The Scottish parliament will today consider final amendments to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The Bill, a key priority of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP-Green government, will update the Gender Recognition Act 2004, the legislation governing the acquisition of a gender recognition certificate (GRC). Once a person obtains a GRC, ‘the law will recognise them as having all the rights and responsibilities appropriate to a person of their acquired gender’.
At present, a man who wishes the law to recognise him as a woman, or vice versa, must be at least 18 years of age and must undergo a long process based on medical evidence of gender dysphoria. The Bill will change this by jettisoning the requirement for a clinical diagnosis and putting in its place a regime of self-declaration. It will reduce the statutory waiting period from two years to three months plus a further three-month reflection period. It will also lower the age at which a person may embark on the process to 16.
The Bill is an article of faith for Nicola Sturgeon, who believes it does nothing more than simplify the GRC process and expects it will make life easier for trans people. Opponents warn that the legislation is the product of an ideological determination to introduce self-declaration at any cost. Among the costs they predict are legal challenges, implementation problems and, above all, an erosion of the rights of women and girls.
Gender-critical feminists object on philosophical grounds: being a woman, they say, is not a feeling or an identity, but a material reality rooted in biological sex. They object to lowering the age restriction because teenage years are a time of rapid physical and social development – and teenagers are ill-prepared to make such pivotal life decisions.
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