A woman has told how her life was turned upside down because she was wrongly registered as a boy at birth.
Kim Walmsley, 49, said her 23-year marriage was declared illegal and she was forced to return from Australia after she could not renew her passport.
And no one, including the Archbish of Canterbury, has been able to sort this out.
She’s the mother of five children……
Time to start hanging some bureaucrats pour encourager les autres.
This is clearly insane. The mind boggles. She’s clearly female, therefore why can’t she get the same rights a transsexual would have – a birth certificate record in her (much more than merely apparent) sex?
So the bureaucracy collides with reality. Let’s see who wins.
Somehow I am reminded of Bob Hosking’s passing. Must be a Brazil thing.
“Why can’t she get the same rights a transsexual would have”
Welcome to 21st century Britain, where the State will bend over backwards to accommodate you if you fall into certain politically correct sections of society, and fuck you right over if you don’t.
This sort of thing is a measure of how far this country has fallen into the pit of a socialist dystopia.
She could apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate like a trans person. It takes two years from application to grant, her marriage is still invalid, but she could marry right now, as a same-sex marriage and, provided her husband consents, retain the marriage through her transition.
From trans people’s point of view, they’re in the same (legal) position as her; they were given the wrong sex on their birth certificates too and they just want it correcting to match their reality, so why should she get any better treatment than them.
If she does, then they will sue to get equal treatment.
“From trans people’s point of view, they’re in the same (legal) position as her; they were given the wrong sex on their birth certificates…”
Errr, no. Not even remotely correct. She’s female, they aren’t, and no manner of bureaucratic inventions or medical wizardry will make them female.
I really can’t see how Schedule 4 of the Gender Recognition Act applies? Anyway, it says that the marriage _is voidable_, not that the marriage is void. Now, it is entirely up to the Church that married her whether they consider her church-wed* but she must, at least, retain the civil equivalent.
* The CofE do come up with some nonsense from time to time. I can imagine the conversation up here in the SEC: “Are you a woman?” “Yes.” “How do you know you are a ‘real woman’ in accordance with ancient church doctrine?” “I’ve given birth to five kids.” “Okay, your marriage is valid in church law. Sod the GRO.”
Yet he, and your second sentence from the quote are both right. Richard was quite careful to include this in his comment:
Not from the point of view of biology, child-bearing, or other aspects of reality, but _their_ pov.
And in world where people have more sense and can take responsibility, what they’d do is realise that the birth cert was wrong and correct it, thereby making the marriage valid.
But we live in world where no-one can take proactive action and everyone has to follow the rules and the check lists for fear of losing their job for a minor infraction.
It’s a mad mad mad world. You can see why I’m sad about it.
So Much For Subtlety – Yar.
All it needs now is for Michael Palin to show up in a baby mask.
Absolutely effing mental. British bureaucracy is pettier and more officious than the Vogons. Rules is rules, eh?
Shame she’s not an Australian, apparently their rules allow you to change your gender on a passport application on a whim without offering any supporting documentation a whatsoever.
But the Courageous State has said that she is male so she is male.
Feeble attempts to claim that she is female are just neo-liberal sophistry.
You need a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. (Section 2 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004) She can’t get a diagnosis, because she does not and presumably has never had Gender Dysphoria. This puts her in the same position as someone born with an intersex condition, registered male at birth but who grows up as a woman and has kids.
What is unusual in this case is not that it has happened, it is that it has made the press.