FurryGiraffe Fri 15-Sep-17 19:26:25

The European Court of Human Rights was concerned about the lack of recognition of transition on official documents such as passports and driving licences. They also felt there was a problem where there is a disconnect between a person's legal status (birth sex) and 'social reality' (where gender reassignment surgery has taken place paid - especially where it's paid for by the state).



As to disentangling sex and gender in the legal framework, it's tricky. Gender identity is recognised as a protected characteristic, separate from sex, under the Equality Act (i.e. you can't discriminate on the basis of gender identity). However this (important) exception aside, I don't think there is scope for gender identity and sex to legally co-exist because they're two alternative mechanisms of categorisation which are necessarily in conflict. The purpose of legal/official recognition of sex (or gender is the current rather confused conflation) is to allow us to segregate people for various purposes (i.e. the prison estate). For this purpose, you've got to use either sex or 'gender'- you can't use both.



Hypothetically you could include both sex and gender identity on passports and other official docs but I don't see that it serves any purpose. We have to pick one to use for legal categorisation. Once you do that, the other isn't really relevant, is it? If we operate categorisation by biological sex, then gender identity is as irrelevant to the state as sexual orientation. I guess if you categorise by 'gender' then biological sex might remain relevant for identification purposes, but this is probably a bit old hat in a world with biometrics!



Disclaimer: I haven't thought about it from quite this angle before (and I'm posting while putting the DC to bed ) so I don't rule out the possibility that I've missed a legal angle from which sex/gender identity disaggregation would be helpful!