A Counter To JK Rowling’s Article in The Times
I try and ignore what JK Rowling is posting but it is kinda hard to ignore and when she is given the platform of a newspaper to post misinformation, I feel the need to counter. (By the way, I copied and pasted this from my FB)
So JK Rowling was given an entire opinion piece in The Times yesterday to write about her opposition to the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland.
Let’s make this clear. Who or who doesn’t have access to single-sex spaces has nothing to do with the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. It never has done. It is covered by the Equality Act of 2010 where there are actually exemptions where a trans person can be refused access to a single-sex service upon a case by case basis where the goal is to meet a legitimate aim. It however, is not allowed to be a blanket ban.
The one exception to this is prisons, where the accepted practice is that you initially go by what is recorded on a person’s birth certificate and a panel should meet on where a trans prisoner is to be held.
The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 covers birth certificates and a persons tax record. When issued with a Gender Recognition Certificate a trans person is issued a new birth certificate in their acquired gender and their legal sex is altered for tax purposes.
This enables a trans person to marry in their acquired gender and for their death certificate to also read the same when they die. It also places a few additional protections. Like for example, a person with GRCs previous gender is not allowed to be disclosed without their consent unless necessary.
Scotland’s proposed change removes the medicalisation of being trans which JK Rowling somehow argues will increase medicalisation of children. Not sure how demedicalisation leads to further medicalisation. Plus I have an interesting note about the medical process here.
So to get a doctor to sign off on the fact you intend to live in your acquired gender for the rest of your life you are actually required as part of the medical process to use single-sex facilities of your acquired gender to get that sign off. As I said, single-sex facilities are not under the remit of the Gender Recognition Act, but to get the necessary sign offs to meet the present requirements of the Gender Recognition Act you HAVE to use those facilities. To get sign off for surgery you HAVE to use those facilities.
How do I know all this? Cos unlike JK Rowling who has no experience of being a trans person in the UK and who has no expertise on the subject besides having a seeming obsession with trans people, I am a trans woman who has gone through the entire process from start to finish.
I realised I should be a girl when I was 10 (2003).
I came out when I was 15 and got referred to the local gender identity clinic that same year (2008).
I had my name changed in 2012.
I had gender reassignment surgery in 2016.
I got my gender recognition certificate in 2017, after initially being rejected in 2016 because for some reason the Gender Recognition Panel decided the letter from my Gender Identity Clinic didn’t meet their criteria. The Gender Identity Clinic who provide these letters fairly routinely.
And before I go I just want to highlight this. The proposed reform to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 in Scotland are to remove the medical aspects, lower the age to 16 from 18 and make it so you have to only live 3 months in your acquired gender as opposed to 2 years.
JK Rowling argues there is no measure really for someone living in their acquired gender and it is one point I’m tempted to agree with her on. However, the medical process that JK Rowling as a cisgender* woman has never experienced does seem to have a measure for this.
Most of you on here know me fairly well. You will know in day-to-day life my go to outfit is jeans, t-shirt, plaid shirt and depending on the weather maybe a hoodie. At work black trousers and a plaid shirt. It is genuinely how I feel comfortable.
At my appointments at the GIC though, I’d sit down and one of the first things the doctor would do is examine how I was dressed.
Doctor: Hmmmm, I see your wearing jeans today. That’s rather masculine attire isn’t it?
Me: They’re from the women’s section.
Doctor: (dismissively) Hmmmm. (writes notes)
And I heard it a lot, that how I choose to dress is not in keeping with the gender roles the GIC expect I conform to as a woman. That I’d never get hormones and surgery if I didn’t put on make-up and a skirt for my appointments. And I do not exaggerate. I don’t know if they still do it but Porterbrook GIC had an image consultant who REPEATEDLY asserted these things to me during my appointments with her.
Honestly, my appointments to Porterbrook GIC felt like a trip to the fucking 1950s where women were expected to be prim and proper housewives.
I’d like to imagine the gender identity clinics have improved but frankly I still don’t hear good things to this day. And God, JK Rowling and her friends like to talk about how trans people are re-inforcing regressive gender stereotypes. Well, the medical process you want us to continue to go through to get a GRC, oh boy is it full of regressive gender stereotypes.
- Who has access to single-sex spaces is not covered by the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, but by the Equality Act of 2010 which does have a single-sex exemption clause where trans people can be excluded from a single-sex service on a case by case basis, where the goal is to meet a legitimate aim.
- The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 covers what my birth certificate says, whether I am husband or a wife when I marry, what gender is recorded on my death certificate and in a day and age when it was less equal, my tax and pension rights.
*cisgender means someone whose gender (sense of self) matches up with their sex. For lack of a better word it is the opposite of being transgender. Like straight is the counterpart to gay, cisgender is the counterpart to transgender.
