A Return To The `Truth' Of The Past

Published date01 June 2009
AuthorAndrew N. Sharpe
DOI10.1177/0964663909103633
Date01 June 2009
Subject MatterArticles
A RETURN TO THE ‘TRUTH
OF THE PAST
ANDREW N. SHARPE
University of Keele, UK
THE GRA is clearly a positive development in a number of respects as
detailed in the opening article. Moreover, while Sandland is correct
to highlight how the Act reproduces, and thereby bolsters, a binary
gender order, and is in this sense problematic, his acknowledgement of the
claim by Whittle and Turner (2007) that the legislation nevertheless ‘under-
mine[s] the binary of two morphologically distinct sexes’ is worth emphasiz-
ing. Yet, even here, we should perhaps be more circumspect. In this concluding
comment I want to draw attention to a specif‌ic and discrete diff‌iculty con-
tained within the legislation. This diff‌iculty serves to call into question how
we choose to characterize and situate the Act within the wider context of
transsexual law reform. I wish to suggest that despite the obvious benef‌its of
the GRA including, and in particular, its renunciation of a requirement to cut
the f‌lesh, law has not divorced itself from a concern with the body.
Indeed, I will put it more strongly than that, and claim that a biological,
rather than a merely anatomical, understanding of sex is, in an important
sense, a subtext within the Act. It is in this sense that the GRA represents a
return to the past. In this regard, the GRA might be read as less progressive
than some earlier reform decisions and statutes. I have argued elsewhere that
reform jurisprudence rarely entails a clean break from the past (Sharpe, 2002).
The argument here is that the GRA proves to be no exception. This contention
might strike the reader as counter-intuitive. After all, the GRA has enabled
transsexuals to have their gender identity legally recognized irrespective of
any surgical or even hormonal interventions. In the face of this legal develop-
ment, how, it might be wondered, can it be argued that the anatomical body
remains paramount, let alone its biology?
To appreciate a connection between the GRA and a biological understand-
ing of sex we must look to section 11 of the Act. Section 11 gives effect to
schedule 4 to the Act. Crucially, paragraphs 4 and 5 of schedule 4 amend
section 12 of the Matrimonial Causes Act (MCA) 1973 to add a new ground
for rendering a marriage voidable, namely ‘that the respondent is a person
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES © The Author(s), 2009
Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
0964 6639, Vol. 18(2), 259–263
DOI: 10.1177/0964663909103633

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