The British Medical Association (BMA) has backed the right of transgender and non-binary people to self-identify. The affirming decision was taken on Tuesday at the BMA’s annual conference. At the moment, any individual who wishes to amend their legal gender identity in the UK has to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a doctor.
This perpetuates the idea that transgender or non-binary people suffer from a mental health condition. “This process currently requires doctors to determine whether somebody’s transition is ‘valid’, requiring them to produce lengthy and costly reports about the life and medical history of transgender people to be sent off to an opaque committee which never meets the individual in person.