On the erasure of trans rights — A letter to my MP
I wrote this today in response to the leaked article saying Liz Truss and Boris Johnson are going to roll back transgender legal protections. It started out as a letter to my MP but it ended up getting rather long… the problem is that there’s so much different misinformation and tangental nonsense in it that really each paragraph needs a whole article to explain the issues with it! I’m going to try and edit it down tomorrow but thought I’d post the whole thing here. Any feedback would be appreciated, and feel free to take and use any bits for your own letter!
EDIT: I reduced this down to just over 500 words to send to my MP and included it below the article.
I’m writing to you as one of your constituents in Bristol West regarding the article published on the front page of the Sunday Times today titled “Boris Johnson scraps plan to make gender change easier”. Vague as it is, I’m very concerned about the possible implications of the leaked document for the legal protections of transgender people.
I’m a transgender man, and this summer it’s going to be 20 years since I first came out aged 15. In that time I’ve had the privilege to experience great advancements in the legal protections of trans people in the form of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 and the inclusion of “gender reassignment” as a protected characteristic in the 2010 Equality Act. As well as this it’s been great to see the increase in cultural understanding and acceptance of trans people which has allowed those who transitioned after me to have more access to support than I did.
So as I’m sure you can appreciate I was shocked and disturbed to read in the Sunday Times that equality’s minister Liz Truss and the PM are planning the biggest roll back of trans rights in the UK’s recent history, as the article announced not only the abandonment of the proposed GRA reform plans but the introduction of “new protections” which will prevent trans women from using women’s toilets and other spaces and remove unisex bathrooms, plus vague comments about making sure only “reputable medics” can approve transition related healthcare.
The article doesn’t go into any detail of what these “new protections” might be, but I can’t see any way to do it that wouldn’t be degrading and invasive towards anyone who doesn’t fit societal sex stereotypes, whether trans or not. There’s no mention of trans men in the article at all, and on a personal note I am extremely anxious about the possibility of a law coming into effect that would force me to use women’s bathrooms. As I said I’ve been living as male and using male facilities for close to two decades and to be forced to out myself as transgender whenever I needed to use the bathroom in a public place would be a massive invasion of my privacy, as well as being extremely degrading and putting me at risk of violence.
I’m pretty lucky though, as a transgender man who has had access to medical transition so passes as male most of the time. I’m more worried for transgender women as they are often more visible and receive the brunt of abuse, as well as any women who doesn’t fit feminine stereotypes. Trans people are a very small demographic overall but there’s a lot of us in Bristol, and this article has massively increased our and our supporters anxiety about a possible removal of hard-won legal protections. Whenever there has been an attempt to bring in laws like this there has been an increase in violence against transgender people, so even if it doesn’t come to anything this article puts me and other trans folk at risk.
This came out just a couple of days after Trump made the disturbing announcement that he would be removing protections for trans people making it legal for them to be denied healthcare, during some of the biggest civil rights demonstrations in recent history, and particularly insultingly during LGBT pride month. The timing of it seems like a cynical attempt to divide the community and to overwhelm us with so much that we’re unable to fight back. It also doesn’t seem like something Truss should be focusing on at the moment (especially considering no one is able to use any public bathrooms at all right now), it seems to me that much more pressing issues for the Minister for Women and Equalities would be the rise in domestic violence due to lockdown, the higher likelihood of death from Covid amongst BAME people and the effect that the upcoming recession will have on marginalised people across the country.
Regarding the public consultation on GRA reforms in 2018, the article says that, despite 70% of respondents to the GRA reform consultation approving of the rights of trans people to be able to change their legal sex through Self ID, “officials believe the results were skewed by an avalanche of responses generated by trans rights groups”. First of all the consultation was never meant to be an informal referendum, the website states that it “…simply asks how best government might make the existing process under the Gender Recognition Act a better service for those trans and non-binary people who wish to use it”. Because of this stated aim it seems bizarre that they would complain about receiving a lot of responses through groups that support trans people, as that’s who the consultation itself claimed it wanted to hear from.
However at the time there was also a very active campaign from gender critical groups (many created specifically for the purpose) encouraging people to fill out the consultation against GRA reform. These campaigns included a full page advert taken out in the Metro by Fair Play for Women, which incorrectly claimed that GRA reforms would allow men to access women’s spaces.
The fact that the results of the consultation came out overwhelmingly in support of GRA reform despite this heavily funded campaign against it says a lot about the support trans people have across the country, and to ignore these results strikes me as deeply undemocratic.
It’s unclear which polls they are talking about when they say they show most people aren’t comfortable with trans women using women’s facilities/trans men using men’s facilities. According to the most recent British Social Attitudes poll: “72% of women said that they were “very” or “quite comfortable” with a transgender woman using a female toilet, compared with 64% of men who reported that they were “very” or “quite comfortable” with a transgender man using the male toilets”.
Both the GRA reform consultation and the British Social Attitudes poll suggest that Truss and Johnson are incorrect to claim that scrapping the reform and banning trans women from accessing women’s facilities is “more in line with public opinion”.
The statement that “New protections will be offered to safeguard female-only spaces, including refuges and public lavatories, to stop them being used by those with male anatomy” sounds a lot like they’re trying to bring in something like the North Carolina’s 2016 “Bathroom bill” which forced trans people to use the bathrooms of their birth sex in state-owned buildings. The bill was scrapped in 2019 as it was essentially unworkable and had led to increased violence towards both trans people and to anyone who people thought might be trans (particularly women who aren’t stereotypically feminine).
The article also states that “There will be a crackdown on “quack” doctors to ensure that only reputable medics can give approvals”, which doesn’t make any sense as only approved medical professionals are able to diagnose gender dysphoria and give transition related treatment.
I really hope you can speak out as a voice of concern against this leaked document and its implications, as well as the way the announcement was made. There has been a national protest announced for next Saturday, and I hope you will be able to come to meet members of the trans community in Bristol to hear our concerns in person.
Thanks a lot,
Chris Hubley
Edited Version
Dear Thangam Debbonaire,
I’m writing to you as one of your constituents in Bristol West regarding the article published on the front page of the Sunday Times today titled “Boris Johnson scraps plan to make gender change easier”. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-scraps-plan-to-make-gender-change-easier-zs6lqfls0. Although the article is vague and not an official statement I’m very concerned about the possible implications for the legal protections of transgender people and ask that you request clarity from Truss and demand that trans protections not be put at risk. I’m a trans man, and both myself and other trans people I know are extremely anxious about the possible implications of this leaked information. Overall trans people are a very small minority but there are a lot of us living in Bristol.
My particular concern is the claim that they plan to bring in “new protections” to ensure that trans women won’t be able to access women’s spaces such as bathrooms. This is extremely concerning and would represent the biggest roll back of trans legal protections in recent years. There have been attempts to introduce “bathroom bills” like this such as in North Carolina, but these have always been repealed due to being essentially unworkable, and have also resulted in an increase in violence towards both trans people and those who don’t fit gender stereotypes (particularly masculine women).
I’m also extremely concerned about the claim that they will ignore that 70% of respondents to the GRA consultation were in favour of reform as they believe it was “skewed by an avalanche of responses generated by trans rights groups”. Apart from the fact that the stated aims of the consultation was to hear from transgender people about what they would want from reforms and was never intended to be the informal referendum it’s being treated as, this claim ignores that there was also a very active public campaign by those who were opposed to reforms which included a full page advert in the Metro by Fair Play for Women. On top of this the most recent British Social Attitudes poll reported that “72% of women said that they were “very” or “quite comfortable” with a transgender woman using a female toilet, compared with 64% of men who reported that they were “very” or “quite comfortable” with a transgender man using the male toilets” (https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39358/5_bsa36_relationships_and_gender_identity.pdf, Pg 17).
With everything else that’s going on at the moment this doesn’t seem like something Truss should be focusing on (especially considering no one is able to use any public bathrooms at all right now). I feel that much more pressing issues for the Minister for Women and Equalities would be the rise in domestic violence due to lockdown, the higher likelihood of death from Covid amongst BAME people and the effect that the upcoming recession will have on marginalised people across the country.
I hope you can request clarity from Truss and Johnson about this, and speak out against any proposed rolling back of trans people’s legal protections. There are talks of holding protests in the next few weeks and it would be great if you could come and speak to members of the community in person about your concerns.
Thanks,
Chris Hubley
