You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Sarah Montague.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the programme and I hope you enjoy it.

My guest today is the chief executive of the UK's largest LGBT rights charity, Stonewall.

Stonewall was founded 30 years ago to campaign for gay and lesbian rights. When my guest today, Ruth Hunt, became its chief executive, she extended its work to include the trans community.

But many Stonewall members have been upset at the line the leadership has taken on gender recognition,

that anyone can declare themselves to be male or female, and at their refusal to share a platform with anyone who disagrees.

Is this coalition, which has been at the forefront of gay liberation for decades, now in danger

of tearing itself apart? Ruth Hunt, welcome to hard talk. Thank you. Hello. Stonewall could

have argued that it should be easier for trans people to have their chosen gender recognised.

But you chose to go further and say,

all someone needs to do is say that they're a man or a woman.

Why did you take that position?

Well, that's the current position that exists in Ireland, Malta, Argentina,

and in reality, is the practical way in which most trans people in this country and abroad operate.

Very few feel the need to necessarily go through a process by which they receive another certificate.

So what's classified as what's called self-identification is actually a reflection of how most people live their life.

So if a colleague came in to see you and said, look, Sarah, tomorrow, I'm going to be coming in and I'd like you to call me John, and I'd like you to use my pronouns as male and he.

You wouldn't turn around and say, well, can you tell me what process you've been through, whether you've seen any doctors and whether you've seen it?

So people are accepted for who they say they are, generally, in society.

And that is what Ireland did in terms of their legal recognition, and that's how it's now managed in many countries. But the question still stands, because the situation at the moment, the criticism of it,

is that it's bureaucratic and that it's intrusive and that it's expensive because you have to go through a process that you need a medical diagnosis and then you need to go through, what, two years before a panel decides.

And there would be many people who would say, you're right, it needs changing.

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