ANNA SOFIE GREBE ØSTERGAARD & SARA SCHWARTZ WIMAN
The passing of a gender recognition law in Scotland caused controversy in the entirety of the United Kingdom. While some believe the law is a necessity for living a life where you are recognized for who you are, others claim that it could have potentially disastrous consequences for other groups in society. The fear of not being listened to puts its stamp on both sides, but for transgender people that fear affects everyday life.
Diane Redhead doesn’t call her bedroom a bedroom anymore. She refers to it as the railway room. A large part of the colourful room in her Edinburgh flat is taken up by a model railway, complete with trains, tracks, and little shops lining the rails. The model railway has been a project of Redhead’s since 2020 when her husband passed away in the Covid-19 pandemic, and it now serves as a kind of monument over her life. Everywhere along the rails, there are subtle little gadgets, all referring to different and important parts of Redhead’s life and personality.
One of those gadgets is graffiti on the wall in a tunnel. With big, bubbly letters, the graffiti says, “Reform the GRA.” For those unfamiliar, “GRA” might just come off as three random letters — but for some people, its meaning is close to everything.
GRA stands for the Gender Recognition Act, a piece of British legislation that came into effect in 2004. The law allows for transgender people to legally change their gender on their birth certificate and obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). The certificate is important for transgender people, partly because of the sense of having your personal identity recognised, but also for instance when you get married and for being protected against discrimination. The process of gaining a GRC has been criticised for being long and often complicated.
Being yourself is liberating
Redhead has led a long life. She is 82 years old, and knew at a young age that something was, in the words of herself, “wrong” with her.
“I tried to suppress that and be a normal adult person for 60 years. And then, when I was 73 and my second wife died, I thought well, that’s it. I’ve got to investigate it and find out. And so, one day, I just saw myself for who I really was.”
She describes it as a kind of lightbulb moment, the realisation that she was a woman. From that moment, she immediately began her transitioning process.
“And I’ve been me ever since,” she says.
Similarly, Payton McIntosh came out as non-binary in 2017, meaning that they don’t identify with either the male or the female gender. They agree with Redhead on the feeling of freedom when they were able to live as themselves.
“It was liberating to know that the person that people are meeting is me and not a lie that I feel I’ve had to live for most of my life,” they say.
Being non-binary, McIntosh can’t get a GRC. Non-binary people in the UK are not able to be legally recognised in the current legislation. The inclusion of non-binary people was something people and activists in Scotland in favour of reforming the GRA were advocating for, but it never made it to the final law proposal – the Gender Recognition Reform.
The Gender Recognition Reform Bill
The message on the little graffiti in the tunnel in Redhead’s model railway, “Reform the GRA”, actually became reality. Public consultations for a reform on the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland, whose parliament is partly devolved from the British one, began already in 2017. Those consultations showed a majority of the respondents in favour of a reform, and so the Scottish government began the process of introducing and passing the law in March 2022.
This video explains what the Gender Recognition Reform Bill is, and how it differs from the current legislation.
The reform was passed in the Scottish Parliament on Dec. 22, 2022, nine months after its formal introduction. Florence Oulds, Policy and Public Affairs Officer at Scottish Trans Alliance, recollects its passing.
“It was so surreal,” she says. “It was all me and my colleagues had been working on for the past year, and I told myself it might just not happen, it might not pass. But when it did, it was really exciting.”
“But then, just within hours, people started talking about the block.”
UK stops the bill
The block Oulds is referring to, is the fate of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. In January 2023, Alister Jack, the Scottish Secretary in the British parliament, announced that the British government would not allow the bill to proceed to royal assent, which is necessary for all laws made in the UK. Jack used the section 35 order of the Scotland Act — an order that’s never been used before, and that allows for the UK government to block any Scottish laws that conflict with existing British laws.
The Scottish Gender Recognition Reform was shot down. Protests immediately arose from Scottish politicians as well as transgender people and other Scots concerned with the UK interfering to such an extent with Scottish laws. It also awoke the long-lived debate on whether Scotland should be independent from the UK or not. But for some, the UK’s decision to block the bill was a warm welcome.
A different stance on trans
For years, transgender people’s rights have been a contentious topic in the British equality debate. Right-wing conservatives have gained a somewhat unexpected ally in their opposition to enabling transgender people to, for example, legally change their gender on their birth certificate — women’s rights activists.
Infamously known as TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists), some women’s rights activists all over the UK and Scotland have made it their stance that trans liberation puts cis women in danger. One gender critical feminist is Susan Smith, co-director at For Women Scotland, a campaigning group who, on their website, claims that they believe that “there are only two sexes, that a person’s sex is not a choice, nor can it be changed.”
Smith opposed the Gender Recognition Reform and says that its content could potentially harm women, partly because it could allow men falsely claiming to be transwomen to gain access to public women’s spaces.
“I’ve met with women who are terrified to use public bathrooms because they’ve been exposed to sexual assault by men and are scared to find men in the bathrooms, claiming that they are women,” she says. “And you’re not allowed to complain about it, until something happens.”
The argument that men would take advantage of the Gender Recognition Reform to gain access to women’s spaces is a common one used by gender critical feminists. When hearing that claim, Redhead sighs and shakes her head.
“Let’s assume there’s a predatory male, a bad actor, who wants to abuse a woman in a women’s toilet. On one hand, he could walk into the toilet and abuse her. Or on the other hand, he could live in a female gender for three months and sign a declaration he’s going to live in the female gender for the rest of his life, and then wait another six months and be given a piece of paper, and then go in the toilet and abuse her,” she says.
In the Equality Act, a British law which regulates discrimination, there is protection for single-sex spaces such as women’s bathrooms if there are circumstances where it is proven to be “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. That means that transwomen could be excluded from women’s spaces if necessary, since the Equality Act trumps the existing GRA as well as the proposed reform bill. Yet, gender critical feminists continue to highlight the risk that in their opinion the reform could pose to women.
Feminist gender critique – not a new phenomenon
McIntosh believes that the gender critical feminists are not so much opposed to individual transgender people, as they are to a “culture of trans acceptance.”
“But when I hear that, knowing for example that a third of employers stated openly that they would discriminate against a trans person, I think that stronger culture of trans acceptance is a good thing,” they say.
Gender- or trans- critical feminism is not a new thing, says Åsa Eriksson, PhD in Gender Studies at Stockholm University.
“There are traces dating all the way back to the 1970’s from feminists who opposed transgender people,” she says. “Basically, since transgender people’s struggle for their rights became visible in the public sphere.”
“This sort of trans-critical feminism has been very useful for the broader anti-gender movement such as religious groups, where they can point to these feminists and say, ‘look, even feminists agree with us’,” Eriksson continues.
Smith at For Women Scotland is hesitant to even use the word gender. She explains why;
“I worry that people are trying to embed some really regressive ideas back into law because whenever I’ve asked someone to tell me what they mean by gender, they usually go back to stereotypes. Like ‘oh, they always played with Barbies’ or ‘she was always a tomboy and into sport’.”
Scotland — a hotspot?
People and groups who share opinions on gender and trans rights with Smith and For Women Scotland have been around for a long time, claims Oulds from the Scottish Trans Alliance. She says that she doesn’t necessarily think that they are against trans people as such, but have different ideas to how transgender people’s inclusion in society should look. What worries Oulds, though, is the increase of those opinions in Scotland.
“But those voices have gotten louder and louder over the past few years in the UK and Scotland. And while it’s picking up in other places in the world, I think we’re a particular hotspot for it,” she says.
How UK sensationalism has affected the conversation
British media has for many years been accused of putting ethics aside in the pursuit of wild, sensationalised news stories and headlines. Stories where reality is distorted to generate interest among readers. This also seems to be the case in the trans rights discussion, at least if you ask McIntosh.
McIntosh explains that the increased visibility of transgender people in the media is both good and bad:
“The increased visibility has been a blessing and a curse. I think there’s some trans people who wish that the increase in visibility hadn’t happened. The strange thing about the hatred that’s being whipped up, it has nothing to do with the Gender Recognition Reform Bill at all. It has all to do with things that are legal. Trans people existing,” they say.
In addition to wanting to create colourful, sensationalist headlines, it seems that the media also has a desire to let the more extreme voices speak. If you ask Oulds, this is certainly the trend if you look across the media landscape. In particular, feminist groups such as For Women Scotland have gained a significant voice in the debate, which she believes is damaging.
“Even though it was only a couple of years, there was still a big shift in the way trans people were being talked about in the media in particular. Campaigning groups like For Women Scotland and Women’s Place UK became more in the public eye. I think that was because of quite heavy campaigning from these groups who were opposed to the bill,” she says.
By allowing the loud, controversial voices to dominate, the small voices are being ignored. Small voices that in many cases belong to trans people who just want to live a life like everyone else. Oulds sees this as a huge challenge — she feels that the image of trans people is distorted also because they don’t get column space in the newspapers.
“Unfortunately, because there’s so much spin and there’s so much scaremongering, that narrative isn’t really able to get out. As an organisation, we’re trying to encourage trans people who feel confident to tell their story and talk about their perspective. We find that when people do that, there are people like, ‘oh yeah, that makes sense.’”
McIntosh would go as far as to say that in some cases, the media tends to be transphobic. Because once trans people get used to being more visible, the gloves come off in terms of how trans people are treated in the media. It’s easier to sell newspapers when there’s something to upset people, they point out.
Public opinion affected
And there are indications that public opinion has swayed. Looking at a survey conducted by the BBC in 2022 shows that people in Scotland are hesitant to support the details around the changes in the bill. 44% of the respondents opposed the change that reduces the minimum time lived in acquired gender from 2 years to 3 months, while 53% opposed the fact that the minimum age a person can apply should be changed from 18 to 16.
Although Oulds, Redhead, and McIntosh all feel that there is a clear negative agenda among news media against transgender people, they are not the only ones who believe that the British media’s need to polarise and exaggerate can be damaging. Smith from For Women Scotland also points out that the media’s portrayal of her and her group is wrong and harmful:
“There are a lot of people out there who genuinely believe that women like me are completely evil and we want to murder them, that sort of thing. They repeat that all the time, and they believe that. So that has not been pleasant for us either.”
Confident despite dark times
Back in the Edinburgh flat, both Redhead and McIntosh are left with hope for the future despite both blockage and general resistance. Just as Redhead is still building on her railway and life story, the issue of transgender rights and perceptions of transgender people is ever-evolving. And even though they’re facing a lot of resistance right now, they have faith that things will work out.
“50 years ago, transgender was barely even a term. In 50 years I would hope that gender identity is something that people just take in their stride,” McIntosh says.
McIntosh in particular has a lot of faith in the younger generation. They believe that young people have a very different view of gender and are much more willing to be open to the fluidity of gender identity:
“I’m actually really impressed with the way younger people have the acceptance that’s been displayed by the current generation. I think they have an amazing understanding of accommodating people who are different to themselves.”
Oulds from Scottish Trans Alliance is also hoping for better times. She is sad to see the backlash against transgender people that she seems to be seeing these days, but she also hopes that many years from now, people will look back and think that these were strange times.
“It feels like the voices of people who are peddling misinformation and hate are much louder than those of people who are speaking sense. But I think there is always backlash to progressive reform. I just hope it’s the kind of thing when in 20 years time we’ll be like, ‘wasn’t that all a bit wild? So glad we’ve all got legal gender recognition now’.”
The conflict that seems to be reigning in the UK doesn’t appear to be fading anytime soon. On the contrary; it seems that the blockage of the bill in the UK has only added more fuel to an already large fire. Despite grey clouds over the trans community, two smiling faces remain in the colourful Edinburgh living room. Both Redhead and McIntosh have fought their battles and will continue to do so, for a right to a normal life. While Redhead serves McIntosh a final cup of tea, McIntosh says in a firm voice:
“I think people need to accept that trans people aren’t going anywhere. That we’re part of civil life in the UK.”