De-producing gender: the politics of sex, decertification and the figure of economy

Abstract

This article explores the contribution that the figure of economy can make to understanding gender in contemporary Britain, focusing on gender as a social quality and legal category that is produced, allocated and used. The article proceeds in two parts. The first part considers the politics of sex-based feminism and gender-as-diversity through an economic frame. The second part focuses, in detail, on one specific juncture where these diverging politics meet: decertification – a law reform proposal to dismantle the system for assigning, registering and regulating legal sex. Decertification is a controversial strategy. Advocates argue that self-expression and interpersonal communication, whether through gender or against it, is hindered by a state-based disciplinary certification system. Critics disagree. They argue that dismantling legal communication about a person's sex makes it harder to put categories of female and woman to remedial use. Drawing on other uses of certification, including commercial ones, this article suggests that certification not only communicates information about a process, quality or thing; it also contributes to their production. The impact of decertification on how gender is produced, what gets produced as gender and the uses to which gender is put are central to determining whether decertification is beneficial to a progressive transformative gender politics.

Introduction to Special Issue: Decertifying Legal Sex—Prefigurative Law Reform and the Future of Legal Gender

“…The progressive and critical orientation of our research means it is equality-based arguments for retaining formal gender and sex status (rather than conservative ones) that we mainly attended to, and these surface in this special issue. Advocates of retention argued that stable, trackable, standardised categories facilitate measures to counter institutionalised forms of inequality through positive discrimination and affirmative action (see Cooper 2022Cooper , 2023a. They also argued that the current system enabled sex-specific provision in support of women's safety and dignity (see also Jeffreys 2014); and facilitated essential data collection on women and men's sex-related experiences (Sullivan 2020).…”

Non-binary gender markers: Mobility, migration, and media reception in Europe and beyond

“…In recent years, attention to transgender rights has given rise to a number of international legislative and policy reforms to sex and gender registration. Academic scholarship has also begun to delve into the critical questions that these developments have provoked (Aboim, 2020; Cooper et al, 2020; Quinan and Bresser, 2020; Quinan et al, 2020; Van den Brink et al, 2015; Verloo and van der Vleuten, 2020). One significant aspect of such attempts to address gender diversity and equality has involved the re-evaluation of how binary sex or gender markers and other identity documentation practices disproportionately impact trans and non-binary people’s lives (Spade, 2011).…”