On the 20th of December, I sat down in the Scottish Parliament viewing gallery watching Scottish democracy at work. Almost every MSP sat in the chamber preparing to debate one of the most disputed issues of the last five years – reforms to the Gender Recognition Act.
Self ID in Finland is on the horizon so we asked a Finnish trans writer to tell us about it and the wider context it exists in. Vilja Heikkilä writes;
The Scottish Gender Recognition Reform bill was debated and voted on about a month ago – give or take a day or two. It passed with a majority of 88 to 33 votes and it’s been a hell of a month since.
On the 22nd of December, after 7 years of intense toxic debate, the Scottish Parliament finally voted through the Gender Recognition Reforms bill. Since then the UK Government has outlined two plans to undermine Scottish gender reforms. Both plans have massive ramifications and will fail.
The Office for National Statistics has released data from the 2021 census which for the first time ever includes statistics about the numbers of trans and non-binary living in England and Wales. Here Tom Pashby takes a look at the transgender and non-binary census data;