CN: transphobia.
Late on Friday night the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) released an ‘interim update’, offering advice to businesses and public bodies in which it tells them that “trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities and trans men (biological women) should not be permitted to use the men’s facilities”. The update also notes that “in some circumstances the law also allows trans women (biological men) not to be permitted to use the men’s facilities, and trans men (biological woman) not to be permitted to use the women’s facilities”. This is in response to the UK Supreme Court judgment last week which defined ‘woman’ as someone who is ‘biologically female’. A judgment the court told us “does not remove protection from trans people” is immediately being used as the justification to try and remove important protections from trans people. I think the judgment is profoundly wrong and deeply harmful.
This discussion usually centres around toilets. Toilets are important because accessing them is vital for participation in public life. You want to go out for drinks, or dinner, or a show? You will probably need to pee at some point, so if your access to these facilities is policed, and you can’t be sure whether you’re able to use them, it’s possible you won’t go out at all. The idea of living in a society in which trans people don’t feel safe to fully participate is terrifying. That’s the first way this law will affect you, no matter what your gender identity: a society in which a vulnerable minority cannot fully participate is poorer, weaker and more hateful than one in which everyone has the same basic rights.
It’s not just toilets that are affected by the Supreme Court judgment, though. It could also affect trans people’s ability to join certain groups. The court specifically used the example of lesbian spaces:
“A certificated sex interpretation would also weaken the protections given to those with the protected characteristic of sexual orientation for example by interfering with their ability to have lesbian-only spaces and associations”
So… if you run a lesbian club/society/bar/group you’re not allowed to admit trans women? Even though, according to research, lesbians are the least transphobic cohort of people on the whole?
Another thing which happened shortly after the Supreme Court judgment (in which, remember, the court stated explicitly that it “does not remove protection from trans people”): the British Transport Police declared that trans women will now be searched by male officers.
Defining women
Over the last few years, politicians in the UK have been asked, ad nauseum, ‘what is a woman?’ or ‘do you believe a woman can have a penis?’ because those are the wedge questions that bigots want to get in the public eye so as to spread the (false) message that womanhood can be boiled down to something extremely simple, physical and obvious.
Biology is far more complex than bigots would have us believe, though, and language too. If you want to understand it a little better then Julia Serano’s brief overview responding to the ‘what is a woman’ question is a good place to start, and her piece on ‘biological sex’ myths is a good follow-up. If you’re more of a viewer than a reader, you should totally watch ContraPoints’ JK Rowling/Witch Trials video – the last half-hour especially – in which she talks about why so many right-wing women are drawn to the rigid definition of womanhood as presented by right-wingers (which includes transphobic feminists).
I am not going to get into the detail here because frankly the question is not genuine: it’s a campaign slogan dreamed up by bigots who want to simplify gender in such a way that it defines trans people out of public life. Banning them from spaces which are segregated by sex, and preventing equal participation. That’s why we always end up talking about toilets.
You can’t demand proof of womanhood
Any attempt to guess at whether someone is a ‘biological woman’ will necessarily lead to policing women’s appearance based on patriarchal expectations.
“This person is probably a woman because she’s curvy and petite and dainty, that other person is six foot tall and broad and has short hair and doesn’t wear make-up so they must be a man.”
Oh, let’s get out the fucking checklist, shall we, and see who measures up?
Rather than asking politicians ‘what is a woman’ over and over again, as a meaningless faux-philosophical gotcha, I’d much rather see them asked solid, practical questions that show up how cruel and unworkable bathroom bans are in practice. For instance: what proof of gender do you expect people to provide before you’ll let them go to the toilet?
Back in the day, transphobes argued that trans women posed a material danger to cis women using toilets. That claim is obviously false. What’s more, this hand-wringing fear that perhaps someone who doesn’t have the exact same biological make-up might end up weeing in a stall next door causes genuine material harm… to trans people! Again obviously. Click on that study, and see how many trans people (men and women) were verbally harassed or denied access to the bathroom in the 12 months before it was conducted.
There’s a huge problem around bathroom access for trans people, and it’s the exact opposite to the imaginary issue that gets all the column inches. The UK media (devastatingly, shockingly, aggressively transphobic and getting more so with each passing year) would have you believe that ‘transgender activists’ are all busy rubbing their hands in glee, excited to gain access to these precious gendered spaces which are the only areas cis women and girls can ever feel safe. In fact, the opposite is true: trans people, who have been using bathrooms with you since long before you ever heard the phrase ‘gender critical’, are having their basic rights removed. Trans people are increasingly being denied the right to participate in public life.
Trans people exist: they always have and always will. And any society that doesn’t allow them to fully participate is failing in its duty of care to all of us.
What can we do?
The first thing you can do if you’re in the UK is email your MP. There’s a guide on how to do this over at the Trans Legal Project. It talks you through structuring an email and key points to hit, with different aspects to address depending on whether you’re trans or cis.
You can also donate to the Good Law Project, which is going to be challenging the Supreme Court’s decision on the basis that it puts the UK in breach of its obligations under the Human Rights Act.
In the short term, I think it’s important that all of us make it clear we won’t be tolerating any form of gender policing in pubs, bars, restaurants, clubs, or anywhere else. Even fucking Wetherspoons has said that trans people should pee in whichever bathroom they feel most comfortable. It’s a sorry state of affairs when Spoons – run by one of the most right-wing Brexitty, flag-waving motherfuckers in the country – has a more trans-inclusive outlook than the actual Prime Minister.