British gender reassignment / trans Act

2.2 In advance of the enactment of the British Gender Reassignment Act (GRA) government policy explicitly stated that GRCs are intended for the group they identified as transsexuals undergoing medical transition with a diagnosis of gender identity disorder/ gender dysphoria/ transexxualism. It was recognised that there was a much larger group of people who cross-dress for other reasons and were explicitly excluded from the provisions of the GRA by the policy makers and legislators at the time. As the Department of Constitutional Affairs stated in a briefing in 2003:

“Transsexualism is not transvestitism or cross dressing for sexual thrill, psychological comfort or compulsion”.