Nearly half of U.K. citizens oppose loosening restrictions to allow people to change their gender on official documents, according to a recent survey.
An online YouGov poll of 1,688 adults surveyed in late June revealed that 28% said it should be easier for people to alter their legal gender status whereas 47% said they opposed such a move, according to the U.K. Times.
The U.K. government estimates that between 200,000 and 500,000 people in the U.K. identify as transgender. Among those, some 5,500 have been legally allowed to change the gender listed on their birth certificate.
It also found that most oppose giving “transgender women or men access to single-sex changing rooms or lavatories than support it unless they have had gender reassignment surgery,” The U.K. Times added.
The poll results follow many months of contentious debate over proposed updates to the Gender Recognition Act. With Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Tories sweeping victory in the December elections, the controversial reforms were largely seen as dead given the electorate’s opposition to making such changes.
YouGov’s data revealed that U.K. citizens distinguish between the freedom to self-identify as transgender and being legally recognized as such. The vast majority of respondents said that if someone desires to change their legal gender, the requirement that a medical doctor sign off on it should remain, as should the requirement that the person desiring to change his or her legal gender live as the opposite gender for at least two years beforehand.
“Forty percent agreed with the statement ‘a transgender woman is a woman’ while 36 percent disagreed. More people supported than opposed trans people’s right in principle to access to single-sex spaces, but this was reversed when asked whether this should apply to those who have not had gender reassignment surgery,” the U.K. Times reported.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Brandon Showalter
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