Scotland is currently conducting a debate that is already underway in Germany: a draft law by the government of Nicola Sturgeon provides that people could change their gender in the future with a self-declaration and without a medical report. There are legal concerns about the draft and resistance from women’s rights activists – including the Harry Potter author Joanne K. Rowling.
“No to self-identification,” the author wrote on Twitter on Thursday. Rowling posted a photo of herself accompanying her statement expressing her solidarity with those protesting against the change outside the Scottish Parliament.
She wears a T-shirt on which the Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon is allegedly described as a “destroyer of women’s rights”. The word “women” is cut off in the photo Rowling shared, but other images of demonstrations have the same shirt artwork with that text.
In the past, Rowling has often made statements in the debates about identity politics and the rights of trans people. For example, she criticized the use of the term “people who menstruate” for biological women.
Trans people took these and other statements as hostile and discriminatory, and several actors in the Harry Potter films turned away from Rowling. Trans people or transgender people are people who do not feel they belong to the gender that was determined at birth.
Sturgeon’s bill would require applicants to live under their new gender for three months before applying for a gender change. The age for changing sex without a medical certificate will be lowered from 18 to 16 years. The government in London announced a legal review of the law.
In Germany, the traffic light coalition is planning a similar reform of civil status law with the Self-Determination Act. Key points presented in June envisage that reports on sexual identity or a medical certificate should no longer be a prerequisite for changing the gender entry in the future.
