The United Kingdom is abandoning a plan to allow trans people to correct their legal gender without receiving a medical diagnosis first.
On Tuesday, Women and Equalities Minister Liz Truss unveiled long-delayed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, which allow transgender citizens to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate recognizing a legal gender change. Trans activists have long complained that the process is extremely arduous: It requires, for instance, submitting evidence to a panel that an individual has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and has been living as their true identity for at least two years.
In the last 16 years, data shows that only 5,000 people have completed the process successfully. Receiving a Gender Recognition Certificate allows trans people to correct the gender listed on their birth certificate, among other things.
But while Truss claimed that Downing Street planned to reduce the application cost from £140 (or $178 in U.S. currency) to a “nominal amount,” she maintained that a proposal which would allow trans people to self-identify their gender is “not the top priority for transgender people” at the current moment.
“Perhaps their most important concern is the state of trans healthcare,” she said in a public statement. “Trans people tell us that waiting lists at NHS gender clinics are too long. I agree, and I am deeply concerned at the distress it can cause.”
Downing Street’s recommendations, which include streamlining the application process by moving online and expanding the number of gender clinics, fly in the face of a years-long consultation rolled out during Theresa May’s administration. Responses were collected from over 100,000 people, and nearly two-thirds supported abolishing the requirement of a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to the BBC.
A separate survey conducted by YouGov and the LGBTQ+ news site PinkNews earlier this year found that 50% of U.K. residents supported allowing trans people to self-ID, while just 27% opposed the idea.
Despite Truss’ claims that the changes would make the task of correcting an individual’s gender “kinder and more straightforward,” LGBTQ+ groups said the reforms pushed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government don’t address many of their key concerns. For instance, the Gender Recognition Act doesn’t allow individuals to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate until the age of 18, and advocates have called for the minimum age to be lowered.
Nancy Kelley, CEO of the U.K. charity Stonewall, said the declaration amounts to “minimal administrative changes,” calling it a “shocking failure in leadership.”
“Today, the U.K. government has fallen far short on its promise to reform the Gender Recognition Act, and has missed a key opportunity to progress [LGBTQ+] equality,” she said in a statement. “While these moves will make the current process less costly and bureaucratic, they don’t go anywhere near far enough toward meaningfully reforming the act to make it easier for all trans people to go about their daily life.”
Mermaids, a U.K.-based support group for trans children, added in a press release that the planned reforms “make no mention of non-binary identities.”
The gaps in the government’s effort aren’t entirely surprising, however. Earlier this year Truss signaled a potential desire to ban trans children from receiving gender-affirming treatments, telling a parliamentary committee that kids under the age of 18 should be protected from making “irreversible decisions.”
Although the self-ID proposal has ignited backlash among TERF groups and a seemingly never–ending transphobic tirade from author J.K. Rowling, advocates noted that other countries have allowed trans people to correct their documents without a doctor’s signoff for years. These nations include Argentina, Malta, Norway, and Portugal, none of which have witnessed major social upheaval as a result.
Ireland, for instance, instituted a “demedicalized system for gender recognition” five years ago “without any problematic outcomes,” noted Mermaids.
The Gender Recognition Act could be revisited under a future administration, which could be coming sooner rather than later given Johnson’s extremely poor poll numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic. But for now, Truss maintained that the 2004 bill struck the correct “proper checks and balances in the system,” while also providing “support for people who want to change their legal sex.”
“We want transgender people to be free to live and to prosper in a modern Britain,” she said.
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