This bill was introduced in the House of Lords early in January 2004 immediately after the Queen's Speech and is jokingly known as the "GerBil". To its credit, the government has consulted very widely and has incorporated as much of the transsexual community's "wish list" as possible. In its draft form, the Bill is 99% acceptable to 99% of the transsexual community. The government had little option over the introduction of this legislation since the European Court of Human Rights has, over the past ten years, been increasingly critical of UK law in its treatment of transsexual people.
[In the discussion below I use the shorthand "new gender". This is, of course, not entirely accurate but is a useful stylistic convenience for me.]
In summary the chief parts of the law are as follows:
The bill is not without some drawbacks:
The debate over the Bill has been interesting. Because of the pressure from the European Court of Human Rights, this Bill is being whipped (MPs have to vote according to their party's policy, or there will be repercussions for them). In fact, it has attracted all-party support: The Lib-Dems have for many years been very supportive of trans issues, the Labour introduced the Bill so their support is not surprising, and the Conservatives also have a policy of support.
Given this, it might seem surprising that the passage of the bill unscathed is not entirely assured. In the event that the bill is so modified and watered down, we could end up in a situation worse than where we started. Moreover, because the Bill was introduced in the Lords, the government cannot invoke the Parliament Act to force the Bill through in a useful form, should it suffer badly at the hands of the "wreckers". [The Parliament Act is a mechanism where a government can, having introduced a Bill in the House of Commons where it is passed, sends the Bill to the House of Lords who then amend it and send it back to House of Commons. If the Lords' amendments are not acceptable to the government, the House of Commons may re-amend the Bill and send it back to the House of Lords. The length of this game of legislative ping-pong can be limited by invoking the Parliament Act by the government to limit the number of times a Bill may amended by the House of Lords. The House of Commons would then have the final say. Because the Gender Recognition Bill was introduced in the House of Lords, the Parliament Act cannot be used.]
Not surprisingly, Lord Tebbit (the Chingford Skinhead) is leading the charge of the "nasty party". His arguments are facile and easily countered by anyone with any real knowledge of the subject (which is non-existent in the Lords). He, however, has a considerable reputation and is likely to have considerable influence over this Bill.
His first contention is that gender is determined by chromosomes. If you are XX you are female, if you are XY you are male goes his facile argument. Hundreds of thousands of geneticists, me included, who actually know something about the issue, would beg to differ. There are at least one hundred known chromosomal conditions where this simple equation fails in humans. It would be interesting to present Lord Tebbit to someone who has AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome - a condition where although testosterone was present in the foetus, the individual was born apparently female, often a very girly girl indeed) whose individual's chromosomes are often of the classic XY form - the reaction would be interesting. He also ignores the issues surrounding other chromosomal abnormalities for example, XXY, XYY, etc. In addition, he ignores the other six metrics of gender identity.
The second plank of Lord Tebbit's objections relate to the issuing of replacement birth certificates. This he describes as an "officially-sanctioned lie" and that "anyone telling the truth would be committing a criminal offence". This, as I see it, is merely a consequence of his first argument. If the objection to recognising gender identity on the basis of a person's feelings and social role fails, then this argument fails along with it.
Lord Moynihan, the sports minister has been rather hysterical about the consequences of the Bill for sport. Some of the newspapers have been wryly observing that if Tim Henman cannot produce a British tennis champion, perhaps Tina Henman might! Lord Moyniham has been successful in having the Bill amended so that there is a two-year waiting period after the granting of a Gender Recognition Certificate, before the individual can participate in regulated sport in their new gender. This is really, in my opinion, overkill, since there is already a two-year qualification period for the granting of a Gender Recognition Certificate, and sports regulatory bodies have been dealing with this issue quietly and efficiently for the past 20 years.
Finally, in my rogue's gallery, there is the Bishop of Winchester. I have had the opportunity to correspond with him briefly and I'm left with the strong impression that he is a kind and loving man. He does not appear, on the basis of our correspondence, to accept that the seat of gender identity is in the brain. (Quite where else in the body it may lie, I leave as an exercise to my readers, who should bear in mind that he is a man.) His argument, as I understand it, has been rather neatly trumped by research published in the USA within the past month. It relates to a small number of boys born with a particularly rare form of extremely ambiguous genitalia. In the cases studied, the children were operated upon and raised as girls. All rejected this gender role and behaved in a typically boyish fashion. If the sense of identity lies neither in the genitalia nor in the brain, I'm totally at a loss to know where it may be found. [My own view on this is clear - it lies in the brain. I'm certain that there are cases known where brain injury has resulted in Gender Identity Dysphoria, though my researches have failed to reveal any.]
Page last edited: 24 January 2004