It is "a wide gate, leading to a short paddock" according to Naomi - whereas other places have self ID which is a "wide gate to the whole bloody hill side"!
This argument presupposes that the GRA would be replaced by legislation allowing people to change their birth certificates on the basis of Self-ID. That does not necessarily follow.
it is useful in limiting the spread of gender stuff
Seriously, how can the GRA be said to have "limited the spread of gender stuff"?
It did the exact opposite.
The GRA was celebrated by the likes of Stephen Whittle for redefining "sex" in UK law and as a step towards finally abolishing "sex" in UK law, ie. replacing it with "gender", ie. "gender identity". That has always been their ultimate aim.
''Sex Changes'? Paradigm Shifts in 'Sex' and 'Gender' Following the Gender Recognition Act?'
by Stephen Whittle and Lewis Turner, Manchester Metropolitan University
2007
"8.7 As the Gender Recognition Act states that one’s acquired gender becomes one’s legal sex then there is little difference between sex and gender. Indeed sex is preceded and exceeded by gender by the terms of the Gender Recognition Act. Sex in this sense is determined by gender identity – the social role that one chooses to take. This reverses the original gender attribution at birth which as based on the genitals (and strictly speaking not based on other ‘known’ identifiers of biological sex such as chromosomes). For the Gender Recognition Act, the body is irrelevant, as neither bodily modification, nor the presence or lack of a penis is determinative. Moreover, the Gender Recognition Act is performative (see Butler 1990), in that as a form of speech-act, what it ‘does’ is makes gender into sex in law. Indeed, as one of the authors was present at the meeting in the Department of Constitutional Affairs where the question of ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ was discussed, it can be verified that the decision to use gender was to bring a contemporary recognition of the complexities of the question to the Act. The decision to include ‘sex’ as well as gender within the GRA was to acknowledge this and to ensure that the Act could not be challenged."
"Changing sex for the purposes of legal recognition then, is not about changing biology or changing bodies to ‘match’ genders, but about changing how sex is legally defined."
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/621107/1/2007-Whittle%20Turner%20-Sex%20Changes%20-Paradigm%20Shifts%20in%20Sex%20%26%20Gender.pdf
(Whittle could not help bragging that she was "present at the meeting in the Department of Constitutional Affairs where the question of ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ was discussed". Later she went further and admitted/claimed that she was not a passive observer but instead that she had a determinative advisory role.)
giving trans people reasonable rights in relation to the state
That is all that was required of the UK, nothing more. The GRA was criticised by legislators during the passage of the Bill for "gold plating" far beyond what was required of the UK.
In addition, the arguments about equal marriage rights and pensions are no longer valid.
All else that was required of the UK was some sort of recognition that, in so many words, "trans people exist". It was not stipulated that the UK had to allow them to change their birth certificates.
The GRA set in train reams of policy tailored to provide privilege and secrecy.
Likewise, the definition of "Gender Reassignment" was not a mandate that the UK had to adopt. Having been enshrined in the GRA, that wooly definition was then plugged into the Equality Act 2010.
The Labour Government under Tony Blair (and, de facto, Alastair Campbell) at the time of the passage of the GRA Bill wanted to go much further than was required. It got away with it through a combination of stealth, lies and voting power.
Apropos of nothing . . . research results indicate that approximately 5% of heterosexual men are sexually attracted to intact transvestites.
By contrast, homosexual men taking part in those experiments did not experience involuntary indications of sexual arousal.
That is, approx 5% straight men and most gay men really do see them as "chicks with dicks".
Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women
K. J. Hsu*, A. M. Rosenthal, D. I. Miller and J. M. Bailey
2015
d-miller.github.io/assets/HsuEtAl2015.pdf
IMHO the task now for GC top legal brains should be to propose legislation (drafts and or redrafts) that would make repeal of the GRA a political possibility.