Self-declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender

Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender examines the impact of legislation premised upon the principle of ‘self-declaration’ of legal gender status.

Existing doctrinal and comparative analyses have tended to come out strongly in favour of, or against, self-declaration. This book offers a socio-legal alternative which focuses on how self-declaration is experienced, on an embodied level, by trans and gender diverse people. It presents research conducted in Denmark, which became the first European state to adopt self-declaration in June 2014. By analysing Danish law through a Foucauldian framework which brings together socio-, feminist, and trans legal scholarship on embodiment and jurisdiction, the book offers the first empirically based and theoretically informed analysis of self-declaration. It draws upon legal consciousness, affect theory, vulnerability, and governmentality literatures to argue that the jurisdictional boundaries which existed between law and medicine were maintained throughout the reform process. This limited the impact of the legislation, enabling access to health care to be restricted in the same year in which amending legal gender status was liberalised. As the list of states that have adopted self-declaration increases, this intervention offers activists and policymakers insights which might shape how they respond to similar reform proposals in the future.

A timely and important assessment, this book will appeal to researchers and practitioners working in trans, gender, feminist legal, and socio-legal studies.

Chris Dietz is Lecturer at the Centre for Law & Social Justice, University of Leeds, UK.