This article explores the political conflict over reforming how sex and gender categories are used in British law, focusing on the speculative legal proposal to ‘decertify’ sex and gender. Three interconnected arguments are advanced. First, diverging views on decertification are both about and seek to marshal competing perspectives on the value and risks of formalization and its undoing. Second, understanding these views, and decertification more generally, benefits from an account of the formal and informal as interconnected movements of (un)settling, (un)acknowledgement, system (un)intelligibility, and (non-)deference which remains irreducible to the presence or absence of state and law. Third, while formalization can pin down responsibilities and entitlements, it can also fix unequal and exclusionary status relationships. Focusing on positive action in the final part of the article, I consider how movements of formalization and informalization interrelate and the choices available, in conditions of decertification, if positive action is to counter gender inequality.

中文翻译：

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男女平等需要什么？重新审视女权主义法律政治中的正式和非正式

本文探讨了关于改革英国法律中性与性别类别的使用方式的政治冲突，重点关注“取消认证”性与性别的投机性法律提案。提出了三个相互关联的论点。首先，关于取消认证的不同观点既是关于也试图汇集关于正规化及其取消的价值和风险的相互竞争的观点。其次，理解这些观点，以及更普遍地取消认证，受益于对正式和非正式的解释，因为（不）解决、（不）承认、系统（不）可理解性和（不）尊重仍然不可简化为国家和法律的存在与否。第三，虽然正规化可以确定责任和权利，但它也可以修复不平等和排他性的地位关系。