#Gender recognition

[our-trans-punk-experience]

TRANS UK

You may already be aware but the UK Supreme Court has ruled on the definition of a woman in UK law and it is not in our favour.

"The UK Supreme Court has unanimously decided that the definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010 refers solely to biological sex, and does not include people with a Gender Recognition Certificate."

What this means is that being assigned at birth the biological sex of female means you are legally a woman, regardless, and being assigned the biological sex of male at birth means you can never legally be a woman, regardless.

Trans people still have protection under the law as "gender reassignment or presumed gender reassignment" remains a protected characteristic of the Equality Act 2010. However, trans women do not have the right to sex-based protections anymore, even if that was the reason for discrimination, and can be legally excluded from women-only spaces.

Obviously this is horrifying and disheartening, but it's important that you have all the facts. For anyone who isn't aware, here's a short timeline so yk what happened and who to blame

2018, Scottish Government passed the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act, which happened to include those with Gender Recognition Certificates/ living as women and undergoing transition as women for this purpose

2023, Scottish Government passed the Gender Recognition Reform as an amendment to the Gender Recognition Act. This would have made it easier to legally change gender

January 2023 Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Government used powers given by Section 35 of the Scotland Act (powers that allow UK government to veto Scottish legislation despite their devolved power) to block this.

Despite that particular reform being blocked, the Scottish definition of womanhood remained and this freaked out the group For Women Scotland, who got a case appealed all the way to the Supreme Court to challenge the Scottish Government. Case began November 2023

The group For Women Scotland is significantly funded by J.K. Rowling, who's money will have been a big help to them in their legal fees for this case. There will be other prominent donors

The case is called to interpret the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, and is against the Scottish Ministers. They are being represented by their lawyers rather than appearing in court and have mostly not been commenting.

The Labour Government has been called on for comment and Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson says the government supports maintaining the sanctity on single sex spaces, and they appreciate clarity in the law

That brings us back up to date. Ask if you have further questions or worries, and please stay strong

[vlovann]

I’ve heard that some non-binary and transgender friends are having issues with their passports being denied.

I want to remind you that there are a lot of other countries that are accepting with real protections of the LGBT+ community and I’m sure, like my girlfriend and I, you’re looking at them specifically for getting out.

I had a realization that if more states start denying gender corrections on passports, I understand that it will be painful and I’m sorry the world is coming to it, but it might be safer to retract the request, let it revert to your incorrect identity, using your real identity socially when safe, and use that to get the hell out of America. Then, once you’re safe and a citizen, you should be able to get your gender changed in your new home.

I am unsure if the current state of America justifies applying for asylum to other countries, yet, or if it has to get even worse, but I already think it should be.

I’ve done my best to gather information from the top safest countries for LGBT+ people (in no particular order) below:

Norway (16+, guardian permission, citizen or registered resident): https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/forms/changing-gender/

Iceland (under 15 needs guardian permission and/or expert statement and case consideration, unsure about citizenship, but most likely similar to others): https://www.government.is/topics/human-rights-and-equality/equality/lgbti-affairs/

In Iceland, no one can come for your rights. It just ends there, period. No explanation needed.

Sweden (18+, guardian permission, registered in Sweden, gender dysphoria assessment, “transsexualism” diagnosis and gender assessment team contact for at least two years according to, unsure of citizenship, most likely similar to others): https://www.rfsl.se/en/organisation/vard-for-transpersoner/transvaard/

Denmark (I can only find an LGBT Denmark article about how families with a non-binary minor are encouraged to apply to state their gender identity, I’m assuming citizenship or residency is required. My iPhone is saying a lot of these websites are trying to steal my information and the ‘visit site anyway’ button doesn’t do anything 🙄): https://lgbt.dk/en/denmark-opens-up-to-legal-gender-change-for-minors/

Netherlands (16+, citizen or resident for 1 year, expert statement, meaning a declaration to an expert that you are not your assigned gender and understand the risks): https://www.denhaag.nl/en/certificates-and-official-documents/change-your-registered-gender-you-were-born-abroad/

Germany (14+, guardian permission, easier for citizens, but options seem to be available if you aren’t registered yet if I understood correctly): https://dublin.diplo.de/ie-en/self-determination-2689792

Spain (all ages, but under 16 needs guardian permission, semi-related as of last year allowing illegal immigrants to earn residency and work permits according to PBS.org, citizenship needed as far as I can tell): https://administracion.gob.es/pag_Home/en/Tu-espacio-europeo/derechos-obligaciones/ciudadanos/familia/genero.html#-92e7156cb2a7

Malta (16+, citizens, people protected under their Refugee act, anyone entitled to an ID card, assuming similar residency of other countries; if you already have an official X from your previous country, they will honor it): https://humanrights.gov.mt/legal-gender-recognition-and-bodily-integrity/b

Portugal (+ name change, legal age or 16-17 through guardian or legal representative, need citizen card): https://www2.gov.pt/en/servicos/pedir-o-registo-de-mudanca-de-sexo-e-de-nome-proprio

Canada (all ages, presumably filled by parents under 16, citizen and immigrant resources readily available): https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-passports/change-sex.html

Most countries will require citizenship or residency. Some don’t explicitly say.

Feel free to comment or reblog with any corrections or additional countries or inside citizen information! Please help with more resources if you can. I can’t find or access some government websites because Apple is stupid.

[nekojamas]

I just read the most gutwrenching news that the Court of the Appeal has denied Ryan Castellucci their legal gender in the UK.

To say that I am sick to the absolute bottom of my stomach is an understatement.

As a fellow non-binary person this is an utter slap to the faces of anyone living under the assumption that the United Kingdom had even a scrap resembling justice or fairness left in the dregs of it's government.

The Lord Justice Ravinder Singh and the Gender Recognition Panel should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

Full Appeal Document Available Here

With the direction the UK government is moving in, and the extreme swing to the right we're experiencing right now, it's difficult not to give up hope. But the absolute grit and determination that Ryan displayed in the face of the full brunt of government disregard and callousness is commendable.

Their GoFundMe to cover their legal costs is still active and can be donated to here

[commiepinkofag]

EU Court Ruling Mandates Recognition of Gender Changes Across Member Statesh

In a landmark ruling on October 4, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed that all European Union (EU) member states must legally recognize gender and name changes made by individuals in any other EU country. This decision, based on a specific case involving Romania, sets a significant precedent for the rights of transgender individuals across the EU. According to the court’s judgment, refusing to acknowledge these changes violates EU law. The ECJ emphasized that any regulation preventing the recognition of legally acquired gender identity in another member state infringes on the person’s fundamental rights under EU legislation.

ZENIT - Englis

[ukftm]

Hi I was wondering what the typical process for getting your gender legally recognised is once you're 18? Do you have to have gone through any medical changes or have a gender dysphoria diagnosis or something? And how do you generally go about it all? Thank you!

Hi Anon,

We have a lot of posts detailing how you can change your name and gender marker. So if you search our page for name change and GRC posts you should find all the information you need there.

[tigergingicat]

*misgenders*

*is challenged*

*doubles down*

*is roundly castigated*

*adjourns panel rather than use correct gender*

You won’t see this every day but making sure the system cannot proceed unless women have a seat at the table is the best possibly thing you can do in a place of privilege.

[firstoccupier]

Trump Signs Executive Order Recognizing Only Two Genders: Nation Confused but Compliant

WPS News Staff Reporter, and Senior Fashion CorrespondentBaybay City | January 23, 2025 In a move that has left legal scholars scratching their heads and social media users reaching for their keyboards, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20, 2025, officially declaring that the United States now recognizes only two genders. In a ceremony attended by a select group of…

[iffeelscouldkill]

🍀🍀🍀🍀💛🤍💜🖤🍀🍀🍀🍀

Best of luck and legal fortitude to Ryan Castellucci today

Ryan's in court against THE ENTIRE UK GOVERNMENT, fighting for the accurate records and documents to which they are already entitled under UK law!

They've got a good case and good lawyers, and if they win it could change EVERYTHING for nonbinary people in the UK. I cannot express how grateful I am that they're using their nerves of steel for this cause that is very important to me.

[Their costs are significant, so if you've got a spare couple of quid, their crowdfunder can be found here. Thank you!]

[angelholme]

The Knight of The Realm and would be leader of this country makes it clear that he believes in devolution and supports the idea that if a region is devolved it has the right to manage its own affairs.

And yet, somehow, when it comes to Scotland and Gender Recognition, he is happy to trample all over Scotland’s rights to manage its own affairs.

It seems that the right for devolved areas to manage their own affairs only goes so far. And only when it is helpful and convenient to him.

It is only helpful when can win votes.

The Knight of The Realm — it turns out — is as shitty a human being as every other person. And as fit to run the country as every other pretender to the throne.

[commiepinkofag]

EU Court of Justice strengthens trans rights by calling for the automatic recognition in birth certificates

The importance of this judgement extends beyond the applicant’s individual circumstance, and underscores the broader issue faced by trans people whose legal gender recognition in one Member State is not acknowledged elsewhere in the EU, preventing them to travel freely, live, work or study across the EU, or even to vote, as any other citizen is able to. The judgement confirms the principle that rights legally obtained in one Member State must remain valid throughout the EU.

Read the full Joint statement by ACCEPT, ILGA-Europe, TGEU

[coochiequeens]

It did not occur to me, as a man, to put myself in the shoes of a woman, encountering a “legal woman” with male genitals in a women-only space." And that is coming from a human rights professor.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/27/i-lost-friends-when-i-changed-my-mind-on-trans-rights/

I changed my mind on trans rights – and lost multiple friends

As a human rights lawyer, I never questioned the trans movement. But, after a lightbulb moment, I publicly changed my position

King’s College London human rights professor Robert Wintemute believes some members of the transgender-rights movement do not understand that ‘women have human rights too’ Credit: Geoff Pugh

By Robert Wintemute 27 May 2025

I am a human rights lawyer and professor at King’s College London. Until 2018, I supported all the demands of the transgender-rights movement. But since then, I have changed my mind.

Why? Because I finally understood that some demands conflict with the rights of women and are therefore unreasonable.

I first encountered transgender rights as a University of Oxford PhD student, researching the human rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals and same-sex couples. The claims of transsexual persons, as they were then known, seemed different to me. I did not understand them, so I was reluctant to comment on them.

And when, in the 2002 Christine Goodwin case (Goodwin said that she had faced sexual harassment at work following gender-affirming surgery), the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK must amend the sex on the birth certificates of “post-operative transsexuals” to reflect their “new sexual identity”, I thought that this must be progress. At last, the UK would have to catch up with other European countries.

Two years later, when the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 went well beyond that ruling, by not requiring any surgery or other medical treatment (a person with a beard and male genitals could become legally female), it struck me as very generous but I did not question it.

I assumed that whatever the transgender community demanded must be reasonable.

They knew what they needed. It did not occur to me, as a man, to put myself in the shoes of a woman, encountering a “legal woman” with male genitals in a women-only space.

As such, when I joined a group of experts in Indonesia to draft the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles, widely cited as “best practice” on sexual orientation and gender identity, I did not question the proposals of the transgender experts.

Everything changed in 2018. My lightbulb moment came at a university summer school. I was asked to explain the “spousal veto” under UK law: a wife must consent, if her husband wishes to change his legal sex to female and in turn make their opposite-sex marriage into a same-sex marriage. I said that the husband’s human right to change his legal sex could be limited to respect “the rights of others” (the wife’s right not to be in a same-sex marriage against her will).

A transgender student could not understand how I could compare the husband’s “fundamental human right” with the wife’s right under “a contract” (their marriage). Feeling frustrated, I said: “Trans rights don’t trump everything else!”

The transgender student became angry and stormed out of the classroom. Finally, it dawned on me that some members of the transgender-rights movement did not seem to understand that women have human rights too.

Over the next two years, I began to speak with women about their concerns about some transgender demands.

One woman asked if I had read Principle 31 of the 2017 Yogyakarta Principles (in which I did not participate). I had not done so and was shocked when I read it.

It boldly claimed that every country in the world must remove sex from birth certificates and, until then, allow change of legal sex based on self-identification (without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria).

In 2021, I publicly changed my position. On April 1 of that year, in an interview published in The Critic, I criticised Principle 31 and suggested for the first time that allowing change of legal sex might not be necessary to protect the rights of transgender people.

Fifteen days later, citing the interview, an LGBT organisation terminated its relationship with me, after more than twenty years.

To an LGBT-rights activist I had known for just as long, I wrote: “I hope that we can still be friends!” He replied that he wanted “to take a break for a bit” (now four years and counting).

A month later, I became a trustee of the charity LGB Alliance (founded in 2019 after Stonewall began to prioritise transgender issues) and went on to speak at its first annual conference.

In that speech, I focused on the legal changes I had witnessed since 2002 and linked the political tensions surrounding transgender rights to an “abuse of sympathy”, which had in turn led to an “escalation of demands”.

I charted how we had shifted from change of legal sex after surgery, to change of legal sex without medical treatment but with safeguards (a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and a two-year waiting period), to change of legal sex based on self-identification (with no safeguards) and finally to removing sex from birth certificates (meaning that there is no legal sex to change).

These were ideas I carried forwards to a staff research seminar at King’s in November of 2021 – albeit not without controversy. The Dean of the School of Law rejected calls to cancel the event and showed his support for freedom of expression by attending. Three security guards were posted outside the room (a first in my thirty years at the university), but no protesters appeared.

Two years later, in January 2023, I was scheduled to give the same talk at Montréal’s McGill University Faculty of Law (where I had studied).

But this time I faced a hostile mob of between 100-200 students.

See rest of article

[princessanneftw]

Princess Anne, Chair of the IOC Members Election Commission, speaking on day two of the 142nd IOC session in Paris on 24 July 2024 🇫🇷

[halfbaked00q]

we need to put James Bond more in the path of queer elders.

Like yes he may be a baby queer finally cracking open the rigid hard shell of his adult life persona to explore Other Modes of Being at 40-some odd years. But also that doesn't stop him from being one of the old guard, he still has a wealth of life experiences, and if anything.... I do think he probably either understands on an intuitive level or would quickly pick up/quickly click with the concepts of gender being Performative. So like that wouldn't be a barrier of entry, and just like. I think he would relate to queer elders better from a like comparable life stages standpoint.

but yeah basically lol, I just think it would be very instructive for him and also, like, that he'd find a lot of camaraderie with elder butches especially lmao. And especially again elder butch activists!! like, in some ways, both him & them have lived through a lifetime of wars that are not wars. And they both had to fight tooth and nail to get here today, but by god are they still alive and screaming in defiance in the face of those that would see them dead.

I think there's a lot he could relate to with them, but also, a lot he could learn from & about with them. Like, queer joy just Hits Different when you see it in queer elders.

[judejuggs]

what if we didn't have the language to express our differences but we could see ourselves in each other and we were both transmasc monks 😳

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 16, 2025

If the law is an ass, the culture war is a bigger one. How else can one explain the phenomenon of judges at the UK supreme court gathering to determine the definition of a ‘woman’? This landmark case was heard in November, and today the verdict has been reached: ‘The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex’.

So there we have it. We now have confirmation that a person’s sex does not change under the Equality Act simply because he or she holds a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). It is curious to think that this decision could have gone either way. When the Equality Act was penned fifteen years ago, not a single legal mind in the land would have entertained the notion that its references to ‘sex’ and ‘women’ would one day cause confusion. Surely these most unambiguous of terms could not have been open to challenge?

The casual observer might have assumed that the judiciary has gone mad, but there are good reasons why this case was raised. It has come about because of the Scottish government’s view – enshrined in its guidance on the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 – that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refers to ‘gender identity’ rather than, you know, an individual’s potential to produce large or small gametes. From the SNP’s perspective, anyone could be a woman so long as they hold a GRC. But this legal fiction – created in the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 – has created problems, not least that some of those so certificated now seem to believe that this should grant them access to women-only spaces.Upgrade to paid

The court’s decision could never have altered reality, of course. Human beings cannot change sex, no matter what the law says. The legal fiction of ‘gender’ has emboldened various campaign groups over the years to rewrite the law inside their own heads, which is why Stonewall was found to have been representing the law as it ‘would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is’. As a result of this activist meddling, many organisations and even schools have been operating under the assumption that anyone who claims to be female should have access to women’s toilets and changing areas, but this has never been the case. Nor has it even been true that self-identification exists in law, in spite of claims to the contrary by genderists.

For Women Scotland was able to make this challenge because the Scottish government has a duty to comply with the Equality Act in its guidance and legislation. By arguing that a GRC could make a man a woman for the purposes of the 2018 Act, they were effectively prohibiting women from assembling without men. This is a scenario that has already been playing out in Australia, where lesbians are no longer permitted to hold female-only events, because to exclude any man who believes himself to be a woman would be illegal discrimination. In the recent case of Sall Grover, we even had a judge ruling that ‘sex is changeable’. Reader: it isn’t.

For those in any doubt at the absurdity of this debate, here is an excerpt from the submission by Scottish Lesbians, The Lesbian Project and LGB Alliance:

‘It barely needs stating that lesbians are females who are sexually orientated to the bodies of other females. Again, it barely needs stating that there are anatomical differences between males and females. The defining characteristic of a lesbian is that she is not sexually attracted to male bodies, including penises, testicles, male body mass and shape. Nor is she sexually attracted to certificates.’

Anyone seriously attempting to argue against this is irretrievably detached from reality.

The task of the supreme court was interpretative, and their interpretations of the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act should settle many of the more frustrating debates of our times. Ultimately, that we have reached this point at all tells us all we need to know about the careening lunacy of the culture wars. Such has been the power of activists that they have been able to reduce the judiciary to a laughing stock. Their war on women has also been a war on language and reality, and the fact that even the highest judges in the land have been dragooned into the fray is some indication of the extent of their power.

It is reassuring that the supreme court eventually settled on the side of reality, but this war will doubtless continue to rage. Activists have made clear that they consider the law an enemy, and this ruling will not change that. In this most deranging of times, it is worth reiterating the basic facts. No human being has ever changed sex. Men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Trans women are, by definition, male. Trans men are, by definition, female. There is no such thing as a ‘trans child’. ‘Non-binary’ is a fashionable form of self-classification, not an inherent characteristic worthy of protection in law. These are facts that will not bend according to the whims of those who wish to run roughshod over the rights of women and gay people.

Men who wave their GRCs around like magic wands and believe that it transforms them into lesbians are deluded. Thank goodness the judges understood this incontestable truth.

[borealopelta]

group killing ourselves starts in five minutes