Occasional author and constant bigot J.K. Rowling has been tweeting for days about how Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which merely reduces the red tape around obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate, will somehow lead to more sexual assaults.
A Gender Recognition Certificate “means a trans person is legally recognized in their acquired gender and can obtain a new birth certificate showing that gender.” First Minister Nicola Sturgeon helped introduce the reform bill to Scotland’s parliament last week. It takes what is currently a horrifyingly invasive process — requiring applicants to receive a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, provide “medical reports and evidence,” plod through a two-year wait, and be over 18 — and changes the process to be merely arduous.
If the bill passes, those hoping to update their birth certificates will (only?) need to go through a six-month process: “To live in their acquired gender for a minimum of three months, with a reflection period of a further three months before a certificate is granted.” They will have to make a legally-binding declaration, and if for whatever reason they change their mind, they could face “a potential punishment of up to two years’ imprisonment.” This last clause is designed to stop cisgendered male rapists from claiming to be trans women in order to, for example, be sent to a women’s prison.
Rowling objected to the law even before it was introduced, tweeting last December, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” As she’s made clear in subsequent posts March 5th-8th, she believes that male predators will go through this not-particularly-swift process in the hope of accessing cisgendered women’s spaces with the intention of assaulting them.
