[OC] Gender Change Applications Have More Than Tripled in the UK Since Pre-pandemic
September 3, 2024
[OC] Gender Change Applications Have More Than Tripled in the UK Since Pre-pandemic
Posted by plotset
32 comments
Is the 2020/21 financial year really pre-pandemic? Surely by most metrics it had already kicked off by then?
[deleted]
2022 population was 66,971,395.
% of 1200 in 67m ~= 0.00179
Fraction of a fraction.
Apparently 1300 Gender change applications are destroying the UK hmmmmmm
Oh noes, people will reproduce less and will adopt the children non-trans people abandoned. How horrible!!
Oh man, wait till they see year-by-year the graph of kids that are left-handed…
Seriously though, this is cool, there are about 700,000-1,000,000 new people in the UK per year, so we should expect something around 2000-5000 new applicants per year (subject to change as new data comes out). It’s nice to see that people are gradually feeling more empowered to live as themselves.
Is this what long term isolation does to the population?
Makes sense, I figured it out during Covid. I was unemployed but lucky to have enough money to live for a bit so I had a lot of free time during isolation. Forced me to look inwards 🤷♀️
Can we see data pre pandemic as well?
Is this possibly related to getting unemployment benefits that were sometimes higher than normal wages?
I remember seeing a video a few years ago that talked about how fewer women were giving babies up for adoption because it turned out all they needed was slightly more financial support, and they could keep their children.
Don’t recall how accurate her stuff was, it was an adoption trauma account and she was pretty popular but then at some point she made an inappropriate comment and she went offline.
But she did show like, a link to a survey – that being said, I cannot recall who did the survey, how many were surveyed, anything about it.
My take on this data as a trans person is two pronged:
– Increased news coverage about trans people (for better or worse. mostly worse) increased greatly over the past 5 years, regardless of the pandemic. I know lots of people that decided to transition in spite of the negative stereotypes and influx of negative attention and reputation trans people are getting. Visibility is the most important factor in more and more closeted trans people coming out and transitioning. (see the left handedness statistics)
– Covid gave a lot of people time and space to reflect on their lives, identities, inner turmoil, etc. It can’t be understated how influential the constant grind of everyday life can prevent you from self reflection. Cogs in the machine are less likely to take a step back, break momentum, and figure out their true selves and desires. To a lesser extent, the whole “fucked-ness” of the world that people internalized during the pandemic, I think, emboldened many to say “fuck society, I’m doing what feels right for me.”
Why are people so salty in the comments? Is this supposed to be controversial?
I’m trans and know many people that came out during the pandemic.
One of the hardest parts about being trans is the transition. Living your life while you wait for the hormones to change your appearance.
The forced lock down made this step so much easier for people as they were able to do much of their transition on their own without having to go in public and/or while wearing a mask.
I worked for a big aero/defense engineering company in the UK during the pandemic. Shortly after we started coming back into the office, one of our directors pulled us into a meeting room to let us know that a 60 year old person that we’ve been working with for decades realized during lockdown would be transitioning to a woman. I was actually surprised at how they handled it as a company, she told them her wishes (tell everyone before I transition and ask them to respect my dignity) and they told everyone, and then followed up with “just to be clear, we will act swiftly to remove the offender if anyone is disrespectful to her or outs her after the transition is visible.” I would have thought a defense company would be more right wing about it because they, you know, are a defense company.
Edit: I’m not used to discussing trans issues and u/aspara_gus_ helped me find a polite way to reword, nothing has functionally changed about the comment.
The data on the actual Gov site looks better than this IMO.
> As expected, GRP receipts have increased annually since 2017/18, particularly more recently following a reduction in the application fee in May 2021 **from £140 to £5**, and the **move to an online application process in July 2022**.
Yawn, easily explainable data.
So like .00002 of the population? They have a bigger problem with food poisonings and contaminated water.
And when they invented glasses, the number of people buying glasses went up. Curious
UK trans woman here. I have some theories about the rise in number of people getting GRC (Gender Recognition Certificates) and also want to clear up what exactly they mean for any non-UK people reading. A GRC lets you mainly do 3 things. Update your birth certificate, get married as your new gender and have a death certificate in the correct gender when you die. That’s basically all they’re useful for. To obtain one you need to have 2 years worth of evidence that you’ve been living as a gender different to the one on your original birth certificate, along with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from an approved psychiatrist. The options for getting this diagnosis are either you wait to be seen by the NHS (waiting times are currently between 5-10 years) or pay £500+ to be seen privately. Whilst it’s great that the fee for applying was reduced from £140 to just £5, many trans people are still blocked by the requirement for a diagnosis if they can’t afford to go private.
Another reason why most trans people just haven’t bothered to get a GRC is that you just don’t need one! The most recent census estimated there were about 262,000 trans people in the UK, of which about 15,000 have GRCs (this is based on the serial number of the GRCs I’ve seen from friends who recently have them). Even without one, trans people can update their gender on their passport, they can change their driving licence and they can change name. We can also access single sex spaces like toilets and changing rooms without a GRC as it’s covered in the Equalities Act (2010).
In the last few years though, the UK had an extremely anti-trans government that had been making noises about making it more difficult to change gender on anything without having a GRC. There’s been a mild panic in the trans community about this, with a lot of people electing to apply for one despite never having been bothered about it in the past.
Why have you ordered them by football seasons rather than by years?
Oh man, I read something so beautiful a few weeks ago on how covid affected somebody’s decision to trqnsition
But the part that hit me like a javelin in the heart was
>It finally came to a head during COVID, or right after, when I had to emerge from lockdown and be perceived as a woman again, and just couldn’t deal with it anymore.
The idea of becoming so comfortable because nobody can see you but yourself, and then it’s finally time to walk out the front door, and freezing with your hand on the knob because you just remembered what you had to do to be out there; that to me is such a cathartic story. And I know it’s only tangential to the data on display here, but I think it does give an incredibly visceral perspective on why the pandemic made some people decide to transition.
But I admit, more than that, I think a lot of people, if they’re really honest with themselves, can see themselves in that redditer’s story. Not as an issue of gender identity, but just being able to not wear your lead mask for long enough that when it comes time to put it on again, you think “what if I just never went outside again”, like that’s actually an option.
So I love that story, and this data was in any way related to that story. And I just thought it was so beautiful.
Wow the entire nation will be distracted by the problem impacting these 1400 people (like less than .0001% of the population). While issues impacting 99% of the people like economy, healthcare, crime, inflation, etc…will lose.visibility
I’m curious how many are M t F and F t M.
Why is raw data so controversial?
This is not a good graph. It references pre pandemic and doesnt actually show anything before 2019/2020 which was the start of the pandemic. You need data from at least as long before the pandemic as after.
Pandemic made a LOT of people trans (me included)
Out of a population of nearly 67 million. Which means two people out of Wembley Stadium instead of one person at every other match/concert.
Most of this was due to fear that the process would be made significantly harder. Lot’s of people felt like it was their lasr chance.
A lot of people realizing life’s too short to not live as their best/true selves.
So it wasn’t the acid rain and the frogs who were turning everyone gay!
That this has anything to do with covid is laughable
Oh yeaaaah… it’s the vaccines!!!!1!1!! /s
Is this in thousands??? There’s just no way that’s the total, unless it’s super rare for trans people to submit the application.
32 comments
Is the 2020/21 financial year really pre-pandemic? Surely by most metrics it had already kicked off by then?
[deleted]
2022 population was 66,971,395.
% of 1200 in 67m ~= 0.00179
Fraction of a fraction.
Apparently 1300 Gender change applications are destroying the UK hmmmmmm
Oh noes, people will reproduce less and will adopt the children non-trans people abandoned. How horrible!!
Oh man, wait till they see year-by-year the graph of kids that are left-handed…
Seriously though, this is cool, there are about 700,000-1,000,000 new people in the UK per year, so we should expect something around 2000-5000 new applicants per year (subject to change as new data comes out). It’s nice to see that people are gradually feeling more empowered to live as themselves.
Is this what long term isolation does to the population?
Makes sense, I figured it out during Covid. I was unemployed but lucky to have enough money to live for a bit so I had a lot of free time during isolation. Forced me to look inwards 🤷♀️
Can we see data pre pandemic as well?
Is this possibly related to getting unemployment benefits that were sometimes higher than normal wages?
I remember seeing a video a few years ago that talked about how fewer women were giving babies up for adoption because it turned out all they needed was slightly more financial support, and they could keep their children.
Don’t recall how accurate her stuff was, it was an adoption trauma account and she was pretty popular but then at some point she made an inappropriate comment and she went offline.
But she did show like, a link to a survey – that being said, I cannot recall who did the survey, how many were surveyed, anything about it.
My take on this data as a trans person is two pronged:
– Increased news coverage about trans people (for better or worse. mostly worse) increased greatly over the past 5 years, regardless of the pandemic. I know lots of people that decided to transition in spite of the negative stereotypes and influx of negative attention and reputation trans people are getting. Visibility is the most important factor in more and more closeted trans people coming out and transitioning. (see the left handedness statistics)
– Covid gave a lot of people time and space to reflect on their lives, identities, inner turmoil, etc. It can’t be understated how influential the constant grind of everyday life can prevent you from self reflection. Cogs in the machine are less likely to take a step back, break momentum, and figure out their true selves and desires. To a lesser extent, the whole “fucked-ness” of the world that people internalized during the pandemic, I think, emboldened many to say “fuck society, I’m doing what feels right for me.”
Why are people so salty in the comments? Is this supposed to be controversial?
I’m trans and know many people that came out during the pandemic.
One of the hardest parts about being trans is the transition. Living your life while you wait for the hormones to change your appearance.
The forced lock down made this step so much easier for people as they were able to do much of their transition on their own without having to go in public and/or while wearing a mask.
I worked for a big aero/defense engineering company in the UK during the pandemic. Shortly after we started coming back into the office, one of our directors pulled us into a meeting room to let us know that a 60 year old person that we’ve been working with for decades realized during lockdown would be transitioning to a woman. I was actually surprised at how they handled it as a company, she told them her wishes (tell everyone before I transition and ask them to respect my dignity) and they told everyone, and then followed up with “just to be clear, we will act swiftly to remove the offender if anyone is disrespectful to her or outs her after the transition is visible.” I would have thought a defense company would be more right wing about it because they, you know, are a defense company.
Edit: I’m not used to discussing trans issues and u/aspara_gus_ helped me find a polite way to reword, nothing has functionally changed about the comment.
The data on the actual Gov site looks better than this IMO.
This is just copied FT colours?
[Figure 7.2 Direct Image](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6579b946254aaa0010050c58/14_grp_yob-1.png)
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tribunals-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2023/tribunal-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2023
> As expected, GRP receipts have increased annually since 2017/18, particularly more recently following a reduction in the application fee in May 2021 **from £140 to £5**, and the **move to an online application process in July 2022**.
Yawn, easily explainable data.
So like .00002 of the population? They have a bigger problem with food poisonings and contaminated water.
And when they invented glasses, the number of people buying glasses went up. Curious
UK trans woman here. I have some theories about the rise in number of people getting GRC (Gender Recognition Certificates) and also want to clear up what exactly they mean for any non-UK people reading. A GRC lets you mainly do 3 things. Update your birth certificate, get married as your new gender and have a death certificate in the correct gender when you die. That’s basically all they’re useful for. To obtain one you need to have 2 years worth of evidence that you’ve been living as a gender different to the one on your original birth certificate, along with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from an approved psychiatrist. The options for getting this diagnosis are either you wait to be seen by the NHS (waiting times are currently between 5-10 years) or pay £500+ to be seen privately. Whilst it’s great that the fee for applying was reduced from £140 to just £5, many trans people are still blocked by the requirement for a diagnosis if they can’t afford to go private.
Another reason why most trans people just haven’t bothered to get a GRC is that you just don’t need one! The most recent census estimated there were about 262,000 trans people in the UK, of which about 15,000 have GRCs (this is based on the serial number of the GRCs I’ve seen from friends who recently have them). Even without one, trans people can update their gender on their passport, they can change their driving licence and they can change name. We can also access single sex spaces like toilets and changing rooms without a GRC as it’s covered in the Equalities Act (2010).
In the last few years though, the UK had an extremely anti-trans government that had been making noises about making it more difficult to change gender on anything without having a GRC. There’s been a mild panic in the trans community about this, with a lot of people electing to apply for one despite never having been bothered about it in the past.
Why have you ordered them by football seasons rather than by years?
Oh man, I read something so beautiful a few weeks ago on how covid affected somebody’s decision to trqnsition
Here is the comment
https://www.reddit.com/r/bropill/s/fqPBDQ1KK7
But the part that hit me like a javelin in the heart was
>It finally came to a head during COVID, or right after, when I had to emerge from lockdown and be perceived as a woman again, and just couldn’t deal with it anymore.
The idea of becoming so comfortable because nobody can see you but yourself, and then it’s finally time to walk out the front door, and freezing with your hand on the knob because you just remembered what you had to do to be out there; that to me is such a cathartic story. And I know it’s only tangential to the data on display here, but I think it does give an incredibly visceral perspective on why the pandemic made some people decide to transition.
But I admit, more than that, I think a lot of people, if they’re really honest with themselves, can see themselves in that redditer’s story. Not as an issue of gender identity, but just being able to not wear your lead mask for long enough that when it comes time to put it on again, you think “what if I just never went outside again”, like that’s actually an option.
So I love that story, and this data was in any way related to that story. And I just thought it was so beautiful.
Wow the entire nation will be distracted by the problem impacting these 1400 people (like less than .0001% of the population). While issues impacting 99% of the people like economy, healthcare, crime, inflation, etc…will lose.visibility
I’m curious how many are M t F and F t M.
Why is raw data so controversial?
This is not a good graph. It references pre pandemic and doesnt actually show anything before 2019/2020 which was the start of the pandemic. You need data from at least as long before the pandemic as after.
Pandemic made a LOT of people trans (me included)
Out of a population of nearly 67 million. Which means two people out of Wembley Stadium instead of one person at every other match/concert.
Most of this was due to fear that the process would be made significantly harder. Lot’s of people felt like it was their lasr chance.
A lot of people realizing life’s too short to not live as their best/true selves.
So it wasn’t the acid rain and the frogs who were turning everyone gay!
That this has anything to do with covid is laughable
Oh yeaaaah… it’s the vaccines!!!!1!1!! /s
Is this in thousands??? There’s just no way that’s the total, unless it’s super rare for trans people to submit the application.