Dear Prime Minister,
I hope this letter finds you and yours in the best of
health. I write to you with much concern about the recent proposals to scrap
reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, especially as they relate to the recent
Sunday Times' front page article of June 14th, and the highlighted prospective
plans to exclude transgender people from single-sex spaces.
I am particularly concerned that much of this recent action
has not given due consideration to many of the unforeseen consequences of such
discrimination against the gender non-conforming, particularly the effect such
legislation is likely to have against not only non-trans women themselves, but
also those that were born women and whom now live and identify as men.
I would urge all those involved in this decision to very
carefully consider that as a result of the so-called "trans panic"
being experienced around the world, and its accompanying reckless urge to
somehow "confirm the gender" of anybody entering women's facilities,
many biological lesbian women with unconventional body types, unusual
self-presentations, or rare strong facial features, are being subjected to
panicked, baseless accusations of being transgender when they are not, by
fellow women whom they have every right to share these facilities with.
This is an unconscionable infliction of undue distress and
harassment on women for simply going about their lives, which must not be
tolerated under any set of circumstances. Indeed, that women should now be
expected to have to conform to any sort of feminine standard of appearance
simply to get changed or relieve themselves in a public building is manifestly
absurd, and must not be encouraged, as I am sure you would hasten to agree.
Furthermore, particularly as this issue relates to female
safeguarding and the impact upon transgender men that were born as women, any
reduction or removal of legal provisions to enable these men to use the
facilities which best affirm their gender identities is very likely to have the
unforeseen consequence of forcing people that may now very much aesthetically
appear to be male to use women's facilities.
This is certain to subject both vulnerable women and these transgender
men to a great deal of entirely unnecessary emotional and psychological
distress and difficulty. I am sure you are able to see how this also applies in
the inverse case, where those whom now appear aesthetically feminine having
been born men, will be forced to use men's facilities, also unduly subjecting
them to a significantly elevated risk of distressing encounters and potential
male violence. I am sure you will agree that either scenario is clearly
ethically unconscionable, and that such outcomes, however unintended, must be strenuously
avoided regardless.
Quite apart from any of the real or imagined plight of
either transgender or born women, and those that are now transgender men, the
Equality Act 2010 has already readily enabled those whom self-identify as their
keenly felt gender to freely use their preferred facilities for the past ten
years or more. In fact, as you know, the free use of facilities which align
with one's preferred gender for at least a year or more is a critical component
of full legal gender transition.
This includes both those born men using women's facilities,
and those born women using men's, and, with respect, I have simply never heard
of any sudden, steep rise in violent, sexually-motivated assaults in bathrooms
or changing facilities in all this time, whether that be transgender women
abusing those facilities (however unlikely), or (and, I believe, far more
likely) transgender women being set upon when surrounded by potentially violent
men in an enclosed private space.
This, in and of itself, would seem to rather give the lie to
such irrational "trans panic" fears. If such things have not yet been
observed to happen in such a vast span of time, it is unlikely that they are
ever likely to happen at all, whether now, or in the future. It therefore seems
to me quite foolish to hurriedly legislate on the opposite basis.
However, I would also argue that if I am wrong, and transgender
women have indeed been the subject of violent assaults by predatory men in
their private facilities, surely that is all the more reason to freely enable
them to seek the safety, shelter, and solidarity of women's facilities, where
they are unlikely to face any such risk of harm? The reverse scenario is, I
believe, highly unlikely – if only because a predatory man depends most of all
upon the isolation of his intended victim, and it would be extremely foolish of
him to attempt any sexual assault upon a woman when completely surrounded by
female witnesses, in an enclosed space, in which he would very quickly and
easily be trapped and prevented from escaping in far less time than it would take
to complain of assault.
Such is why I am also compelled to draw to attention the
fact that in circumstances like this, it is most often, perhaps
counterintuitively, transgender people whom, rather than posing a threat to
women’s rights as is so often incorrectly claimed, are instead the first line
of defence against any danger posed to women’s freedoms and legal entitlements.
Most recently, Women’s Place UK, the so-called “gender critical” lobby group,
took umbrage with women’s access to abortion and medical care being restricted
as a consequence of the U.S. Government’s recent rollback of access to medical
care for transgender people. This of course had an immediate material impact
upon the right of transgender men whom were born as woman, and are still able
to become pregnant, to access abortion and medical care services, which poses a
serious systemic risk of damage to these freedoms for all women as a class.
Women’s Place were unquestionably correct in their
justifiably indignant response that access to medical care and abortion
services is an inalienable right for all women – on that, we will always
unfailingly agree - and yet have failed to notice or understand the crucial
fact that women have been opened up to political attack precisely because trans
people have been attacked in the first place, and that it is once again
transgender men born as women that are the overlooked victims of such “trans
panic” which harms all women as a class.
Furthermore, I also recall a period in which, soon after the
current U.S. Government successfully banned transgender people from military
service, an unprecedented political assault upon abortion rights was soon
launched on the heels of this anti-trans legislation. I do not believe either
of these instances to be isolated, coincidental happenstance, but a predictable
and preventable outcome of the fact that transgender women and men are most
often the first line of defence against the worst forms of misogyny that all
women experience. Particularly in light of the ways I have detailed in which
women and transgender men are likely to be targeted – however inadvertently –
by scrapping these reform changes, I would argue in the strongest possible
terms that it is in fact, contrary to apparent opinion, in every woman’s best
interests to stand in solidarity rather than opposition with the transgender
community. To do otherwise seems, on such immediately available evidence, an
act of manifest social and political self-harm.
Much has also been made, in this so-called
"debate" about the "ease" of abusing Gender Recognition
Reforms to allow those born men whom have no intention of transitioning to
falsely access women's facilities in order to assault or abuse them. I am
afraid this is quite simply a fabrication intended to inflict distress and thereby
unduly influence policy by appeals to emotion. As you are no doubt aware, all
that the Gender Recognition Act changes propose to do - indeed, are only
capable of doing in their current state - is to enable the gender recorded on
one's birth certificate to be changed so as to be more in-keeping with other
legal gender-affirming documentation such as passports and photo IDs. Birth
certificates in and of themselves are not acceptable legal identification.
Such baseless appeals to emotion therefore seriously propose
that it is possible for a man intending to assault women in their private
facilities to use his altered birth certificate as proof of ID, when this is
simply not legally possible. Any such person would instead be obligated to
present a passport or photo ID, which would completely contradict his birth
certificate and thereby expose his malicious schemes and foil him. Surely it is
self-evident how absurd and ridiculous and self-defeating this scaremongering
scenario is?
Moreover, my genuine concern is again for the transgender
men born as women that will find themselves inadvertently hoist on this petard.
Are they now to be expected to present a female birth certificate which
contradicts their male passports and IDs, and to be denied access to men's
facilities, forcing them back into women's facilities and ensuring the
difficulty of risking emotional distress to themselves and women? Are we to
also force transgender women into men's facilities because of contradictory
birth certificates, exposing them to the likelihood of aggressively territorial
violence and the harms of men?
Indeed, if neither birth certificates nor legal IDs are
acceptable in this scenario, lest they invariably contradict each other, we do
perhaps risk the distressing absurdity and harm of somehow informally mandating
genital inspections as proof of claim. Indeed, even I may be expected to
present my male genitals at the door of men’s toilets to confirm I am not a
convincingly transitioned woman if such an imbroglio came to pass in future.
All are morally and ethically unconscionable outcomes which
inexcusably infringe upon the rights and dignity of all people whether transgender
or not. They must be avoided, and are thankfully entirely avoidable. These
proposed GRA reforms merely enable some administrative housekeeping for the
transgender population which only makes accessing facilities easier by the kind
of passive proxy I have described, if at all. Transgender people are still very
much obliged to undergo the long and difficult process of living as their
gender for a set period of time as part of their acquisition of legally
protected gender reassignment status under the Equality Act 2010. I am sure you
will agree that any change which can alleviate some of the stress, even by
simply making legal paperwork easier to file for both transgender women and transgender
men, is to be welcomed.
Lastly, I must also protest in the strongest possible terms
the reported decision to disregard the results of the recent public
consultation on Gender Recognition Reform, which returned a 70% positive result
of support for these reforms, and was then accused of being somehow unduly
influenced by a phantom “trans lobby” before being discarded. I cannot lately
recall any such lobbying myself, and would be most grateful to have it pointed
out to me those instances where trans organisations have unduly influenced politicians
or swayed public opinion by way of expensive newspaper advertisement or radio
or television broadcast platforming, whether in the UK or elsewhere in the
world.
To the best of my knowledge, this reform consultation had to
be manually filled out, and could not simply rely on any copied and pasted
response, requiring individualised, detailed input from all whom took the time
to complete it. This consultation was designed to drastically reduce any such
outcome in the first place, and is therefore unlikely to have ever succumbed to
it.
Furthermore, the consultation itself specifically asked for
the input of transgender people and those that represent their interests. Why
their input would therefore be discarded immediately afterwards defies
comprehension, and would doubtless create a significant sampling bias against the
very transgender people the survey asked for the input of rather than the other
way around, as is being claimed by the Sunday Times. If anything, it seems that
this in and of itself provides an urgent ethical reason to disregard spurious claims
of “trans lobby” influence and to instead take full account of the input of
transgender people on the consultation they themselves were asked to
participate in by the government. Anything else risks an abject failure of good
faith engagement with the data.
I hope you will give due and fair consideration to my
concerns and those of many others which are shared by the transgender community
and their allies, all of whom are acutely distressed and worried about the
consequences of such continued misrepresentation of their political interests and
everyday lives.
In closing, I urge you to reconsider discarding the results
of the Gender Recognition Act consultation, and to pursue an alternative which
respects the consultation’s result, as we are rightfully doing in other present
circumstances.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher O'Dea-Giordano
Beckenham, Kent
No comments:
Post a Comment