Tomorrow the UK government will be releasing a major report on LGBT Equality, and will launch the public consultation period for the proposed changed to the Gender Recognition Act. Given what has happened over the past few months, anti-trans hysteria in the national media is likely to reach fever pitch over the summer. It is going to be very unpleasant.

In view of this, in the run-up to Bristol Pride (July 14th), organisations across the city are coming together to offer their support to the local trans community. They will be promoting the following Pledge via social media:

We believe that Trans People have the right to be treated equally. This includes:

1. The right to exist
2. The right to live freely without fear
3. The right to be treated with dignity & respect
4. The right to enjoy the security of UK legislation
5. The right to speak and be heard

We’ll be using the hashtags #IPledgeTransSupport & #KeepHateOutOfBristol

There is a list of supporter available on the TransBristol website, so if you want to link to something please link to that.

I am particularly pleased that Bristol University has offered their support given the controversy earlier this year.

Thanks to Pride Cymru & Wales Equality Alliance for letting us use their excellent wording, and to Frank Duffy for the artwork.

Last week I had the honour of attending a launch event for an appearance of the Rainbow Pilgrims travelling exhibit at Bristol University Students’ Union. The project is being headed by my good friend Shaan Knan, and once again he’s done a great job.

As part of the event we were treated to talks about how refugees and asylum seekers are treated in the UK today, and it is a clear indication of how much of a police state the country has become. The first talk opened with a quote from Tony Benn to the effect that the way the government treats refugees is an indication of how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it. Well listen.

They are not allowed to work. They are not allowed to study. They are often interned, and if not have to register on a regular basis at a location specifically chosen to be hard to get to. They are at the mercy of bureaucrats who can brazenly give them incorrect instructions knowing that this won’t be accepted as an excuse and the refugee will be punished for doing the wrong thing. Some asylum staff have a policy of never approving a claim, despite that fact that this results in lots of expensive law suits which the government is more likely than not to lose.

It is, to put it mildly, a totally inhumane system. And for LGBT asylum seekers it is even worse. Despite government protestations to the contrary, they are still required to undergo deeply personal and humiliating questioning, often requiring pictorial evidence, of their sexuality and/or gender identity.

I suspect that the way we now treat disabled people is equally horrific.

With all of this in mind I was interested to see that the latest episode of the Charlie Jane Anders and Analee Newitz podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct, focused on the portrayal of refugees in science fiction. The special guest for this episode is Mexican poet and performer, Baruch Porras-Hernandez. He started talking about how some immigrants are very keen to fit in and “pass”, if you will, for members of the dominant culture, while others are proud of who they are and insist on keeping their own language and culture.

I listened to this on Saturday morning, with Kate O’Donnell’s theatre production, You’ve Changed, still fresh in my mind. I was struck by how what Porras-Hernandez was saying paralleled the discussion that Kate and I had after the show.

Back in olden times when Kate began transition (2003), and even more so when I did (1994) the accepted advice was that you must fit in. You must become undetectable as a member of the gender into which you were transitioning. Anything else would risk ostracization and possibly violence. The whole ethos of Kate’s show is that she’s proud of who she is; and doesn’t want to hide away.

Now of course there is no right way to be trans, or to be an immigrant. Some people naturally fit in to the world they are joining, others will always stick out like a sore thumb. No one should have to “pass”, but no one should be punished for wanting to do so. However, I do think this parallel is an interesting way of understanding the trans experience. I’d be interested to know if anyone else finds it useful or illuminating.

One of the many disturbing things occupying my time at the moment is an anti-trans lobby group that has written an “advice” booklet for schools on how to “support” trans children. I use scare quotes advisedly there because their advice is deeply damaging and, far from supporting trans children, is likely to lead to worsening mental health. Following the “advice” would also lead to schools breaching the Equality Act.

Essentially the booklet encourages teachers to practice conversion therapy on trans children. That would be bad enough if they were trained to do such a thing, because the vast majority of the relevant health care bodies have disavowed such treatment. But of course teachers are not trained counsellors, and could do considerable damage to vulnerable youngsters.

Anyway, the group resposible for this awful document has been raising money to print copies and send them to all schools. They are doing so on Crowdfunder. Despite having received an enormous number of complaints about the project, Crowdfunder is allowing the project to continue. Apparently dishonestly raising money with the intention to harm children and encourage schools to break the law is not against their terms and conditions.

Well, you know, freeze peach and all that. But we are free to do things too, and in my case that means never using Crowdfunder again. If you have a project that you want to fund, please consider using a different platform because I won’t back anything on Crowdfunder, and I suspect that a lot of other people will have taken the same decision.

I spend a fair amount of time watching the TERF nonsense than goes on on social media without actually getting involved. It pays to know what your opponents are up to. There is a pattern to how this stuff goes.

The TERFs, of course, make a point of being inflamatory and offensive whenever possible. They want to provoke a reaction, hopefully an angry one that they can later claim is violent.

When trans people and cis women oppose them they generally react with harrassment, mobbing anyone who dares to speak out. Cis women, they will often accuse of being trans. They make disparaging remarks about these women’s appearance as if this somehow proves that they are “really men”.

But sooner or later some cis man will gallantly leap to the defence of his friends. It is great to see, and I’m very grateful, but it is not always helpful. Because as soon as this happens the tone of the TERFs changes. They suddenly switch to a narrative of, “Help, help! We are being oppressed! How dare men tell us who is allowed to call themselves a woman?”

You see, the long term objective of all of this is to cast the disagreement, not as something between trans people and a small but vociferous minority of cis women, but rather one primarily between women and men. On their side they want people to think that they have all women, and some men (you know, good, feminist men like Donald Trump and Mike Pence); and on the other side they want you to think there are mainly just Bad Men.

The point is that this argument looks much better if they can point to actual cis men who are opposing them. That allows them to talk endlessly about how their opponents are “men”, without them having to make themselves look ridiculous by having to give the likes of me as examples of such “men”. They have actual men that they can point to instead.

So I’m afraid that this is a fight where the brunt of the work has to be borne by cis women. There are many other things cis men can go and do, like refusing to be on manels and calling out their misogynist mates. And of course we are very happy to have support behind the scenes. But as far as the public fight goes, cis guys, please stay out of it where possible.

Well known trans activists such as Paris Lees and Shon Faye are well used by now to being invited to “debate” trans rights in the media. Mostly they turn these invitations down because they know that they will be “ambush interviews” in which you get asked to talk about one thing and find out when you get to the studio that you have been put up against some Trans-Exclusionary Self-Identified Feminist (TESIF ¹) and are expected to talk about some completely different issue. The TESIF will get the majority of the air time and the presenter will support the TESIF’s side.

I don’t get such invitations. I am occasionally asked to be on local TV, but they are much nicer people than the national lot. However, of late I have started to get requests to “debate” trans rights from non-media people. I am starting to see a lot of ordinary people — often nice, middle-class, left-wing women — asking me when trans women ² are going to answer the legitimate concerns of ordinary women about this new trans agenda that they have heard so much about.

Now talking to cisgender people about trans issues is my job. I do it a lot (though I normally get paid for it these days). However, it is very clear that when I do training for an organisation I am mostly preaching to the converted. That is, the course is optional, and the only people who attend are people who already have sympathy for trans folk. The people I am getting asked to talk to now are not those people. They are folk who are becoming increasingly worried and frightened about what those evil trans women are up to.

In politics there is a concept known as the Overton Window. The idea is that for an given issue there is a spectrum of views on that issue. Any position within a Window on that spectrum is seen as fair and reasonable by the public. Any position outside the Window, on either end of the spectrum, is seen as extremist and unreasonable. The way to win at politics is to move the Window so that your own views are squarely within the Window, and those of your opponents mostly outside of it.

The way that you move the Window is through the media. As the TESIFs have almost complete control of the media in the UK, they have managed to shift the window so far that trans women are now faced with being accused of extremism if we defend rights that we have exercised in the UK, without any negative effect, for the past eight years. The results of this are deeply worrying.

We are asked to defend things that we have never said.

We are asked to debate political positions that we don’t hold.

We are asked to apologise for things that we haven’t done.

And if we refuse to do so then we are accused of being angry extremists.

In any case, it is very difficult for us to do so. We have no access to the mainstream media except where cisgender allies facilitate it for us. Most of the discussion has to take place on social media, where everything we say will be attacked by people who have nothing better to do with their lives than hate trans women.

It is all very frustrating and depressing. I regard myself as having pretty good mental health these days, but even I’m starting to worry about what’s going to happen over the next year or two. It is pretty clear that the TESIFs want to remove gender reassignment from the list of protected characteristics in the Equality Act, and repeal the Gender Recognition Act. I suspect that the only thing preventing action being taken in Parliament is the ongoing Brexit paralysis.

I will continue to try to talk to people about this when asked, but it is very difficult to know what to say. Presenting the facts won’t wash, because the public has become so conditioned to the lies that they won’t believe anyone who says otherwise. And why should they? The stories they have been told have often come from respectable middle-class journalists from broadsheet newspapers and Radio 4. The only “compromise” positions I can see myself taking involve trans women giving up a lot of the rights that they currently have.

Still, last year a British trans woman was given political asylum in New Zealand because the nice Kiwi people deemed the UK too dangerous for her. I think I might try Canada first as it is closer to Kevin.

1. The TERFs keep complaining that “TERF” is a slur, even though it was coined years ago by irritated Radical Feminists wanting to distance themselves from the trans-hating crazies. So I am trying a new term. They certainly don’t deserve “Radical” as their biological essentialism makes them deeply conservative on the subject of gender roles. And while they might self-identify as feminists I think that anyone whose feminism isn’t intersectional, and who does no political work save for hating trans women, doesn’t deserve to be called a feminist.

2. I talk mainly about trans women in this post, because almost all of the hate is directed at trans women. Can you say “misogyny?” Apologies to trans men and non-binary folks. I am happy to fight your corner too where necessary.

Next week is very busy for me, but aside from a radio show all of the things I am speaking at are for clients. The following week, however, I will be at Bristol University as part of an event called Punished Twice: Being Trans in the Prison System. The event is put on by the Howard League for Penal Reform, and I’ll be accompanied by several other guest speakers, all of whom probably know more about the prison system than I do. I’ll be there to talk more generally about trans politics and medical treatment. I’m also going to make sure that we talk about trans guys being prosecuted for “fraud”, because that tends to be forgotten in all of the media fuss about trans women. The event is free to attend.

A great deal of newsprint and air time has been spent recently on scaring British women over the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. Sadly much of the information that has been given out is wrong, but many people have understandable concerns as a result. I want to address the issues here.

The first thing to note is that legal gender recognition doesn’t protect people from discrimination. It is the Equality Act that does that. A women’s refuge providing services to victims of sexual assault or domestic violence can legally bar various sorts of women from using their services if it is reasonable to do so. It might, for example, exclude a woman who has a highly contagious disease, and possibly even one who is a smoker. I am legally female, but I and other trans women can be legally barred from a women’s refuge now thanks to a special provision in the Equality Act.

Making it easier to change your legal gender will not change the law on whether or not trans women can use refuges.

The whole idea of “making it easier” is complicated as well. The media is suggesting that men will be able to become legally female simply by saying “I am a woman”. That is not how self-declaration works in any of the many countries that use it, and it is not how the Scottish government has proposed the system would work there.

What we will probably get is a system based on a Statutory Declaration. You will have to find a lawyer, pay a small fee, and sign a form that says you intend to adopt a new legal gender for all purposes. I’m sure there will be sanctions available if people use the system in a frivolous manner.

Back now to toilets, changing rooms in clothing stores, and so on. The suggestion has been made that changing the GRA will make it impossible to keep men out of these spaces. But, as I noted above, the GRA is not about discrimination, it is only about legal gender. The only women’s spaces that would be affected are places like prisons which specifically use legal gender to determine who goes where.

For all other spaces it is the Equality Act we should look at. This bars discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment. That is, it specifically protects people who have the characteristic of gender reassignment from discrimination (except in the special case of refuges as noted above). How does one gain this characteristic? Simply by starting on the process of medical gender transition.

To become protected by the Equality Act, all you have to do is visit your GP and ask for a referral to a gender clinic. That is much easier than making a Statutory Declaration. And of course it is a form of self-declaration.

The Equality Act was passed in 2010, so all of these things that we are being told will result from changes to the Gender Recognition Act are in fact already enshrined in law, and have been for over seven years. (Except for access to refuges, which you can bar trans women from and will still be able to bar us from if the GRA changes.)

In all of that time, I cannot recall a single case of a cis man abusing the system to gain access to women-only spaces. I’m sure such an incident would have been all over the newspapers if it had occurred.

Ireland adopted a system of self-declaration similar to what is being proposed by the UK in 2015. They have had no problems with the system. Other countries have been using similar systems for longer.

We should, of course, ask ourselves why a particularly right-wing Tory government is making these changes. Theresa May and Amber Rudd are not exactly big fans of civil rights, after all.

The answer is that the current Gender Recognition Act is manifestly not working. It has made it so complicated, expensive and humiliating to obtain legal gender recognition that most British trans people have not bothered to do so. You can change your passport, driving licence, bank account and so on without changing your legal gender. To the likes of May and Rudd – current and former Home Secretaries – it must be anathema to have thousands of people living a gender different from that in which they are legally recognised. They want to fix that, and they will probably add some means of encouraging trans people to get their legal genders changed so that all of their documents line up. Watch out for the stick that will accompany the carrot.

Much has been made of the issue of people with penises in woman-only-spaces. However, this cannot be avoided without completely undermining the medical process of gender reassignment. Under the current rules, anyone wishing to have genital surgery must have lived full time in their acquired gender for at least 1.5 years. If a trans woman doesn’t do things like using women’s toilets, and changing rooms in women’s clothing stores, the doctors will probably assume that she’s not serious about her transition and deny her surgery.

I can assure you that for many trans women the very idea of someone seeing that we have a penis is horrifying. We certainly don’t want to be waving the damn thing about in public, as it has been suggested we would do if the GRA is reformed. Many of us are glad to be rid of them, and those who don’t opt for surgery have very good reasons for doing so.

Of course there is a small possibility that some man will abuse the system and pretend to be trans. No law is totally bulletproof, and the widespread publicity being given to the possibility of such abuse can only encourage people to try. Someone will doubtless do it just to discredit trans women. But you can’t make laws on the assumption that they must be perfect. The world doesn’t work that way.

Here’s a related example. It is ridiculously hard to get a rape conviction here in the UK. I would like the laws tightened to make it easier. But every time a feminist group suggests this someone in the media will start going on about, “oh, but what if the woman is lying about being raped?”

You can’t have a rape law that is 100% proof against false accusations, and yet we have one because it is needed to protect the vast majority of women who report honestly. With trans women it isn’t even us who are accused of dishonesty, it is that someone else might pretend to be one of us. Is that any reason to deny us fair treatment?

The fact is that men do assault women all of the time. They don’t need to pretend to be trans women to do that. It is just too easy for them the way the world is now. Making it easier for trans people to get legal gender recognition won’t change that. It will help many trans people, and make the bureaucracy involved in gender switching easier and less confusing. That’s nothing to be scared about.

[Note: the above does not address the issue of legal recognition for non-binary people. That’s an entirely different matter, but no threat to women because non-binary people don’t want to be recognised as women.]