Entirely hollow

Trans man Freddy McConnell tells us:

The supreme court judgment on the application of the 2010 Equality Act has rendered the UK’s system of legal gender recognition entirely hollow. It has ruled that men like me who have gender recognition certificates are defined as women in equality law, which applies to organisations ranging from workplaces to public services and sporting bodies. Vice versa for trans women.

But of course trans men are women, just as trans women are men. That’s what the word “trans” is doing there.

What choice do trans people have at this point? Over the past 10 years, their rights have been chipped away in Britain, their lives made increasingly difficult by anti-trans lobbyists with more influential connections and far more money. Systemic transphobia has captured our public institutions with terrifying speed. For its part, the supreme court refused to hear any interventions from trans people before deciding on its recent, devastating ruling.

What are these rights that have been chipped away? It’s not a right to have one’s fictional identity ratified by the state. It’s not a right for men to displace women from women’s rights and organizations and jobs and facilities. It’s not even a right to be flattered and coddled and told how becoming that dress is.

Things were so different in 2016. When North Carolina passed a shocking “bathroom bill” banning trans people from using the correct bathroom, the Labour MP Ruth Cadbury told the Commons that “a bathroom bill would never be passed here in the UK”.

But by “correct bathroom” of course McConnell means “bathroom for the other sex” so it’s not the “correct” one at all. If I go into a public restroom and find a man at the sink, I don’t consider that “correct” at all. (It has happened. The local hipster radio station/hangout place next to a busy bus stop did the toilets free-for-all a few months ago, and I did go in and find a man there, and I got the hell out. Happily they’ve quietly backed away from the whole thing since then.)

MPs who attended the mass lobby probably learned alarming things about what the EHRC’s code of practice might look like, based on the interim guidance it released in April, which is being challenged in the high court by the Good Law project. They might have heard from the news or comment pages that women who are trans may be banned from women’s loos and shelters.

Except of course Freddy means men who claim to be trans, so of course they must be banned from women’s toilets and shelters.

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