Pulling the Thread of Decertification: What Challenges are Raised by the Proposal to Reform Legal Gender Status?

Cooper, Davina; Emerton, Robyn

doi:10.22024/unikent/03/fal.938

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…'Against' legal consciousness stances (e.g., Harding 2011) are associated with marginalised groups both arguing back against normative orders, and heralding things differently. There were hints in 'against gender' of decertification potentially contributing to undoing gendered normativities with attendant possible benefits to those marginalised (see Cooper and Emerton 2020). And as Cowan (2021) notes "the uncertainty over the future of legal gender, as well as the damage that the toxicity of the current debate is causing, is hugely detrimental to all trans and non-binary people's well being" (222).…”

Section: Conclusion: Readiness To Decertify Legal Gender and The Prom...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the one hand, there has been a growth of social sciences scholarship documenting a burgeoning of ways of understanding gendered and agendered identities within the LGBTIQ 'umbrella' (Cover 2019;Munro 2019;Ellis et al 2020;Vincent 2020). On the other hand, even those jurisdictions (for example, Tasmania, Iceland) at the forefront of legal developments in this area have not considered decertifying sex/gender as a legal status, and as such this proposition is not on international or national public agenda-at least not as an official proposition (Cooper and Renz 2016;Cooper and Emerton 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

Peel

Newman

2023

Fem Leg Stud

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This article examines three divergent constructions about the salience of legal gender in lay people’s everyday lives and readiness to decertify gender. In our interviews (and survey data), generally participants minimised the importance of legal gender. The central argument in this article is that feminist socio-legal scholars applying legal consciousness studies to legal reform topics should find scrutinizing the construction of interview talk useful. We illustrate this argument by adapting and applying Ewick and Silbey’s (1998) ‘The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life', ‘before’, ‘with’ and ‘against’ typology to interview talk about legal gender, and critique their cognitivist approach by offering a constructionist alternative. In our analysis, we offer a detailed discursive explication of three key legal consciousness themes. These themes offer a balanced representation of a dataset problematically ‘skewed’ towards sex-based rights feminist perspectives, namely that ‘before’ legal gender is an anti-decertification account, decertification would be risky for natal females; a ‘with’ legal gender construction is neither for nor against decertification per se, though the impact of decertification is produced in accounts as limited and unimportant; and ‘against’ legal gender is a pro-decertification classification, as not abolished legal gender is constructed as harmful to already marginalised groups. In concluding, we explore the reasoning for the lack of readiness for decertification currently, and return to the value of examining the construction of lay discourse about legal matters as talk is a form of social action. We suggest that applying discursive analysis to themes in legal consciousness studies enables a refocusing on the how rather than purely the what of divergent legal consciousnesses, and that this approach is a fruitful addition to feminist socio-legal studies.

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Section: Conclusion: Readiness To Decertify Legal Gender and The Prom...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

Peel

Newman

2023

Fem Leg Stud

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“…This risk/privacy reliance is a broader feature of new gender regimes, which recognise that spatial allocations by gender may no longer organise people according to their genitals. Yet, it is a reliance with limitationsnot least in treating bodies as carriers of future harm that can be safely managed through pre-emptive action or walls (see also Cooper and Emerton 2020). Renz's article also asks how we can assess the likely harms and weaknesses of a speculative future change when there is no contemporary evidence to work with.…”

Section: Decertification As a Proposal For New Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Cooper

Renz

2023

Fem Leg Stud

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Our analysis includes laws that relate specifically to England and Wales as well as laws which also extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland, e.g., see Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Act 2021, s7(1). 2 Political contestation over the terms of sex and gender-in what they mean, what they include, and how they operate as material enactments-makes their usage complicated. Our use of gender does not refer principally to identity or expression but to socially institutionalised processes that draw and maintain hierarchical distinctions. These also work with and give meaning to material forms of embodiment, conventionally understood as sex. Thus, we refer to gender in contexts where some sex-based feminists would prefer to talk about sex. Where the law refers explicitly to 'sex', we follow this terminology. However, English law is often inconsistent in its usage of these terms.

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“…The wider Future of Legal Gender project was focused on understanding the legal implications and feminist politics of decertifying gender (see, Cooper & Emerton, 2020;Cooper & Renz, 2016) but most of the lay participants in the research were unsupportive of binary sex not being recorded at birth and were strongly in favour of the status quo (see, Peel, 2021;Peel & Newman, 2020). As we have discussed elsewhere (Peel & Newman, 2020) the 'gender critical' view that conflating sex with gender is problematic as sex-based oppression is a material reality was over-represented in our data.…”

Section: Legal Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

‘An impossible dream’? Non-binary people’s perceptions of legal gender status and reform in the UK

Newman

Peel

2022

Psychology & Sexuality

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The meaning and significance of gender is currently a focus of heated and, often, polarised debate in the UK and elsewhere. This article provides a new perspective in the gender debate through focused exploration of UK-based non-binary people's perceptions of legal gender status and reform. Binary gender/sex systems, such as the legal gender system in the UK, are underpinned by cisgenderism and are challenged by those whose identity falls outside of the binary of woman and man. In contrast to most lay participants in the Future of Legal Gender (FLaG) project, the majority of non-binary participants reported support for reform (85.5% (n = 165) in favour) to the current UK legal gender system. Over half (57%, n = 110) were in favour of abolishing legal gender (i.e. the state would no longer assign a legal gender status), although this was constructed as 'an impossible dream'. Situating non-binary people's perspectives at the heart of the debate about the certification of gender offers novel insight which could have significant ramifications for how societal structures could support undoing gender in the future.

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Pulling the Thread of Decertification: What Challenges are Raised by the Proposal to Reform Legal Gender Status?

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

“I Don’t Think That’s Something I’ve Ever Thought About Really Before”: A Thematic Discursive Analysis of Lay People’s Talk about Legal Gender

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

‘An impossible dream’? Non-binary people’s perceptions of legal gender status and reform in the UK

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