Nonbinary

Help support the court case by reblogging this post and/or contributing to the crowdfund!

Ryan Castellucci, who is nonbinary, has issued legal proceedings against the Gender Recognition Panel (GRP) and the Secretary of State for Justice arguing that the GRP breached its statutory duty to issue a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) in terms which record Ryan’s acquired gender as nonbinary, and has instead decided to issue a GRC of uncertain legal effect. Ryan is also seeking a declaration that a GRC which records Ryan’s gender as “not specified” would mean that their gender is for all purposes nonbinary.

It turns out that the Gender Recognition Act in the UK doesn't actually specify that you have to be moving from male to female or from female to male, which means there is absolutely already room within the law to allow for nonbinary genders, and obviously the government should accommodate that.

Monday 12th October 2020

[ Link to petition ]

If you try to order a coronavirus test online at https://www.gov.uk/get-coronavirus-test or by calling 119 you must provide a gender, and the only options available are “male” and “female”.

This prevents nonbinary people from ordering coronavirus tests.

Please add a third gender option.

The NHS and the UK government acknowledge the existence of nonbinary people, but the online form and the telephone system prevents us from getting a coronavirus test, forcing us to self-isolate needlessly.

This is indirect discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and in breach of GDPR, which requires information collected about us to be accurate.

More information: https://mxactivist.tumblr.com/post/630975891643793408

There are currently 23 signatures, and it needs 10,000 signatures to get a response from the government. The deadline is 12th April 2021. If you’re in the UK or have followers who are, please consider reblogging this post or retweeting this tweet. Thank you!

[Track signatures]

[ Petition link ]

In the wake of confirmation that the government will announce this week that the Gender Recognition Act won’t be reformed, this petition is suddenly climbing very quickly:

Here’s the text of it:

Reform the GRA to allow transgender people to self-identify without the need for a medical diagnosis, to streamline the administrative process, and to allow non-binary identities to be legally recognised.

The response gathered by the government showed strong support for this reform with 70% in favour, but the results seem to have been ignored by policy makers.

The current process is distressing and often humiliating for transgender people, as well as lengthy and costly making it inaccessible to many people. Reform is needed to improve the lives of trans people, and I don’t think the proposed measures will negatively impact existing provisions under the Equalities Act.

It needs 10,000 signatures to get a response from the government, and 100,000 signatures to be considered for debate. It currently (20th Sept 2020) has almost 40,000 signatures and it’s climbing by a few hundred signatures per minute.

I started a tracking graph for this petition here, so you can see how fast it’s growing.

If you’re a British citizen in Britain or abroad, or if you’re living in the UK, you can sign the petition.

If you are in the UK or you have followers who are in the UK, reblogging this is really helpful! You can also retweet this tweet.

That’s over 1 response per minute for the entire 24 hours.

And almost 100 new followers in that time, too - hi new people!

If you’ve not shared already, please consider doing so. Last year we had 3,055 responses, and I’d love if we could continue the four-year trend and build on that again. Sharing on Tumblr is great, and sharing in other places is even better. :)

To recap, it’s a survey of eight questions, most of which are optional, about the language that you use to describe and express your genders. It’s aimed at anyone who doesn’t feel fully at home in/with the gender binary. And it’s extremely useful for activism, visibility, and generally just knowing more about our community and being respectful and inclusive of all its members.

It closes no sooner than 27th February 2017.

[LINK]

When interacting with the government you often have to provide a title from a preset list of options. Many people prefer to use no title, or a gender-neutral title: government bodies should offer gender-neutral options e.g. “Mx”, as well as the option to use no title at all.

[Image: a screenshot of a green and grey progress bar from the petition website showing that the petition has 292 of 10,000 required signatures.]

This is so important, and for a few minutes I wasn’t going to promote it, because I already have Mx on all my government paperwork and records. But then I realised that if this gets to 10,000 signatures, the Government will have to release an official statement saying that titles aren’t legally binding and that they already accept Mx on records.

That would be a HUGE victory for nonbinary people and people who don’t want to indicate a gender with their title. So please, if you are in the UK or might have followers who are, consider reblogging this. <3

Thank you for your time!

Anybody who has had, considered, or thought about top surgery should take this survey. All questions are optional, time to complete is 10-20mins.

Help us gather lots of data! Spread the word by sharing widely.

[LINK]

Twice now I have surveyed nonbinary people to get a general idea of preferences when it comes to language to describe us. In 2015, nonbinary and genderqueer identities were much more visible (in fiction and non-fiction), and trans issues have been thoroughly discussed in the media.

This time I’ll attempt to improve on the last survey by including some options that were missed out last time, plus any responses that were written into the “other” boxes over 1% of the time. As before, you will not be asked for your name, age, email address, specific location, legal gender, or gender assigned at birth.

What the results will be used for.

It will close at 12pm (noon GMT/UTC London) on Friday 15th January 2016 or thereabouts. (If there’s still plenty of responses coming in, I’ll announce a new closing time.)

Thank you,

Cassian

[LINK]

PS: Last year there were almost 3,000 responses, with some interesting results. If you want to help us to repeat (or exceed) that, please consider sharing in your various social media places!

Tweet

WE NEED YOUR HELP gathering information on how best to replace the Gender Recognition Act with a new form of legal gender recognition, incorporating self-declaration and all forms of gender identity.

What’s wrong with the current system? What do we need to include in any new proposals?

This short survey is for UK residents only, and the five questions should take no more than fifteen minutes. It can be completed anonymously.

Data from this survey will be managed and processed by trans activist CN Lester, social researcher Ruth Pearce and the group UK Trans Info. Our intention is to use survey results to inform the direction of a new campaign (which has yet to be named) which will be run in collaboration with a number of UK-based trans groups, including the Non-binary Inclusion Project.

United Kingdom Nonbinary Election Campaign results and final analysis blog post and bar charts, analysing the performance of the UK Trans Info campaign in light of the general election result.

As encouraging as the 809 candidates pledging support were, the 33 of them that actually got elected didn’t include the 2 Lib Dem MPs who previously showed the most support for nonbinary people in parliament.

This means that it’s important that those 33 who were elected are kept to their word and asked to show active support, and that more MPs are told why these issues deserve consideration.

Over 800 General Election candidates have now made our non-binary pledge. That’s over 20% of all candidates! New pledges can be made until polls close at 10pm tonight, so it’s not too late to ask your local candidates to pledge.

Update to the bar charts from the earlier post on the UK general election Nonbinary Campaign based on the figures as of 11pm the night before the election.

782 candidates have taken the pledge, almost 20% of all candidates.

Top of the list are the Green Parties, which across the English & Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Green parties have 312 pledged candidates (54% of their total candidates and 40% of all the candidates of any party who have pledged).

Only 1% of Tory candidates have pledged, just 11 candidates compared to Labour’s 101 candidates and the LibDems’ 171 candidates.

The first recorded use of the gender-inclusive title Mx in print, from The Single Parent magazine, volume 20, April 1977.

The letters page ‘In The Chapters’ by Ann Parks, page 21, gives some context - it appears that a previous issue had asked a question to which Mx was one of the suggested answers:

There has been some response to the question of what to call men and women (other than Mr. and Mrs./Ms.).  Ex–husbands are WASbands, of course.  Pat Kite (Single-Again Scrapbook, April SINGLE PARENT) felt that both sexes should be designated MX.  But Dalynn Hoeflin (Solano County, CA 92) feels that males should be

But the actual first use in print is on Page 16 in an article called ‘Single-Again Scrapbook’ by Pat Kite. This appears to be a short story, possibly part of a serial, involving a flirtatious encounter at a party:

“THE WORST PROBLEM facing the single woman today is having to decide whether she is Miss., Mrs., or Ms.,” said the Blue-Eyed Man as he sat sipping his rosé.

  “Ooohh, really?” I gasped, swallowing my frito whole.

  “I’m glad you agree,” nodded the Man, taking the matches from my hand to light my cigarette. “Now, where I work we make it a point to call every female ‘Ms.’  It took me quite a while, but I made it.  Now everybody’s happy.”

  “Where do you work?” I asked.

  “The welfare bureau.”

  “Do you mean if you get a widow who was married forty-eight years in your office, and you address her as Ms., she likes it?”

  “Why not?” said the Man.

  “Frankly the term Mizzzz reminds me of the servant section of a pre Civil War Southern plantation,” I commented, drawing out the words through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, that was in the past” smiled the happy Man. “Now Ms. for everyone connotes individuality.  What tile do you go by?”

  “Mrs.” I replied with a shrug.

  “Why Mrs.?”

  “Because I have four children and I like them to look legitimate, that’s why. Anyhow, if Mrs. and Miss are to be shortened to Ms., then I think Mister and Master should be changed to Muster … abbreviated Mu. On second thought, maybe both sexes should be called Mx.  That would solve the gender problem entirely.”

  “Are you a women’s libber or something?” said the horrified Man.  "Then how come you didn’t get mad when I lit your cigarette?“

  "Because it was a gesture of courtesy,” I answered, “and I don’t think good manners ever go out of style.  Besides, I love having doors opened for me, and my heavy packages carried.”

  “Oh, then you’re not a libber!” said the Man with a sigh of relief.

  “It all depends on how you look at it,” I replied.  "For instance, if you’ll give me my matches back, I’ll be able to light your cigarettes.  We could take turns.“

  "You wouldn’t.  .  .  .!”

  “Why not?” I said with a tiny smirk.

  “You know, the biggest problem women have today is whether to be Miss, Mrs., or Ms.,” said the Man, as he took the matches from his pocket and lit my Bel-air.

  “Not quite, kind Sir,” I commented, trying to change the topic to the artistic merits of Alice Cooper.

 "Yes really, Ma'am,“ laughed the Man as he got up to dance.

 And we mixed our whimsey with our wine until well past midnight.”

There are also a number of examples of people discussing Mx on Usenet newsgroups starting from 1982, with the first person mentioning that they have used the title for themself appearing in 1998.

Mx is currently being considered for inclusion in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bar charts showing the number of pledges by candidates of the top 9 parties in the UK general election Nonbinary Campaign.

Over 700 election candidates have pledged to support nonbinary rights and recognition. Practical Androgyny has a new post analysing the performance of the different political parties.