Sensible Policy, Excellent Practice: Challenging the 'Common Sense' of Legal Recognition for Transsexual People (original) (raw)

Abstract

In this paper, the author demonstrates the differences in ‘quality of life’ for transgender and transsexual (trans) people in Hong Kong with that of trans people in the United Kingdom, before 2013. Consideration is given to the demonstrable differences in legal protections from prejudice and discrimination, and the requirement, in Hong Kong, that trans people undergo full genital reconstruction surgery in order to get changes made to identity documentation, in comparison to the United Kingdom where there is no such requirement in the United Kingdom’s Gender Recognition Act 2004. The chapter recaps research undertaken in the United Kingdom and Europe during the 1990s which highlighted the inadequacy of legal protection in both employment, and when accessing goods, services, housing and facilities. By looking at the early challenges to UK law for trans people in particular the cases of Rees v the UK Government 1986) and Cossey v the UK Government (1990) at the European Court of Human Rights, one can see the failure of the Courts to comprehend what were the real issues for trans people. The chapter then reviews the 1992 founding of the United Kingdom’s trans activist group, Press For Change, and the group’s campaigns; social education through the popular press, the lobbying of Parliament and Government, and also challenging the failure of the United Kingdom government to make appropriate legal changes through taking key cases to the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. Initially, Press For Change’s campaigns did not win everything it fought for, but the paper outlines the significance of Court victories which included protection from discrimination whilst in employment, the rights to relationship recognition, and notably, the impact the campaigns had on the public’s awareness of the concerns and difficulties faced by trans people in the United Kingdom. The paper concludes by comparing the changes introduced into United Kingdom law by the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and compares these with the decision of Hong Kong’s Supreme Court in W v the Registrar of Marriages (2013), and how the failure to respond to this decision continues to leave Hong Kong’s trans community facing inappropriate and unnecessary hardships.

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