Chris Dietz, "Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender" (Routledge, 2022)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network – New Books in Law
Episode: Chris Dietz, "Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender" (Routledge, 2022)
Host: Jane Richards
Guest: Dr. Chris Dietz (Lecturer, Centre for Law and Social Justice, University of Leeds)
Date: January 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Dr. Chris Dietz’s book, Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender. Dr. Dietz explores how legal recognition of gender has evolved, focusing on the shift from medicalized and bureaucratic models toward self-declaration systems, with a comparative lens on Denmark and the UK. The discussion touches on legal, medical, and social complexities, the lived experiences of trans people under different frameworks, the limitations of legal reform, and critical reflections on progress, visibility, and vulnerability in trans rights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Chris Dietz’s Background and Motivation

• Personal and Academic Evolution (02:34 – 03:23):
  • Dietz’s awareness of legal gender issues arose during undergraduate feminist activism and was influenced by experiences during an Erasmus year in Sweden, where trans friends faced hurdles changing legal gender.
  • Inspired by early findings around the UK's Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) and observing Denmark’s 2014 move to self-declaration.

2. Evolution of Legal Gender Recognition (03:57 – 09:18)

• Historical Shifts (04:10 – 06:22):

  • Originally, most countries, including the UK, provided no legal path for changing gender. Pre-2004, legal recognition in Europe typically required surgery and hormone treatment.
  • The GRA introduced legal recognition based on psychiatric diagnosis, no longer requiring surgery/hormones, seen as progressive for its time but still gatekept.
  • Denmark’s 2014 law marked a radical shift to self-declaration (no diagnosis or surgery required), influencing other countries.

• Conceptual Distinctions: “Self-Declaration” vs. “Self-Identification” (07:06 – 09:18):

  • Dietz distinguishes “self-declaration” (making a formal, binary request to the state) from informal “self-identification.”
  • Quote:

    "I specify self declaration because in Denmark the options were male or female. It’s a binary choice and it’s not enough to simply identify as those things—you have to tell the state." (07:36)

3. Sex, Gender, and Law (10:24 – 13:32)

• Debates and Ambiguity (10:29 – 13:32):

  • Sex/gender distinctions are central to current culture wars. “Sex” and “gender” are often conflated in UK law and Danish language.
  • Difficulty disentangling sex (as registered at birth) from gender (as later recognized).

• Memorable Reflection:

  "It is very difficult to disentangle sex and gender... the two are so heavily dependent upon one another." (13:28)

4. Gender, Power, and Legal Subjects (14:06 – 17:33)

• Gender Performativity and Inequalities (14:33 – 17:33):
  • Theoretical grounding in Judith Butler’s performativity; it's harder for some to "do gender", with trans people facing systemic barriers and discrimination.
  • Trans people’s legal and medical experiences remain pathologizing—different from cis people.
  • Quote:

    "Trans people somehow aren’t discriminated on the basis of gender—I think is misguided and easily disproven... they do face different barriers than what cis people face..." (16:41)

5. Comparing Denmark and the UK (18:15 – 21:28)

• Transition to Self-Declaration (20:19 – 21:28):
  • Denmark’s model removes medical gatekeeping for legal gender change, streamlining the process for trans individuals.
  • UK process remains burdensome, costly, and sometimes unnecessary for daily life.
  • Quote:

    "In Denmark, making it an Internet-based system... meant it was seen as much more accessible to trans people..." (20:51)

6. Methodology and Surprising Findings (21:48 – 29:32)

• Legal Consciousness and Empirical Work (21:48 – 23:36):
  • Dietz conducted qualitative interviews with trans people and regulators (legal consciousness methodology).
  • Initial assumption that Denmark must be “doing things well” was upended by trans interviewees’ negative experiences with healthcare after legal reform.
  • Quote:

    "The law is fine, but the access to health care got worse. And if anything, access to healthcare is more important than access to legal recognition for trans people." (29:23)

7. Legal Embodiment, Law, and Medicine (31:01 – 35:14)

• Institutional Power and Embodiment (31:01 – 35:14):
  • Dietz analyzes power dynamics between trans people, law, and medicine, focusing on institutional and experiential aspects rather than universalizing “trans embodiment.”
  • Medical discretion and legal frameworks profoundly shape trans experiences.

8. Jurisdictional Boundaries: Law vs. Medicine (35:14 – 44:51)

• Jurisdictional Tensions and Discretion (35:14 – 44:51):
  • Parliamentary debates in Denmark reveal politicians’ tendency to cede contested issues (like medical transition) to doctors.
  • Medical gatekeeping remains potent, with doctors focused on excluding those “not really trans,” limiting non-binary people’s access in particular.
  • Quote:

    "Our job is to find people to whom this won’t be right. So... the main focus is weeding out people who aren’t really trans." (43:09)

9. Visibility and Progress in Trans Rights (45:15 – 50:57)

• Visibility’s Double-Edged Sword (45:15 – 50:57):
  • Increased trans visibility doesn’t always correlate with more rights or acceptance: visibility has fueled backlash as much as progress.
  • Progressive reforms can pass even without high visibility, and, at times, increased visibility has triggered restrictive measures.
  • Quoting Edouard Glissant, Dietz highlights “the right not to be understood” as an alternative to the demand for perfect public understanding:

    “Perhaps the right not to be understood... is potentially... a direction away from this idea that people should have to come out and explain themselves all the time in order to be granted rights.” (50:44)

10. Vulnerability and Medical Institutions (52:00 – 57:44)

• Expanding on Vulnerability Theory (52:00 – 57:44):
  • Dietz adapts Martha Fineman’s vulnerability theory beyond individuals to institutions, suggesting that centralization and standardization in medical authority in Denmark was, in part, a defensive reaction to institutional vulnerability.
  • Individual autonomy is insufficient as a solution; better outcomes may come from supporting healthcare as a vulnerable institution rather than emphasizing neoliberal individualism.

11. Governmentality and the Nation-State (59:06 – 65:24)

• Broader Structural Analysis (59:06 – 65:24):
  • Drawing on theorists like Dean Spade, Dietz considers how the Danish state’s approach to trans rights is shaped by broader demographic, eugenic, and nationalist concerns.
  • Historic and contemporary requirements around procreation, citizenship, and medical eligibility reflect societal anxieties beyond trans rights per se.
  • Potential for progressive law reform to mask or introduce new exclusions and problems—legal recognition alone is not the full answer.
  • Quote:

    "What might be lost by even a progressive law reform, a successful law reform project... whether the law should be centered in our activism and in our demands from the state..."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Changing Views of Denmark:

  "When I got there, the first few trans people I met all told me what a nightmare it had been... the law... improved, the healthcare got... more restricted." (23:03–29:04)

• On Legal vs. Material Rights:

  “Trans rights aren’t often granted in those areas [healthcare, housing, employment] and in the places where they are, that doesn’t always translate into material equality—or very rarely does.” (50:28)

• On Methodology Surprises:

  “I had this big shift in my viewpoint… I wanted to come and see how it’s done, and straight away they’re saying, joking, ‘It’s a nightmare!’” (23:09)

• On Non-binary Experiences:

  “I keep cutting my hair short whilst I’m going to the sex clinic. I don’t want to confuse them. I’d love to grow my hair long but I want them to believe that I want to be a man.” (44:05)

• On Governmentality:

  “The myth of liberal Denmark is a myth—and what the dark underbelly of Denmark’s kind of progressive self-reputation...” (62:52)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro to Guest and Book: 01:32
• Personal motivation and research origins: 01:45 – 03:32
• History of gender recognition laws: 03:57 – 09:18
• Self-declaration vs. self-identification: 07:06 – 09:18
• Sex vs. gender in law and society: 10:24 – 13:32
• Power dynamics & structural inequalities: 14:06 – 17:33
• Comparing Denmark/UK frameworks: 18:15 – 21:28
• Methodological approach & surprises: 21:48 – 29:32
• Legal embodiment and institutional power: 31:01 – 35:14
• Jurisdiction: Law vs. Medicine: 35:14 – 44:51
• Visibility and progress: 45:15 – 50:57
• Vulnerability (theory and medical regulation): 52:00 – 57:44
• Governmentality and broader implications: 59:06 – 65:24
• Key takeaways and future projects: 66:00 – 70:19

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Key Takeaways

• Legal self-declaration is not a panacea.
  Removing gatekeepers (e.g., in Denmark) improved legal access but sometimes worsened healthcare access. Law alone doesn’t ensure material equality.

• Medicalization and gatekeeping persist.
  Even after legal reforms, medical professionals hold significant power, often limiting access based on narrow definitions of transness.

• Visibility can backfire.
  Increased public and media focus on trans people may generate backlash and new barriers as well as progress.

• Vulnerability isn’t only individual.
  Medical institutions themselves experience vulnerability, which can prompt protective or restrictive reforms.

• Progress is complex and non-linear.
  Legal reforms are entwined with social structures, power relations, and must be assessed for their real-life impact—including unintended consequences.

• Broader structural and political forces matter.
  Efforts to support trans people must go beyond law reform, considering intersections with healthcare, economic security, and nationalism.

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Further Work

• Chris Dietz's Current/Future Research (69:00 – 70:21):
  Dietz is shifting focus to examine the regulation of wearable health devices in the UK, analyzing legal embodiment, surveillance, and implications for healthcare.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Hello and welcome back to New Books in Law, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Jane Richards and today I've got the great pleasure of speaking with Dr. Chris Dietz. He is a lecturer at the center for Law and Social justice at the University of Leeds, and his book today is Self Declaration in the Legal Recogn Recognition of Gender. It was published by Routledge in 2023. Chris, welcome to the show.

[C]

Hi, Jane, thanks for having me.

[D]

And yeah, pleasure to be on the podcast.

[B]

Oh, it's great to have you here. So, just to get us started, can you please tell me just a little bit about yourself and how you came to write self declaration in the legal recognition of gender?

[C]

Yeah, okay. So. Well, it's been quite a long process in terms of me looking into how.

[D]

Sex and gender have been regulated in law.

[C]

It actually dated back to my undergraduate dissertation. And actually the idea came from even before that. I had been involved in some feminist activism whilst I was on my undergrad. And then I did an Erasmus exchange year in Sweden. And there I met a couple of trans people from different countries who were both having similar problems in terms of changing their legal gender in their home countries. And one of my. One of the intentions of my year.

[D]

Abroad was to work out what I wanted to do my Undergrad dissertation on. And I thought, oh, it'll be interesting.

[C]

To see if that's the case for.

[D]

Trans people in the uk. At that point I actually didn't know any trans people in the uk, although that changed quite quickly when I got back.

[C]

And yeah, I looked into it and we had this, this law in 2004, the gender recognition act, which was in many ways world leading at the time, I suppose you could say, but with lots of caveats and there's just been.

[D]

A load of literature published just before.

[C]

I was conducting this research and yeah, I applied for a PhD to look into that actually further and it was only when I actually started the PhD and the law changed in Denmark to have a much more seemingly progressive form of recognition that I considered going there.

[D]

And making self declaration of gender, which at the time my undergrad wasn't, was.

[C]

A sort of pipe dream, actual case study.

[B]

And it's super fascinating and I just want to pick up on something you just mentioned about the changes in law. So you talked about the introduction of the Gender Recognition act in the UK and then all these legislative changes that happen in Denmark, which was the subject of your PhD. So and I think this is a really interesting sort of thing to draw out. So can you tell me how the regulation of gender actually changed over the period of your writing the book?

[C]

Yeah, so, well, sort of prior to when I got interested in this subject, you know, there was, there's a case where it was the case where, you.

[D]

Know, a lot of countries, including the uk, offered pretty much no form of.

[C]

Gender recognition or you could consider that the right to change your legal gender.

[D]

From the one that you were assigned at birth.

[C]

And yeah, in the UK that was, that was the case before the Gender Recognition act, actually in a lot of continental European countries, including Denmark, it had been possible to change your legal gender, provided you'd undergo, you could prove that.

[D]

You'D undergone what they would consider like.

[C]

A full transition and that was with hormones and surgery so restricted to which.

[D]

Only ever is available to a minority globally, a tiny minority of trans people.

[C]

So yeah, you know, in some ways they were ahead of the uk. Then the UK skipped ahead of them by making this psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria the main condition for getting legal.

[D]

Gender recognition.

[C]

Which didn't in, in law.

[D]

Require trans people to have undergone any surgery or taken any hormonal treatments.

[C]

Yeah, like I say, that was seen as very progressive at the time.

[D]

And there was a rich, small but rich body of literature in the UK from academics like Alex Sharp, Sharon Cowan.

[C]

Sally Hines.

[D]

Going into this, this, this law and what was the, what were.

[C]

The ways in which it was progressive.

[D]

And what were the ways in which it was, you know, ultimately conservative.

[C]

And then when, yeah, the law changed in the, in Denmark to basically allow gender recognition purely on the basis of one's own self declaration. That is to say where you tell the state, you know, my legal gender is actually male when it had previously been recorded as female or vice versa. And the state basically accepts that without any further gatekeeping. When that happened in 2014, it was the first European state to enact that, that model of gender recognition after Argentina.

[D]

Had previously done so.

[C]

And yeah, I suppose my thought was.

[D]

To sort of build a body of.

[C]

Literature around that change, much like there'd.

[D]

Been a body of literature around the Gender Recognition Act.

[B]

And it does, you know, sort of thinking about the history you've just taught through this idea that gender could be self declared does almost seem quite radical, you know, overcoming sort of so much sort of legislative history and entrenched ideas about gender and trans people. I wonder if you can comment a little bit on how progressive the law was and how it sort of turned out to be since 2014.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Well, on the first point, on the sort of radical shift it is in a way, I mean, I always specify self declaration and the reason I chose that for the title of my book, rather than self identification, which some people.

[D]

Say, or self ID for short, is.

[C]

That everybody's entitled in some way to self identify their gender. But for me that carries a assumption, or there's an undertone there, that you.

[D]

Would be able to self identify on.

[C]

A personal level amongst a range of options. So potentially non binary or gender fluid or gender queer agenda. There's lots of different options there or, and that you would be able to do so on a personal level. I specify self declaration because in Denmark the options were male or female. So it's a binary choice and it's not enough to simply identify as those things you have to tell the state.

[D]

If you want your papers to match up with this new self identification.

[C]

So there's a sort of two stage.

[D]

Process, the self identification, then the self declaration that comes after and the fact.

[C]

That you have to do a declaration. I was inspired a lot by Emily Grabham's work on and also Dean SPADE in the U.S. talking about the bureaucracy of declaring gender and how that sort of fits with certain types of nation.

[D]

Building and there's ways in which this.

[C]

Engagement with the state it already provides.

[D]

Confines and people's people's sort of gendered expression.

[C]

And so yeah, so I think it is, it is a, it was a radical change and certainly a lot of trans people, non binary people included in the UK would prefer the UK to go in the direction that Denmark went or a lot of other countries we've seen the Republic of Ireland out of our near neighbors have gone down this.

[D]

Route and Scotland have attempted to, although that's been blocked by the UK government and that sort of rumbling on that issue.

[C]

The idea of it taking away the.

[D]

Gatekeepers has massive appeal for people who struggle to gain the approval of medical and medico legal gatekeepers to diagnoses like gender dysphoria.

[B]

Yeah, that's interesting because notwithstanding the sort of the element of the legislation that is progressive, there is still this, as you sort of mentioned, this bureaucracy and engagement with the state that trans people who do self declare still have to overcome, that people who are not trans don't have to overcome. It's sort of. Yeah, it's interesting, but it does seem this additional hurdle to be recognized for who you are. So I want to sort of go back a little bit to the start of the book. And you open the book and you write this book is about gender. It's also about sex to the extent the two can be distinguished from one another. So just to sort of contextualize the book a little more, can you provide some sort of context in terms of the way that gender and sex are related and how they can be distinguished, especially for the purposes of the book?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean this is in some ways this, this distinction between sex and gender.

[D]

Is at the crux of a lot of the culture war debates that are taking place nowadays all around trans issues.

[C]

With you know, people who were seen to be more pro trans rights or non binary rights. Focusing on the idea of gender as.

[D]

A sort of social construct which is.

[C]

Like layered on top of the physicality.

[D]

Of the, of the body, of the.

[C]

Sexed body and other people who are more resistant, either sort of self defined gender critical feminists or the broader anti.

[D]

Gender movement I think would include evangelical.

[C]

Christians and far right governments and anti abortion activists. Funders in from the US also oppose this idea of gender. And we see it a lot in.

[D]

Eastern Europe, but like I say in the US and increasingly in the UK.

[C]

Too, saying sex is what's real, gender is some kind of gender ideology is.

[D]

The term that's been used. The idea that all that hard work.

[C]

That actually second wave feminists ironically did in the 70s and 80s to say that your Biology isn't your destiny. And that the social roles of man.

[D]

Woman are sort of constructed is. Is somehow a trick.

[C]

Yeah, for me distinguishing is difficult and that, you know, it is a socio legal project.

[D]

Ultimately it's not a philosophical treatise and.

[C]

It'S not a biological study. I am inspired by certain biologists, but for me the. It's very difficult to disentangle sex and gender. In the uk, for example, especially in law, sex is what is registered in the Birth and Death Registration act when the child is born. And yet gender is what's recognized.

[D]

So there is a.

[C]

It's often the two terms are used interchangeably in UK law and interestingly in Danish. In the Danish language, the Danish term K is actually.

[D]

It means both sex and gender.

[C]

Sometimes they specify in the parliamentary debates that I analyzed things like they say biologis K or physique, which is biological, physical, sex, slash gender.

[D]

And sometimes they say identity, which means like identity gender.

[C]

And so there are ways in which you can clarify the conceptual distinction, but often I don't think it's useful. And yeah, there is an extent to which when people talk about biological sex, it's really hard to separate that from.

[D]

Sort of the.

[C]

Confines of social gender and vice versa.

[D]

The two are so heavily dependent upon one another.

[B]

Yeah, that's super interesting to reflect upon and reflecting upon your book in this space of the cultures that, you know, we see in the media all the time. It's fascinating, but I do think it relates to sort of. My next question is in terms of how gender shapes power relations between legal subjects. So wondering if you could tell me a little bit about this in the context of your research and perhaps if you'd like to comment more broadly as well.

[C]

Um, yeah, you mean gender in. In the. In the sense of like how it's inscribed in law and how that.

[B]

Yeah, I think how it is. Yeah. How gender is described in law and how. Yes, exactly. And how it perpetuates inequalities and then also perhaps how gender as a sort of. Sort of. So the concept of social gender also has the potential to influence power relations.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, well, so theoretically I'm quite inspired by Judith Butler and others who argue that, you know, we all do gender in different ways. I think that that is.

[D]

That sort of idea of gender performativity.

[C]

Has become widely used and to some extent misunderstood. There is the rest of Butler's work after Gender Trouble. Stuff like Bodies that Matter highlights and focuses a lot on the way in.

[D]

Which.

[C]

That'S much harder for some bodies than others. And this sort of feminist injunction that, that CIS men, non trans men have privilege and certain advantages over, well, CIS women, but also others I think applies. And that's something I've tried to be.

[D]

Sensitive to in the book.

[C]

So, yeah, things like unpaid labor that happens in different societies, like historically women.

[D]

Have been treated as inferior to men and have faced barriers, some of which maintain to this day.

[C]

I think that the point at which I would depart from those sort of gender critical feminists is the idea that.

[D]

Trans and non binary people somehow also benefit from this male privilege. That's not sort of, that's not shown.

[C]

In the figures or the statistics around trans people's high mortality rates, high unemployment rates, poor access to health care or access to housing security, low earnings, poor difficult health outcomes. Like there's lots of ways at high.

[D]

Rates of discrimination or propensity towards violence. And yeah, I'm painting a bit of.

[C]

A stark picture here, but the idea.

[D]

That trans people somehow aren't discriminated on the basis of gender, I think is.

[C]

Is misguided and easily disproven purely in the sense of identifying in law as well, you know, they do face different.

[D]

Barriers than what CIS people face in.

[C]

Terms of I'm a CIS man and I identify as a man.

[D]

I don't need any doctor to approve that for me.

[C]

So there are, they are treated both in law and in medicine in the UK as exhibiting a pathology or an illness that pathologized for doing gender in a slightly different way to cisgender peers.

[D]

And that's something which, yeah, I think.

[C]

It'S worth identifying, which has knock on effects in terms of, yeah, employment, access.

[D]

To healthcare, access to housing. Yeah, all of those kind of things.

[C]

Which have a material effect and on.

[D]

Trans people's lives and bodies.

[B]

And so then sort of thinking about digging further into the implications into like this regulatory framework in law about the way transgender people's bodies and their lives are regulated. And sort of thinking about the research you did in Denmark and then the uk, I'm wondering, can you sort of comment on how gender is sort of realized and recognized and perhaps make a comparison between some jurisdictions. You've sort of touched on it before, but I'm wondering, you know, what are some of the lessons we can learn from like looking at the model in Denmark compared to say, the UK and other states?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I mean the model, like I said, the easiest. I don't do a pure comparison in the book. I try and go in depth in the Danish case so that people outside of The UK get as much from.

[D]

The book as people inside it.

[C]

Having said that, bearing in mind my.

[D]

Background as a British person who's worked primarily in UK institutions and the, the.

[C]

The main comparator is still the Gender Recognition Act 2004, in that you have to have as proof of this psychiatric.

[D]

Diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

[C]

So there is that element of, well, number one, being able to get that diagnosis, number two, being able to prove it. And there are ways in which there.

[D]

Are various other sort of conditions in the Gender Recognition act which mean that.

[C]

It'S a certain minority of trans people.

[D]

Who were likely to be able to get that kind of recognition.

[C]

And I also, from having spoken to.

[D]

Lots of activists and trans people in the uk, know that a lot of trans people who maybe even could go through that process choose not to because it's all straightforward to change individual pieces of identification that it makes no sense to go for the central, central recognition, the legal recognition which is supposed to have this knock on effect because anyway you still need to go through the process of changing your driver's license, changing your passport, changing, etc, etc and a lot of this is possible without a gender recognition certificate.

[C]

Marriage is impossible and there are certain.

[D]

Things which make it harder if you.

[C]

When you die in terms of like.

[D]

Having things recorded on your death certificate. Although I saw recently some research which suggested that that would be possible for people, trans people to have their identity recognized without a gender recognition.

[C]

Anyway, there's a, there's a bureaucracy and that it's complicated and quite expensive and.

[D]

Time consuming to go through the process for a lot of British trans people.

[C]

Will choose not to in Denmark, making it like an Internet based system where you just self declare your agenda and then confirm this six months later is supposed to take some of that, those issues away. And certainly a lot of the trans people who I interviewed, so I did interviews with some regulators and people involved.

[D]

In the reform process, but also a lot of trans people to ask about their personal experiences of the change.

[C]

And a lot of them had sort.

[D]

Of taken part in the, in the, in the process of the recognition process. Because removing these a lot of conditions and removing the need for expert approval meant it wasn't seen as much more accessible to trans people to change their legal gender at least. Although I didn't mean that the word problems that came after that or that.

[C]

The other aspects of what you might.

[D]

Call sort of gender transition were smoother on the basis of having had legal recognition.

[B]

So I just want to pick up on something you just mentioned you did A lot of like, interviews for your book, which was actually really fascinating to read. Can you tell me a little bit more about your methodology and the research that you actually, you know, how did you. How is your sort of research grounded? I guess it's my question.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So I sort of used this legal consciousness methodology. The idea was I wanted to get a grounded, empirical view of how these.

[D]

Reforms were being experienced in practice.

[C]

Incidentally, you know, I went to Denmark thinking, perhaps quite naively, this is the.

[D]

Most progressive model of recognition in Europe.

[C]

Let's go and see how well it can be done. And then I'll come back to the UK and be like, oh, well, you.

[D]

Know, you need to do it like this, you need to do it like that. And often denim like does have quite.

[C]

A self professed, but also a widely shared opinion reputation of being, you know.

[D]

A sexually liberal.

[C]

Kind of social democratic country with high wealth there, high taxes.

[D]

Often it's seen as part of these kind of Nordic block of countries that offer a different route to. So I guess the sort of like bland neoliberalism that we've been having in the UK since the 70s and also in the US since probably much before that.

[C]

When I got there, the first few.

[D]

Trans people I met all told me.

[C]

What a nightmare it had been. So I had this big shift in my viewpoint in terms of, I told.

[D]

Them, you know, I'd like to come and see how it's done and straight away saying, you know, joking kind of thing.

[C]

So that was a shift and in a way that justified my methodology, I think of trying to, rather than doing, say, a comparative study which covered loads of different countries or even like any kind of like a desk based analysis, or not try another analysis of what.

[D]

The Danish law was or I did.

[C]

Do that work and I did translate the parliamentary debate.

[D]

So there was an element of doctrinal.

[C]

Analysis in the book. However, the interviews and the empirical research is really where my main findings is. What my main findings rose out of. And focusing on the legal consciousness of trans people was my way of trying to work out, you know, how the.

[D]

Law reforms register on an embodied level.

[C]

What the impact the every, the impact.

[D]

Was on trans people's everyday lives of the fact that they, you know, now lived in most liberal state in Europe for in terms of transgender legal recognition at least.

[B]

Yeah, right. So I'm, I'm not sure if you just answer this question, but I'll ask anyway and let me know. But then my next question is, what surprised you most in doing this research?

[C]

I mean, yeah, Definitely that, that definitely this, the, the arriving in Denmark and sort of having this straight away. My hypothesis totally blown out of the water. The hypothesis that Denmark was doing things.

[D]

Better and doing things well.

[C]

I've never been, it was always meant to be a Socio Legal PhD. My funding was for socio legal studies.

[D]

That's what my PhD is in.

[C]

So I've never been a like law first person, always been, you know, identified as myself within that kind of body.

[D]

Of law and society research and looking.

[C]

Not just at what law says and then what the effects of that are, but having a, having an idea that the, the two, that law and society.

[D]

Are constantly intertwined and shaping one another.

[C]

So I suppose I always thought, I knew there would be issues still ongoing in Denmark. What I didn't know was like how, how much the progressive legislation had been, was part of the same reform package as some more regressive changes.

[D]

I guess, if you want to use that framing.

[C]

The health care system in Denmark was very unregulated before 2012. And then a key point in the sort of timeline of trans issues in Denmark, trans rights, was then when a young trans man, or maybe even trans.

[D]

Boy, I think he was 15 at.

[C]

The time, had had his breasts removed for on in the private healthcare system. He'd gone to the press, he'd gone to newspaper TV to say, oh you know, I got this great treatment and why shouldn't everyone else, you know, just.

[D]

Because my parents were kind enough to.

[C]

Pay for this surgery for me, why.

[D]

Shouldn'T other trans people have access to.

[C]

This young trans people that I think.

[D]

Probably he wouldn't mind me saying, the trans people wouldn't mind me saying that.

[C]

That had backfired to some extent. There was an outrage, as you can.

[D]

Imagine, with, especially with the context of being the 16. A lot of the culture was framed around protecting children at the moment in the UK and the US and that happened there.

[C]

It all kind of got mashed together. And in the end the changes to the healthcare system in Denmark were to make it much more centralized and standardized.

[D]

The way in which you would gain.

[C]

Access to both surgeries and hormones. Even though a lot of people were.

[D]

Mostly.

[C]

This comforted by the fact that.

[D]

It was a surgery that this trans boy had undergone and for trans people.

[C]

Of all ages, even though a lot.

[D]

Of people who were reacting and, and.

[C]

To be a round sociologist in Denmark who's written about this, you know, he, that's his point basically that the effect.

[D]

Was to include, to make things difficult for all trans people.

[C]

Even though in the, in the media.

[D]

It seemed like people's reactions were mostly against the age, the underage element of, of this procedure.

[C]

So, yeah, so basically they tightened up all of the way in which trans people would access both hormones and surgeries. And there was a period where a.

[D]

Lot of trans people were worried.

[C]

The doctors that had been prescribing their.

[D]

Hormone replacement treatments were prohibited from doing so any longer. So which you can imagine is pretty.

[C]

Traumatic and also anxiety inducing for trans.

[D]

People to wonder if their medicine, they're going to get access to their medicine or not.

[C]

They were told they had to go to the central, the main clinic in Copenhagen. Just one clinic would be able to approve access to healthcare treatments.

[D]

And a lot of people had already been there and didn't like it at all, so wouldn't go back or were.

[C]

Very scared to go back.

[D]

I talk about that being a sort.

[C]

Of state monopoly for healthcare which doesn't persist to this day.

[D]

There's been some other clinics now approved elsewhere outside of Copenhagen, a couple at.

[C]

Least, but that's been since my empirical.

[D]

Research has been over. I'm not sure if their sort of way of prescribing hormones is more accessible than it was at the sexological clinic in Copenhagen.

[C]

But yeah, the idea was as the law improved, the healthcare got at least restricted.

[D]

And from a lot of the trans people I spoke to, much harder access to healthcare.

[C]

And yeah, I had a great quote.

[D]

Which actually I didn't put in the book. It's in an article, jurisdiction in Trans Health, which I published in the Journal of Law and Society from one of the trans people I interviewed who said.

[C]

The law is fine, but the access to health care got worse.

[D]

And if anything, access to healthcare is more important than access to legal recognition for trans people.

[C]

So that was the surprise, I guess the law, which, you know, as legal scholars we sometimes think is the main way of protecting rights, as that improved people's experience of their rights in particular. Healthcare rights. Yeah, got worse.

[B]

That's a super interesting point. Thinking as a lawyer, you know, law is offered as a solution. It's a sort of rights based legalism approach to protecting rights. But actually, you know, in this case, I think, well, it's, it's not a good example, but it's a sort of. It's an example of how, you know, the centralized and increased sort of centralized and standardized regulation of trans people actually was massively problematic. So. And I think that's a really interesting lesson from your book and a really interesting takeaway, at least in this case. So one point you sort of touched on a moment ago was this idea of legal embodiment. And this is sort of the concept of legal embodiment is central to some of the research questions that you set out. So wondering if we can sort of go through these a bit and talk about this concept of embodiment. Do you forbidden will power jurisdiction mobilise in the governance of legal embodiment? I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about this and how your book answers this.

[C]

Yeah, so when, when I was starting off, I was interested, like I say, in approaching the question from a kind of a perspective inspired by the work of people like Judith Butler who write about law and bodies, or law and the body, or at least people who've been inspired by her work have. But I came to this idea of legal embodiment actually through it. It's been mostly fleshed out within primarily.

[D]

UK based health care law literature.

[C]

And I basically use that as a way to try and encapsulate the power dynamic that's developed between trans people, law and medicine primarily. It looks by focusing on embodiment rather than bodies or the body, you kind of took, you get more of this idea of the experience of trans people being important to that, to the analysis. And yeah, I, I think the thing I added to, to the excellent work that had already been done on legal embodiment was to really focus on institutional aspects and dimensions of embodiment. Because I, I don't want, I didn't want to.

[D]

I deliberately want to stop well short.

[C]

Of accounting for the, the holistic complexity of trans embodiment. Being a scholar who's not a trans person, I found much more comfortable limiting the book to exploring the power dynamic.

[D]

Yeah, like I say, between law, trans.

[C]

People, medical professionals and how that's affected by regulatory governance. So focusing not on like, say, someone like Zoe Davey in her brilliant book recognizing transsexuals, she focuses on so many.

[D]

Different aspects of trans embodiment.

[C]

Sexual, subjective. Like there's lots of different relational aspects of embodiment to do with, like how trans people aesthetics. So how that they, you know, navigate.

[D]

Their way through the world is kind of a Doersian sociology of trans embodiment.

[C]

I didn't want to do that. I wanted to, for various reasons, like.

[D]

I laid out earlier, I wanted to.

[C]

Focus primarily on the interaction between trans.

[D]

People in the law, but with this.

[C]

Kind of legally pluralistic understanding that law isn't just civil law, it's not just what's written down in legislation. It also, like the way that the.

[D]

Doctors treat Trans people is legally, as a legal basis, it's permitted.

[C]

The amount of discretion that healthcare professionals in Denmark, in the uk, in US etc, have over trans people, the amount of control they have over the direction of trans people's destinies is, is legally ascribed. And you know, the idea that, that it's not legal because it's health is.

[D]

Something that I really wanted to challenge because, you know, there is medical law.

[C]

There'S healthcare law, and you know, in.

[D]

Many different contexts, you can think about.

[C]

Disability studies, disability law, other areas where rights, human rights are completely circumvented by medical discretion in certain contexts. And the idea that, you know, you have a right to access health care and then the doctor decides, okay, but.

[D]

Not for this reason, not now or not for you.

[C]

You know, there's always ways in which.

[D]

That can be limited.

[B]

And what you've just said, I think relates to one of your other research questions, this idea looking at the intersection of the experiences of trans people, law and medicine. And I want to ask you. So then again, turning back to your research question, but so then how are jurisdictional boundaries between institutions such as law and medicine affected by self declar.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I mean this was, this was a great method of an or.

[D]

Mode of analysis for me looking at jurisdiction.

[C]

It really helped me understand what was going on. It was actually inspired by Mariana Valverde's work on the Big Book. I guess where she talks about jurisdiction.

[D]

Is the chronotypes of law.

[C]

But I actually saw her do a talk at Leeds way before that book came out and just at the hilly in the early days of my PhD and I'd just been thinking of like, how am I going to concept conceptualized so professional boundaries between law and medicine. And she came in and she talked about these different kind of ideas that she'd been having and jurisdiction was one of them. And she's written little bits outside of that book on it. But the idea is the way in which jurisdiction is the thing that holds these different, sometimes contradictory logics or ideologies together is where law says, okay, here is the limit to where we impinge upon medical discretion and, or vice versa. You know, here's, here's the point at which medical discretion stops and, and law takes over. And there are many instances in which, you know what? The doctrine doesn't know best, otherwise there wouldn't be a whole field of medical or healthcare law. And yeah, I sort of was focused, yeah, like I say, both in this article, jurisdiction in trans health, I wrote before the book, but also within the Book itself at looking at how jurisdiction.

[D]

Sort of.

[C]

Greases the cogs of the legal system and just keeps things moving along, means that the doctors know what their limits are of their, of their powers. And also, yeah, the, the way in.

[D]

Which it was really clear in the.

[C]

Danish parliamentary debates the points at which the politicians decided, okay, well, we know.

[D]

Trans rights are important, or at least.

[C]

We have to say they are, and.

[D]

We can believe that.

[C]

But then at the point at which it becomes a health issue, well, we're.

[D]

No experts on that at all.

[C]

And the idea that they, that that would be fine and, or would be filtered down, okay, into trans people's lives.

[D]

Who, you know, a couple of people.

[C]

Said to me, you know, it's fine.

[D]

For me to change my legal gender.

[C]

To female, but when I look like I do and go around with this body that I don't feel is right for me, it's not going to make.

[D]

Things any easier for me in terms.

[C]

Of accessing employment or accessing healthcare or accessing housing, or not facing discrimination in the streets. And the idea that there's no attempt.

[D]

To kind of see things from the bottom, the everyday.

[C]

Legal subjects viewpoint, that.

[D]

Doesn'T trouble jurisdiction because it's, I think.

[C]

The point of jurisdiction primarily, like I.

[D]

Say, is just to make sure the.

[C]

Status quo is in some way maintained.

[D]

Or at least the smooth functioning of the system. I think that's an accidental quote from the day is maintained.

[B]

And that's really interesting. And I said, I want to delve a little bit more into this point. The idea of politicians being driven by policy and saying, as you just said, trans rights are really important. But actually then pulling back and say, but we're not going to encroach upon professionals in medicine. We're not going to tell them what to do. I'm interested to know then in terms of policy, you know, is there sort of like discretion granted to medical decision makers and doctors that sort of almost takes power away from trans people in this space? Or is this sort of, you know, is, has the regulatory system sort of stepped in or improved in terms of, because of self recognition or is it there's just a sort of shift in discretion?

[C]

Well, I did a couple of interviews with doctors who'd been involved in the, at least the legislative process or, or the drafting of the new medical guidelines which came in, in Denmark which centralized the, the system. They said to me, I said to them, you know, what would you think if a trans person came in and said, you know, I've got my legal.

[D]

Gender recognition, I Was like, would that influence your decision whether or not they had gender dysphoria?

[C]

And they said to me, well, you know, it's part of the picture, but, you know, your rights out there, they don't necessarily apply in the clinic here.

[D]

Danish people speak very bluntly. It was great interviews, very honest about.

[C]

What their thoughts are, generally speaking. And I think that was interesting in terms of like, seeing, you know, I think they said, you know, the idea behind that was that if you change your legal gender and it's a fast to change it back, that that would be seen as positive in terms of.

[D]

You getting a diagnosis, because it proved your sort of commitment in some.

[C]

It wasn't just a fad, which is.

[D]

Like a big, big fear of the doctors and people who were wary of granting too easy access to hormones or treatments.

[C]

But still the idea that there's different viewpoints on the. From the sort of health sociology side.

[D]

Ruth Pearce and Zoe Davey have both.

[C]

Written about the way in which both the diagnoses in the DSM and the ICD themselves are discriminatory. The way in which they describe gender dysphoria or gender incongruence is that, you know, there's things to look fat that look for. There's like a checklist. So the. The way in which you are trans is. Is kind of prescribed or circumscribed in that.

[D]

In that.

[C]

That those diagnostic manuals. So the diagnoses themselves are part of the problem, the way in which they're.

[D]

Formulated in these handbooks for psychiatrists or other medical professionals.

[C]

And I think there's definitely something in that. The thing is, I also think, I mean, I don't have a great experience.

[D]

Of the healthcare system in the UK for trans people, but I've written and repeated. My former colleague, you know, we've talked a lot about it. Her great book, Understanding Trans Health, lays out the UK system fantastically.

[C]

I think I. I think the way in which. The main difference, if I want it.

[D]

To be very sort of reductive, is.

[C]

That in the uk, the, the doctors.

[D]

Some doctors start from the point of.

[C]

You know, using these checklists as a kind of guide.

[D]

When the trans person comes in, they.

[C]

Sort of see how many of these.

[D]

Did they fit with? And, you know, is there anything that indicates to me that they aren't a trans person?

[C]

Whereas the way I think historically it's been done in Denmark and it might.

[D]

Be changing now, it's more to see, do you tick all of these boxes? So it's. The starting point was a little Bit more restrictive, I would say they were really keen. And one of the doctors said this to me. Our job is to find people to whom this won't be right. So rather than seeing themselves as kind of healthcare providers to facilitate access to healthcare for trans people, it was about weeding out. The main focus is weeding out the people who aren't really trans.

[C]

And that includes, you know, contrary to sort of the arguments put forward in.

[D]

The culture wars that, you know, oh.

[C]

It'S all non binary now, you know.

[D]

You can't be non binary in if.

[C]

You follow a strict literal textual understanding.

[D]

Of gender dysphoria because it specifies, you.

[C]

Know, a strong identification with the other.

[D]

Gender to the one assigned at birth. It doesn't say I'm not the gender to the one assigned at birth.

[C]

So, yeah, so something as simple as being non binary, maybe in the UK that's a bit more accepted nowadays, but certainly in Denmark.

[D]

I didn't think it, it didn't come across as something that was, was being facilitated.

[C]

In my interviews with doctors and in my interviews with non binary people, they said to me, one of them said.

[D]

To me, you know, oh, I'd really. This was a non binary person who'd been assigned female gender at birth, said.

[C]

To me, I keep cutting my hair.

[D]

Short whilst I'm going to the sex clinic. I don't want to confuse them.

[C]

I'd love to grow my hair long.

[D]

But I want them to believe that I want to be a man.

[C]

Even though they did, they just didn't.

[D]

Want to be a woman.

[C]

So it was. There's ways in which trans people are.

[D]

Really non binary people.

[C]

Either they just don't go to these.

[D]

Clinics because they just think it's not. I'm not, I'm going to get rejected, I won't get access to hormones. I tried that is safe or can try and do it privately or overseas.

[C]

Or they just hide their true gender expression and just fit the narrative, the.

[D]

Sort of tired old narrative narrative of this is what a trans person is and how they should be. And sometimes the doctors are happy to go along with that kind of, with supporting that kind of transition.

[B]

And so this is perhaps an interesting point to talk about. One of your chapters is titled Visibility and Progress in Trans Rights and it is really a sort of really big topic that plays into cultures. I want to think about, you know, firstly, what is visibility in relation to trans rights and then how do we measure progress in this space?

[C]

Yeah, this is, I mean, this is one of the chapters in the book.

[D]

There's A couple towards the end of.

[C]

The book that I think will have sort of controversial arguments in this one and the next chapter as well. But in this one I think I was a bit wary of getting too much into telling trans people or trans activists what they should be arguing for. I didn't really want to do that so much. But there is a sort of basic understanding that the more we see of trans people, the more we'll accept them. And I think it's been partially true in the case of gay and lesbian people. But I mean there's plenty of sort.

[D]

Of counter examples you could say in that context too.

[C]

In the uk, you know, we had a trans woman win Big Brother and then we, you know, the more that.

[D]

Trans people were sort of seen in everyday cultural contexts seem to be that they were being more accepted. But we've got this huge backlash now.

[C]

And I sort of started the chapter.

[D]

By saying, you know, when, when trans.

[C]

People have never been more visible in.

[D]

The US and uk, the backlash has been and the moral panic has been huge.

[C]

And in Denmark when the. One of my points in this chapter was that they weren't very visible at the time of the law changing.

[D]

So it was possible to pass progressive.

[C]

Law reform without very visible trans people.

[D]

Featuring in the public consciousness and the.

[C]

Instances in which they were visible.

[D]

In the Caspian case, this, the case of this 15 year old boy who.

[C]

Had his breast removed, that probably led.

[D]

To some of the issues, the drawbacks with the reform. So with this tightening of the medical process.

[C]

Yeah, I, I guess my, what I was trying to say in the chapter was that you can pass law without, without being super visible and that visibility doesn't necessarily equate with progress.

[D]

In this section of the chapter I was quite inspired by Lauren Belance theory.

[C]

Of optimism and also trying to sort of see how this idea of visibility and progress and rights and development and enlightenment, those, some of those liberal ideas.

[D]

Can be problematized in practice.

[C]

When you look at how law works, Poland is writing mostly about the US context where you know, you have under Obama, gay rights and also a change.

[D]

And a shift in the kind of imperial warfare.

[C]

So looking at how she talks about.

[D]

You know, two steps forward, one step back, you know, being kind of model of government.

[C]

And that really spoke to the research.

[D]

I did in Denmark in terms of this, this idea of change the law, the civil law one way and take a huge step back with the access to healthcare.

[C]

And yeah, I'm asking, is there a.

[D]

Different way which it could, which it could work.

[C]

I used some of Eve Sedgwick's work, looking at how ignorance and opacity can compete with knowledge about, about a group in order to change how they're understood. And then I also, there's a, A German trans artist who talks about the need to embrace opacity. They need to grant rights and recognition on the basis of not understanding what.

[D]

A person is all about.

[C]

And like, I mean, it's not something I threshed out in the book as a, as a model for reform and more just an idea of, like, what would law reform look like without means testing and without diagnostic lists? And if we just could say, you know, yeah, this group, we don't know, we don't really understand their way of life, their culture, their history, but we're still willing to give them the same rights that other people have. Maybe that's quite utopian, like I say.

[D]

In a chapter that's kind of quite.

[C]

Pessimistic, but, yeah, that, that was the idea and the context of the change.

[D]

In which trans people have been viewed.

[C]

When I started writing in 2012 on.

[D]

Trans issues, people would ask me, what's that even about? When I would mention it, like any kind of work event or a social event.

[C]

And now everybody has a new point on whether trans rights have gone too far or the backlash is really the end of the world. And I think in this case you're sort of seeing that visibility isn't a.

[D]

Guarantor of progress in the uk.

[C]

And also, what would even progress look.

[D]

Like in this context? Is it all just about giving more.

[C]

Rights or are those other material factors.

[D]

Like I mentioned before, I keep saying healthcare, employment, housing, these kind of, these kind of maybe more important aspects.

[C]

Trans rights aren't often granted in those areas and in the places where they.

[D]

Are, that doesn't always translate into material equality or very rarely does.

[C]

So, yeah, perhaps the right not to be understood.

[D]

That's an Edouard Glissant quote, is potentially. Yeah, just points a direction away from this idea that people should have to come out and explain themselves all the time in order to be granted rights.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's a really important point. You know, cisgender people don't, don't have to explain themselves, you know, like it's exclusively for minorities who are marked out as sort of different or other, having to jump through these hoops and explain constantly who they are. And yet, as you just said, you know everyone now, you open a newspaper, you see on tv, everyone has an opinion on trans people and whether it's gone too far and whether the rights have been granted too much, notwithstanding, you know, access to resources. All that you just mentioned are, you know, very limited. And that, I think, changes the lived experience for trans people and minorities. I want to talk now. The next chapter is about vulnerability in medical institutions. And you introduce vulnerability theory here. I'm wondering if you can sort of apply this in the context of your book and think about how it might apply a little bit in practice as well.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think so. This is, like I hinted before, another.

[D]

Potentially controversial argument is made in this.

[C]

In this chapter, the idea that the concentration of power within these medical institutions isn't a sign. My argument isn't. Is that it isn't a sign of their flourishing or their omnipotence in terms.

[D]

Of over trans people and trans rights.

[C]

I actually thought by. By integrating a kind of vulnerability perspective, that in the wider context of cuts to public health care institutions, and also you say on sort of an attack.

[D]

From law in terms of rise, in terms of the risk of malpractice, or.

[C]

There'S lots of kind of ways in.

[D]

Which medics are kind of.

[C]

Wary of doing anything sort of politically interesting that, that you could basically see the sort of expanding jurisdiction of the medical jurisdiction, medical professional discretion in Denmark as a kind of response to their vulnerability.

[D]

Basically, the.

[C]

The Danish government made them sort of lay out some.

[D]

Some rules and some. And.

[C]

And centralize and standardize the way trans people were given access to hormones. They've been very informal before they'd been.

[D]

It's a small country, Denmark. It's only about 5 million people. And basically a lot of the trans people I spoke to knew of a couple of psychiatrists who were very open to prescribing hormones to trans people on a pretty much informed consent basis.

[C]

They were prohibited from doing that any longer. And things like justification of increasing expertise and professional professionalism, increased transparency and this.

[D]

Kind of thing came to the fore.

[C]

And I've looked at the way in which the medical regulators, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority, was also under attack. Under attack for a couple of different scandals at the same time. And my argument basically is that if you look at the position of health care within Denmark, and you can equally.

[D]

Apply this in other states where health care is underfunded or threatened by politics or war. Like I say that it's a kind of a consolidation, it's a retreat to make the law as strict as it was.

[C]

This is a slightly. What do you call it, like, new way of applying vulnerability that Martha Feynman, mother of vulnerability theory, has mooted without going Too much into most of her.

[D]

Work on vulnerability is to do the vulnerability of the human subject. And she sort of takes a ontological perspective on that. All of us being one injury away from dependency, irrespective of our wealth or status, and looks at how.

[C]

And yeah, that there's no point positioning some people as particularly vulnerable and others as invulnerable.

[D]

We're all vulnerable.

[C]

However, she has talked about her in more recent works, the vulnerability of institutions. Others have taken this and run with it a little bit.

[D]

Stu Marvel, a former colleague, has talked about plural parentage and you know, looking.

[C]

At how in within marriage that could.

[D]

Be a vulnerable institution.

[C]

And yeah, there's Mitch Travis, my colleague.

[D]

He's also talked about the vulnerability of heterosexuality. What I wanted to look at is.

[C]

Like the vulnerability of these medical institutions as the jurisdiction was expanded. How could we understand their responses? Essentially defensive. And what would a better outcome be to.

[D]

Than to sort of attack them. I was actually interviewed by the Danish media briefly whilst I was in Denmark.

[C]

And they didn't use any of my interview.

[D]

I think I was way too, I.

[C]

Was way too circumscribed. At one point they said to me, would you say that this is a case at the Danish government centering the rights of doctors over the individual and all the needs of the state over the individual?

[D]

And I just thought, you know, I can't as a good conscience, as a.

[C]

British person, go to Denmark and more kind of collective society and start attacking the state for not giving enough freedom to the individual. And I told some of the trans activists that I've been interviewing there about this and said, you know, autonomy and individualism is one answer to restrictive regulation from the state. But for my own sort of theoretical perspectives and also political tendencies, I don't think the individual is.

[D]

Is the answer, especially like not a kind of neoliberal, empowered self sufficient individual which we so often see being kind of trumpeted as the answer.

[C]

So yeah, so I thought vulnerability theory maybe offers something else. You could think of a way in.

[D]

Which the healthcare system could be more.

[C]

Supported by the state. The way in which, if it was properly funded and regulated in a way which allowed discretion in the right areas, there could be innovative health care being provided broader access and looked at ways in which, not in detail. Again, the point of the book was never to provide a roadmap for how.

[D]

Trans rights should be granted, but to.

[C]

Look, you know, how it might be more effectively, well, what's going wrong currently? And then maybe a little taste of.

[D]

How it might be done differently towards the end of each chapter.

[B]

I think that's really important. Isn't it just, you know, in terms of thinking about law reform and granting rights and empowering individuals especially to sort of live out their own conception of the good life. You know, we can say, well, yes, the current regulatory framework has progressed on from what it used to be. But, you know, we can still say, well, there are problems and it applies problematically. And that doesn't mean we just sort of stop and say, well, this. This change didn't work, this reform didn't work. Let's go back to the old model. Or, you know, I think it's really important, and I think this is a really important lesson from your book that, you know, that there needs to be sort of continual progress and continuing to question, you know, how. How do people get to live as they are and sort of as themselves? I just want to turn finally to the last chapter in your book on governmentality and managing trans health. So you offer a governmentality analysis, the governmentality analysis of the legal reform in Denmark. What can be sort of, you know, what can we take away from this analysis of governmentality and managing trans health?

[C]

Yeah, I was sort of, again, sort of inspired by people like Dean Spade, Emily Grabbe, Sarah Lamble, who. People who've written about, yeah, governmentality and looked at how the state benefits from either granting trans rights or not or denying them. And I wanted to kind of make a broader point in terms of, like, how. How sort of the Danish state sort of presents its.

[D]

The legal subjects in which it's supposed to be, you know, providing reforms for.

[C]

And I looked a bit in terms of. It didn't take long to look through the history of the kind of medical law. There was like little snippets of terms which I can look back into different Danish, like medical laws. And yeah, there was an easy line to draw between the way in which diagnosis is currently defined and has previously been defined and like, basically Danish eugenics.

[D]

As it's been used historically.

[C]

So there was terms which. Like. Which, yeah, it's hard to translate, but basically the.

[D]

The rule.

[C]

The rule was, you know, you had.

[D]

To be, I think, direct translations like surgically castrated previously in order to gain access to legal recognition.

[C]

And still that is kind of presented as the. The correct end point of any kind.

[D]

Of medical transition for trans people that eventually they will have a surgery which prevents them from procreating.

[C]

And I looked at how that had been used in history to police troublesome female sexuality.

[D]

People who would have multiple.

[C]

Sexual Partners outside of marriage, maybe got pregnant outside of wedlock. And I kind of drew a link basically again to, to sort of try and understand this history of legal violence against women, if you like, and to draw parallels between that and the current.

[D]

Treatment of trans and non binary people.

[C]

And what I saw of the point I made, drawing on a bit the work of Susan Stryker and others, was that the, the way in which trans people are now included still fits this overall lens of like what is a productive citizen who is welcome within the Danish state nowadays. They, the Danish health care system is very wary of giving access to these treatments which might make a trans person sterile. Because. Well, my argument is, you know, there's an element of NATO politics in the.

[D]

Sense that they want to ensure that.

[C]

Trans, that Danish native, if you like, Danish people can procreate at a time when the average age in Denmark is increasing and the borders and are being.

[D]

Hardened like elsewhere in Europe, but in.

[C]

A specifically Danish way. They, you know, they're really wary of.

[D]

Having too many migrants coming into Denmark and being reliant upon them to maintain this like highly successful historically Danish welfare state.

[C]

So, so yeah, it was, it was trying to broaden out the discussion so in a way which would be relevant to try and understand the law, which.

[D]

Would be interesting for people who aren't.

[C]

Necessarily working in the field of trans rights and to look at kind of how the myth of liberal Denmark, that's a. Another quote from Tobias Round is a myth and how it's being kind of what the dark underbelly of Denmark's kind of progressive self reputation or you know.

[D]

Sort of self maintained reputation is.

[C]

And then yeah, I try, I end concluding by sort of talking about the consequences of that kind of analysis for.

[D]

Trans legal studies, feminist legal studies, also sociolegal studies more broadly, which is a.

[C]

Kind of complicated conclusion to get to. But the idea is to sort of in your projects is not just to look at what law is doing or.

[D]

How even the sort of socio legal perspective of how it's being experienced in an embodied level, but also about jumping back up to the kind of structural.

[C]

Level and trying to see what kind of regulatory picture do we have here on a broader level and how far law reform is even the answer, how far it should be the target of trans rights and trans activists at this point in time. In the visibility chapter, I suggested it would be a long time in the.

[D]

UK for until it's the law. Law reform is a good idea for trans people because of the backlashes we're seeing. I thought in Scotland, they would get this change through, but we've seen that that's been vetoed and.

[C]

Yeah, but on top of that, what.

[D]

Might be lost by even a progressive law reform, a successful law reform project.

[C]

What comes with it, who might be missed out and you know, whether, whether.

[D]

You know, the law should be centered in, in our activism and in our demands from the state, or if there's.

[C]

A more direct way to potentially to.

[D]

Improve material conditions for trans people and others, you know, the ways in which.

[C]

They get through their everyday lives.

[D]

Can you make that easier without granting them a new passport, which not everyone can afford, not everyone needs. If you, if you can't afford to go on a foreign holiday, what use is a passport for you? Right.

[B]

Yeah. And actually I found your book in that sense really relevant and broadly applicable. I mean, I don't work in this space, but you know, thinking about the protection of rights in a sort of broader socio legal space, I think it's really important and it's. Your book is really easily transferable and translatable to different contexts. So I would suggest it, it's really helpful and a really useful book in that sense as well, just to sort of bring it all together. I'm just wondering, do you have any key takeaways from the book?

[C]

Well, I guess, yeah. I mean those ones that I've said in terms of like not just reading what the law is as it's written down and assuming that that is going to tell us what the reality of.

[D]

The law reform project is on a.

[C]

Grounded, everyday, experienced, legally embodied level, focusing on how professionals and different institutions are regulated and what the interplay between the professions is. So in this case it was law and medicine in my work.

[D]

But there's lots of other ways in which professionals are drawn in to law.

[C]

Reform projects and granted a sort of more of a carte blanche or discretion to regulate in a way which can be highly problematic, the people who are supposed to benefit from legal changes. And yeah, then I guess about focusing like I say, on the kind of broader political trends and seeing where our research fits into.

[D]

Into that.

[C]

And I guess all of these are targeted to some extent at legal scholars.

[D]

Or socio legal scholars specifically.

[C]

But I also think trans rights activism, feminist activism, but which we must remember.

[D]

You know, those two aren't mutually exclusive.

[C]

There are still plenty of intersections between those two groups. And yeah, maybe people were interested in.

[D]

Just human rights and more broadly there.

[C]

Are demands for political nuance and awareness and the way things are going broadly, there's a lot written which is generalizing.

[D]

On that level too.

[C]

Right.

[D]

In terms of political shifts in Europe and beyond.

[C]

But it is important to do some thinking around that.

[D]

Like, how does my work fit into these broader political patterns and arrangements and.

[C]

Frames, like, yeah, jurisdiction, legal embodiment, visibility, vulnerability, governmentality. These are all concepts which I've used to try and help me do that. It's not for the sake of it.

[D]

And none of those concepts or frameworks or heuristics, you know, I think worth.

[C]

Well, they're all great, but it's not about looking at them for the sake of it. It was about, like, how can they.

[D]

Help me understand what's going on in Denmark and how that might apply in the UK and elsewhere and, you know, what might we learn from that on a broader level about law reform and more in society?

[B]

Yeah. And it is really a great book and it is. Yeah, it will be really useful to so many different scholars and even, I think, perhaps policymakers and practitioners. I think it's. It's really important. So, Chris, I've taken up a lot of your time now, but just before we go, can I just ask you, what are you working on now?

[C]

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm starting a new project at the moment with my colleague Josh Warburton, and it's a bit of a shift, actually. We're looking still in area of like, health law and regulation of health law, but we're working on a project which is about regulation of wearable devices. So like fitness bands or smart watches and in particular how they're being utilized in the UK National Health Service. So it's still using some of the same kind of. Still looking at sort of legal embodiment of mentality, if you like. There's a lot of stuff about surveillance capitalism that we've been using to try and understand what the utility of these devices is to the healthcare system. And also, yeah, what the impact, the.

[D]

Subjective impact on the embodied level is.

[C]

For patients who are being advised by their doctors.

[D]

Whenever you considered wearing this or that.

[C]

And, yeah, maybe it's a little bit more of a niche project, but it's something that I'm interested in.

[D]

And, yeah, we'll be working on at least for the next few years.

[C]

So I think. And just, yeah, in the book, I think I felt like I said everything I wanted to say for now about trans feminism and trans legal studies, and it may be that I come back to it in the future.

[D]

But, yeah, it's looking at something a.

[C]

Little different and seeing again, what is law permitting the healthcare system to do and also with the view of that vulnerability, like how. How are manufacturers or data collectors benefiting.

[D]

And in what ways, what the impact of that for a public healthcare system that we have here in the uk.

[B]

Yeah, no, that sounds fascinating and actually, I don't, from my perspective, I don't think it sounds niche at all. I've got, you know, three kids and I, you know, I think about the implications of young people going around permanently connected to a device that's tracking everything they do. So, yeah, I think it sounds very, very relevant at the moment. So I look forward to seeing what comes out of that. So, just to wrap up, I'm Jane Richards. I've been speaking to Dr. Chris Beets about his book Self Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender. It was published By Root Lich 2023. This is New Books In Law, a channel on the New Books Network. Chris, thank you so much for your time today.

[C]

Thank you, Jane.

[D]

It's been a pleasure.