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Transgender topics |
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Transgender rights in the United Kingdom have varied significantly over time.
Trans people have been able to change their passports and driving licences to indicate their preferred binary gender since at least 1970. Transgender people were, prior to the ruling in Corbett v Corbett, able to have their birth certificate informally amended to reflect their gender identity. The ruling prevented the amendment of the sex marker on birth certificates for other than clerical errors. The 2002 Goodwin v United Kingdom ruling by the European Court of Human Rights resulted in parliament passing the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 to allow people to apply to change their legal gender, through application to a tribunal called the Gender Recognition Panel. The application requires the submission of medical evidence and a statutory declaration. The tribunal is made up of medical and legal members appointed by the Lord Chancellor.
Anti-discrimination measures protecting transgender people have existed in the UK since 1999, and were strengthened in the 2000s to include anti-harassment wording. Later in 2010, gender reassignment was included as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. With the 2013 introduction of same-sex marriage, it became possible for a spouse to legally change their gender without requiring a divorce in the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland, where this became an option nearly a decade later on 13 January 2020.
Since the late 2010s, the treatment of trans people in the UK has been an increasing source of controversy, particularly in regards to British news media. The Council of Europe criticised what it described as a "baseless and concerning" level of transphobia gaining traction in British society.[1] YouGov noted an "overall erosion in support towards transgender rights" among the general public by the early 2020s, and while Ipsos found that most Britons supported trans people getting protections for discrimination, support for gender-affirming healthcare in the UK was amongst the lowest of the thirty countries they studied.
In July 2024, UK Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer responded to a question by author, J. K. Rowling asking whether trans women with a gender recognition certificate have the right to use women-only spaces, to which Starmer replied, "No. They don’t have that right. They shouldn’t".[2][3] Starmer has ruled out allowing trans people to self-ID.[4] He has also said he will continue the block on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in Scotland.[5]
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