Last week the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission issued a new set of guidelines for public authorities explaining how they might best go about carrying out their duties to treat trans people fairly. Amongst the things that the EHRC would like public authorities to do is to:

set the example for society challenging stereotypes to
ensure that trans people are treated as human beings who deserve to
access services, goods and facilities with the same respect and
dignity as everyone else.

Yes, the EHRC believes that it is necessary to encourage the British public to treat trans people as if they were human beings.

One of the reasons this is necessary is, of course, because the British media spends an inordinate amount of time trying to convince the British public that trans people are anything but human, and should be laughed at, discriminated against and otherwise bullied and belittled in any way possible. It was inevitable, therefore, that the EHRC’s document would be greeted by some journalist getting into a frenzied panic about how politically correct loonies were threatening our British way of life by catering to weirdo perverts.

Step forward, therefore, Marie Woolf at the Sunday Times, who managed to ignore the vast majority of the EHRC’s document and focus solely on a small section about gender-specific clothing in schools. It was perhaps inevitable that Ms. Woolf would get the details completely wrong. The story would have been much less interesting if she hadn’t. But let’s think about the issue instead.

Gender-specific clothing isn’t a trans issue, it is a feminist issue. The British media fell over itself in its haste to condemn Sudan last year when women were sentenced to be lashed for wearing “indecent” clothing, namely trousers. And yet suddenly when trans people become involved Ms. Woolf discovers that forcing women to wear gender-specific clothing is an integral part of the British way of life that must be defended at all costs. I’m sure that the Sudanese government will be very happy at this change of heart. They might even offer Ms. Woolf a job doing PR for them. I hope she remembers not to wear anything “indecent” if they do.