Hello neighbour (especially if you're trans),

I don't want a GRC and I don't think you should have one either. Please let me explain.

The gender recognition system is shit, transphobic to the core, the bare minimum to scrape the UK through after losing in human rights court.

I have held a principled stance since the introduction of the gender recognition act against getting a GRC and 90% of trans people in the UK have similarly just not bothered to acquire one. My principles here aren't too different from the reasons most trans people have:

The Gender Recognition panel system is oppressive, the evidence burden is awkward and discriminates massively against disabled people or people who struggle to put together adequate documentation of their labour (eg labour in grey markets which the trans community does a lot of).

There are additional issues, the gender recognition system deliberately makes it hard for detransitioners to reverse their legal identity if they choose to do so, committing transitioners to some sort of penalty for gender crime (which never gets prosecuted, but nevertheless!)

There's also the matter of the Transsexual Register which serves as a central database of us, tracking us like criminals. We should not have to undergo registration in order to be afforded our basic human rights like this.

I believe, in my heart of hearts that the ideology which says that trans gender is best regulated to approved identities and surveilled is a direct producer of a lot of the harm done to trans people, by placing state authority above our own in how we are defined.

We've seen only this last year how Gender Critical people will call for trans men who become biological parents to be treated as gender criminals for failing to "live out that role [as men] for life" as expected by the GRA.

So, to finish:

Fuck the GRA, trans liberation not state assimilation.

I forgot to add:
- regulating gender to two binary norms we're expected to conform to, eliminates space for non binary people and potentially future identities that form from people finding current norms restrictive.

Abolishing legal gender avoids this. https://twitter.com/AlixWzl/status/1301814622626951168?s=19

Also bringing this QT in too.

I'm not trying to shame anyone who wants/gets one. I'm just making the case against it. You make your own choices obviously, we've all got to get by somehow. https://twitter.com/thattransjew1/status/1301817202237157377?s=19

Also if you've read this thread, you should read the much more strategically current thread by @NMRLPH on why chasing the UK govt for GRA reform right now is also a terrible idea. https://twitter.com/NMRLPH/status/1301812422752247809?s=19