Why do you think so few people have applied for / acquired a GRC?

[QuimReaper]

I was surprised to read recently that the number of people who hold a GRC is under 5,000, when apparently 500K people in the UK self-identify as trans. I'm just wondering why that might be - I'd have thought a majority of trans people would want their chosen pronouns on documentation. I note the fee has been reduced following the last GRA review, although I cannot possibly believe it was contributing to the low numbers originally.

Is it simply that having a GRC doesn't really impact your day-to-day life very much beyond having 'Mr' or 'Ms' on your bank statement etc.?

AGP - role play, wearing the lady clothes and make up turns them on, not a certificate.

[quote OldCrone]Obtaining a GRC doesn't change your rights in law.

Are you sure about that? I thought that your legally recognised sex was important when it comes to some single-sex provision, such as prisons, where "all individuals who are transgender must be initially allocated to part of the estate which matches their legally recognised gender."

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/863610/transgender-pf.pdf[/quote]
Your example rather proves my point here - 'all individuals whoa re transgender' is not the same as 'all individuals who have a Gender Recognition Certificate'.

As far as I'm aware, there are zero examples of a space that is explicitly not accessible to a transgender person unless they have obtained a GRC. Under the EA2010, a space either meets the 'proportional means to a legitmate aim' clause (in which case it's based on birth sex, and a GRC doesn't change that) or it doesn't meant the clause (in which case it's based on identity, and a GRC doesn't change that either).

"The GRA was passed as an alternative to legalising same sex marriage, so that two people of the same sex could marry as long as one of them obtained a GRC to say that they were legally the opposite sex.

Homophobia is the main reason why the GRA was passed."

This is.. not true. The GRA was passed because an ECHR ruling (Goodwin v United Kingdom). It had nothing to do with gay marriage whatosever - and the very idea that somebody should change sex because they're gay is as daft as it is homophobic.

Your example rather proves my point here - 'all individuals whoa re transgender' is not the same as 'all individuals who have a Gender Recognition Certificate'.

No it's not, but the purpose of my post was to illustrate one particular circumstance where transgender people are treated differently depending on whether or not they have a GRC.

This is the part of the document I quoted:

"all individuals who are transgender must be initially allocated to part of the estate which matches their legally recognised gender."

The purpose of a GRC is to change someone's legally recognised 'gender'. (It should be 'sex', but they seem to have made a half-hearted attempt to acknowledge that people can't actually change sex.)

The 'legally recognised gender' of a person who was born male and identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is male.

The 'legally recognised gender' of a person who was born male and identifies as a woman but does have a GRC is female.

The person with the GRC will be sent to a women's prison. The person without a GRC will be sent to a men's prison.

This is.. not true. The GRA was passed because an ECHR ruling (Goodwin v United Kingdom). It had nothing to do with gay marriage whatosever - and the very idea that somebody should change sex because they're gay is as daft as it is homophobic.

The ECHR ruling said that Goodwin, a male to female transsexual, should be allowed to marry a man. This could have been remedied by passing a law allowing same sex marriage. The legal fiction of letting someone change the details of their birth record to say that they had been born the opposite sex was preferred by parliament to allowing same sex marriage.

I don't think anyone suggested that people should 'change sex' because they're gay (it's the Iranians who do that), but in 2004 same sex marriage was dismissed as a solution to the ECHR ruling and I'm sure that for some MPs this was due to homophobia. Had they been less homophobic, perhaps we'd have had same sex marriage 10 years earlier and there would have been no need for the GRA.

So basically Self ID has been brought in by stealth and is effectively the prevailing system of the day, rendering GRA unnecessary/redundant unless you feel very strongly about documents?

@Lifeaintalwaysempty

So basically Self ID has been brought in by stealth and is effectively the prevailing system of the day, rendering GRA unnecessary/redundant unless you feel very strongly about documents?

For most informal settings, yes. For situations like prisons, when proof of identity (including legally recognised sex) have to be produced, a GRC is more important.

Self-ID for a GRC would mean that a rapist would be able to simply self-ID his way into a women's prison according to that prison document I posted a link to earlier.

There appears to be no way to remove a GRC from someone who makes a fraudulent declaration to live as the opposite sex, since Freddy (the 'seahorse') went to a fertility clinic to get pregnant just days after getting a GRC and making a declaration to 'live as a man' and was allowed to keep the GRC (even though pregnancy is not normally considered to be something covered by 'living as a man').

So presumably a rapist would be allowed to keep their GRC. If being pregnant can be considered as 'living as a man', then it could be argued that raping people using a penis can be considered as 'living as a woman'.

@OldCrone

Your example rather proves my point here - 'all individuals whoa re transgender' is not the same as 'all individuals who have a Gender Recognition Certificate'.

No it's not, but the purpose of my post was to illustrate one particular circumstance where transgender people are treated differently depending on whether or not they have a GRC.

This is the part of the document I quoted:

"all individuals who are transgender must be initially allocated to part of the estate which matches their legally recognised gender."

The purpose of a GRC is to change someone's legally recognised 'gender'. (It should be 'sex', but they seem to have made a half-hearted attempt to acknowledge that people can't actually change sex.)

The 'legally recognised gender' of a person who was born male and identifies as a woman but doesn't have a GRC is male.

The 'legally recognised gender' of a person who was born male and identifies as a woman but does have a GRC is female.

The person with the GRC will be sent to a women's prison. The person without a GRC will be sent to a men's prison.

I appreciate that the wording used is ambiguous, but a transgender person does not have to obtain a GRC to be allocated into a prison that matches their identity but not their birth sex. A GRC does not change this allocation.

@OldCrone

This is.. not true. The GRA was passed because an ECHR ruling (Goodwin v United Kingdom). It had nothing to do with gay marriage whatosever - and the very idea that somebody should change sex because they're gay is as daft as it is homophobic.

The ECHR ruling said that Goodwin, a male to female transsexual, should be allowed to marry a man. This could have been remedied by passing a law allowing same sex marriage. The legal fiction of letting someone change the details of their birth record to say that they had been born the opposite sex was preferred by parliament to allowing same sex marriage.

I don't think anyone suggested that people should 'change sex' because they're gay (it's the Iranians who do that), but in 2004 same sex marriage was dismissed as a solution to the ECHR ruling and I'm sure that for some MPs this was due to homophobia. Had they been less homophobic, perhaps we'd have had same sex marriage 10 years earlier and there would have been no need for the GRA.

Goodwin v United Kingdom had nothing to do with marriage.

"She claimed that she had problems and faced sexual harassment at work during and following her gender reassignment. She also alleged that the fact that she keeps the same NI number has meant that her employer has been able to discover that she previously worked for them under another name and gender, with resulting embarrassment and humiliation."

RE: Prisons - the Transgender Policy Framework is here:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/863610/transgender-pf.pdf

Page 9:

"Additional structured risk assessments and resources are required before a person is allocated or transferred to part of the estate which does not match their sex assigned at birth, including where a person has gained legal recognition of the gender with which they identify."

Risk assessments exist for trans people accessing prisons, access is therefore not automatic, but a case by case basis.
These risk assessments apply "including these a person has gained legal recognition" - the legal recognition is not a requirement for consideration, otherwise this clause would not exist.

InfoRelish seems to be here to spread misinformation.

We went through all of this with self ID. Yes, we've heard all the trans activists arguments: "it won't make any difference to single sex spaces! It's just admin!"

Nope. It makes a huge difference. As Julian Norman & all the other lawyers endlessly explained. Prisons is one key example. Yes you can be transferred to a female prison without one, like Karen White was, but if you have one, you are AUTOMATICALLY put in a female jail, with no more risk assessment than would be done on a biological women. You are treated exactly the same as a biological women, and you don't even count as trans in the stats. That's a huge difference.

Goodwin v United Kingdom had nothing to do with marriage.

Really?

The applicant in this case lived as a woman and would only wish to marry a man. As she had no possibility of doing so, she could therefore claim that the very essence of her right to marry had been infringed

The court ruled that there had been a breach of Article 12, the right to marry.

Here is a link to the Hansard records by Hairy Legged Harpy.

mobile.twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049289194370002945?s=20

I'm going to tweet out a few of the illuminating comments from the debates that led to the GRA 2004, to save you all ploughing through Hansard

One of the primary motivations (if not the foremost) for the bill was to avoid legalising same sex marriage. This featured VERY heavily in the discussions.

Always v helpful is Hairy.

A GRC can be revoked by the Sec of State if it is obtained fraudulently. The Sec of State notified the court in Freddie’s case that he chose not to exercise that option. This is recorded in the Court Ruling on the case.

A GRC can be revoked on request and it will be recorded by the GRC panel that the original GRC was issued in error. The person also needs to submit a new application for a GRC. The Panel would then issue a new GRC so that the person can have another new birth certificate issued.

This process is recorded in the GRC Panel Minutes, in response to a question submitted about the process if someone wanted to revert legally to their birth sex. Whether it has ever happened is another matter entirely.

Theoretically, there is a technical difficulty in that any applicant for a GRC should submit medical evidence that they suffer from gender dysphoria. That might be true, in the sense that they now experience discomfort being legally identified as the wrong sex. However, it might rather be the case that they no longer suffer the dysphoria that made them eligible to obtain a GRC, ie. that they are cured.

I am convinced from reading the GRC Panel minutes that the Panel would find a way to make this happen that causes as little distress as possible. They record details of the type of work conducted by staff between meetings, such as the considerable amount of time spent contacting applicants by phone to talk them through the process, provide advice and reassurance, etc.

This process is on another planet from the genuinely complex, massively time-consuming and degrading gate-keeping familiar to anyone who has applied for any sort of disability benefit. The GRC Panel WANTS people to navigate the system successfully - it’s not a “test”, it’s a compassionately guided, administrative process with set requirements in terms of documentation to be submitted.

The GRC Panel minutes (they do NOT discuss individual cases) were released to Maya Forstater following a FOI Request. They make fascinating reading as it is clear as day that the Panel bends over backwards to accommodate and assist applicants.

It is also clear that the approval process is strictly administrative, simply making sure that the documentation submitted complies with the legislation. There is no sense in which the panel makes value judgments and all the drama queen rubbish about it being a “degrading” process is a load of BS.

I’ve seen social media posts from people claiming how awful it was when they “went in front of a panel” - that never happens. There is no provision to meet an applicant - it’s all done on paperwork.

The GRC Panel minutes are linked in this article by Maya Forstater:

”LONG, SLOW, DEMEANING, INTRUSIVE AND DISTRESSING or SWIFT, PROFESSIONAL AND RESPECTFUL?”

mforstater.medium.com/long-slow-demeaning-intrusive-and-distressing-or-swift-professional-and-efficient-e100f2fb41f8

Ta, Molesmokes.

I seem to recall Keira Bell (I think) talking about her GRC and not being able to get it undone, because of the "dysphoria" requirement.

But it's perfectly possible she hasn't made the attempt, and it would just be a question of putting "n/a" in the relevant box and a bit of explanation in the comments...

Related - does anyone know what the procedure would be for someone wanting to get a record change on the grounds of actually being assigned the wrong sex at birth? No dysphoria or gender identity claims, you just were recorded wrong - likely due to a DSD or maybe a "Brazil"-style clerical error?

Would the GRC panel handle that?

I have no GRC and I have no intention of getting one. Three main reasons.

1. I do not want to falsify my birth certificate, which is an accurate record of my birth.
2. Neither do I want our marriage certificate to be changed. If I was granted a GRC, our marriage certificate would need to be changed to show that we were a same-sex couple who had been married in a register office. We were actually married in a church, but churches don't do same-sex marriages. We would even be able to change the date of our marriage (for consistency) but we wouldn't be compelled to do that. It feels like a dogs dinner.
3. Why bother? As others have said, I can change everything apart from my birth certificate, marriage certificate (neither of which I want to change) and certain pensions records without a GRC. Trans people might complain about Corbett v Corbett (that put a stop to the previous informal process that changed birth certificates) but it left in place the right to change passports, driving licences, bank records, medical records (!!!), and the rest with - at most - a letter from your GP. We had effective Self-ID in 1970, and nobody else realised. How good was that?

The reason I got involved in this campaign from 2016 was that I did realise and I figured that we were shooting ourselves in the foot. Or more likely Stonewall UK and others were shooting us in the foot for reasons I did not understand at the time).

My thinking has developed since then but I still view this entire campaign for legal Self-ID as a massive own goal.

They would go through the GRC process. This is recognised by the GRC Panel and Government as an issue for Intersex People who need to obtain a GRC. They still need to get a diagnosis of dysphoria to comply with the legislation but the panel is aware that this is a formality. It is one of the issues considered when Reform of the GRA was being proposed.

There are separate processes for Intersex people whose sex was incorrectly recorded at birth. See for example chapter 6 of "Variations in Sex. Characteristics*. Technical Paper." January 2019, published by the Government Equalities Office.

I hope this link works.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/771468/VSC_Technical_Paper_Web_Accessible.pdf

Thanks Debbie! I am out of date :-)

@Molesmokes: there is nothing to stop Intersex people using the GRA on the same terms as everyone else, if that is what they want to do.

But the GRA and GRC doesn't really change your sex. The House of Lords was keen to avoid peerages being affected. And, while everyone used to think that a GRC would grant an access all areas pass to transwomen, the campaigning by Nicola Williams and others has challenged that notion.

We would even be able to change the date of our marriage

Really??? I'd not heard that nugget.

I guess this sort of makes sense if you're convinced trans people are so incredibly endangered they need to be treated like secret agents or people in witness protection programs.

Entire false histories created so as not to "reveal" their true sex. Takes a certain fantastical mindset to think that the effort can be justified. And taking yourself a bit too seriously.

Does seem rather American - doing the Mission Impossible thing with lots of face masks and self-destructing briefings, rather than just doing what James Bond does - wandering in under his real name and saying he works for "Universal Exports".

Seriously, a rubber mask isn't going to stop you being dunked in a shark tank. And no-one's installing proper shark tanks these days anyway. No respect for tradition.

A GRC can be revoked by the Sec of State if it is obtained fraudulently. The Sec of State notified the court in Freddie’s case that he chose not to exercise that option.

That’s interesting, MoleSmokes. I didn’t know that. Hard to think of anything more female than getting pregnant. So, if that could be cited as a precedent, it would be very difficult to get, say, a rapist’s GRC revoked.

When I spoke to a transsexual with a GRC she told me that one of the reasons for the interview to gain a GRC was to check that the motivation for transition was not primarily for sexual gratification.

That question would disqualify a number of the activists active on Twitter, whose posts and particularly their pictures make their motivation clear.

I wondered if the decision by the Sec of State was in order to allow Freddie’s case to go ahead so that the law could be tested and clarified. There was no reason cited in the judgement but maybe there was correspondence in which it was explained? Not that an explanation would be required.

Now that the law has been clarified that a legal man can be a Mother then maybe it could be argued that a legal woman can be convicted of rape under English law?

Scottish law has already been changed to allow a female with a phalloplasty to be convicted of rape and all gendered pronouns have been removed so “she” can definitely be convicted of rape:

www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2009/9/section/1

What an unholy mess the law is when changing the name on your gas bill can constitute “living as a woman” while giving birth is apparently compatible with “living as a man”.

There are no interviews for a GRC, it is all done on paperwork. There should however be a clinical assessment for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to complete the paperwork.