APOLOGIES FOR THE WALL OF TEXT!
"The GRC premise that once you change your sex on paper, you can never change it back, is awful. In what other area of law can you make a life changing decision as a young adult and never be able to change it back for the rest of your life? This is not how consent works."
The Labour Government in 2003/04 was determined that there should be no means to revoke a Gender Recognition Certificate. This went against the advice of Government Depts.
So why did they do that? Because it is what trans lobby groups wanted.
Trans lobby groups conceded that some people might detransition and wish to revert legally to their birth sex. However, their bigger agenda was to get acceptance of "transsexualism" as a sort of "biological brain intersex". Allowing for reversion to "birth brain sex" as part of proposed legislation on "Gender Recognition" would work counter to that bigger project.
The Gender Recognition Bill was informed by the Report Of The Interdepartmental Working Group On Transsexual People
April 2000
The Working Group was set up by the Home Secretary in April 1999 with the following terms of reference:
to consider, with particular reference to birth certificates, the need for appropriate legal measures to address the problems experienced by transsexual people, having due regard to scientific and societal developments, and measures undertaken in other countries to deal with this issue.
We were asked to report to Ministers by Easter 2000. Our membership was as follows:
Home Office (Chair)
Department for Education & Employment Foreign & Commonwealth Office
General Register Office for Northern Ireland General Register Office for Scotland Department of Health
Office of Law Reform, Northern Ireland Lord Chancellor’s Department
Office for National Statistics
Scottish Executive
Department of Social Security
National Assembly for Wales
(These next quotes are from the main part of the report, produced by the members listed above. Representations from trans lobby groups are contained in Annexes to the report.)
Page 20
Key stages for Recognition of Change of Gender
4.5 Changing gender is a gradual process, usually lasting over a period of years. There is no common point of change for transsexual people, who will undertake differing amounts of treatment depending on their personal circumstances.
4.6 There are three main stages, each of which might be considered as the point at which full recognition could be given
.
(i) Living in the role of the new gender
4.7 This is the point at which transsexual people can at present be issued with passports, driving licences etc. in their new identity. But at this stage there is a significant chance that some people will revert to their birth gender; and the person concerned will still bear most of the physical characteristics of their birth sex.
(ii) Hormonal Treatment
4.8 At this stage the person concerned will have sought medical intervention. Their body will have at least some physical characteristics of the opposite gender; and although they will still have many physical characteristics of their birth sex they are unlikely to be able to have children. There is however still a chance of reversion to the birth gender.
(iii) After Surgery
4.9 Not all transsexuals, particularly female to male transsexuals, can undergo full reassignment surgery. For most the process is complete (apart from continuing hormonal treatment) after surgery which may not cover the gonads or the genitals.
4.10 A transsexual person who has had, for example, breast implantations or a double mastectomy, combined with hormone treatment, will have clear physical attributes of the opposite gender. There is a reasonable expectation that the change of gender will be permanent, although the possibility of a reversion to the birth sex cannot be ruled out. They would probably not be able to consummate a marriage with someone of their birth sex: but it would almost certainly be impossible for them to father or bear a child.
Page 25
5.1 Transsexual people deal with their condition in different ways. Some live in the opposite sex without any treatment to acquire its physical attributes. Others take hormones so as to obtain some of the secondary characteristics of their chosen sex. A smaller number will undergo surgical procedures to make their bodies resemble, so far as possible, those of their acquired gender. The extent of treatment may be determined by individual choice, or by other factors such as health or financial resources. Many people revert to their biological sex after living for some time in the opposite sex, and some alternate between the two sexes throughout their lives. Consideration of the way forward must therefore take into account the needs of people at these different stages of change.
(Now, what trans lobby groups wanted. Some quotes below do not show the full text of a paragraph.)
Annex 2. MEETING THE NEEDS OF TRANSSEXUAL PEOPLE
A Presentation by: Change, The FTM Network, G&SA, The Gender Trust, GIRES, Liberty and Press for Change
January 19th 2000
page 30
- What Transsexual People Want
2.1 It is often thought that what transsexual people seek in terms of change is the right to have their birth certificates re-issued and the right to marry in their new gender role, but this is only partly true.
2.2 Gender Recognition
2.2.1 Firstly, birth certificate re-issue is not of itself what is sought. Rather we seek changes in the civil registration system so that the ‘public’ and administrative record of who we are reflects the gender in which we identify. . .
Page 33-34
3.7 The Promotion of Social Acceptance
3.7.4 . . . . As our knowledge of all sorts of intersex conditions grows, as medicine increasingly admits to there being a significant number of births in which it is impossible to guarantee that the sex designation given is unquestionable, and as our society increasingly removes the barriers to equality between the sexes, it may be that ‘sex’ is no longer something that we should record about the individual.
Page 35
4.4 Enabling Valid Marriage
4.4.3 We believe that the administrative decision made in the Joella Farmer case was correct. Just as the courts would not dissolve the marriage of an androgen insensitive woman born with vagina and brought up as a girl, who discovers that she has XY chromosomes and gonads. Yet under Ormrod’s criteria, that apparently governs these matters, she would only be 33% woman. The reality is that it is easy enough to determine the sex of a transsexual person, simply by allowing them to live in the gender role that they choose. Sex cannot be determined by percentages.
Page 37
6.4 In addition to help you with your deliberations we have included a short appendix containing 2 documents. The first is a recent expert witness statement to the High Court in the Bellinger case which addresses the question of whether transsexuality is an intersex condition. The second is a comment from Dr Z- J Playdon of the Post Graduate Medical Centre of the University of London, which discusses the nature of medical ‘proof ’ as regards intersex conditions.
Page 38-39
Appendix A
EXPERT WITNESS STATEMENT
- This affidavit is provided by Professor Louis Gooren of the University Hospital of the Vrije Universtiteit of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
- Born in 1943, I am a medical doctor specialising in the field of endocrinology. Within this field, diseases related to disorders of sexual differentiation and the biological process of becoming man or woman are the focus of my work. In 1988 I was appointed Professor and assigned to the treatment of patients who present with gender identity problems as well as other patients with sexual differentiation (intersex) disorders who need hormonal and surgical medical interventions. Over the past 24 years I have worked at the Gender Clinic of the University Hospital, which receives about 150 new patients per year. Approximately 80-90 of them receive actual hormone and surgical therapy . . .
- Gender Identity Disorder (transsexualism) is a medical condition and from my work and other research in this area I now believe that transsexualism is a disorder of sexual differentiation: the process of becoming man or woman as we conventionally understand it.
- The process of sexual differentiation takes place in distinct steps, first the chromosomal configuration is established, next gonadal differentiation, next differentiation of the internal and external genitalia and finally the differentiation of the brain into male or female.
- It is remarkable that in some mammalian species this process of brain sexual differentiation takes place after birth. Swaab and Hofman have shown that one brain structure, that is different between men and women, becomes only sex- dimorphic between the ages of two and four years, well after birth and long after assignment to the male or female sex has taken place. Nature is not free of errors and the process of sexual differentiation is no exception. There are human beings in whom not all traditional criteria of sex are concordant. They may have some biological characteristics of one sex and some of the others, a condition known as intersexed.
8 . . . . it is no longer tenable to claim that the genetic or gonadal criterion determines one’s status as male or female.
- Sexual and nonsexual brain differentiation is now accepted as part of the process of becoming male or female in the mammalian species to which humans belong. . . . it has been hypothesised that in human subjects with gender identity problems the sexual differentiation of their brains has not followed the pattern predicted by their earlier steps in the sexual differentiation process (such as chromosomes, gonad, genitalia) but has followed a pattern typical of the opposite sex in the final stage of that differentiation process; . . .
(This next bit has been debunked.)
-
Interestingly, Zhou, Swaab, Gooren & Hofman, published in 1995 a scientific report that could demonstrate that in one of the human brain structures that is different between men and women, a totally female pattern was encountered in six male-to-female transsexuals. They were able to show that this was not due to the transsexuals’ previous cross-sex hormone treatment. These findings showed that a biological structure in the brain distinguishes male-to-female transsexuals from men. The findings were published in the leading scientific journal (Nature) with a rigorous scientific review process which would not have overlooked essential scientific biases in the design and interpretation of the experiment.
-
In conclusion: Since there is evidence that the sexual differentiation of the brain in the human occurs (also) after birth it is unavoidable that in subjects with errors of the sexual differentiation of the brain, sex assignment takes place after birth, sometimes much later in their lives since it requires a large amount of life experience to discover the predicament of being born in the wrong sex: . . . In the case of a intersexed child it is often possible to tell at birth that the sexual differentiation process has not taken place in a conventional way and so it is possible to make that decision to assign a sex through medical intervention shortly after birth... The decision to recommend hormonal and surgical treatment for a transsexual person takes place much later in life . . .
This expert witness affidavit has been provided to the High Court in the Case of Elizabeth Bellinger (see page 39, Appendix 4 of “Recognising the Identity and Rights of Transsexual and Transgender People in the United Kingdom”, Press For Change 1999).
Page 40
Appendix B
TRANSSEXUALISM AS AN INTERSEX CONDITION
Dear Dr Whittle
Further to your query about the arguments for and against understanding transsexualism as an intersex condition, may I advise as follows.
I would advise government to treat transsexualism “as if it were” an intersex condition. . . . at the start of medical enquiry into transsexualism, two possible theories were advanced, that it was somatic and that it was psychiatric . . .
Evidence was sought to verify either of these theories but no conclusive evidence was found. . . . the circumstance might be described as a physiological condition which was subject to verification by psychiatric analysis - the analysis verified, or proved, that the individual was not mentally ill.
. . . it has not been possible to falsify Benjamin’s original theory, that transsexualism is somatic. . . .
. . . the long-term evidence is that trans people are perfectly mentally stable, unless they have another mental disorder as well as being transsexual, . . .
. . . trans people are not mentally ill. . . .
Thus, I am obliged to advise that if a legal action were taken by the transsexual community, to assert their right to transsexualism being considered to be an intersex condition, then it would undoubtedly win. There is zero evidence that psychiatric intervention can ‘cure’ transsexualism, just as there is zero evidence that psychiatry can ‘cure’ homosexuality. Such a legal action might, at present, be taken against, for example, the American Psychiatric Association, or the Royal College of Psychiatry, or, if government should be seen not to treat transsexualism as if it were an intersex condition, against the UK government . . .
Dr Zoe-Jane Playdon University of London
14 January 2000
(Dr Playdon is a man who says he is a woman)
(Finally, we get to the part where the trans lobby groups minimise and dismiss the interests of detransitioners.)
Page 41 - 43
Annex 3. THE PROBLEMS OF GENDER RE-REGISTRATION
A Consultation Paper To the Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People’s Issues.
Produced by:
Change, The FTM Network, G&SA, The Gender Trust, GIRES, Liberty and Press For Change by:
Christine Burns, Tracey Dean, Roz Kaveney, Mark James, Susan Marshall, Claire McNab, Kathleen Redding, Alexander Whinnom, Stephen Whittle.
16 February 2000
- GENDER RE-REGISTRATION: A RECOMMENDED TWO-STAGE PROCEDURE
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 A problem often highlighted in any discussion of legal recognition of gender reassignment is the problem of people who ‘revert’ to their original gender role, after a period in their new gender role.
1.1.2 This arises, on rare occasions, for several reasons:
● Social stigmatisation, prejudice and discrimination against transsexual people is still a significant feature of a minority of British people, and some people who wish to undergo gender reassignment will find that they cannot face the added pressures these things bring to their gender role transition.
● Some transsexual people will develop health complications either as a result of gender reassignment treatment, especially hormone therapies, or for some other reason and so they will not be able to complete the path to surgical reassignment and they will prefer, without that, to revert to their original gender role.
● A few people with gender identity problems will discover during the ‘real life test’1 that they are unhappy with the decision they have made, and that gender reassignment is not for them.
1.1.4 To resolve this problem we propose a two-stage procedure. The first stage would ensure that trans people could effectively start the real life test. The second stage would further allow those for whom the experience of the real life test is successful, and hence will lead to their permanent adoption of their ‘new’ sex (gender role), full legal recognition for all purposes, including the validity of a new marriage, in their ‘new’ sex.
1.4 Stage Two: The Issue of a ‘Gender Confirmation’ Certificate
1.4.1 People who wished to undergo full gender re-registration would be permitted to make an application no less than (after) two years (in the real life test), Such a delay would eliminate the vast majority of the small minority of people whom, for whatever reason, decide not to continue living permanently in their ‘new’ sex.
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BOOM!! The Government decided to give trans lobby groups what they wanted, ie. a one way street to sex-falsification with no U Turn.
House of Commons Library
The Gender Recognition Bill [HL]
Bill 56 of 2003-04
RESEARCH PAPER 04/15
17 FEBRUARY 2004
Page 67-68
D. Reversal of recognition in acquired gender
In Grand Committee and on Report, Baroness O’Cathain sought to limit the number of times a decision by the Panel might be reversed.180 The Lord Bishop of Winchester drew attention to the statement by the Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People that many people revert to their biological sex after living for some time in the opposite sex, and some alternate between the two sexes throughout their lives.181
Lord Filkin said that it was not the Government’s position that many people change their minds or oscillate between the two. He put the figure at about one per cent.182
Lord Filkin confirmed that the Panel would need to be convinced that a person is committed to a permanent change of gender before granting any application.183
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP04-15/RP04-15.pdf
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To be fair, the alternative would be even more unworkable than what we have now when you consider all the ramifications.
Detransitioners are paying the price for this mess and Liz Truss was not doing anyone any favours by dropping the price of a GRC to £5.
It is worth reading the Report Of The Interdepartmental Working Group On Transsexual People to appreciate the utter insanity of Scotland's Gender Recognition Reform Act, which sought to replace the GRA2004 with an admin process based on self-declaration and which would issue GRCs that can be repeatedly reversed and re-applied ad infinitum.
https://gendercriticalwoman.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Transsexual-Working-Group-2000.pdf