How should official documents record the sex/gender of transgender people? Should transgender women be able to access female bathrooms? In the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights, the law has often dealt with such issues through the lens of “gender recognition”, that is, on what criteria should the law recognise the gender of a person. This paper will critique this gender recognition jurisprudence from the perspectives of essentialism and assimilationism, two concepts which work both in tandem and in tension with each other to disadvantage minorities. It will then assess whether a shift from the lens of “gender recognition” to that of “transgender discrimination” might address such concerns. In doing so, lessons will be drawn from disability discrimination law. The paper will finally conclude with thoughts about the relevance of essentialism and assimilationism, and identity politics more generally, to discrimination law.
Our 2020 Annual Conference was scheduled to be held at the University of Wrocław in Poland on July 9-11, 2020.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICON·S Executive Committee has decided to postpone our 2020 Conference to 2021. Our next Annual Conference will take place from July 8-10, 2021, in Wrocław, Poland.
Procedural details regarding the organization of the 2021 Conference will follow in the months ahead.
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