Introduction to Special Issue: Decertifying Legal Sex—Prefigurative Law Reform and the Future of Legal Gender

Abstract

This special issue explores the politics and controversy surrounding the proposal to decertify (or abolish) legal sex status in Britain, focusing on the jurisdiction of England and Wales.Footnote1 Decertification emerged as a law reform idea, from the confluence of several developments: feminist and transgender politics, intellectual movements in critical and prefigurative research, and the institutionalisation of liberal equality paradigms. However, the immediate story starts with legal measures introduced transnationally to accommodate gender transitioning and in some cases to legally recognise gender identities other than as women and men (e.g., see Sharpe 2007; Clarke 2018; Holzer 2018; Renz 2020a). These state legislative projects of incorporation, intent on maintaining broader legal sex and gender structures,Footnote2 provide for some movement away from binary statuses assigned at birth (e.g., Dunne and Mulder 2018; Renz 2020b).