Boris Johnson’s Plan Will Make Changing Gender Harder In Blow For Trans Rights

It could become harder to change your gender as plans for self-identification could be dropped by Boris Johnson, in a blow for trans rights.

On the first day, Boris Johnson came to power plans to make changing your gender easier in the U.K. were kicked into the long grass, and today, The Sunday Times is reporting that according to a leaked document, those plans have now been dropped entirely.

The leak says Boris Johnson will scrap plans originally made under Theresa May’s premiership to allow people to change their legal gender by self identification.

The plans would have not only made the current arduous and lengthy process of changing your gender shorter – but would have removed a medicalised transition, a great burden, for thousands of transgender people.

But now these plans are reportedly dropped, despite 70% of people supporting self-identification, in a consultation on the Gender Recognition Act that has informed this decision.

They will however finally announce a ban on “gay cure” therapies, another plan that has long been promised and so far not yet enacted.

But in a fresh blow to trans rights, the government is also reportedly preparing to set out new safeguards to protect female-only spaces including refuges and toilets.

A No 10 source has told the PA news agency that details of the response were yet to be finalised, and the Prime Minister would have the final say on the recommendations.

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“My party will create another Section 28 with this”

The leaked plans have already been condemned by LGBT activists, and even the Conservatives own LGBT group:

“If this media speculation turns out to be true, my party will create another Section 28 moment that will have to be apologised for & unpicked within years,” Jon Cope, Deputy Chair of LGBT Conservatives tweeted.

Thought’s echoed by trans author Juno Dawson who recently wrote for Huff Post UK:

“The notion now that gay men or women posed a threat to children or society looks woefully bigoted – and we must act to stop the same prejudices being applied to trans people”

Section 28 has become a clause of the 1988 Local Government Act that is infamous within the LGBT community.

Brought in by Margaret Thatcher’s Government, it banned public bodies of any kind from talking about being gay. It was repealed by Labour in February, 2000.

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The plans are being spearheaded by Equalities Minister Liz Truss, who set out her plans in response to the consultation in April this year.

“First of all, the protection of single-sex spaces, which is extremely important,” Truss wrote.

“Secondly making sure that transgender adults are free to live their lives as they wish without fear of persecution while maintaining the proper checks and balances in the system.

“Finally, which is not a direct issue concerning the Gender Recognition Act, but is relevant, making sure that the under 18s are protected from decisions that they could make, that are irreversible in the future.

“I believe strongly that adults should have the freedom to lead their lives as they see fit, but I think it’s very important that while people are still developing their decision-making capabilities that we protect them from making those irreversible decisions.”

But trans groups picked apart this statement as laden with hypocrisy, promising to protect transgender people with one hand, whilst limiting them with the other.

If true, it will mean the UK becomes the latest country to confirm a removal of trans rights, part of a global trend of the recession of tran rights, happening as a deadly pandemic rips across the world.

Moves which have even lead the UN to warn countries, not to erode LGBT rights under the guise and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will also become just one more reduction of trans rights in the U.K. the Governement has already signalled will happen. In December 2019 they announced voter reform plans that could prevent trans people from voting. 

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