Days of Visibility
Apr. 8th, 2022 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholmA week or so ago, on Transgender Day of Visibility, the Government celebrated by specifically excluding trans people from their long-promised ban on conversion therapy in the UK. This caused outrage, of course, and there was a heartening degree of unanimity from LGBT groups, but so far no sign that the Government will keep its word.
A couple of days later, the EHRC published guidance on interpreting the 2010 Equality Act. This was always a flawed piece of legislation, which spent much of the space it devoted to trans people detailing ways that - uniquely among the groups it set out to protect - it was actually okay to discriminate against us after all. But it did at least recognise that you shouldn't be able to discriminate on a whim, and that finding trans people a bit icky isn't enough of an excuse. The bar it set was that trans people should be excluded only when this was a "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim" - giving as an example the right of a rape crisis centre to turn away rape victims should they happen to be trans.
I thought, and think, that the exception sucked, but in practice it hasn't ever been used, because there isn't really a legitimate aim for which discriminating against trans people would be a proportionate means. Rape crisis centres, to use the Government's own example, haven't in practice shown themselves willing to sacrifice rape victims on the altar of transphobia.
This situation wasn't satisfactory for the phobes, however, and having effectively taken over the EHRC in the last couple of years they saw to it that the advice on the Act recently offered by that organisation set the bar at a subterranean level, saying that (for example) organisations are free to actively look for a service user to object to sharing a toilet with a trans person on the grounds of, say, 'privacy' or 'dignity', and thenceforth to exclude trans people tout court. The advice doesn't have the force of law, and indeed is almost certainly illegal, but until it's challenged in court - which seems to require an actual instance of this kind of ban happening - it will be circulated by the press and others as if it were the legal position, adding that extra element of fear and loathing to any toilet break.
(Oh, and of course, it's not just trans women who will be 'challenged' at the toilet door. Any butch lesbian or generally gender non-conforming woman will be too. The ironically self-declared "gender-critical" crew has willed it so.)
Then, a couple of days ago, along comes Boris Johnson and declares that trans women should not participate in sport. Now, part of me struggles to be interested in this because I can't understand why anyone would participate, but I do think it's significant that Johnson has said it. It's not, of course, because he cares about or is interested in women's sport, any more than Trump cared about the health of the avian population living near windmills. It's pretty clear that the Tories have decided that trans people are the perfect wedge issue for the next election and the two years leading up to it. It's something on which Labour is split, something that doesn't affect most people directly and about which they have only limited knowledge, something that can be reduced to "common sense" slogans and gotcha questions. From their point of view, it's ideal. So, Johnson's remark was a straw in the wind. And the wind is already blowing.
On the whole, I think I prefer trans invisibility.
A couple of days later, the EHRC published guidance on interpreting the 2010 Equality Act. This was always a flawed piece of legislation, which spent much of the space it devoted to trans people detailing ways that - uniquely among the groups it set out to protect - it was actually okay to discriminate against us after all. But it did at least recognise that you shouldn't be able to discriminate on a whim, and that finding trans people a bit icky isn't enough of an excuse. The bar it set was that trans people should be excluded only when this was a "proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim" - giving as an example the right of a rape crisis centre to turn away rape victims should they happen to be trans.
I thought, and think, that the exception sucked, but in practice it hasn't ever been used, because there isn't really a legitimate aim for which discriminating against trans people would be a proportionate means. Rape crisis centres, to use the Government's own example, haven't in practice shown themselves willing to sacrifice rape victims on the altar of transphobia.
This situation wasn't satisfactory for the phobes, however, and having effectively taken over the EHRC in the last couple of years they saw to it that the advice on the Act recently offered by that organisation set the bar at a subterranean level, saying that (for example) organisations are free to actively look for a service user to object to sharing a toilet with a trans person on the grounds of, say, 'privacy' or 'dignity', and thenceforth to exclude trans people tout court. The advice doesn't have the force of law, and indeed is almost certainly illegal, but until it's challenged in court - which seems to require an actual instance of this kind of ban happening - it will be circulated by the press and others as if it were the legal position, adding that extra element of fear and loathing to any toilet break.
(Oh, and of course, it's not just trans women who will be 'challenged' at the toilet door. Any butch lesbian or generally gender non-conforming woman will be too. The ironically self-declared "gender-critical" crew has willed it so.)
Then, a couple of days ago, along comes Boris Johnson and declares that trans women should not participate in sport. Now, part of me struggles to be interested in this because I can't understand why anyone would participate, but I do think it's significant that Johnson has said it. It's not, of course, because he cares about or is interested in women's sport, any more than Trump cared about the health of the avian population living near windmills. It's pretty clear that the Tories have decided that trans people are the perfect wedge issue for the next election and the two years leading up to it. It's something on which Labour is split, something that doesn't affect most people directly and about which they have only limited knowledge, something that can be reduced to "common sense" slogans and gotcha questions. From their point of view, it's ideal. So, Johnson's remark was a straw in the wind. And the wind is already blowing.
On the whole, I think I prefer trans invisibility.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-08 09:27 am (UTC)