OK, so now I have your attention with the clickbait headline, here’s what this is all about. Normal people have a sensible understanding of what sex a person is. Not so in the UK. Here there are all sorts of possibilities, depending on what definition of ‘sex’ you choose. Here is a rundown of the options.

Actual Biological Sex

Anyone with more than a primary school understanding of human biology knows that sex is a very nebulous concept. There are chromosomes. There are other weird genetic things. There are hormones. All of these result in organs. The important thing is that humans are more similar than different, regardless of what combination of sexual attributes they have. Biological sex is anything but binary.

Assigned Sex

This is what the Supreme Court mean when they used the term, ‘biological sex’. When a baby is born in the UK, it is assigned a sex based on a cursory examination of its genitals. No medical tests are done. The assigned sex is written on the birth certificate and that, according to the justices, is that. The little human is now male or female, cannot be anything else, and is forever irrevocably different in all ways from someone assigned the other sex.

Certified Sex

When the EHRC came to write their guidelines on how trans people should be treated under the Equality Act, they came up against the issue of the Gender Recognition Act which says:

9.1 Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).

Does this mean that the person’s sex has changed? It does say ‘for all purposes’. Well no, say the EHRC, that has only changed the person’s Certified Sex, which is a very different thing from Biological Sex (by which they mean Assigned Sex which is nothing to do with biology). Even though the person in question will have been issued with the new birth certificate to show that their Assigned Sex has changed. Clear?

Anyway, the upshot of this is that having a Gender Recognition Certificate in the UK is now pointless, because it has no effect in law.

Except that if you learn that someone has a GRC it is still a crime to disclose that to others. Because trans people have a right to privacy in that narrow case, and in no other. So you should never, ever, ask someone what their Certified Sex is, even for purposes of policing toilets.

Imposed Sex

None of this has made the TERFs happy. Oh dear me no. There are all sorts of people whose Assigned Sex is female whom the TERFs would like to have unceremoniously dumped out of that category. These people can include:

• Anyone who has a Y chromosome, regardless of what interesting intersex variation they might exhibit;
• Anyone with elevated testosterone levels;
• Anyone whose gender presentation is insufficiently feminine;
• Black women;
• Anyone who doesn’t conform to white Western standards of beauty;
• Anyone who is sympathetic to trans people;
• Any celebrity of whom a random TERF happens to be jealous;
• The wife of the President of France;
• And so on.

Perceived Sex

The EHRC accepts that most people judge what sex other people are by how they look. Thus, while a trans man might have an Assigned Sex of female, he probably has a Perceived Sex of a muscled bloke with a bald head and a beard. He will thus be perceived as male. He cannot be allow into men’s toilets because his Assigned Sex is female, but equally he cannot be allowed into women’s toilets because his Perceived Sex is male.

Probably the best bet for trans men who want to go out in public is to dress as a cleaner, because male cleaners are still allowed in women’s toilets, even though their Assigned Sex and Perceived Sex is male.

Because the British hate talking about sex, the EHRC suggests that it might be rude to ask someone their Assigned Sex when they enter a toilet. The TERFs are spitting furious about this. They want chromosome tests administered to anyone who wants to pee. (Such tests are expensive and take about a week to process.)

Personal Sex

Which is the only one that really matters. What sex do you think you are? That will do nicely. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.