By Mabel Wellman, director of Trans Pride Southampton.
On the 16th April the Supreme Court made a landmark ruling on the definition of what a woman is in UK legislation.
This has been something I had on my radar for quite a while. This ruling originates from an appeal from the Scottish courts on whether trans women with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) would count towards quotas for women holding positions in public office. That simple case (which was supporting trans women as women prior to this appeal to the Supreme Court), has now mutated into the (with this ruling) full blown removal of the rights of transgender women as women.
Transgender people (women, men and nonbinary people) are still protected from discrimination stemming from their gender reassignment. However, a major implication of this ruling is that trans women can be excluded from same sex spaces (such as changing rooms or restrooms if there is a “justifying reason”. This implication, which is not the only one mind you, threatens the entire public life of a transgender person.
This reason means we (trans women) must now fear whether or not leaving the home and needing to use either a toilet or other facility could lead to us being physically or verbally assaulted, it could lead to us being banned from places we need to go (like shopping centres or gyms), it could lead to us being humiliated by being frog-marched out of a restroom, or worse yet – even worrying about being arrested depending on how this is enforced.
This doesn’t protect any woman, this ruling endangers a tiny subgroup of women who are already incredibly marginalised and at risk of violence and sexual assault. Over the past day this ruling has been announced. I have seen pretty much all of the transgender community and support pages, and online friends who are trans, pour their hearts out about how distressed this announcement has made them. We’re not a group of monsters or Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing like the media and so-called “gender critical” lobby groups like to portray us as. We are less than 1% of the UK population, who have had a bigger and bigger target placed on our backs for more than a decade.
Again, the implications of this court ruling are not completely understood or played out at this point. Over the coming months, there is likely going to be many court cases where trans-exclusive policies for employers and trans clients alike are going to have to play out to understand just how exclusive this is, which will likely mean the government too will have to step in to offer some more clarity regarding this.
In the meantime – the transgender, wider queer, and communities of our friends, family and allies must come together to be ready to fight these individual cases and pressure the government and public places to accept trans people. For any trans person (or again ally) reading this, I urge you to help as much as you can in the following ways:
Write to your local MP to be supported of supporting trans people. It seems a bit fruitless some of the time, but we need to pressure our MPs at this time, that they need to support transgender people
Get involved in a trade union, regardless of your industry, this can help safeguard transgender employees, clients/customer, students, patients and more ways in which trans people come into contact with your industry and need to be protected by company policy
Protest this ruling, over the coming weeks there is already a national demonstration organised in London (Parliament Square this Saturday), and there are likely going to be countless regional demonstrations in which we have to take part.
Again, transgender people are a tiny part of the population. However, if every trans person in the country can rely on (at least some of) their friends and family networks to stand up for them, and the wider queer community, that tiny voice will be amplified into an extremely powerful force. Now is the time to get organised at grassroots level, whether it be mutual aid groups, groups to organise sit-ins of places that refuse trans people to use their restrooms, and many more ideas – we will resist this rising tide of trans hate and antagonism.
Trans women were women yesterday, and we are still women tomorrow.
For more information about Trans Pride Southampton, visit their Facebook page.
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