Being Transgender

Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their sex assigned at birth. Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual. 

Transgender, often shortened as trans, is also an umbrella term.

A transgender man who gave birth has lost his appeal court battle to be registered as a father in a case that wrestled with the legal definition of motherhood and transgender rights.

The ruling against Freddy McConnell, a 34-year-old freelance journalist who works for the Guardian and who lived as a man for several years before suspending his hormone treatment and becoming pregnant, upholds an earlier high court verdict that motherhood is defined as being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person who does so was considered a man or a woman in law.

A court of appeal panel headed by the lord chief justice, Lord Burnett, effectively came down in favour of the right of a child born to a transgender parent to know the biological reality of its birth, rather than the parent’s right to be recognised on the birth certificate in their legal gender.

McConnell said it was “distressing to be a trans person and have your most fundamental rights overlooked”. But he urged trans rights activists not to despair and said he would apply to the supreme court for permission to take the case to the highest level.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/29/transgender-man-loses-appeal-court-battle-registered-father-freddy-mcconnell