Regulating gender in Denmark: Some preliminary findings
Chris Dietz, doctoral researcher at the Centre for Law & Social Justice, University of Leeds (UK) presents his research on the ‘self-declaration model’ of legal gender recognition in Denmark.
Abstract
This talk will present findings from the first empirical qualitative study of gender recognition in Denmark since it became the first European state to adopt the ‘self-declaration model’ of legal gender recognition in June 2014. It did so by enacting the L182 Act on the Central Person Register 2014 (the CPR law), which grants Danish residents the opportunity to make a statutory declaration of their legal gender identity. This enables people to bypass gatekeeping medical and legal authorities; allowing them to amend their gendered social security number without having to first undergo surgical castration (removal of uterus and ovaries, or testicles and penis) for the first time in Danish history. Yet, at almost the same point in time, new guidance authored by the Danish Health and Medicines Authority (Sundhedsstyrelsen) and published by the Ministry of Health (Ministeriet for Sundhed og Forebyggelse) in December 2014 had the effect of centralising the authorisation of access to body modifications considered 'sex/gender modification treatments' at the Sexological Clinic in the National Hospital (Rigshospitalet), Copenhagen – making the healthcare situation of those unable or unwilling to gain approval from their psychiatric evaluation programme increasingly precarious.
Drawing upon interviews conducted with 33 stakeholders – including trans people, activists, politicians, civil servants, and medical practitioners – in Denmark in 2015, this talk will suggest that the process through which the self-declaration model was enacted – and the manner in which it was designed and interpreted – is such that it cannot be easily situated within a progressive human rights narrative. Instead, reading these interviews alongside recent socio-legal governance scholarship, it will argue that these reforms might be better understood as constituting a review, reassessment, and reallocation of jurisdiction in gender recognition. The various effects of this jurisdictional arrangement will be presented for consideration.
Bio
Chris Dietz is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Law & Social Justice, University of Leeds (UK). He was a visiting researcher at the Center for Gender Studies (Center for Kønsforskning), University of Copenhagen, from April-June 2015 while conducting interviews for his PhD thesis, which considers possible alternatives to the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 on the tenth anniversary of its enactment. Taking gender recognition in Denmark as a case study, Chris’s project considers the allocation of jurisdiction in the governance of transgender citizenship with a view to informing UK policy-making debates and developing a greater understanding of legal embodiment.