Jul 18 2024 57 mins
Transgender people have existed throughout history. Yet, the way transgender identity intersects with the law is complex. Trans identity has been litigated and legislated, from the High Court case Corbett v Corbett in 1970, to the European Court of Human Rights case Goodwin v United Kingdom in 2002, to the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, to the recent 2023 judgement upholding the UK Government’s use of a Section 35 order to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was a bill aiming to improve the system by which trans people can apply for legal recognition of their gender through a Gender Recognition Certificate. This Bill intended to remove the current requirements for a medical diagnosis, reduce the time that applicants for gender recognition need to have lived in their acquired gender from two years to three months, and reduce the age at which one may apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate from 18 years to 16 years. While the bill was supported by the Scottish Government, it was blocked by the UK Government with a Section 35 order under the Scotland Act. The Section 35 order means that the Bill cannot be implemented at this time, but the Scottish Government has committed not to withdraw the bill either.
In this episode, Rach interviews Sharon Cowan on the intersections between the law and transgender identity. Professor Sharon Cowan is a Professor of Feminist and Queer Legal Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Sharon has published extensively on the legal regulation of gender and sex and is presently working on a comparative socio-legal project looking at the impact of law on transgender people. She was also involved in consultations on the Reform of the Gender Recognition Act. Recent projects also include a national empirical project looking at how women asylum claimants, whose applications are based on a claim of rape, are treated, and along with Dr Chloe Kennedy (Edinburgh) and Professor Munro (Warwick), she is a co-editor of the Scottish Feminist Judgments Project @ScottishFemJP.
Articles mentioned:
Cowan, Sharon (2005). “Gender is No Substitute for Sex”: A Comparative Human Rights Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Sexual Identity. Feminist Legal Studies 13 (1)
Cowan, Sharon, The Best Place on the Planet to be Trans? Transgender Equality and Legal Consciousness in Scotland (December 1, 2020). Dunne, Peter. and Raj, Sen (2020) The Queer Outside in Law (Palgrave MacMillan), Edinburgh School of Law Research Paper No. 2020/05, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3777503
Cowan, Sharon. (2009). Looking Back (To)wards the Body: Medicalization and the GRA. Social & Legal Studies, 18(2), 247-252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663909103627
Sandland, Ralph. Feminism and the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Feminist Legal Stud 13, 43–66 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-005-1456-3
Cowan, Sharon (2005). “Gender is No Substitute for Sex”: A Comparative Human Rights Analysis of the Legal Regulation of Sexual Identity. Feminist Legal Studies 13 (1): 93
Books mentioned:
Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano
Autogenerated transcript available at: