Ordinary meaning of trans
Before the law there needs to be an ordinary meaning of a concept or term that provides consistency for judges and juries, semantics that allow for a thread to be traced through case law and legislation. Yet, when it comes to gender and trans identities there is little historic case law to draw upon, with the ordinary meaning of sex based on societal assumptions and a singular case in English law, Corbett v Corbett. Law ideally seeks to find objective meaning of terms, having precision allowing for affective judicial decisions. Yet, as with all cultural artefacts, semantics are always evolving and changing. A crucial issue with the ordinary meaning of sex at law is that it removed any phenomenological understanding of self, relying on a 1970s societal construction of sex that still underpins the ordinary meaning of sex. Chromosomes, gonads, genitals, and gender expression bound sex in case law, even though there is no legislated definition of sex in statute. Despite laws such as the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 stating that gender reassignment is a protected characteristic, the reality is that this term was not defined in the act, leaving the courts to decide any potential ordinary meaning of the term.
This matters because while objective trans people exist in the world, the labels placed on trans people and their bodies is subjective. When I talk about being trans I have…
