Abstract

In this short article I argue that the UK government’s decision not to update the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) is more than a missed opportunity. It weaponises the GRA, now an effective instrument of assimilation and containment. The failure to reform the GRA seems like a maintenance of the status quo, but given that the circumstances have significantly changed since 2004, the GRA now explicitly fails trans people, including nonbinary people – and in fact this is the intention. Rather than being a flawed attempt to improve trans lives, the GRA is a well-designed apparatus of biopolitical control that reinforces binary gender and cisnormativity, demanding assimilation in return for recognition.