Gender certification plans ‘do not go far enough to progress trans rights’

CAMPAIGNERS have said that long-delayed Scottish Government proposals to streamline the process for trans people to obtain gender recognition fall short of what is required.

The Scottish Government, which first started drawing up plans to update the Gender Recognition Act in 2017, has published its blueprint for allowing transgender people to obtain certification easier and in a more dignified way.

Under the proposed legislation, supported by all parties except the Tories, the system used by trans people to obtain a certificate legally recognising their acquired gender will be simplified and sped up.

MSPS on Holyrood’s Equalities, Human Rights And Civil Justice Committee were told the current set-up for trans people in Scotland “is far behind international best practice”.

Vic Valentine, of the Scottish Trans Alliance, said people require “psychiatric diagnosis” as part of the current process.

They added: “It is not fair that we need to provide this psychiatric diagnosis to be recognised as who we are.”

Valentine said the proposals were “not perfect”, adding it “would not see Scotland become worldleading if the bill were to go into effect”.

They criticised the failure to include proposals to recognise non-binary people and containing no provision to recognise trans people under the age of 16.

Valentine said that recognising non-binary people “would have meant that it was an ambitious law reform”.

They added that a failure to include a “policy of legal recognition for non-binary people” is what the trans community is “most disappointed about”.

Dr Mairi Crawford, chief executive of LGBT Youth Scotland, added: “Trans young people are very clear that this bill does not go far enough or it does not make Scotland a policy leader in this area.”

When asked by Tory MSP Alexander Stewart if he believed that the Bill posed a “threat” to women and girls and their rights, Colin Macfarlane, director of Stonewall Scotland, said: “I think we have to be very careful in the public discourse around this that trans people are human beings, they are valid, they are not a threat to the wider public and some of the framing around this subject has been really unfortunate.”

Mr Macfarlane, added: “A lot of the discourse around this is reminiscent of the discourse around lesbian, gay and bi identities and particularly around gay men – that we were predatory, that we were somehow a threat to children, that we were a safeguarding risk, that there was something inherently dangerous about us.

“The same rhetoric is being used around trans people, and particularly trans women around the reform of this Bill.”