It’s often said that debates on transgender issues are polarised and intolerant to a degree that helps no one. Last week, in a Westminster Hall debate on reform of the Gender Recognition Act, the Scottish National MP Mhairi Black showed how it could and should be done. At stake were the difficulties trans people have in getting their identities legally recognised. With this issue come the fears raised by those who oppose simplifying these processes, that dangers to women would arise as a result of people born with male bodies being able to enter lavatories, changing rooms and other single-sex spaces.
Black’s support for reform was clear. The current process, she said, “is deeply invasive, traumatising, unnecessary and dehumanising”, while arguing out that possession of a gender recognition certificate, the end point of it all, is actually irrelevant to access to single-space spaces.
