Times- SNP-Green coalition moves to simplify trans self-identification

 

SNP-Green coalition moves to simplify trans self-identification

Work on a bill to make it easier for trans people to legally change the gender on their birth certificate has resumed, Shona Robison, the social justice secretary, said

ALAMY

Mike Wade

Friday September 03 2021, 12.01am, The Times

Contentious plans to allow trans people to self-identify their gender will be brought forward by the SNP-Green coalition, despite questions about the quality of an official consultation.

Shona Robison, the social justice secretary, confirmed that work had resumed on a bill that aims “to improve and simplify the process” by which a trans person can legally change the gender on their birth certificate.

At present applicants must be 18 years old, supply evidence of a medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria and swear an oath that they have been living in their new gender for two years.

The Scottish government is proposing to relax some of these requirements by allowing trans people to self-identify their gender, scrapping the need for a medical report. The two-year period would be cut to three months.

The government-backed consultation found a “small majority” of 215 organisations, which included councils, NHS health boards, political parties and charities, were broadly in favour of relaxing the rules. Analysis of individual respondents, who unlike organisations did not have their comments published, show a country divided.

On the question of whether the minimum age at which a person can apply for legal gender recognition should be reduced from 18 to 16, opinion among individual respondents in Scotland split in half, with each on 49 per cent. “That no overall breakdown is available for the 16,843 individual responses feels like a significant omission,” Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, the policy analysts, said.

Both sides agreed on one thing: the debate was “highly polarised”, “toxic” and “underpinned by a culture, and in particular a social media culture, in which people are being bullied and harassed by those taking a different view”.

In the consultation, the organisations supporting self-identification “tended to see the case for change as being clear and pressing”, researchers found, and tended to agree that the age at which a person could apply for legal gender recognition should be reduced to 16.

They tended to disagree with the notion that there should be a period of reflection, or any requirement to live in an acquired gender for a period of time.

“Many individuals” shared these perspectives, along with the “considerable majority” of children and young people’s groups, lesbian, gay, bisexual, LGBT and trans goups, political parties, and organisations in health, social care and the third sector.

Opponents of Gender Recognition Act reform wanted the bill scrapped, raising concerns about the removal of the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before anyone receives a gender recognition certificate.

“These respondents were often very concerned about the potential impact of the proposed changes on society in general, but on the safety and wellbeing of women and girls in particular,” the authors said. “This was the perspective of many individual respondents and the considerable majority of the women’s groups and religious or belief bodies that responded.”

The report added: “It was also argued that women’s sex-based rights will be compromised, with potential effects on women’s sport, medical services, rights to equal pay and women-only shortlists.

“However, many of those broadly supporting a statutory declaration-based system rejected the idea that the move would be harmful to women, with some of those making this point noting that they were women and feminists.”