held by the Government Equalities Office). So the demand for self-certification is not breaking new territory, but re-establishing old rights.

Does anyone know if this is true - not that a speaker said it, but that once this was the case? When and why was it changed?

This is what wiki has to say about the history of trans people's legal status.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbett_v_Corbett

This is at the end of the wiki entry, I wonder if this is what they are referring too.

As a result of Justice Ormrod's decision, unofficial amendments of birth certificates for transgender and intersex people ceased.

I can't find any reference to an official GRC existing before the 2004 GRA.

That must be it, thank you. I meant the amendment of birth certificates, not the creation of gender recognition certificates, sorry for the loose wording.

That didn’t actually give anyone proper rights though - the April Ashley court case proved it and ended the unofficial practise.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbett_v_Corbett

Dr Forbes-Sempill went about her change of gender in the quietest possible manner. She applied to the Sheriff of Aberdeen, and acquired a warrant for birth re-registration. Then, on 12 September 1952, there appeared a notice in the advertisement columns of Aberdeen's The Press and Journal, which stated that henceforth Dr Forbes-Sempill wished to be known as Dr Ewan Forbes-Sempill.' Three weeks later, he married his housekeeper ...

www.tatler.com/article/trans-toffs

I hate to be transphobic but that^ sounds awfully like not wanting / able to be an out lesbian...

When Forbes-Sempill's transformation was later challenged by a disinherited male relative, a judge affirmed that he was indeed a man. One of the key pieces of evidence: his wife (the former housekeeper) experienced complete sexual satisfaction ...

Willing to bet that any 'unofficial amendments' were only ever made for fully medically transitioned transsexuals

Official amendments may also have been made for intersex people - those who were brought up as one sex, but on puberty their bodies demonstrated the other. I know we try hard now to distinguish disorders of sexual development from transgenderism, but 100 years ago none of these terms and not much of this knowledge was current