I think things will be looked on differently in 5 years time when the concerns outlined in J K Rowling's thoughtful essay
Here’s a question.
How much of your information about trans lives comes from JK Rowling, or Suzanne Moore, or Mumsnet, or authors of that ilk? And how much comes from trans authors?
In other words – who’s framing this for you, who’s saying how we see this issue?
And does that lack of trans representation in trans stories bother you?
One of the cruellest things I think I’ve ever read was recently published in The Spectator, where James Kirkup found his inner Betty Friedan, suddenly showing solidarity with women after the hate crime committed against Sarah Everard. Writing about her murder (in a situation she should have been safe in), he wrote:
Absolutely, how important. Society is backsliding. 'Outside' isn't safe. We need to protect women. But then, despite this being a murder with terrifying societal connotations for how we simply walk outside, Kirkup wrote:
Um... So trans women are equivalent threats to this tragedy? And yet, the canny thing is that this article is (at its rotten heart) true. As this board has shown, women FEEL at threat. Why wouldn't a Spectator reader feel threatened by trans issues, given the prominence of anti-trans articles in the Spectator? And of course it's hardly just the Spectator – British authors specialise in seeking out all kinds of teeny stories they can exaggerate to keep this 'debate' rolling. This near-daily drip-feed leads to a feeling of fear. So whilst – ESPECIALLY after this hate crime, which revealed how few safeguards we all actually have – this fear and indeed anger should be addressed (by both cis and trans women) at our infrastructure, at our substandard safeguards and authorities, at our culture towards women, naaaaah – instead, let's blame trans women for cis male violence.
But do the facts back him up; ARE women at threat from trans women? Absolutely not. Trans women face the same gendered dangers on the streets of assault and mistreatment as cis women, and the same societal exclusion as the rest of the LGB community. The issues Kirkup quotes – “standing in society”, “near-equal status”, danger when “doing the most mundane things” – are dangers to trans women too. The article ought to conclude the exact opposite – that cis women and trans women should be allies in making sure it's safe to simply go outside; given the abuse on the streets and within families, we know that not to be so. The same rights and safeguards absent when protecting cis women don’t protect trans women…
Yet this suggests trans women are a threat to cis women, so shouldn't participate in protecting their own safety. That's heartbreaking. There wasn’t even the cause to demonise trans women – and yet they found a way! Instead, this strikes me as a time to show solidarity with anyone at threat from cis male violence. Allyship seems the most natural thing now.
Some quick facts:
This took me 5 minutes of googling. I could have done more but I'm not sure I could have coped.
And yet trans women are a threat to cis women? Really? Aren't they allies?
So let’s specifically talk about changing rooms. A woman in a sports hall is more likely to be assaulted by their coach – as we’ve seen in numerous high-profile cases. Or by the family member driving them to and from their lessons. If a thug is going to barge in and assault them, that thug will do so whatever the pretence.
In any of these cases, are the rights and safeguards there to protect women? We know they’re not. We know that the police’s response to assault charges is pitiful, a fraction of what it should be. We know now that the police themselves are an issue however appropriately they apparently act. These lack of safeguards are one of the reasons why trans women are assaulted at a sickeningly high rate along with cis women.
I almost wonder if there’s misplaced altruism. You perhaps have a sense that, by assuming trans women have an ulterior motive then countering that motive early on, it’s a way of tackling actual abuse. After all, against actual abuse, we're powerless, and this is a way to have power. For example, a lot of abuse happens from people within the family – and so, to protect ourselves, we have to learn to potentially distrust our better instincts and accuse our siblings or parents of being abusers – and that’s such a potential horror to ourselves. If we want to feel safe leaving young women like our daughters in the charges of sports coaches, we need to know that abusive coaches can be reported and victims will be taken at their word – yet we live in a time where we know the police are not our friends. Changing these and providing these safeguards is, frankly, impossible without, well, revolution. We can vote in the local council elections, sign petitions, and go to vigils as long as we don't cause any disruption. In a world with so little we can control to protect women’s rights, and so much needing protection and change, scapegoating then excluding trans people is something we can control. That gives us a sense of safeguarding.
But trans people are not the perpetrators in a case like this, and it's righteous anger wrongly directed. And, um, there’s no evidence that trans people using their preferred space is a threat. Quite the opposite.
A trans person using their chosen changing room is in as much threat from a coach or a family member or a random attack as a cis woman is. And it's deeper societal changes – making sure that people can be trusted and reports of abuse are taken seriously – that we ought to really aim for.
Someone earlier mentioned thugs on Twitter. That's just wrong. That's a minority of hooligans on the internet who should be treated as the criminals they are - and, indeed, the fact that it's so hard to report hate crimes online is something else that ought to worry us. The best way to fight against death threats on Twitter is to stand by everyone at risk. Who gets threatened online? Trans women. Cis women. Women. The best way to fight abuse is to look at who’s conducting the abuse and hold them accountable – whether the police or authority figures or random thugs. Again, this is a situation that requires allyship, not demonization.
Amnesty International denying “legitimate representation” to women like yourself was new to me. I researched that, taking it in good faith. That’s terrible. It’s also untrue.
The full letter is here. In context it’s clearer, but the full sentence absolutely says enough:
Good! This strikes me as no different to asking the BBC to stop letting Nigel Lawson and his like talk about the climate crisis. If the BBC, in its ‘balance’, decides that it’s equally OK to let a transphobe talk trans policies on Question Time or on the Today show, the BBC suggests to you and to me that this isn’t a lived experience, but a ‘debate’ – and a ‘debate’ where your rights as a woman stand opposed to those of trans women, not alongside. This, needless to say, is so harmful to trans women in society, and this ripples later to trans women in the workplace or trans women getting medical attention. It'd be the same as inviting an anti-vaxxer on to discuss Astro-Zeneca for 50% of the 'debate'. Is that bad?
Indeed, I’d really love to know where you read about this story. Truth be told, I hadn’t heard about this particular news item (Amnesty’s recent decision on Russia struck me as a mistake, though I still send them a tenner a month). Looking it up, I found those three words you quoted – “deny legitimate representation” – repeated in numerous tweets and Spiked articles and Facebook posts and fringe websites – but not the whole letter. The context – the crucial framing, the necessary safeguards – are removed, and only the sensationalist words are taken out of context and implied to mean something different. Did you read about the threat trans people are under, the similar threats of violence and sexual assault to cis women, and the dangers that come from not giving trans people accurate medical health – as well as the repeated use of the word ‘feminism’ and ‘ally’ and support for cisgender women? Or did you just read the few sensationalist words out of context – “defend biology” and “deny representation” – and take them to their out-of-context extremes? Or, more importantly, who did that for you – who framed this letter for you?
As for Amnesty – it was the local branch manager in Ireland. They’re currently fighting for the rights of cis women arrested in Saudi Arabia. That’s a cause we should all support. Here in the UK, we should deny people who support conversion therapy from going on the BBC, just as we should deny anti-vaxxers. Internationally, women’s rights are women’s rights.
When framed fairly, the letter wants to stand for safety. When framed by sensationalist excerpts alone, it absolutely means what you say. And therein lies the terrifying way this ‘debate’ is framed – in support of anti-trans policies and against women’s protections. You took this story to heart – and why not? Through this interpretation, it would harm women. I had to spend a good 15 minutes of my life looking up the story, reading the whole letter, checking Amnesty’s general feminist policy, and writing this. Fundamentally, your view comes from someone else's bad-faith reading of the line ‘defend biology’ out of context – clunky words, I admit, but in a letter this long, I take a good-faith reading and assume they mean “treat biological sex as gender identity”. That might just be me. The context of the letter absolutely implies a broad feminist approach, but where’s the fun in reporting that? Where’s the sensationalism in that? Where’s the righteous anger the right can use to win your vote with that?
I do believe almost all of this is down to the framing of a narrative; who lives who dies who tells your story. On here, someone said “We’ve not seen the same being done to the word ‘man’ [as to the word 'woman']”. Well, indeed – for example, if you buy the Spectator’s recent report on Manchester Uni scrapping the word ‘woman’ (www.spectator.co.uk/article/manchester-university-scraps-the-word-mother-) you’d have more proof of that, with the word 'mother' becoming verboten. Read the article, however, and both the word ‘mother’ and ‘father’ aren’t to be used – so in fact, yes, men are being erased. But, um, report it honestly and without sensationalism, and it’s a simple extension of ‘parent or guardian’ – so the Spectator are flat-out lying. Nothing is being erased. Yet this fell into my inbox as a leading story I had to read. Hmm. Why frame this story that way? Why SPECIFICALLY talk about erasing women, not extending terminology full stop?
And then James Kirkup has fuel for his fire when he wants to blame trans women for the death of a cis women in an act of obvious misogyny. It's so cruel, so harmful to cis and trans women, so dangerous to society on the whole, I'm amazed people aren't angrier at the media that peddles this. But I'm also not amazed. It's easier to be angered by Manchester Uni's straw man here than it is by the Spectator lying.
I say the Spectator, but it’s the lot of them. I have push notifications from the Telegraph when Suzanne Moore has thoughts. The BBC frames this as an either/or – pretending trans lives aren’t lived but debated. The Guardian/Observer – our leading liberal paper – is far far far from perfect. As this shows, our media has long realised the power of anti-trans narratives, and a few simple lies from 2016 – cannily linking a few principles and skimming over where evidence was missing or contradictory – showed the UK media that transphobic theorising sells. There is so much evidence that bathrooms and changing rooms present no greater threat when trans people are allowed to use them – but there are ways to frame it otherwise. Money money money. Right now more people are tweeting about whether Robert Webb deserved this interview or not than the lived experiences of trans women thanks to charities criticized on Twitter. The topic is not discussed fairly.
Now, whilst that suggests it’s the media in particular who’ve stoked transphobia, I have a wee theory about why this is the case. Is the UK LGBTQIA+ friendly? No. It hasn’t been since summer 2019.
Boris Johnson is an opportunist. We know that. When homophobia was laddy fun, we all know what he wrote, and it boosted his career. When the mayor of London required allyship and tolerance, he marched in Pride, and that boosted his career.
Transphobia is very good for the Tory party. Trans rights aren’t.
What we’ve seen so much of this year is a ‘culture war’ being brewed. It doesn’t matter how untrue this bullsh*t is – what matters is that the feeling of something big works. This year, two statues were torn down – Edward Colston, and the Jen Reid statue replacing Edward Colston – and yet statues are debated in parliament, written about in the Tory press, and debated on the BBC as one of the five most pressing topics on Question Time. If the Tories can push an issue like this, they can choose the battle ground.
As we’re seeing on this board, it’s easy to frame this as ‘protect women or stand up for trans rights’. The issue, in this binary, simply doesn’t exist – but it’s easy to manipulate a few facts and frame it as such. So all the Tories need to do is maintain this either/or, this 'debate' – self-serving and fraudulent though this is; ineffective as it is; hurtful to women as it is. And the Tories – and the Tory press – are doing just that, especially dividing liberals.
And with this, what can Sir Keir do? Fighting for common-sense trans rights means ‘pandering to liberals’ and ‘excluding women’; not fighting for common-sense trans rights will obviously harm him as a liberal leader. But that’s the position the media and the Tories are putting him in. If trans people themselves got to frame this debate, it would be all about the allyship and tolerance necessary, and support for trans rights would be a vote winner. As the Tories get to frame it, instead, it's a way to kill Labour votes.
And I do wonder how liberals will vote in the next election. Just as Brexit became a single issue that turned Labour voters away from Labour, the Tories are framing other culture issues: toppling statues and campus free speech and other bullsh*t that – with bad faith arguments framed as they choose – means Sir Keir can’t win. Even though it’ll cause great danger, trans rights are one such issue.
The Tories – and the establishment press – are framing this debate for us; not the lived experiences of trans people themselves. And they’re framing it as this either-or. And it’s working. And it'll cost Labour votes. And it'll cost cis women their safety. And it'll cost trans women their lives.
As long as these opportunists are in power, no minority is safe. ESPECIALLY whilst these opportunists need a punching bag, no minority is safe.
Protecting trans rights means protecting women’s rights. It is not an either/or. Standing with women means standing with cis women and standing with trans women. Sometimes these mean fighting for the same issues; sometimes these mean fighting for parallel issues. The rights of women are fundamental. The rights and safeguards protecting women have been neglected and chiselled away at for years, if they were ever truly there.
Instead, we get politicised lies; it’s amazing how easy it is to slightly skew the evidence to make trans women (especially trans women, not trans men) the villains of a piece. With Manchester’s ‘parents/guardian’ policy, the Spectator can take 50% of one report from one university and use it as fuel to the fire that female-specific terms are being erased. For James Kirkup, trans women are the real threat to women murdered in safe spaces – trans women don’t need to even exist in a story to pose an existential threat to women. And this is the bad faith underlying the lived experiences of trans people in the UK. That is, simply, unforgivable.
But principles like ‘standing for women’ and protecting women in shared spaces are so so important – too important to be held back by lies about trans women. Instead, we need to challenge and change the media and the authorities and the society at large. And in the end, this ‘debate’ just does harm. Trans people are at physical and mental risk. Cis women are at as much risk of male danger as they ever were. But the media keeps selling and the Tories keep winning and the world keeps turning. And well-meaning people keep parroting that, holding not just trans rights back but your own rights back. When the world reopens, we need to properly protect the rights of women, cis and trans, against a greater threat than misrepresentations in media and lies about locker rooms.