Fox News Quick to Amplify Misinformation on Scottish Trans Rights Bill
The bill would shorten the process of obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate, which does not impact women’s sports teams, prisons, bathrooms, changing rooms, or safety in any way.
by Evan Urquhart
The first ever use of Section 35 by the UK government will be an attempt to block a Scottish law that would reduce the bureaucracy required for transgender people to get a gender recognition certificate (GRC). The law would reduce the amout of time a trans person has to live as a member of the opposite sex before obtaining a GRC, and would no longer require a doctor to sign off.
Refering to the law colloquially as "self ID," transphobes have long campaigned against it, often misrepresenting it as allowing trans women to do things they are already legally able to do without a GRC, such as use women's restrooms and changing areas.
Almost as soon as the news hit, Fox News was on it, repeating the misleading claim that the bill could impact single-sex areas. (Although this claim was attributed to the government of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, no clear quote or other source for that information was provided in the article or in its links.)
screenshot from Fox News
Contrary to the above misinformation, trans people in the UK do not need a GRC to be allowed into single sex areas. It is not required to obtain or update a passport, to be protected from discrimination, to use single sex spaces, or any other practical matter of daily life. A GRC is required for a trans person to change their sex on their birth certificate, and to aquire a marriage license listing the correct gender. A GRC may also be useful in a few other bureaucratic contexts, particularly any where there is no clear alternative procedure for changing and/or correctly listing one’s gender on official documents.
Transphobes, however, have made the issue of GRCs a stand in for the larger issue of trans acceptance, repeatedly stating that allowing trans people to more easily obtain one would lead predatory men to falsely change their gender in order to abuse women. A GRC does not provide any particular avenue for abuse which such men would not otherwise have. A purely bureaucratic document, applicable to only a few pieces of paperwork, it has literally no implications for the safety of women or children in any way.
