Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill (Detailed)

I oppose this change.
The original GRA (2004) legislation was designed to accommodate a small number of people experiencing intense psychological distress.
It is not clear why people who are not experiencing gender dysphoria should have a right to change their legal sex.
This change to self-identification enormously expands the group of people who may change their legal status.
The 2004 GRA legislation was intended to apply to a tiny group of people. Examination of Hansard shows that the main motivation was to allow marriage for transexual people to someone of the same biological sex, at a time before same-sex marriage was legal.
This legislation has nevertheless had a wide range of unintended consequences on issues from sports to data collection. Essentially, it has weakened the status of sex as a protected characteristic, erecting barriers to providing single-sex services and activities for women. It has also led to a wide range of organisations failing or refusing to collect data according to sex.
Expanding the pool of people who can change their legal sex will inevitably exacerbate the problems caused by GRA (2004).

The concept of living in a gender is vague and undefined. In fact it appears meaningless unless one assumes it relates to sex stereotypes.
In addition, three months is a very short period of time indeed, especially for a young person. If gender is fluid, then it is unclear why the state would allow a change of legal status after such a short time.

It would be preferable to remain with the UK GRA Panel, which is a tried and tested process. Given high levels of mobility within the UK, a UK-wide process has obvious advantages in terms of consistency.

This proposal puts vulnerable young people at risk.
We await the final report of the CASS review. The rapid increase in young people, and young girls in particular, identifying as transgender is still poorly understood.
To propose this change now is hasty and irresponsible.

People with gender-diverse identities are already protected against discrimination in law. Therefore it is not clear what practical problem introducing legal self-id is intended to solve. The government should work towards making sure that discrimination against any protected characteristic is not tolerated. This can be achieved within the existing legislative framework.

The bill should be amended to provide explicit protection for sex-based data collection. Without sex-disaggregated data, it will be impossible to assess the effects of the proposed reform. Serious policy evaluation will be rendered unfeasible.

We are already losing sex-based data collection in Scotland, Scotland's Census has defined "sex" according to self-id, meaning that data on this variable is not harmonised in the UK. Scotland's Chief Statistician has advised that data on sex should only be collected in exceptional circumstances. https://webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20220306031528/www.gov.scot/groups/sex-and-gender-in-data-working-group

The social statistics community is united in opposing the loss of sex disaggregated data. A group of 91 quantitative social scientists has written to Scotland's Chief Statistician to make this clear. https://ukdataexperts.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/response-to-hallidaypublicdomainversionredacted.pdf

The proposed reform is likely to exacerbate the loss of data on sex unless explicitly amended to avert this.

The cross-border effects of this legislation are potentially severe, given the high levels of mobility between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Therefore, the whole of the UK, particularly UK women, have a stake in this.

Women have not been listened to on the question of self-id. Gender identity activism has been characterized by a culture of misogynistic abuse and threats. Women who have spoken out have faced threats to their livelihoods and careers, e.g. Maya Forstater, Allison Bailey, Kathleen Stock. This has constrained both academic investigation and discussion and political participation on this issue. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9752.12549

In this environment, the government has a duty to slow down, to facilitate meaningful discussion, and make a pro-active effort to listen to critical voices.