Once again for the people at the back: Trans Rights Are Human Rights
If I’m completely honest, by the end of 2019 I was exhausted. I’d spent so much time talking about the same subject in various ways, I needed a break. This subject was (of course) gender, or rather my binary-gender-scepticism, also known as ‘I think it would be nice if we just stopped saying there are only two gender options loosely based around what genitals we think someone has’.
Many people have reached out to me since I came out back in 2015, and my conversations reached critical mass following my TEDx talk in Kingston. Those people fell into four main categories:
Parents of gender non-conforming kids who wanted reassurance
Gender non-conforming adults, both out and in
Activists and progressives supporting queer people
Very upset and annoyed cis men
Now each provoked their own interesting conversation type, both good and bad, and I was generally delighted to engage. I’ve always enjoyed talking about gender (read: myself). Ever since Mrs Jones, my bad-ass feminist drama teacher shoved A Handmaid’s Tale into one of my hands and Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut into the other, the weird dance routine of the gender binary has fascinated me. This was overlaid by my own gender non-conformity. Knowing I never liked the right toys or that I dressed the wrong way or any one of a thousand other points of otherness, has always made me feel icky. The inherent sense of wrongness that builds inside you as a queer person is a whole other TED talk frankly.
Whilst I was comfortable in my opinions, the sorts of challenging conversations you open yourself up to, do eventually take their toll.
It’s hard to describe to people sometimes; what it’s like to have to explain yourself over and over. And, yes, I know I asked for it. LGB people have had to do this for a long time – as the cliché goes, you don’t just ‘come out’ once, you come out every time you meet someone new. This is the same for trans, queer and gender non-conforming people. I float between pronouns because it’s hard to enforce they/them a million times a day. Whilst she is the most prevalently used, ‘young man’ has been more common since the lockdown (my aesthetic is now exclusively shorts and hoodies). I say a special blessing each time someone uses they/them.
The interesting side-effect of doing a TEDx talk is that you become so immersed in a topic that you bore all your friends and family to death because it’s the only thing you have anything to say about. So, I’ve had a bit of a rest (read: given my beloveds a break). Now, however, the time to rest is over, dammit. A little bit because I am ready to talk about gender (read: myself) again, but mostly because the Tories are sneak-sneaking sweeping reductions in the rights of trans people before our very eyes.
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 makes the process of changing your binary gender (N.B: enbys still not recognised *sigh*) expensive and long. These two things are quite challenging for queer people as getting work is made easier by having ID that matches your name and also waiting ages for this means you have less money. You get the catch 22.
There’s been a load of campaigning to get this process simplified for trans people. Like literally making it less expensive and less long. Despite this common-sense approach, it looks as though neither of these things are going to happen. Furthermore, a good handful of the rights trans people do have in getting support are going to be scratched out. For example, allowing young people to get help from professionals and allowing women who happen to be trans to use the appropriate changing room. I do not understand the reasoning for this. One argument is that ‘we shouldn’t allow young people to make permanent changes to their body’. To this I say:
“NO IRREVERSABLE CHANGES ARE MADE TO TRANS CHILDREN’S BODIES, ONLY LIFE SAVING SUPPORT AND COUNSELLING.”
Taking this away, as is purported, will cost lives. No child is or would be given permanent life-changing surgery or medicine before they are old enough to be clear in themselves and their identity. This is bandied about, I can only conclude, because ‘won’t someone think of the children?’ is such an effectively emotive line.
The other argument is that trans women are just fetishists who want to avoid male prisons or spy on people in the toilets. That trans men are just vulnerable and misguided lesbians who have been pressured into transition. Sounds like proper old-fashioned sexism to me, non? We are applying the binary gender bias directly onto these people and it old and it’s tired and it’s boring.
Let me be absolutely clear: the people you are concerned will use this legislation to access women’s spaces to attack them are not trans women. They are cis men. You are denying dignity to trans women because of the behaviour of some cis men.
This is the elephant in the room.
And it isn’t right. If you believe we should withhold rights from people who need them, for fear of those who will abuse those rights, then what’s the bloody point in any societal structures? Why not ban marriage because some people use it unscrupulously for visas and whatnot? This is baby out with the bath water stuff.
I am very outraged and annoyed and not surprised by all of this. I’ve got lockdown time on my hands and a penchant for waving my fist in lofty activism. So, it looks like my main topic of conversation is back. Liz Truss my friends and family will henceforth curse your name.