The EHRC Listens to Women

The Equality and Human Rights Commission published two statements this week, regarding the reform of the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland and the government consultation on the draft conversion therapy bill. Their stance basically boils down to the urging of caution and the recommendation that more discussion is needed in order to make sure that everyone’s rights are taken into account. Nevertheless, it has resulted in a tsunami of hyperbole from trans activist groups and allies.

Mermaids called it ‘a shameful act of trans exclusion’ and ‘a systemic oppression of the trans community.’ Stonewall says it is an ‘attack on trans equality’ and moreover the statements ‘seek to exclude trans people from improved rights and protections’. Gendered Intelligence goes further: ‘Their guidance suggests that abuse is ok as long as it’s happening to trans people.’ Pride Cymru called it an ‘ill-informed and dangerous transphobic stance.’

The EHRC’s crime, according to trans ally Maggie Chapman MSP on Radio 4’s Today programme, is that it has paid attention to people who are ‘transphobic or misinformed’. Stonewall blames ‘a noisy minority of anti-trans activists’, Pride Cymru said the EHRC had ‘endorsed dog-whistle transphobia’, LGBTQ Labour refer to a ‘moral panic…which has created a deeply hostile environment for trans and non-binary people’ and Mermaids accuses the EHRC of being ‘captured by anti-trans rhetoric.’ Owen Jones claims the EHRC have made a ‘public U-turn on trans rights.’

This is familiar language to the women who have been fighting to get their voices heard for over a decade. Those wild accusations against a human rights body, simply for doing its job properly and considering the rights of every protected group equally, echo the abuse directed at women over the years for defending women’s rights as they currently stand. Being accused of hatred and bigotry isn’t much fun and can have an impact on work and friendships and mental health, but most of all it distracts from the real issues and puts off anybody else thinking of having an opinion. That’s partly the point of course.

It is ironic to all the women involved in grassroots organising, that the very groups who have had the ear of the EHRC and the Government Equalities Office for so long, and have kept feminists out by a strategy of smear tactics and #NoDebate, are now the ones to be so upset that things aren’t going completely their way. They have become used to being consulted on ‘trans issues’ exclusively and are now outraged that it’s not just them anymore. It must be awful for them.

Stonewall et al have never engaged with the evidence from women’s rights campaigners and they have never expressed any concern at all that the changes they are lobbying for could have a negative impact on any other protected group. They are not interested in a ‘balance of rights.’ They have expected legislators to share their uncompromising stance, and largely their expectations have been met.

Back in 2015 when the Women and Equalities Select Committee held the first Trans Inquiry, not many people outside of the trans community were even aware that it was happening. Feminists who had been following the legislation closely for years nevertheless contributed a significant number of submissions to the inquiry. The pattern was set by that inquiry: no women’s groups were invited to give verbal evidence, trans issues were only to be discussed by trans people and there was to be no debate. Debate became a dirty word, equivalent to genocide: feminists who wanted to talk about women’s rights were accused of debating trans people’s right to exist. Maria Miller set the ball rolling in smearing ‘purported feminists’ as being legitimate targets for abuse, the Trans Report was a wholly biased document, skewed towards trans demands at the expense of women’s existing rights, and Gendered Intelligence were promptly hired to write the GEO Trans Guide for Service Providers. It all seemed to be neatly sewn up.

Feminists though are a determined bunch.

By the time of the GRA Consultation of 2018 there was a huge groundswell of grassroots women’s groups who were well-educated on the issues and informed of exactly what was at stake. The word had to be spread on social media and in private networks because there were no established women’s organisations mobilising support and there was very little balanced media coverage to alert women to the assault on their rights. Not even Woman’s Hour would touch the subject until the day before the public consultation closed. A small number of journalists and broadcasters had nevertheless begun to turn the tide in the media and the voices of women could no longer be so easily ignored – this time women were invited to give evidence, both written and then in verbal evidence sessions at the GEO. It was still a hostile environment: questions were like accusations, we were on the back foot from the start. The picture painted by trans activists over the years had clearly had an influence: we were not just giving evidence, we were having to defend ourselves from the outset.

A couple of years later a similar tone of hostility can be witnessed in the 2020 WESC Inquiry into the Reform of the GRA: women were being invited into a discussion which concerned their rights, but not, it seems, as equals. The impression was that women’s motives were still not to be trusted. The degree of respect afforded to the trans witnesses, even down to using their titles in the introductions, was not afforded to the female witnesses, despite their academic qualifications and articulate arguments.

Throughout all the political engagement over the years, women have been at a disadvantage: the disadvantage that comes from somebody else having got there first and laid the groundwork for the tone of the debate. Women were deliberately kept out of the process, then reluctantly admitted, then eventually grudgingly listened to. Behind the scenes women have been gathering evidence, conducting research and raising awareness. The landscape of feminist activism has completely changed since trans lobbyists first started calling us ‘transphobic bigots in need of education’ all those years ago. Many more specialist grassroots groups have grown up through local networks: groups of parents and teachers, academics, LGB people, lawyers, medical professionals, politicians of all parties, therapists, detransitioners, sports professionals – any area where the chilling effect of gender ideology has been making an adverse impact on other people’s rights. The level of education around the issues has skyrocketed but the insults and abuse have strangely remained the same.

The purpose of trans rights hyperbole is to smear the opposition and close down their arguments, but it’s looking now as if they may have overplayed their hand. Public institutions, including government departments, have recently been leaving the Stonewall Diversity Scheme and finding that the world hasn’t come to an end. The EHRC itself left the scheme last year and it’s hard not to suppose that this has had an impact on their current stance. There is a sense that the stranglehold on public opinion is lessening.

The length of time it has taken for women’s rights to be considered in this debate has been frequently frustrating, but in one sense it has benefited the case being made. The more time that it takes, the more examples come to light, not just from the UK but from all over the world, which illustrate the unintended but highly predictable consequences of legislation which makes sex a matter of personal choice rather than a material reality. Well publicised stories of males winning women’s swimming races, males assaulting women in prison, academics being hounded out of university careers, and many others, just keep coming. No wonder the EHRC’s call for ‘more consultation’ has sent the trans lobby groups into such a tailspin.

It’s tiresome and predictable that once again their reaction to this perceived setback is to insult and threaten not just the people that the EHRC have listened to, but now the EHRC itself. As a handful of the UK’s trans organisations threaten to pull out of the government’s LGBT Safe to be Me conference this summer, Stonewall call on the UN to ‘urgently review’ the EHRC and Gendered Intelligence threaten to ‘cut ties’ with the EHRC (Which begs the question ‘What ties?’) the pressure is clearly on. To those of us who have seen it all before it looks a lot like sour grapes.

Bullying tactics such as these aim to shame and discredit everyone into silence, but it hasn’t worked on feminists, and we’ve been putting up with this for years. It’s taken a huge amount of work, determination and courage and some individual women have paid a considerable personal price. Let’s hope the EHRC shows as much bottle.

‘Trutrans’ and the Question of Compromise

As the rights of trans people are being endlessly examined, discussed and made the subject of official inquiries, women are yet again being asked to compromise.

The segregation of spaces and services by sex is under sustained attack for not being ‘inclusive’ enough, and to this end it is currently being framed solely from the perspective of those being ‘left out.’ It sounds mean when presented that way: it sounds like mean girls are manning the barricades and pushing other people away, meanly. At the same time it is increasingly being claimed that trans people have used the facilities which match their ‘gender identity’ for decades with no adverse effect. The inference is that everyone was happy with the arrangement until a sudden unprovoked uproar from feminists threatened to ruin it for everyone else, who up until that point were getting along just fine thank you.

Firstly, if true, this contradicts the assertion that trans people are currently being prevented from being their true selves and living authentic lives, and it begs the question: In that case what exactly is being fought for? Why did things need to change?

Secondly, if true, the fact that so far males have been accessing facilities put aside for women means that female-only spaces have been used without our consent, and this not only throws into question the justification for continuing the practice, but also demonstrates such a lack of respect and sensitivity towards women that it is evidence if anything that we should double down on protecting these spaces even more.

Thirdly, if true, past experience is no longer especially relevant in today’s ‘trans umbrella’ world, where part-time cross-dressers, transvestites, ‘gender fluid’ and ‘non-binary’ people are now included in the list of people who are women if they say they are. Moving from a historically tiny number of transsexual males who presented with some form of visual ‘transition’, to an effective free-for-all of different gender identities, renders the evidence of the past null and void. Today, on numbers alone there is bound to be more of an impact.

It is a possibility of course that the ‘no adverse effect’ argument is not quite true. It’s quite possible that the presence of an unexpected male in a toilet or changing room has had quite an effect on an individual woman, whether or not she makes a fuss or reports it. There are anecdotal stories to support this view, although no official figures reflect it. Women seldom report violations of their privacy, even extreme ones, but that doesn’t mean that women or girls have not felt frightened or anxious, and it doesn’t mean women or girls have not self-excluded from a service as a result.

The ‘no adverse effect’ argument is also undermined by the trans movement’s extremely combative distrust of women. If women’s spaces had already been graciously ceded, we wouldn’t need the outrageously prescriptive trans inclusion guides produced for businesses and schools, designed to enforce a narrow range of approved beliefs. The alleged historical acceptance of male transsexuals in women’s spaces is simply not compatible with such an authoritarian clamp-down on our speech, behaviour and thoughts. It doesn’t make sense if it had previously all been going so well. Surely the trans movement could have built on the established trust of women, who were already being ‘inclusive’, rather than using bullying and silencing tactics and emotional manipulation? That’s how you treat an enemy, not a friend.

So far then, I’m not convinced that the history of sharing women’s spaces is as hunky dory as it’s being made out to be. I think it is being misrepresented partly in order to suggest that trans rights are being rolled back, which they’re not, and partly to suggest that any opposition to more ‘inclusion’ must be coming from a place of transphobia and bigotry rather than any genuine concern for women and women’s boundaries.

From a woman’s point of view, the trans activists are looking at it from the wrong angle. From our perspective we are not pushing anyone out, we are simply reiterating the fact that we have boundaries, and reminding everyone that these are historically and legally based on biological sex. There might be other ways of distinguishing between human beings, but in terms of safety, privacy and dignity, sex seems to fit the bill most accurately and include the most number of people. Everyone has a sex. We could try to distinguish by gender identity instead, as is being proposed, but this would be so ‘inclusive’ as to not leave any boundaries at all. Maybe that’s the point.

The arguments in favour of gender identity are often based on the idea that sex is not always accurately discernible and therefore mistakes can be made: a common claim is that butch lesbians might be read as male for example and barred from a woman-only space. This is a spurious argument: no lesbian that I have ever spoken to has confirmed that this happens, but more importantly it inadvertently backs up the need for sex distinction. If ‘gender identity’ was the criterion for access to a space there would be far more risk of making mistakes of this kind, because gender is a spectrum and infinitely variable. In some cases you would probably have to look into someone’s soul in order to get their gender right.

The process of assessing someone’s ‘gender identity’ has much more scope for personal and individual offence because it becomes more about the individual than the category, and relies on how well someone ‘passes’ or how much we feel we can trust someone’s innermost beliefs about themselves. Everyone who doesn’t ‘look right’ would effectively be on trial. This would lead to exactly what trans people say they don’t want: a policing of gender expression. As it stands, in public facilities which are separated by sex we don’t police users, we rely on a common understanding of sex differences and a willingness to play by the rules. Men therefore are trusted to avoid using women’s facilities and any man who breaks the rules can be legitimately called out on his transgression. The pull of societal norms is so strong that most people comply. Those that don’t are immediately objects of suspicion, and that is what works to keep women as safe as is possible. Just because the system isn’t perfect doesn’t mean we should opt for an even less perfect one.

If you argue for the inclusion of ‘some’ males, and those males can now opt to identify as women full-time or part-time, can have had some surgery or no surgery, can be on hormones or not, can be dressed in a typically masculine or feminine way, can be bearded or clean shaven, can feel like neither a man nor a woman, or can change depending on the day of the week, then there is no way of policing which males are admissable and which are not. To avoid transphobic ‘mistakes’ you would have to admit any man who wanted to enter. We would go from a strict sex binary, understandable by the majority of people, to a situation where nobody could be challenged by anyone. In other words, single-sex spaces would be unenforceable and they would effectively cease to exist.

The belief that anyone is trans who says they are is a cornerstone of trans ideology, which is currently being taught in schools and offices all over the UK, but it is this dogma which will make a compromise solution almost impossible to achieve. Amongst women, the ‘Not my Nigel’ claim was notoriously used by a minority as an argument for making an exception of the ‘good men’, but most people recognise the impossibility of differentiating between good men and bad and so a blanket ban has remained. A similar argument looks set to rear its head in the trans debate, between ‘good trans’ and ‘bad trans’, between the ‘original’ transsexuals and the whole other newer range of transgender identities: ‘Not my Trutrans’ we could call it. However, the transactivist movement, in its insistence that all trans identities are equally ‘valid’, has effectively shot itself in the foot. It has become impossible to take a Karen White for example, and to say ‘this sort of trans person should be kept away from women but not that sort of trans person over there’ because this would involve gatekeeping, and gatekeeping is transphobic. It would make some trans identities less valid than others and it would mean not believing some people’s claims about their own gender identities. Who decides who to believe and who not to believe? Not women, that’s for sure: the new rules insist that every individual knows their own gender identity best.

Women have never claimed that all male transgender people are sex offenders, despite the accusations; but we have watched as trans advocates publicly and uncritically welcome sex offenders and other abusers under their new trans umbrella. Uncritical acceptance includes everyone, as evidenced by the overwhelming support for Ian Huntley from trans activists over a story which would later appear to be fake news. Trans ideology represents the antithesis of safety policy for women: the current measures in place (legislated for in the Equality Act) mean that ‘all men are excluded’ to ensure the exclusion of the dangerous ones, whereas trans policy means that ‘all trans people are validated and included’ which ensures the inclusion of the dangerous ones. Women’s safety has historically been allowed to trump the disgruntled feelings of some men who feel unfairly maligned; we are now in danger of allowing the feelings of some trans-identified males to trump women’s safety. A complete reversal.

As more and more women become aware of the attack on their rights, the trans movement is on the path to becoming a victim of its own extreme dogma. Insistence on 100% belief in individual testimony as a basic tenet so integral to trans acceptance that you are a transphobe if you don’t subscribe to it, has ensured that, for the sake of women’s safety, 100% of males identifying as trans have to be excluded. The old understanding, if it ever existed, where transsexual males used women’s toilets and women allowed this ‘honorary woman’ status as a nod of respect towards the length and difficulty of the transition process, will no longer work now that transsexuals have no more legitimacy than Eddie Izzard on a nail varnish day. The trans rights groups have achieved this, not feminists.

It is a really salient point, not to be dismissed, that feminists will at least argue over whether women can afford to be ‘inclusive’ and if so, to what degree. There are schisms within feminism and the larger ‘gender critical’ movement over exactly this point, and this is at least evidence of a willingness to look for solutions to conflicting needs, even if it leads to a feminist falling-out. Stonewall and the other trans lobby groups on the other hand will not countenance any argument over the validity of anyone’s ‘gender identity,’ nor consequently any compromise at all over the issue of women’s safety. ‘Transwomen are women’ is the mantra which kills the conversation and gives women no choice, and ‘transphobia’ is newly-defined as a refusal to say it. Politicians who parrot this mantra and then say the debate is toxic and has more heat than light are blind to their own complicity in it.

The #NoDebate tactics of the trans lobby have never worked to still the robust debate amongst women over the ‘trutrans’ issue. It is Stonewall et al who have made this disagreement between women more or less academic, because they have left us no choice over the answer. It doesn’t matter if you have a trans friend and it doesn’t matter if your trans friend is one of the good ones: we have been prevented from making any nuanced judgement by the trans lobby groups themselves. Even if you believe that some trans-identifying males are more ‘deserving’ than others, even if you believe in ‘meaningful transition’, it’s not up to you to make that judgement. Trans people themselves who question the dogma or support women’s rights are equally wrong. Trans advocates are very clear about this: ‘trutrans’ quickly becomes ‘truscum’, the trans community will not even debate with its own.

The refusal of trans lobby groups to acknowledge the risk inherent in uncritical acceptance of self-ID makes it effectively impossible to discuss any compromise. The uncompromising 100% of Stonewall’s ‘acceptance without exception’ leaves only one possible outcome. In order to keep women as safe as possible, when it comes to women’s spaces and services we have no choice but to retain the 100% sex distinction without exception.

Turning the Tide

This is an expanded version of a talk I gave at the Woman’s Place meeting entitled ‘A Woman’s Place is Turning the Tide’ in Brighton on July 16th 2018.

 

The GRA consultation has been announced by the Women and Equalities minister Penny Mourdaunt, which means that the original Gender Recognition Act of 2004 is to be examined to see if it is still fit for purpose. This is the first time that women have been allowed a voice in the discussion, which is a good thing – but it’s not all good. Ms Mourdaunt declared that the consultation would start from the premise that ‘transwomen are women’, which actually makes the whole idea of a consultation redundant, because one of the issues at stake is what makes a woman, how a woman is defined, and what rights should be particular to that definition.

‘Transwomen are women’ is a familiar mantra if you spend any amount of time on social media, particularly on Twitter. Some tweets just say ‘transwomen are women’, others say ‘transwomen are women transwomen are women transwomen are women transwomen are women transwomen are women transwomen are women’. Some say ‘transwomen are women, get over it’, others say ‘transwomen are women, choke on it TERF’. Others, to end an argument, say ‘but transwomen ARE women’. Some, much less frequently, say ‘transwomen are women transmen are men’. It’s not just random trolls saying this either: it is politicians, councillors, doctors, left-wing commentators like Owen Jones.

The phrase ‘transwomen are women’ is naively understood to be simply a courtesy to a male trans person, a sign of allyship. If you don’t join in, because you stick to the definition of women which is biologically correct, you are nailing your colours to the mast and this is risky. There is a huge amount of abuse directed at women who refuse to do as they are told, and this fact demonstrates that the use of ‘transwomen are women’ is not as benign as it first seems. If you wish to be ‘nice’ to someone, that is your free choice, but if you are punished for NOT being ‘nice’ then it is no free choice at all and it begins to look more like bullying and coercion.

‘Transwomen are women’ as a slogan is nothing to do with being nice. It is a political mantra: it does not define its terms and it is used to shut down all dissent. The impact on women and girls is huge. Although self-ID is not law yet, the government’s Guide for Service Providers, published after the 2015 Trans Inquiry, and written by trans lobby group Gendered Intelligence, made sure that public and private institutions would be so confused about it that they would act as though it was law, just to be on the safe side. This has already led to the erosion of women’s single-sex spaces such as shops’ changing rooms, public swimming baths and gyms’ changing rooms, women’s refuges, prisons, the Girl Guides, sports, youth hostel bedrooms, as well as women’s prizes and shortlists – there is an ever-expanding list. Treating sex as a ‘gender identity’ rather than a biological and material reality will ALWAYS mean that girls and women lose out, and leave men and boys relatively unscathed. In a society where the sexes are unequal this is inevitable.

Transgender rights groups have been established and well-funded for years: Gendered Intelligence, GIRES, Mermaids, Action for Trans Health, Trans Media Watch, TELI, Stonewall: most of these groups have been around for a decade or more. The Allsorts Trans School Toolkit has been used in East Sussex schools since 2013. These groups  have successfully promoted the idea that only trans people can talk about trans issues, and that any difference of opinion is transphobic. You can always tell when an organisation has had the trans awareness training because they all suddenly start using a particular kind of language. This is the kind of language which is based on a belief system rather than fact, for example: ‘sex assigned at birth’. Even the NHS uses ‘sex assigned at birth’ – as if somewhere in their maternity wards there is a Hogwarts-style Sorting Hat, under which babies are placed after birth in order to get their sex allocated.

In all these years there has been one narrative, endlessly reinforced, and no challenge to this view has been allowed. Trans Media Watch for example, has been busy ensuring that a crime committed by a male transgender person is recorded in the press as a female crime, but if that person takes their own life in prison it gets recorded as a trans suicide. GIRES pushes for schoolgirls to share their changing rooms with any male who identifies as a girl. TELI are working on ensuring that male sex offenders have the right to be intimately searched by female prison officers. Action for Trans Health demand that all transgender prisoners be released, and advocates violence against women who disagree with their ideology. The government has listened to them all. The Trans Inquiry in 2015 listened to evidence from 15 trans advocacy groups and no women’s groups.

Women’s groups currently working to protect the rights of women and girls have grown up much more recently and have no public funding: they rely on volunteers and crowdfunding.  A Woman’s Place, We Need to Talk, Fairplay for Women, Transgender Trend, Mayday4Women, Man Friday, Critical Sisters: all of them have grown out of grassroots activism in the last few years.  Women have been put on the back foot: much has already been done and dusted without consultation and behind closed doors. The feminists who originally talked about this subject have been vilified and silenced. Transactivists say there is #nodebate, and they are right: up till now there has been no debate.

The success of women’s groups in getting an alternative message across has been fantastic, but has also shown up how difficult it is to get your voice heard when an accepted narrative has already been so well entrenched, especially when part of that accepted narrative is that any disagreement is bigotry. Parts of the press have begun to report on women’s concerns, although others are still happy to paint women as bigoted transphobes. The BBC has occasionally resisted the wrath of Trans Media Watch and presented a more balanced picture, but largely it has been running scared. Woman’s Hour won’t touch the subject. Well, I say that, but obviously they included Caitlyn Jenner on their Power List, and obviously they saw Munroe Bergdorf as the ideal candidate to talk about the silencing of women. But apart from that: nothing. There have been thunderstorms on Mumsnet and earthquakes in the Girl Guides, but Woman’s Hour has its fingers in its ears and hasn’t noticed. I don’t think anyone’s told them yet that there is a consultation on the GRA and that this might be a story which affects women.

It has become clear to me that ‘transwomen are women’ is political marketing genius.  Under the ‘human rights’ guise of treating a minority with respect and dignity, it cleverly undermines all of women’s sex-based rights. If transwomen are women then there is no need to do any impact assessments on women when legislation is changed, as would normally be required by Public Sector Equality Duty. It completely disappears women as a sex class. The protected category of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act is therefore overridden. The government has said that the Equality Act 2010 is not up for review, and will be unaffected by the current consultation, but if the GRA is reformed it will result in the effective removal of a protected category from the Equality Act, by making it meaningless. Thus the change will happen anyway, but by the back door. Male transgender people will then have two protected characteristics in the Equality Act: ‘gender reassignment’ and ‘sex’, and women will have nothing left to themselves. Gender identity will always overrule sex because it is unidentifiable: I cannot be a transwoman because of sex but a transwoman can be a woman because of gender identity.

If the government implements gender self-ID as a means of distinguishing between the sexes, it will not simply make the paperwork a bit easier for trans people, as is claimed. It will cement the changes already taking place, to the detriment of women and girls’ equality, and it will reify the notion of ‘gender identity’ as a marker. For those of us who understand gender as a tool to keep women in their place, rather than an innate identity, it would be a disaster. The law of the land would be telling us that we choose our own subordination. The law of the land would be agreeing with trans activists that Ian Huntley is a woman because he says he is.

‘Transwomen are women’ is political dogma, repeated endlessly and deliberately in order to reinforce the message. Because there is #nodebate  it has been made almost impossible to counter. For this reason I now reject, as a political act in my turn, the notion that ‘transwomen are women’.  It has nothing to do with ‘hate’ or ‘transphobia’ or ‘bigotry’. If the political arm of the Anti Kitten-Stomping League was trying to infringe on women’s rights, I’d fight them too: it wouldn’t mean that I approved of stomping on kittens. It is purely a political defence of the rights of women and girls, against a political movement which threatens those rights. It is undemocratic to threaten and abuse women who speak out on this.

Now is the time to get involved and speak up, so that our daughters will be able to benefit from the rights and protections that we take for granted, and which are now under threat.

Including the fundamental right to actually name ourselves as the female sex.

When Women’s Rights Are #NotaDebate

When there is conflict between trans rights and women’s rights (such as whether toilets and changing rooms should be segregated by ‘sex’ or ‘gender’) an open debate should be encouraged to ascertain how best to accommodate the rights of both parties. This hasn’t happened, and it hasn’t happened in a big way, so it’s worth looking at how and why the debate has been stifled.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 gave trans people a right to be legally recognised as the opposite sex. The Equality Act 2010 gave the characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ a protected category status. At that time ‘gender reassignment’ essentially meant ‘sex change’ – the language used in the Act refers to transsexuals, and people understood ‘trans’ to mean a transition of some sort, usually (at that time) from male to female. The Act was for a person who was ‘…proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex’. Although biologically impossible, sex change was recognised in law as it was the only treatment which could alleviate the suffering of a minority of people with gender dysphoria.

Things have changed greatly since 2004, and the pace of that change has accelerated since 2010. The use of the word ‘trans’ no longer necessarily indicates any kind of transition, the word ‘transgender’ has replaced ‘transsexual’ and ‘sex change’ has disappeared altogether in public discourse. An Act which was formulated to protect a tiny minority of people who experienced such discomfort with their biological sex they would risk invasive surgery to fix it, became an Act which protected a larger minority of people whose ‘identity’ fell under the ever-widening trans umbrella, whether or not there was a medical diagnosis or any kind of transition. The Act itself didn’t change but the definition of ‘trans’ did. Arguably the biggest change was the insistence that now a man who believed himself to be a woman was actually a woman, and had always been a woman.

The disadvantage of formulating a protected category with indistinct boundaries is that it can grow and grow until it hardly resembles the original definition at all. There should be public unease about protecting the ‘rights’ of a cross-dressing middle-aged man to get undressed in the same changing room as a teenage girl, but this aspect of the proposed changes to the GRA has been largely ignored. On the contrary, any mention of the potential risks will result in the accusation of inciting hatred against a marginalised community. The wider public perception of transgender as ‘sex change’ has remained back in the times when the original Act was drawn up to protect it, but the contents of the category itself have moved on.

The Act is therefore no longer fit for purpose, but not for the reasons that trans advocacy groups would have you believe. The view of activists is that the Act needs to be updated to take away any ‘gatekeeping’ of trans identities, such as doctor’s reports, surgery or treatment of any kind, or even a ‘binary’ understanding of sex in the first place. A person’s gender, it is said, should be entirely theirs to define, and so gender self-definition is being promoted as the only humane way for the Act to go. The problem with this is that without any gatekeeping at all, there is a much greater risk to women from predatory men misusing the new definition. This side of the argument has been almost entirely closed down, despite the fact that women are still supposedly a protected category based on sex, and therefore should have been allowed a voice in the debate.

The new meaning of trans is currently being cemented into public consciousness by some very simple ideas used in a rather emotionally manipulative way. These ideas have been promoted so widely as to have reached the status of ‘self-evident’:

• Trans people are ‘Born in the Wrong Body’
• Gender is innate
• Around half of trans people will attempt suicide
• Trans people suffer abuse more than any other group
• Only trans people can talk about trans issues

There is no evidence for any of this, and plenty of evidence against. ‘Born in the wrong body’ is a feeling or a belief so it cannot be proved or disproved: it relies solely on the say-so of the speaker and whether or not they are being honest. (Imagine if the same criteria were applied to people with disabilities applying for disability benefits!) Innate gender would rely on there being a male or female brain, an idea disproved repeatedly by modern neuroscience, or on there being a male or female ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’, which is akin to a religious belief: again, unprovable and unmeasurable. The suicide stats have been debunked in several different studies but are still used repeatedly as though they are fact, despite the risks outlined by the Samaritans of associating suicide ideation with one particular cause. The crime stats for the UK show that trans people are actually less likely to be the victims of homicide than the perpetrators. And on gender issues trans people are not the only experts: there is a huge body of work on the subject by feminists, partly because gender is one of the social structures used to keep women in their place and uphold the Patriarchy. Women have a stake in this.

Possibly because there is a lack of evidence to back up trans ideology, there has been a sustained campaign to rule feminists out of the debate, and it has been done partly by ensuring there is no debate to start with. The hashtag #NotaDebate is routinely used to protest against feminist meetings and to suggest that people who want to debate are actually trying to deny trans people’s right to exist. Just to want a debate at all is framed as transphobic.

In 2015 the Trans Inquiry, led by Maria Miller and the Women and Equalities Committee, invited contributions from trans groups and other interested parties to give evidence. There were 208 written submissions from groups and individuals, including trans advocacy groups and women’s groups. Of these a number were called as witnesses, to provide further evidence and answer questions from MPs. Fifteen of these were trans people or groups, a further handful were health professionals (mostly working in gender identity settings) and absolutely none of them were women’s groups. On the subject of prisons for example, this led to the anomaly whereby no mention was made of the nefarious reasons that a male prisoner may wish to begin transitioning in prison (listed by the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists in their written evidence), whereas a question about strip-searching prisoners precipitated a collective bout of amnesia from both expert witnesses, and was then not pursued by the questioner. A women’s group may have had something to say about the right of a female employee to refuse to strip search a male body, but no women’s groups were there to do so.

The Trans Inquiry legitimised the notion pushed by trans groups that only trans people should be allowed to speak on trans issues. Amongst the groups invited to give verbal evidence were Action for Trans Health, GIRES, Trans Media Watch, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids and the Scottish Trans Alliance. Since then these same few groups have been allowed a near monopoly on trans discourse, consulted by everyone from the BBC to the NHS, the NSPCC, the EHRC, schools, prisons, the Girl Guides, universities, political parties and the media. Some of these organisations then recommend all the same groups for their members or customers to go to for ‘more information’. The same mantras are being repeated on an endless circular self-reinforcing loop because nobody has been allowed to challenge them. All of them, it goes without saying, are to the benefit of the trans community. No consideration is given to any other protected groups. Not women, not children.

The Trans Report, published that year, was therefore predictably one-sided. Not only had women’s groups been excluded, but Maria Miller herself made a little dig about ‘purported feminists’ in her dismissal of those expressing criticism. In spite of the government’s cautious response to the report, a Guide for Service Providers was published in November 2015, in association with Gendered Intelligence. It was written as if the recommendations of the report had already been implemented. Service providers were told that the definition of trans included ‘transsexual, transgender, a cross-dresser (transvestite), non-binary and anyone else who may not conform to traditional gender roles’. This had changed considerably from the original Act’s definition. Services such as shops and leisure centres were advised that they must ‘Assume everyone selects the facilities appropriate to their gender’. This amounts in practice to something very close to gender self-ID. No laws had been changed to achieve this, and no impact assessments had been undertaken. Essentially at this point the UK government had given away the word ‘Woman’ without asking us first.

{Last week it was announced that Topshop had made all its changing rooms gender neutral, to appease a male customer who identified as trans non-binary, after he had complained in a tweet that he had been refused access to the women’s changing room. Topshop is a fashion retailer whose customer base is largely teenage girls and young women. Service providers now seem to think we have a law which protects young adult males from the indignity of being refused access to a teenage girls’ changing room. Meanwhile the Saturday girl, probably on minimum wage, has responsibility not just for the number of garments taken in, but also for the policing of which men should be allowed access. I hope they put her wages up.}

It wasn’t just the government who was keen to push forward trans rights. In 2014 the LGB support group Stonewall decided to add transgender people to their remit. From then on all LGB groups became LGBT groups, a move which tapped into the public support for LGB people at a time when same-sex marriage was in the headlines. Trans organisations have always been keen to make it clear that transgender is not a sexuality, probably because they wish to distance themselves from the evidence of autogynephilia (a sexual paraphilia associated with cross-dressing men), the highlighting of which is unlikely to foster much public support (although, unlike the accepted myths like ‘born in the wrong body’ there are decades worth of research and evidence to back it up). Trans people have benefitted from being a part of a group intended for minority sexualities, with its existing support base and funding, and have gained a much wider platform from doing so. One of the benefits has been that now anyone criticising trans rights can be accused of ‘attacking LGBT people’, and this has been very successful as a means of silencing women who want to support lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Lesbians have borne the brunt of the new trans activism: a lesbian refusing to accept the idea of a male-bodied potential sex partner is increasingly seen as transphobic by LGBT allies, and lesbians are attacked rather than supported by the organisations meant to represent them.

In October this year a meeting was held at Garden Court Chambers in London entitled ‘Progress and Challenges in Advancing Equality for Trans People in the UK’. It was hosted by the Human Rights Lawyers Association and the speakers included Bex Stinson from Stonewall and Michelle Brewer from TELI (Trans Equality Legal Initiative). Bernard and Terry from GIRES were in the audience and were also asked to speak. It was to be expected that the talks would focus on trans rights but nevertheless the extreme level of female erasure was breathtaking. When discussing the experience of trans people in prison for example, much was made of the human rights of a male bodied trans person to be strip searched by a person who matched his ‘gender identity’. One of the lawyers there had represented such a prisoner and had won the case. The word ‘dignity’ was used a lot. Not one human rights lawyer there even considered the dignity of the female prison staff asked to perform such an intimate task as part of a day’s work. In a similar vein, two of the speakers talked about the trans suicide rate in prison and both of them mentioned the most recent case, ‘just this last week’,  to hushed and respectful silence. The trans prisoner they referred to was a man called Martin Eatough who was serving a life sentence for violently raping a fifteen year old girl. He had begun his ‘transition’ in prison and was taking hormones but had not yet had any surgery. The sympathy shown to this rapist because he now came under the trans umbrella obscenely overlooked the rights of his victim.

No suicide in prison should be tolerated, whatever the offence or the sex of the perpetrator. However, due to the tireless work of Trans Media Watch, it is now increasingly the case that male crimes are being reported as female ones. So it seems from reading press reports that a man can be a woman when committing rape or murder, but that he becomes trans again if he commits suicide. It’s a double whammy for his victim: if a crime which she has experienced as male violence cannot be named (does she have to refer to him as ‘she’ for fear of committing a hate crime?) and then his suicide is elevated in the press due to his trans status (most other prison suicides are not reported individually) then where does that leave the rights of the victim to be treated with dignity, respect or sympathy?

An evening spent with human rights lawyers highlighted how large a disparity there is between trans support groups and women’s support groups. The tactics of  trans rights groups and allies to smear, no-platform and threaten people who do not support the dogma 100% has put women’s groups in an impossible position. Groups which cater for women, and are technically able to remain women-only under the current legislation, have in practice become overwhelmingly trans-inclusive. The mantra ‘transwomen are women’ is repeated ad nauseum to close down any argument, and women’s groups risk losing not only friends, but also jobs, and in some cases funding, if they voice any uncertainty. The trouble threatened by trans rights activists is often more than a small women’s centre can deal with.

High profile cases of no-platforming or public reprimand, such as Julie Bindel, Germaine Greer, Dame Jenni Murray, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Linda Bellos have shown us that anyone can be a target of trans hate. They serve as a warning to us all. Best not to speak up.

On social media there is a constant stream of abuse from trans advocates and allies towards women who don’t believe everything they are told, as documented by the website terfisaslur. Some trans Twitter users seem to be making a career out of reporting feminists to their employers for stepping out of line. This has real life consequences such as the recent case of Anne Ruzylo, Labour party women’s officer in Bexhill and Battle. Accounts which challenge the trans narrative, such as transcrimeuk, are routinely shut down after mass reporting. The website was set up to collect data about trans crime because no public body is monitoring it. Trans lobbyists would prefer that you didn’t know these stats which contradict their own statements, and the press and prison service are colluding with this spreading of misinformation by recording crimes by gender identity instead of sex. This does not stop the majority of sexual crime being committed by males and the majority of victims being female, it just means we can’t talk about it. Claims by trans groups that there is no risk to women from male-bodied trans people are disproved by the number of male sex offenders in the UK currently identifying as women –  EITHER ‘transwomen’ have male rates of violent criminal offending OR males will pretend to be women when it suits them. One of these has to be true. Women have a right to be worried.

The highly-respected academic Heather Brunskell-Evans was recently made the subject of a disciplinary investigation by the Women’s Equality Party over her comments on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze. She had expressed her view that caution was needed when diagnosing children as transgender. This resulted in complaints from trans members of the party, and the party was ‘quick to act’ in raising a complaint with the Executive Committee. The opposite view meanwhile, that ‘trans kids’ should be affirmed and celebrated in their chosen identity, is being taught in primary schools by groups such as GIRES and Mermaids, despite there being no long term evidential base for diagnosing a child as transgender. Feminists have not yet succeeded in even getting consent education added to PHSE lessons in schools, but a trans dogma that can lead to a lifetime of medicalisation and sterility is being added with no public consultation and little parental awareness.

The Labour Party supports the updating of the GRA to include gender self ID and has recently appointed a nineteen year old man who identifies as a woman as its Women’s Officer in Rochester. The Green Party refers to women as ‘non-men’ in order to include trans and non-binary people in the category, although the category ‘man’ remains unaffected.  The Conservative Party is planning to push through gender self-identity after a consultation on changes to the GRA in the new year. Trans activists at the Anarchist Bookfair attacked women handing out feminist leaflets about the impacts of the GRA. It seems there is no longer a political home for women.

Along with the slurs and public shaming meted out to women who don’t agree with the new gender identity rules, there has been a refusal to debate the issues publicly by trans activists themselves. Meetings of women wishing to discuss the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act have been disrupted, even though speakers have been invited from the trans community (and subsequently failed to attend). A refusal to debate by trans spokespeople like Paris Lees has led to the cancellation of slots on BBC Newsnight, and, even more worryingly, a consultation by the NSPCC was cancelled after representatives from the trans community refused to debate with Sarah Ditum, calling her a ‘notorious transphobe’. (Top tip: call a woman a transphobe often enough and you can then justify calling her a notorious transphobe). Ruth Hunt, CEO of Stonewall, refused to answer questions put to her by Times journalist Janice Turner, for an article she was writing about trans children. Feminists have always wanted this debate to be balanced and transparent and public. It’s beginning to look as though trans activists have something to hide.

The outcome of the tactic of #NotaDebate is that when there is a conflict of interests which needs to be talked about there is little public understanding of the issues. Facts are hidden and simple mantras take their place. Trans people can call on the support of not only trans groups but also LGBT groups, human rights organisations, political parties and even women’s groups. Women have effectively been left with nothing. Not only that but the protected category of sex, intended to protect women from discrimination, has been neutered by the inclusion of men. Groups and political parties set up to support women and level the playing field now have to be ‘inclusive’ in order to survive, despite the fact that the sex category ‘women’ is by definition ‘exclusive’. Prizes, awards, sports and jobs reserved for women are being awarded to men in the name of inclusivity.  This is the natural consequence of giving away the word ‘woman’. We could still exclude trans-identified males from spaces reserved for women, if only we could name them as trans-identified males. Feminists are now increasingly adopting this choice of language in order to reclaim ‘Woman’ as a sex-specific category that belongs to us. We have to be able to assert our own boundaries.

The argument we have to contend with from trans activists and allies, is that  transwomen are women, and not only that, but they are the most oppressed and marginalised of all women so they deserve more support than the rest of us. The fact of male anatomy, biology and physiology evidently doesn’t change this and nor does the fact of male socialisation. The argument usually made is that ‘transwomen’ do not benefit from male privilege as they have never felt ‘male’, but aside from the fact that privilege does not work in that way, it is irrelevant anyway: what men benefit from is female socialisation. When women are brought up under the constructs of gender they are socialised into wanting to please, to be nice, to be kind, to care about other people. Stepping out of line is painful, and also it is punished. Women who speak out about gender are called TERFs and TERFs are the same as Nazis and Nazis deserve violence. At least, that’s the view peddled by Action for Trans Health (remember? The group invited to give evidence at the Trans Inquiry?)

When trans activists say trans lives are #NotaDebate what they really mean is that they refuse to discuss women’s rights and they refuse to discuss child protection issues. The focus on listening to trans people has proved to be indulgent and infantalising towards the people it is meant to help, and it has led to an extreme level of entitlement amongst activists, evidenced by the level of verbal and physical violence deployed.

It’s sometimes difficult to remember, amongst all the arguments, exactly what women stand to lose here. The sex category ‘female’ is being asked to absorb the sex category ‘male’. What women are being forced to accept could literally not be any more extreme.

So, that’s the point we’re at. Changes to the Gender Recognition Act are due for consultation in Spring 2018. Grassroots groups of women are springing up everywhere as more and more women realise what’s happening. On Facebook, on Twitter and on Mumsnet, increasing numbers of women are finding groups where they are allowed to debate, and real-life groups are forming off the back of these. Unfunded and voluntary for the main part, ordinary but extraordinary women are working together to protect the rights of all women. Our voice is finally being heard in the mainstream media. There will be a tipping point where the number of women refusing to be silenced will overtake the number of women too scared to speak up.

If you want to find out more, or join in, go and look at Fair Play for Women, Transgender Trend, A Woman’s Place, Mayday for Women, Youth Trans Critical Professionals, the Lesbian Rights Alliance, Socialist Feminist Network and more. Come and join us. Remember, as a clever feminist recently coined it, what TERF really stands for is Telling Everyone Real Facts. And someone’s got to do it.