Draft bill would make changing sex on birth certificate “less intrusive and less traumatic”.
Proposals to reform how transgender people change the sex on their birth certificates will are a step in the right direction towards greater equality, according to leading LGBTI organisations.
The Scottish Government’s draft Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill would introduce a raft of changes to the current system, which dates back to 2004.
These include removing the current requirements for psychiatric and medical reports, which have been branded demeaning and invasive.
The proposals would also allow 16 and 17-year-olds to apply for a gender recognition certificate and move to a system whereby a trans person makes a legal declaration confirming the sex in which they have been living for at least 3 months and their intention to continue to do so for the rest of their life.
More than 65% of respondents to a consultation on the current system agreed with the proposed reform to a statutory declaration system, which will simplify how transgender people change the sex on their birth certificates.
Speaking in the run-up to last week’s general election, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the reforms would make the legal process of changing gender “less intrusive, less bureaucratic and less traumatic for trans people”.
She added: “I am a supporter of trans rights, I’m a supporter of women’s rights and I think it is incumbent on people like me to demonstrate that those things aren’t and needn’t be in tension and in competition. I am a lifelong feminist. I would not be proposing or arguing for something that I thought would be ‘trampling women’s rights’.”
The proposals have been welcomed by charities and campaign groups including the Scottish Trans Alliance, Equality Network, LGBT Youth Scotland, Stonewall Scotland and LGBT Health and Wellbeing.
James Morton, Scottish Trans Alliance manager, said: “The current process to change the sex on a trans person’s birth certificate is a humiliating, offensive and expensive red-tape nightmare which requires them to submit intrusive psychiatric evidence to a faceless tribunal panel years after they transitioned.
“What’s written on a trans person’s birth certificate is not the deciding factor for their access to single-sex services or sports competitions. The reasons trans people change the sex on their birth certificate are so that they no longer have the worry of being ‘outed’ by that last piece of paperwork not matching their other ID, and to be sure that, when they die, nobody can erase their hard-won identity and right to be recorded as themselves.
“We are very pleased that the draft bill is based on statutory declaration not psychiatric evidence and that it reduces the age for application from 18 to 16. However, we are disappointed that the Scottish Government has chosen not to include under 16s or non-binary trans people in the draft bill. We urge the Scottish Government to expand the bill so that all trans people can have equal inclusion and acceptance within Scottish society.”
Dr Rebecca Crowther, Policy Coordinator at Equality Network, added: “As a lesbian feminist woman, I know that trans rights are not in contradiction of, nor counter to, the fight for women’s rights and equality, of which I am part.
“Scotland’s national women’s organisations broadly support the reform of the Gender Recognition Act to a statutory declaration system. Now that the draft bill has been published, it is very clear that it does not make any changes to the Equality Act’s single-sex services provisions, so will have no effect on the way single-sex spaces can choose to operate.”
