GRC and Suzie
My Partner and I are concerned about the growing right wing (or fascist) government and their policies. So before they make it impossible to do so we have both applied for our Gender Recognition Certificate, or GRC.
This allows us to change our brother certificates and use our new names to get married, rather than our old names.
The process is quite intense, you have to provide 4 pieces of evidence of your new name for each of the last 2 years , from different companies e.g. bank statement, driving license, insurance, etc. Its actually a lot, remember the 8 should all be different and cover each quarter of the last 2 years.
Then you have to provide your formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria, medical records from surgery and your psychiatrist assessments.
Finally your deed poll and also statutory declaration (which has to be in the last two years)
What’s bonkers is I have my passport and driving license, that was easy, one form, deed poll and done.
What also drives me nuts is that after all this form filling I have to wait up to 6 months for a panel to decide if I’m female enough! Yet in other countries (southern ireland for example) simply signing a stat dec is enough, it IS a legally binding document.
Our hope is that once we have these done we can get married using our true names before this government makes things worse for LGBTQ+ people.
We’ve also looked at leaving the UK because it’s getting worse, as I’m sure many other British people also feel the same.
Anyway, onto brighter things, Suzie is settling in well. We have got her a new name tag, it’s of course a rainbow coloured dog bone shape 🙂
Shes calmed down and seems to have stopped destroying things (TV remote, Xbox controller, DVD, etc) and is slowly getting more comfortable with people and dogs whilst out.
Shes not yet met any up close, but she no longer barks at other dogs or people, though she is still wary and will often put her tail between her legs and drag us home quickly. But this will pass in time. Here is a couple more pictures to make you smile.
