The Women’s and Equality Committee ft some transphobes
By: Gemma Stone
Tags: Feminism, LGBTQ, Gender Identity, Transgender, United Kingdom

On Wednesday 9th December 2020 Caroline Nokes chaired a meeting between The Government, 3 trans people and 3 transphobes. This is all part of the inquiry going on in relation to gender recognition act reform, the consultation of the aforementioned and how it all went so horribly wrong for everyone involved.

I won’t speak much on what Ruth Pearce, Stephen Whittle and Alex Sharpe had to say; you are more than welcome to go check that out for yourself and know that I agree broadly with most of what they said. They all raised good points and showed a keen insight into the issues going on, explaining them clearly and succintly. If I had to add anything it would be just one thing which a few people might think a little bit radical. There should be no legal gender/sex recognition.

No really, none at all. For the vast majority of people the government having a record of your sex is almost entirely pointless. As far as I’m aware the only thing it controls is your pension/retirement age which should be equal and not different between the sexes. Laws shouldn’t be written in ways that would prejudice one sex over another, they should be written in a gender neutral and all inclusive way; what’s illegal for you should be illegal for me even if we have different sexes. Recording your sex in an official government capacity is, quite frankly, completely arbitrary and pointless.

More to the point of why I think its a big bad idea is that with that comes the gender recognition certificate or at the very least some kind of record that shows a legal sex has been changed. Effectively this creates a register of transgender people. Now, even despite how our government hasn’t been stella when it comes to transgender rights, I doubt they would go full genocide on trans people any time soon. But when we’re making laws we don’t just have to consider what the current people in charge will do, we have to consider what future people in charge could do. Having a register of transgender people is an incredibly dangerous prospect and one that we as a community should absolutely be concerned about.

But you didn’t come here to see me talk about that, you came here to see me roast some transphobes. So lets get on with that shall we. The meeting was split into two panels, probably to keep the scowling to a minimum. Panel 2 began around 3:25pm and included Kathleen Stock, Alice Sullivan and Rosa Freedman; Rosa is actually a friend of mine so I sure hope she doesn’t say anything to make me regret that. I say, as if I don’t already know. (Though I’m yet to see it for myself)

First question; Prior to the government’s response to the GRA consultation what were some of the concerns you had about the changes to the GRA legislation especially regarding self identification and access to single sex spaces?

Stock is up first and immediately jumps into a position which seems to defend stripping transgender people of bodily autonomy in exchange for legal recognition. Her claim is that the original purpose of the GRA was there for people whom the lawmakers of the time assumed would have had “extensive medical interventions” to “look very much like the opposite sex”. Note: this was said without a hint of irony in a meeting with two pretty masculine leaning gender non-conforming cis women. She literally said “sex is pretty obvious”, this is the same woman who has once said that butch lesbians will be acceptable collateral damage in excluding trans women from spaces.

In conclusion her general worry is that if we reform the GRA it will have “lost its rationale”. None of this makes any bloody sense though. Anyone can pick up a Google and flip through to the history of the GRA page to find out that people weren’t particularly happy with it even in 2004. Specifically trans people who recognised it for the half-assed measure of a bregrudging government that had to be dragged kicking and screaming through the courts to implement the bare minimum. A bare minimum which still doesn’t grant non-binary people the legal recognition they deserve too.

The rationale of the government who installed the original GRA should be lost, it was a dog shit rationale. We should instead replace it with a rationale that is actually seeking to recognise and support its civilians and their human rights. Anything less is frankly injust.

Now Rosa, my dear friend. Rosa starts her answer to the same question with a statement about how the policy being proposed supposedly didn’t uphold the single sex exemptions in the Equality Act 2010. But as we previously heard from Sharpe, Whittle and Pearce; those single sex exemptions remain as is regardless of reform to the GRA. The GRA reform was about reforming a process of changing your birth certificate. Birth certificates and legal sex do not have any impact on anything at all with regards to the EA 2010.

Rosa continues that this lack of clarity would allow people to self identify as women and access women’s spaces. But again, this is not how birth certificates and legal sex work, you do not need and have never needed a female birth certificate in order to use a women’s bathroom lawfully as a transgender woman. Legal guidance surrounding this exact issue suggests that having a female birth certificate would not even be sufficient evidence alone to support a discrimination case should an actual trans person be thrown out for being trans.

Really I wish Rosa had just stopped there. The above positions are clearly disconnected from the reality of our legal system, this despite them coming from an actually well-regarded and esteemed law professor. They are utterly indefensible and clearly just an attempt to reach a transphobic conclusion regardless of the facts at all. But she didn’t stop there, Rosa continued her speech on.

First she suggested that the exclusion of transgender women from some spaces can be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. This is true, and is the word for word what the EA2010 says. This is a deliberately high bar to pass in court as it would effectively constitute a form of legal discrimination, such decisions cannot be made lightly. However it absolutely does not state that you can just blanket ban trans women from the spaces Rosa named, such as refuges or prisons. Why? Because that’s not proportionate, nor is doing it just because you think trans people are icky a legitimate means. This is exactly why these single sex exemptions have never actually been tested and applied in court, because its genuinely hard to find examples where they can or should be employed.

Then she just slapped the friendship right out of me with this next bit, as she cited the widely criticised and debunked misrepresentation of the study known as “The Swedish Study” amongst the trans community. This study is so widely misrepresented that almost any transgender person engaging in tackling transphobia has written or commented on it before. Heck even the actual author of the study has had to give numerous interviews and even a Reddit AMA to say how badly misrepresented it is and how she wants the bigots to stop.

Essentially Rosa, my dear lovely friend Rosa, just implied I’m likely to be a fucking rapist for being transgender. Thats how transphobes misrepresent that study and that’s what Rosa meant when she said that trans women “retain male pattern criminality” to the Government. In actual fact the study suggests that if you deprive people of basic humanity, equality and freedoms they will turn to less savoury methods of getting by. As society improves and the oppression those communities face decreases, we notice a strong drop off that criminality because no duh, they don’t need to go streetwalking (which is a crime) to feed themselves any more if they can actually get jobs now.

I know I’m writing in a jokey tone but I can’t tell you how much this actually hurt to hear her just say like that. Like holy shit I genuinely thought she was my friend.

The rest of her speech is again more conflation between the GRA, ie birth certificate law and access to spaces ie not birth certificate law at all. I can’t stress enough that this is a law professor.

Next is Alice Sullivan who fully supports the rights of transgender people to live our lives and express ourselves as we wish. Just kidding, she’s an asshole too. Her first worry is about women’s sports categories which again; is still not governed by the GRA or birth certificates in any way. As Baroness Berridge said in her speech to the House of Lords following the publishing of the GRA consultation; sporting bodies are and always have been responsible for deciding who participates where in their sports.

For example, the IOC — the International Olympics Committee has allowed transgender women to participate in women’s categories for 15 years, with varying levels of requirements we must hit in order to qualify. There have so far been zero bronze, silver or gold medalists that we know of. This is entirely besides the point and you can debate trans women’s place in sports all you like, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the thing you’ve actually been invited to the meeting to discuss.

Next Alice references the years old attack on Maria McLachlan; “who was just trying to attend a meeting!” Except it was at an anti-trans event to undermine our civil rights. She was absolutely without a doubt a victim of an assault by at least one transgender person and two others who were at least trans supportive. This was an awful thing to happen and no one should be being attacked physically or otherwise. Though I must say that Maria is hardly entirely innocent; no she didn’t deserve to be assaulted but she was there to oppose and undermine the human rights and equality of other people. I guarantee this story would be being framed incredibly differently if Julie Bindel had clobbered a misogynist protesting abortion rights, for example.

Alice thinks that the extreme response and reaction to a literal hate movement specifically targeting one of the smallest and most vulnerable minorities in the UK is really strange and not something she’s ever been aware of happening before. That must be nice. Again, I’m not justifying, condoning or supporting violence in anyway when I say this; but if you are going to threaten the civil rights and well-being of people you’re bound to face a violent reaction to that eventually. People don’t take too kindly to oppressive forces.

Question 2; Some of the written evidence that we’ve received argues that some women are scared to speak out about concerns they have over single sex spaces. Why do you think that is?

Before we get into Rosa’s answer, I’d just like to add some context here. A recent report showed that over 50% of transgender people were afraid of using public bathrooms. Too scared of prejudice to go for a piss so we either hold it uncomfortably or avoid leaving the house if we can. This combined with the fact that many trans women are prescribed a diuretic as part of our HRT, a medication which literally makes you pee more. Yet these privileged assholes are about to whine about how their reputation is suffering because they’re being complete bell ends for no reason.

Rosa claims cis women are fired and silenced regarding these issues but we know that isn’t the case. There are in fact thousands of articles being published every year defending transphobic cisgender women and their bigoted positions; in the mainstream media no less. The number of trans supportive articles in those same spheres pales by comparison.

As for cisgender women being fired, yes a couple of notable cisgender women have indeed been fired for their involvement in transphobic campaigning and the issues this would cause for transgender people in those workplaces. One of which being Sasha White who literally worked in a position of power for a very pro LGBTQIA+ publisher. No shit when you have tweets suggesting that if a cis woman assaulted a trans woman in a bathroom you’d be fine with that you’re going to get fired from that kind of publisher.

As a law professor Rosa should be keenly aware of the fact that you are entitled to your beliefs. However if your beliefs then go on to foster or create an unsafe workplace environment for someone based on a protected characteristic, such as Gender Reassignment in the EA2010; then you may be fired for that. Our rights don’t end where your beliefs begin.

Its pretty good advice that if you have something hateful to say about another group of people, then perhaps you should keep that to yourself. You could argue this means they’re being silenced but what’s the alternative? We just let transphobes create unsafe workplace environments that force transgender people out of jobs? I’m pretty sure that kind of thing is exactly why we have equality law in the first damn place, but I dunno, I’m not a law professor.

Stock’s answer now. She launches into some guff about HR policies at companies which again follow the EA2010 and have nothing to do with the GRA; the thing she’s been invited to talk about. Then she starts talking crap about Stonewall and their guidance for companies to follow to be included on their list of ‘Diversity Champions’ which apparently includes an expansive definition of transphobia. Stock claims that this definition could land her in trouble for believing that sex is more important than gender identity across a wide range of domains; but that’s quite obviously not true.

In Stock’s words the definitions reads as follows: fear or dislike of trans people including denying their gender identity or refusing to accept it. Which is a bit of a wordy way of saying “just don’t be a dick”. It doesn’t at all state anything about the importance or lackthereof of sex or gender identity and I’m struggling how Stock’s reading is just a “natural” way to view that statement. It quite simply isn’t. For a start you are unlikely to find a group of people more keenly aware of sex and all of its intricacies than transgender people, its pretty important to us.

Infact, the lack of recognition of its intracies comes squarely from transphobes who mostly do so as a way of avoiding acknowledging, accepting or understanding transgender people in any capacity. They do so like a bull in a china shop, not really caring what else get’s knocked over along the way which so far has included numerous other groups of people. Such as intersex people, especially intersex women and cisgender women who can’t conceive children of their own. Turns out when you try to define sex entirely around gamete production or reproductive ability you hurt more than just trans people. Who knew.

Stock continues with throwing shit on Stonewall and its diversity champions by referencing the BBC and The Guardian who are part of that group. She claims that these media orgs referring to her, Alice’s and Rosa’s views as transphobic or anti-trans isn’t helping and is contributing to cisgender women being too afraid to share their transphobic beliefs with the class. Which is ironic considering The Guardian has had 3 trans staff quit over internal transphobia and 338 staff had to write a letter about it; which still didn’t see any real action taken to combat said transphobia. The BBC recently landed itself in hot water after platforming LGB Alliance, an anti-trans hate group specifically set up to oppose trans inclusion and equality. Not to mention the countless BBC staff on social media vocally supporting hate groups. For as terrified of this ‘diversity champions’ shit as she claims to be, they aren’t doing a very good job of actually championing diversity at all.

In essence though Stock’s argument seems to be that she wants to be able to air her opinions without people criticising them or calling them (and therefore her) transphobic for having them. She’s asking for a protective bubble to be placed around her and people who share her beliefs because she’s scared of people not liking her for them. So what does she want the out come to be here? No consequences for your actions? Curb the freedom of speech and expression of those criticising your hateful views? How does no one see how deeply horrific and authoritarian the only solution to the ‘problem’ she faces is?

I am sorry but not sorry, if you are saying things people think are transphobic and don’t like that fact. Then realistically what you need to do is stop saying transphobic things, not ask for special protection from criticism of your shit beliefs and ideas. You can’t just say no one is allowed to call what you’re doing transphobic any more while claiming to want a debate or that you support freedom of speech. That’s literally the antithesis of both of those things.

Alice now. Who is thoroughly shocked and appalled at the Stonewall slogan #NoDebate, she has called this an attempt to shut down the debate and said it was “absolutely vicious”. Its a fucking hashtag, come on. Vicious? Really? Alice continues on to talk about being deplatformed from a seminar on something to do with statistics or something. I don’t know, honestly I just zoned out at this point a little. The point is she claims it was because she merely stated that it was important to collect data on sex and organised a letter to that effect. Which is of course a bit of a twist on the truth.

In actual fact Alice organised and sent a letter to Scottish Government regarding their decision that may sort of allow transgender people to choose their sex on the census. Censuses? Censusi?.. Multiple of those things around the world have been reluctant to include transgender people in any meaningful way and Scotland decided to be one of few countries intending to change that. So they did some governmenting and passed a bill unanimously that said questions about gender identity could now be asked on the census.

Alice’s letter was posted in The Sunday Times which blows the whole ‘we’re being silenced’ thing out of the water and in its opening paragraph states:

We are writing to express our concern about the proposed online guidance to accompany the sex question in the 2021 census, which advises respondents that they may respond in terms of their self-identified gender. The guidance acts to conflate two distinct characteristics — sex and gender reassignment, both protected categories under the Equality Act 2010 — and will effectively transform the longstanding sex question into a question about gender identity. We are concerned that this will actively undermine data reliability on a key demographic variable, and damage our ability to both capture and remedy sex-based discrimination

Which is hilarious on multiple levels. For a start, does she think that transgender people have been giving our assigned sex on the census all these years? No, no we haven’t. We, like everyone else on a census, have been self identifying; because thats literally what a census is. It’s to collect data on who you are. So the concern she has has already been in play forever and hasn’t caused any issues because no duh we are less than 1% of people, but even further is that the proposals by Scots Gov’t is to gather more information, not less.

I imagine (and have since confirmed) that this would likely take the form of a question which asks “Are you transgender or cisgender?” alongside the ‘longstanding sex question’. With this question in place it is absolutely impossible to argue that the sex question would therefore be transformed into a question about gender identity. Its pretty easy to work out which ones are trans or cis when there’s a question literally about that. The conclusions she draws are therefore also complete and utter bollocks. This woman is allegedly an expert in this field.

So yeah, she was deplatformed for blatantly seeking a transphobic position and opposing recognising trans people on a census via the use of some watery bigoted nonsense that even my stoner ass has broken through with ease. No shit it isn’t a good idea to have people in charge of things like creating an accurate catalogue of who people are if that person just flat out refuses allowing asking questions about a demographic of people that actually exist. Like what did you really expect to happen here?

She later talks about how some people claimed that her position which let me be clear; is that trans women should have to tick the “male” box on the census and trans men the “female” box, would make people unsafe. She phrased it very differently, claiming that she just wants to record data on sex but thats what she actually wants the out come to be here. I’m not personally sure how it could make you actually unsafe or what risk it necessarily poses to you in the immediate, but it would certainly make me feel unsafe if the Government said I must tick the male box. It would definitely feel as though they were refusing to recognise who I am and therefore that I’m living under a government hostile to my existence.

I have and always will be ticking the female box btw.

Alice continues mentioning Selina Todd and once again claiming she did nothing wrong but now needs to be escorted to lectures by security because of credible threats. As always threats are bad and no one should be fearing for their life; but it must be stated that when transphobes are threatened by trans people? They get security detail. When trans people are threatened by transphobes, we get put on blast in the mainstream media as being unreasonable for being upset about it. Then she goes on to talk about researchers being silenced too and I swear to god the first one she references is Lisa Littman.

For those of you who don’t know Littman is the author of a study into what she and transphobes have dubbed Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. This is a completely made up pathology by transphobes whose research almost exclusively took place on known websites for transphobes to congregate. The study did not speak to a single transgender person or child and was therefore rightly discredited as the garbage it is. Littman wasn’t silenced for speaking on controversial subjects, she was told her work was garbage because it was.

Then she goes on to talk about Keira Bell and her judicial review against GIDs regarding the prescription of puberty blockers for transgender youth. A JR which has caused widespread heartbreak and damage to transgender youth and their mental healths by cutting off their access to medication they’ve fought long and hard to get. This answer has gone on for quite a long time and has deviated extremely far from the point of what was being asked. On a question about being silenced perhaps you shouldn’t have chosen to speak about literally all of the women whose name you can Google and find multiple articles of them speaking in the mainstream media.

Question 3; Its been argued that reforms to the GRA would have no impact because Section 7 of The Equality Act means trans women are already able to access women’s only spaces already. What is your view on how the GRA and Equality Act interact in that regard?

Section 7 of EA 2010: Gender reassignment

(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. (2)A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. (3)In relation to the protected characteristic of gender reassignment — (a)a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a transsexual person; (b)a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to transsexual persons.

For the avoidance of all doubt, this is self ID in law. This plainly states that all you need to have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment is to state that you are transgender in any capacity. There is no official register of transgender people you have to apply to before you are considered protected under this law.

Furthermore this section does not at all ensure trans women have access to women’s spaces etc. Access to women’s spaces in the UK are not under the authority of the law, there is no legislation stating that you must use a certain space based on whether you’re a woman or a man, legally or otherwise. The way spaces work in the UK is that its up to the owner and/or operator of said space to decide who gets access to where. From there if the operator removed someone and they believe it to have been unlawful they can file a discrimination case and that’s where this section would come into play. In a court of law where you would in fact have to prove that you are proposing to undergo somekind of transition; what qualifies for that is up to the courts to decide on the day I suppose.

In short this legislation protects transgender people from being kicked out of a space specifically for being transgender. It does not at all give us any kind of free license to access spaces or behave inappropriately in any space. If we were behaving in appropriately then we would absolutely be removed from that space and unlikely to win a discrimination case should we attempt to file for one.

Rosa is up first on this one. She comes in strong arguing there isn’t particularly any clarity on this stuff and that policy makers, judges etc have shyed away from giving any guidance on sex based exemptions. Specifically on when they count as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. But as we discussed earlier this is a matter for the courts to decide as and when such a case comes to them. It hasn’t so far because its such a high threshold to hit for such an important reason.

In her complaining Rosa claims people do have the requirements for sex based exemptions but they aren’t being upheld at all. But again this seems out of touch with how this would work in practice. For sex based exemptions to be employed what we would need to see is first a scenario where that could be argued to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and second for a transgender person to bring a discrimination case against a business or service. The defense could then argue for sex based exemptions but they would really need to have that case on lock as again, super high threshold.

Rosa isn’t arguing for that law to play out as intended though, she’s arguing for sex based exemptions to be put in place by default. She wants things like hospital wards to be single sex by default and for us to have to fight our way into them through the courts. That’s the policy she seems to be advocating for organisations to use, all whilst unironically mentioning policy capture because businesses etc have instead chosen to follow the EA 2010 as written. By that I mean, they don’t want to risk being sued for anti-trans discrimination because its pretty bad PR.

Before we move on to the next question answerer I have to give credit where credit is due. Rosa did in fact show a level of respect for transgender people in this specific answer, including using phrases like gender identity in a positive and accepting sense while also talking about the dire state of our access to healthcare. I do also agree with her point about how the lack of our government taking a firm stance one way or the other has impacted this whole thing in a far more negative way than was ever needed. A lot of the lies and disinformation from transphobes in this conversation could have been put to rest very early on because the government knew they were lies and disinformation. They knew that’s not how any of this worked and they just let those people spread them and even in a few instances actively helped them to do so.

But by far the government’s completely half arsed approach to anything LGBTQIA+ isn’t the most prescient matter. The fact is that dedicated groups of transphobes have poisoned the well and created toxicity intentionally to frame trans people as bad and evil. There is no reconciliation with these people, there is no compromise or middle ground we can reach with them. They simply want to exclude, dismiss, deride and denigrate transgender people and nothing more. They need to be ignored, not given space in Parliament.

Stock again now. Who finally starts talking about birth certificates except she seems to suggest that if reforms went ahead, someone could just produce one and get away with being a pervert or something. This is nonsense for two main reasons, first who carries a birth certificate with them? That thing isn’t a legal form of identification, it doesn’t even have your photo or anyway to prove its your birth certificate on it. Second, actual legal identification such as passports and driving licenses issued by the government already allow you to self ID. You do not need a gender recognition certificate to have your marker changed on these cards — and yes, British driving licenses do have a sex marker hidden in your driver number. You can Google that if you want.

More rambling from Stock over single sex exemptions which are still not at all impacted by the GRA before she states her position on the matter and how it differs from the likes of The European Court of Human Rights. Their view being that single sex exemptions are a high threshold to beat and her view being that they should instead be extremely common because there’s so many situations where they are needed. To which I say; well then start suing for them then.

That’s how this legal system works, that’s the entire basis of it all. If you believe that you have a right to a single sex space and a space is not upholding that then take them to court and sue them. It would literally solve all the problems mentioned here and by Rosa, because we would finally have some clarity and guidance on how these exemptions actually work in a court of law, cos they would actually have been bought before a court of law.

Again, the argument Stock is making isn’t that she wants to see single sex exemptions actually tested and applied in law; she’s stating that she wants them employed as default. Which isn’t going to happen, businesses do not want to take the risk of a lawsuit for transgender discrimination, they’ll never start doing this as standard because it opens them up to case after case after case after case.

Alice Sullivan’s answer is something actually worth taking the time to respond to here. She mentions a decision currently underway by Scottish Government regarding survivors of sexual violence and their choice of examiner after an attack. Alice expresses her concern about the words being used in this being that they either get to specify the gender or sex of their examiner and I think that she largely misses the point. I don’t think gender or sex should be mentioned here at all, instead survivors of sexual violence who are trying to get examined should be able to veto literally anyone for literally any reason.

Being a survivor and especially one who is only recently made one is traumatic as all fuck. So in my view this is one of very few instances where bigotries and such should be tolerated for the sake of the greater good. That is to say that even if said survivor is horrifically transphobic and screaming all sorts of nonsense about a transgender examiner; that transgender examiner should excuse themselves and see to it that said survivor gets the care they need all the same. In that setting the patient’s care is what matters the most and you’ll be hardpressed to find anyone arguing otherwise. But this logic applies to literally anyone and everything, if a survivor just doesn’t like your eyes and thinks you look a bit too angry and it makes them uncomfortable they should be allowed to ask for someone else. Patient care trumps all. Though maybe we can give some hazard pay to minority healthcare workers who face prejudice on the frontlines? Just to soften the heartbreak a little?

Focusing this issue around the existence of transgender examiners and caregivers ie literally people who have dedicated their lives to helping others, is utterly ludicrous. It seems the intention entirely is just to create space where transphobes can argue for a justified example of calling a trans woman a man. Even Alice’s own statement on this veers extremely close to saying this out loud describing trans women as “having a desire to be viewed as a woman” as if that’s unique to trans women and not something cis women want too. When I’ve encountered this position out in the wild it seems as though most people don’t actually care much about the survivors and are merely using them as a ploy in their rhetoric, sadly. Basically its an emotional hook to reel people in with, because like I said its a pretty indefensible position to suggest survivors be examined by anyone they don’t feel comfortable with.

Alice finishes by saying we need to have a grown-up conversation about these rights conflicts but we don’t really. The system has been operating more or less as I described above for decades without much issue until this recent wave of transphobia took hold. All sorts of minority caregivers and healthcare professionals understand their position and have an unwavering dedication to their patient’s well being, even if it means stepping out because a patient is a homophobe who thinks my gay ass is contagious. Even if that is heartbreaking to have to do as a health care professional in a supposedly equal society.

Question 4; What is your understanding of how confident those who operate single sex spaces like women only support services feel in applying the single sex equality act exemptions?

The lady asking these questions needs help I’m not gonna lie. Women only support services are not necessarily “single-sex” in the way that transphobes use the phrase “single sex” ie, to exclude transgender women. Infact the vast majority of women only support services have emphatically come out in support of transgender inclusion. If I recall correctly one has even gone on record stating they’ve never even felt close to needing to attempt to employ single sex exemptions for anyone. These spaces have almost always been trans inclusive because the women setting them up largely recognise trans women as women and survivors of the same sexual violence as any other woman.

Rosa responds by talking about funding and how its often tied to not being a dick head to minorities. She phrased it differently. And yeah, no duh women’s services that actively enforce prejudices against a group of women are unlikely to be very popular amongst women. Honestly most of this entire thing is these three privileged ass academics complaining that there are consequences to having prejudiced or bigoted beliefs, such as that transgender women are somehow less deserving of access to shelters when we’re homeless or survivors of sexual violence. I don’t know how to say “consequences for your actions occur” to grown ups, its something you’re supposed to have learned as a child.

That’s not to say you can’t start up a cis woman only service, by all means go right ahead. You could probably win a law suit on single sex exemptions if you argued right from the get go the service was advertised as specifically for cis women. But to expect that you’re given funding as if your decision to close your doors to one of the most vulnerable groups of women is no biggie is absurd. Of course you will lose funding, especially since most of that funding comes from women; including the trans ones.

Stock jumps in on this to ask whether trans inclusion is actually stopping cis women from accessing services for rape crisis or breast examinations. Never once missing a beat and wondering if the reverse is true. Which we know it is, as I said earlier — over half of transgender people report being too afraid to use the bathroom in public. Let alone breast examinations or crisis centres. The difference here is that transgender women self exclude because we fear being further abused or treated with hostility in some of our most vulnerable moments because of who we are. Transphobes self exclude because of their own fears and prejudices about transgender people that only they can control in any capacity; nothing that transgender people have actually done or can do.

I’m not much of a solutions person but there’s only one I can see for this situation specifically, and that is getting less transphobic. Trans people aren’t going anywhere and in fact there’s more of us each year as more of us find the strength to come out. The ‘problem’ transphobes face, trans people, isn’t going away so at some point they are going to have to tolerate our existence and not throw a tantrum every time we are included, supported or accepted in any capacity. Good luck on that one though, considering transphobes have attacked literally anyone for including us, including Cancer Research UK for talking about cancers that affect cisgender women, transgender men and some non-binary and intersex people too.

Stock then mentions the idea of being retraumatised or rather re-experiencing your trauma because of some kind of trigger, such as a visual trigger for example. Which is a valid and important thing to talk about for a crisis centre, though it has zero bearing on the GRA and the GRA zero bearing on it. But I did want to touch on the subject because what’s Stock seems to be suggesting is kind of barbaric.

Because whereas she’s right that trauma and PTSD aren’t rational processes and you can’t just educate yourself out of being triggered by a trans woman in a rape crisis centre, for example. But what’s the solution for her here? That we kick the also rape surviving woman out of the service because she’s trans and upsetting a cis surivor by existing? How fucked up is that? By no means should any survivor be turfed out because someone else is uncomfortable by them even if it is an irrational PTSD trigger type deal. I imagine if I were the trans woman in that situation I’d do my best to avoid ever bumping into said survivor and feel utterly terrible that I’m having such an effect. But by no means would it justify kicking me out, that is in essence saying that cis lives matter more than trans ones which is fundamentally anti-equality.

I’d say that I doubt Stock et al would be so happy to support this same position if it were a racist or a homophobe rather than a transphobe. But honestly you can really never be too sure with this lot. They have supported such terrible conclusions in their neverending pursuit of trying to justify their discrimination of transgender people.

Question 5; Written evidence to this inquiry suggests that many trans people feel that the current system of gender recognition infringes upon trans people’s human rights to self-declare. How can the government best support transgender people’s human rights and the human rights of women?

Its so annoying that this lady keeps asking questions as if transgender people and women are two distinct and entirely separate categories. They aren’t. Many transgender people are women, and phrasing it in the way that she has chosen to do so implies that we are not. At absolute best it should be “and the human rights of cisgender women?” To which the obvious response is to ask how those human rights are under threat exactly as a result of GRA reform? The answers given so far have been insufficient to say the least.

Leaning into using this kind of trans exclusionary rhetoric is nothing but validating transphobia and our government should know better.

Stock is first to answer this one. Her first position is that she doesnt believe its a human right to have your identity recognised by the state which is just factually untrue. Hence the entire European Court of Human Rights fight that led to the GRA 2004 initially. She then goes on to say that the state should protect us from discrimination but that’s part and parcel of the reason the GRA was passed in the first place. Having our documents misaligned repeatedly led to us being abused via discrimination after essentially being outed by the state. Short of actively removing all transphobic people from the country, this solution at least stops the state from having accidentally or otherwise led to us being discriminated against.

Next she suggests that the idea of self identification being a human right is linked to the idea that gender identity is an innate sense of self which she doesn’t believe in. Instead she believes that environmental context is what leads to one’s identity. Whereas there is a lot of evidence to support your environment has an impact on how you view and describe yourself it doesn’t actually debunk the idea of an innate sense of self. The language and descriptors we use might come from our social and cultural contexts, ie a white Brit is unlikely to call themselves Two-Spirit; a very native American term for a transgender identity. But that doesn’t imply there isn’t something innate being described, just that the words we use to describe it aren’t innate, which yeah no duh? Words aren’t innate shouldn’t be controversial.

Rosa is next talking about how the right to self determine wasn’t intended to be used for this purpose by indiviauls. Rosa states that the right to self determine was brought in after colonialism began being considered a pretty terrible thing to have done, and was intended for those countries, those peoples to be able to reclaim their identity from the awful hands of British Invaders, basically. In her own words “I do not have the right to choose who governs over me, we have the right as a collective, as a group, as a people.”

Which is all true, the legal right of self determination is almost exlcusively about being able to vote in whichever maniac you want and no one being able to stop you, in essence. For example the USA expressed its right to self determination as a people by voting Trump into office and then voting him out again. That is basically what the right to self determination means in hoity toity legal speak. There is no right to self determination in regards to your legally recognised sex in the UK currently; which is like… the whole point of why we are here at all talking about this? That’s what we want, we want there to be a right to that because its important for us, trans people, as a people.

Other countries have already given transgender people this right to self-declaration of our legal sex. They have largely done this for a few reasons, many of which we’ve already gone over but in short a) there’s no real reason not to and b) it protects trans people from being outed by the state and facing prejudice or discrimination. When it all boils down, we have one group of women being recognised by the state as standard and another group of women having to ask permission for that. That is and always will be fundamentally inequal and disadvantage that second group of women, who in this case are the transgender ones.

Alice’s turn now in which she states that there is a diversity of opinion from transgender people on this topic and that the “Gender Identity Lobby” doesn’t represent us all. I’m not sure what the Gender Identity Lobby is exactly and this seems like blatant fearmongering by using scary words. Though I will admit, there is a diverse array of opinions regarding this stuff, I even gave a different one of my own in the opening of this article for example. However, the opinions Alice cites are detransition voices, not specifically transgender voices and therefore the voices actually looking to change their legal documentation. Unless a detransitioner has already gone through the process of obtaining a gender recognition certificate and now wants to take it back, then they have no need to be involved at all and we know that most detransitioners haven’t obtained a GRC because most trans people haven’t either.

(quick edit: Got some feedback that the section on detransitioners comes across as dismissive and that wasn’t my intention. In my view detransitioners are still every bit as under the transgender umbrella as people who’ve transitioned. They are by no means accepted by our cissexist society on the same terms as cis people and our fights are linked because of that. Our liberation is theirs and vice versa so we must do everything we can to support them too.)

Telling people to talk to (transphobe approved) detransitioners is a common transphobe tactic and before that it was a common homophobe tactic with articles about “ex-gays” going up every other week. The point of it all is to try and sow doubt on the legitimacy of being gay or being trans, to argue its all a phase or that we aren’t being serious because look this small minority of other people have said it wasn’t for them! It’s complete nonsense, yes, some people might believe they are gay or trans and then work out they aren’t. That doesn’t imply or impact anyone else who is actually gay or trans though because why would it?

Question 6; Rosa just coming back to you in an article you wrote in 2018 on what would changes to the GRA mean. You wrote that self ID may conflict with the rights of other vulnerable groups particularly women and members of religious groups. Can you just expand on that please?

Rosa’s argument is that self ID would turn spaces into mixed sex spaces which could conflict with the rights of different groups. She tries not to say it so hard but its pretty clear what she wanted to say here, which is that it will allow men to self ID as women and enter women’s spaces. Again, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how our law works that we’ve been over already in this article to death and back. Spaces already operate on a self ID basis with the owner or operator making the ultimate decisions regarding access. A decision which can be challenged in court if someone believes it to be discriminatory at which point they could argue for single sex exemptions and potentially justify that exclusion if its found to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

So take the example Rosa gave, Hampstead Heath pond. Transgender women were suddenly placed under attack by transphobes for using the pond and after much deliberation the owners decided that opening themselves up to discrimination lawsuits they weren’t sure if they could win or not just wasn’t worth it. So transgender women were indeed allowed to use the pond and not blanket banned; something which likely would never be considered a proportionate means of achieving any legitimate aim. Reform to the GRA does not at all impact any of this and again I can’t stress enough that its a law professor, an expert in the actual law, who is making this blatant misrepresentation in Government.

Question 7 and my apologies for the lady’s mic is real bad and I struggled to hear what she was actually saying but I’ve done my best regardless; In response to the points of the panel that anytime they try to articulate their thoughts they are construed as being transphobic. Obviously this debate has become quite polarised and very emotional. There is perhaps a paradox to that in that there seems to be this implication that someone would obtain a GRC or self ID under the proposal and abuse that privilege and act in a violent or inappropriate manner. How would you reconcile this disparity that someone could pick that rhetoric up and imply that all transgender women are violent or dangerous or predatory?

Basically she’s calling transphobes out on intentionally using rhetoric and misrepresenting statistics which frame transgender women as dangerous and therefore in need of being excluded from women’s spaces. She’s asking the transphobic panel how they would go about expressing their concerns without suggesting such things. I personally don’t think that’s possible and I imagine we’re about to get a lot of three assholes decidedly doubling down on supporting the lies told by Rosa in the first few minutes of this article.

Stock is first and she’s straight in with talking about “male patterns” of criminality amongst trans women. She states that women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than men and gives some statistics for that. Statistics which more than likely respected the self ID of transgender women and included them as women; as they almost all do. The problem here being that she is grouping transgender women in with men just because she wants to believe we are men and nothing more. It isn’t about violence statistics or what they suggest in any capacity. Its about making the argument that transgender women are men so that they can leapfrog from that to transgender women shouldn’t have access to women’s spaces or legal recognition as women in any way — as many transphobes have even suggested wholesale repeal of the GRA.

The line Stock uses in this statement is that “there is no reason to think that once you self ID as a woman you suddenly become less subjected to the statistical generalisation about the male sex”. But again this is asserting that transgender women’s criminality and cisgender men’s criminality is likely to be the same with absolutely no supporting evidence for that. She’s asserting it and her only evidence for it is her smug grin while she says it. In fact the only supporting evidence given for this argument in this entire talk was given by Rosa, which actively doesn’t support this conclusion. Rather that evidence supports the conclusion that if you stop mistreating trans people and give us jobs we won’t have to do illegal prostitution to eat food or take drugs to escape the pain of living in a world you keep deliberately trying to make worse for us.

Stock then goes on to say that there are of course people who will attempt to pretend to be transgender for nefarious purposes, she even cites two respected medical organisations saying that this can in fact occur. Which yes, it can and in the last 10–15 years we’ve seen less than 100 cases worldwide of that occurring. Is that adequate justification for putting transgender women in the danger that Stock claims to be so afraid of? Would it actually stop those opportunists from trying to take advantage of women? I don’t think so, I think if you cut off one pathway to access to women for a rapist they’ll find another; and if that pathway you cut off happens to be the only rickety rope bridge to safety for a minority group then perhaps we shouldn’t cut it off at all. Perhaps there are better solutions?

Alice next who begins by saying that the fear of violence isn’t why she wants single sex spaces, which kind of pisses on the parade of Stock whose speeches have almost all been about the need to protect cisgender women from violence by excluding trans women. Instead Alice says that she wants trans women excluded for privacy and dignity. I’m not exactly sure how one’s privacy and dignity is more undermined by sharing space with a transgender woman than a cisgender woman and Alice doesn’t go on to elaborate. I guess its just prejudice which uhh… no? Again, I doubt Alice would be so keen on supporting this position were it a homophobe or a racist claiming they want dignity and privacy from those they are prejudiced against.

Question 8 and I kind of love this woman, she’s a rambler with a terrible mic but she straight up called Rosa right for having said the GRA needs to be updated and directed a question specifically to her because of that; in short the question is What do you think the consensus amongst transphobic women like yourself is on how best to move forwards with GRA reform that you bigots would accept?

Rosa actually comes in strong here and states that one of trans people’s biggest concerns is our lack of healthcare. In her own words “trans people are not having their healthcare needs met by this country”. That’s powerful and an important thing I want to give her credit on because of my stupid sense of integrity even though half a page ago she basically implied I’m a rapist. But yeah no, she does come out swinging in support of more funding and support for transgender healthcare and condemns the government for its failings.

She does go on to say that the “self ID regime” doesn’t work unless we have proper definitions, which I don’t know what she means by that. In my view strict definitions are a pain in the ass because there’s always going to be an exception which you’re going to have to amend your definitions for in the future anyway. That’s basically a history of human rights for you right there.

Rosa continues that if we are to allow self ID on birth certificates we need to figure out how it works and well I hate to say it but most of us already seem to know. Its Rosa and her friends who seem to be entirely misrepresenting and not understanding the situation, as evidenced by their repeated attempts to imply or outright state that GRA reform would impact access to spaces which is categorically would not.

Then she says that the only way we are going to work any of this stuff out is to have an adult conversation about it, but trans people keep refusing. But again I have to stress that she literally spread one of the most hateful and dangerous lies about transgender women in the opening of this panel. What on earth do you think any of us have to say to you after that? I’d love to give more benefit of the doubt and perhaps if it was a less infamous misrepresented and lied about statistic I would. But the ‘The Swedish Study’ as its known is the absolute archetype for lying about transgender people to obstruct our equality. There is no way at all an actual academic who actually wanted to learn about this stuff could have missed the hundreds of transgender people who’ve written about that exact study or the author herself who has come out to debunk the points made by transphobic misrepresentations.

So what that means to me is that she doesn’t actually care about learning. She doesn’t want to have the conversations that show her she’s wrong and being evil to minorities for no good reason. She doesn’t want to confront the possibility she’s been wrong this entire time. It’s not that trans people don’t want to discuss things with people like Rosa, its that most have the sense to know there’s no fucking point.

New question from a new question asker; this one has cool windows.

Question 9; What is your opinion on the government’s response to the consultation and why do you think they decided against self identification?

Rosa is first and tries to say that the Government thought self ID would be an “easy win like same-sex marriage”. She goes on to suggest that the Government didn’t expect the backlash from groups, all sorts of groups like religious groups for example. To which I just sit here mouth agape like… she knows that same-sex marriage or as I prefer to call it; marriage equality, was hotly contested right? One of the big name transphobes herself, Caroline Farrow, who is now opposing transgender equality was there on Question Time as a religious woman opposing gay marriage only a few years before hopping to the trans cart on the anti-LGBT train.

We have heard all the exact same concerns from anti-marriage equality types as we hear from anti-self ID types. Including things like “I don’t consent to you changing the definition of woman/marriage to include those people” type takes. Its not new, its the same bigotry repackaged except this time they’ve somehow managed to make it appear as though this is an actual feminist position and not just dog shit bigotry.

Rosa’s final tidbit on this is that a lot of people were responding to the GRA consultation via automated forms, which they absolutely were. Though she’s careful not to say this was happening on bothsides with places like Stonewall and the transphobic hate group Fair Play For Women both having very simplified ways to fill it in. The latter specifically had a one-click method, if I’m not mistaken.

Stock is in to say she agrees with Rosa that the government didnt understand what it was doing because it only talked to transgender people about this initially. Which, yeah no duh, its a law that almost entrely and exclusively affects only transgender people as we are the ones who are likely to be changing our birth certificates in this manner. It doesn’t affect anything or anyone else so there’s no need to talk to anyone else on the subject. She then says that the government ignore the very real concerns linked with self ID, but as of yet noone has actually been able to state an actual concern that would actually be a result of GRA reform. Not one!

Alice is in third in which she cites a YouGov poll that says very few people think transgender people should be able to change our legal sex without a doctor’s approval. To which I say… so? The argument being made here by Alice is that if enough people — 84% in this instance — don’t support the equality and human rights of a people, they shouldn’t be allowed it. Once again, I don’t think Alice would be so keen to make this argument if it were herself or any other minority group on the line here. Because that would be ridiculous, people deserve equality and human rights regardless.

Fun to note is this sentence started with “we live in a democracy” from Alice, but what she’s described is actually something known as tyranny of the majority, not democracy by any stretch of the imagination. It’s straight up authoritarian and fascist.

She then basically says if you fearmonger about trans women you can change people’s minds on whether we should be allowed access to changing rooms etc. Specifically she mentions that if you say many of us have dicks that’s usually enough to get people to change their minds about not discriminating against us. This is obviously anecdotal and probably only tested within Alice’s bubble, but I imagine its quite a useful recruitment tool for transphobes to help reel in people who already had some unconscious biases against trans people.

In fact I know its a useful recruitment tool for that purpose because transphobes have set up a fake organisation claiming to be a “Sex and Gender Ethics Society” in which they make this claim by once again misrepresenting data to create transphobic rhetoric they can use to scare people away from supporting us with. I’ve even written about it.

Alice goes on to say some guff about getting everyone using the same terms, but throughout this has refused to use the word cisgender to refer to women like her. A typical transphobic ploy in which they try to use “women” to refer to cisgender women exclusively and “transwomen” as a noun to refer to transgender women. Then she goes on to suggest that there’s huge amounts of respect for older transsexuals who have had surgery and hormones, this not only seconds after hearing testimony from someone on her own side of this debate saying trans people don’t have access to that because we don’t have access to the healthcare systems which are failing us. Not to mention that there are countless older trans people calling them out for their bullshit too and saying that self ID is important and necessary reform to the crappy GRA as it stands. It really is a minority of trans people who agree with the transphobia of this panel.

Question 10; In Written evidence some trans people have said that they felt that the government equalities office were more prepared to listen to the views of women’s groups during the consultation. What are your views on that?

The GEO had numerous meetings with anti-trans groups, anti-trans groups were even invited into Parliament to have a meeting of their own. Its also reported that GEO met with conservative lobby groups like Heritage Foundation. While on the flipside we have that time the GEO claimed to have met with the lovely people behind Trans Media Watch; who have said no such thing happened. If not the whole office, at the very least the statements being put out by Liz Truss were very clearly using the language of bigoted anti-trans groups, and terrifying the absolute piss out of trans people regarding how this consultation would go.

Rosa is first who mentions groups like Women’s Place UK finding it so damn hard to get things going and capture the attention of policy makers. Yet again, this is a group who were very literally invited into Parliament where they called trans women parasites by our government to organise their transphobia. I believe it was David Davies MP specifically who invited them in with other MPs having shown support too like Jackie-Doyle Price, Joanna Cherry, Rosie Duffield. Not to mention the support they’ve gotten from the House of Lords too with the likes of Ralph Lucas, Lewis Moonie and Emma Nicholson (amongst others) using their platforms to amplify transphobia.

Rosa also mentioned the media which is again, largely slanted in supporting transphobic positions. The Sunday Times has had us up in their paper twice a week for the last few years, throwing out everything from “children are being sacrificed to appease the transgender lobby” as headlines. The writer of which has subsequently won awards for opposing authoritarianism and fascism. The BBC has been largely captured by transphobes too, with an organised clique trying to push for more anti-trans coverage in the BBC including platforming hategroups like LGB Alliance completely uncritically and when they aren’t at all relevant to the story at hand in any capacity. The BBC has even had senior producers, editors and other members of staff cautioned and warned for their social media output which is decisively transphobic; including the time Radio 3 Editor Edwina Wolstencroft compared our healthcare to nazi torture experiments.

If you live in a world where trans people are given more representation and support in media and politics than transphobia? Then throw me the fucking rope and pull me over there right now. I’d love to be there. Because it isn’t the world I live in, transphobia is not and has never been a difficult thing to get aired. It’s the status fucking quo for goodness sake.

Question 11; What else if anything do you think the government should have included in its proposals?

Alice responds by suggesting that from her perspective as a data-minded person she would have liked to see clear distinctions and data on both sex and gender identity. So why did she bloody write a letter opposing exactly that it makes no god damn sense? The Scottish government literally passed a bill saying they would allow the census to ask for the data she wants to be able to make her life easier as an analyst in decyphering who is a cisgender woman and who is a transgender woman. Which Alice opposed. She opposed the exact thing she is now asking for.

Make it make sense.

Stock next who asks for explicit consideration towards spouses of transgender people. Which I’m not sure exactly what she means or why spouses would be relevant? A marriage in law is a contract between two people, not their legally recognised sexes. If one should change their legally recognised sex that shouldn’t impact the marriage contract at all, with the partner being still able to go through the usual divorce procedure if for any reason they want to end the marriage?

Like what do we need to consider? That they might not want to be married to a trans person any more? That’s already taken care of, divorce is already a thing. Spouses shouldn’t be able to have any decision making power of whether I’m transgender or what my birth certificate says just because we are married. That makes no sense at all.

Rosa comes in mentioning marriage as a contract and tries to argue that one signee changing their birth certificate constitutes “unilaterally changing that contract”. But a) it doesn’t, the contract is between two people not their legal sexes as I already stated and b) so what if we just don’t get a GRC? Do they have to stay with us forever even if we are fully out and proud as transgender people? Why is it that spousal consent is only a matter of important for a birth certificate change and nothing else?

None of this makes any god damn sense. It’s all just an attempt to control trans lives in whatever way these assholes can think of.

Amazingly Rosa then goes on to misrepresent a point put forwards by the earlier trans panel. The earlier panel stated that the World Health Organisation intend to remove the component of the diagnosis for being trans which states you have to have dysphoria. As I’ve covered before on this blog its been pretty effectively proven time and time again that dysphoria is a rather poor predictor of whether someone is trans or not, and many in the community have switched their focus to gender euphoria being a better way to tell. So it makes sense that the diagnosis would update to reflect what the data has actually shown on that and what the community ourselves have found to be true.

Rosa seems to have understood this as meaning that there will be absolutely no diagnosis for being trans at all. But there will, it will just be called something else, described differently and in a different section of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Namely Gender Incongruence, a lack of requirement for dysphoria and with it being move to the sexual health section. Rosa uses this point to jump off to and make a statement about healthcare access suggesting that without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria we will not be able to get the care we need. Which we already can’t get despite the diagnosis currently being in practice.

In my opinion it would just be better to move to the Informed Consent model of treatment that the USA uses, in which as an adult you can sign a few forms to say you understand the risks etc and get your meds prescribed on the same day. Hopefully the WHO having changed the Transsexualism in the mental health section for Gender Incongruence in the sexual health section will cut through a lot of the psychotherapist red tape that’s artificially put in our way by healthcare systems in the UK before they authorise the use of cross sex hormone therapy. It genuinely makes no sense that you can have been out and self medding as trans for a decade and still get sent back to square one if you try to get on the NHS pathway at all.

Though the NHS is very much a ‘stuck in its ways’ kind of organisation and I’m not particularly hopeful of seeing this change in any kind of timely manner despite how blatantly obvious a solution it is, and how desperately its needed to make wait times for those merely questioning whether they’re trans significantly more improved, whilst also allowing those who know they are trans to just get on with it.

Question 12; In written evidence it has been suggested that the nearly two year wait since the announcement of the consultation and the results of it has led to misinformation and harm. Would you agree with that, if so could you tell me why?

Rosa responds to this mostly by whinging that people don’t want to talk to her but again, she accused us of being rapists in the opening of this panel using a blatant misrepresentation of statistics. Why the fuck would any trans person want to talk to her?

Stock responds by claiming its undemocratic that a minority group would try to secure their equality and legal rights without consulting bigots first. But again, transphobia is and always has been the status quo, tyranny of the majority is still not democracy because you can’t have a democracy while some of your people are not equal to others.

Stock also mentions Ireland, who has self ID, and asks what impacts that has had on cisgender women in the country. So I guess I’ll just leave artice by Irish feminists in support of transgender equality and self ID specifically right here for you.

Alice’s comment is more of the same mostly, but she also mentions the time she was part of a transphobic protest outside Grenfell in which trans people counter-protested and bought along smoke bombs. You could argue this was insensitive to survivors of Grenfell and the families of the deceased, absolutely. However Alice instead uses it to imply that trans people were trying to make it seem like there was a fire in order to intimidate the transphobes. This is clearly a reach and intended to make trans people look like a violent and aggressive mob.

Its probably not fair to call them smoke bombs either, they don’t explode. They just produce smoke, usually a coloured smoke such as the kind that were used outside of a newsbuilding by trans people during protest of transphobic journalism. They are supposed to be eye catching and draw your attention, not to scare people. They are used in countless protests around the world for this exact purpose.

Alice goes on to say that the toxicity flows one way and she isn’t aware of transphobes trying to get in the way of any of trans people’s events or activities but like look at where you are you butthole, listen to what you’re all testifying about. You are very literally attempting to oppose transgender equality and inclusion, this is why you and your friends get protested against. We didn’t throw the first brick, but there’s only so many times you can hit someone before we start hitting you back. We’ve passed the transphobia tipping point and now transphobia needs to be dealt with because trans people aren’t going back in the box.

Question 13; What steps do you think the government should have taken to mitigate the harm that has clearly been caused by opening this conversation?

Don’t listen to bigots you dicks.

Alice comes in debating the premise of the question, claiming that debate and conversation are not harmful. But it isn’t her that’s having to get up and check the news every day to see if anything disastrous has happened for her equality. It isn’t her that’s having to deal with thousands of people threatening to chop her dick off if they find her in a bathroom just trying to piss. It isn’t her who is transgender and has to deal with this shit on a daily basis. No. she chooses to insert herself into this and act like it all matters to her but it doesn’t, she loses nothing if this goes one way or the other. Trans people lose everything. Its an utterly fucked position they’re putting us in and expecting us to not get a bit dysfunctional over the constant and immense pressure we face just trying to get through our daily fucking lives. Such a privileged white ass academic bullshit thing to have said, I can’t even with this lady.

For people like Alice this is all just words on a screen or whatever. For people like me? Its desperately figuring out whether I need to try and move fucking country or not.

Alice goes on to suggest Rosie Duffield was “monstered” for “simply saying we should be able to use the word woman rather than cervix-haver”, which is yet another amazing twist of reality. Rosie hasn’t been monstered, she outed herself as transphobic by pushing back against inclusive language to include trans men with cervixes on cancer related materials. Rosie said “only women have cervixes” only to be corrected by people concerned of the trajectory she was on to which she repeatedly doubled down. Even at one point having shared articles from right wing rags written by known transphobic campaigners. This isnt even to mention the fact that she follows a lot of transphobic hate campaign accounts on her social media and doesn’t seem to interact with trans people at all on the issues.

Alice and co have repeatedly talked about the need to discuss things and have grown up conversations but the moment any one of them or their friends gets criticised for their bigotry, they immediately start crying foul. Like… how are you supposed to have a conversation with someone about trans equality and transphobia if you can’t tell them you believe what they are doing is transphobic and wrong? You can’t. Effectively these assholes are shutting down the conversations then crying no one will talk to them about it. Make it make sense.

Rosa just said some of the same stuff she’s said already and Stock comes in with “I have trans friends who disagree with what most trans people have said so that should trump everything”.

We are onto the final round of questions now, with Nokes stating there’s only 10 minutes left meaning I can finally finish this absolute hell of an article.

Question 14; In light of the government’s response to the consultation what do you think the solution is to making the GRA work better while addressing some of the concerns that have been raised about women and single sex spaces. Do you know any examples of legislation in other countries perhaps that are widely supported by transgender people whilst also mitigating those concerns?

Rosa says we need to listen to trans voices despite being a non-trans voice clearly here to talk about this topic and dissuade people from supporting the things she says the GRA needs; which is to be more accessible, more transparent, cheaper etc. Rosa seems to express genuine concern at how trans people’s lives are set back in comparison to our cis counterparts. She even made mention of it being distressing to hear that Professor Whittle, an old ass transgender man, struggling to get healthcare that a cisgender man would automatically be entitled to. Which was nice.

She then goes on to say that things like single-sex exemptions need to be properly defined as to how and when they can be employed. Which isn’t how our legal system works at all. Those exemptions are there to be tested in a court of law as and when they are needed, the facts are that they haven’t been brought to a court of law and so we don’t have any definitive idea of how they would work. Perhaps you can argue they haven’t been bought before a court of law because of a lack of guidance and understanding, but I find that unlikely personally. Either way, it isn’t for the government to get involved with and certainly isn’t related to the GRA or its reform in any capacity all the same. This is firmly in Equality Act territory.

Stock starts out by saying she supports better trans healthcare but then quickly pivots to this idea of third spaces for transgender people. We already have a ‘third space’ and its for disabled people, you could argue the ‘fourth space’ is the baby changing facilities you’ll occasionally find which would make transgender spaces the ‘fifth space’ in total, providing I haven’t forgotten anyone.

With the current third and fourth spaces that we have we can see an actual need for them. Disabled people may need extra support, space and safety measures than the average bathroom user so we built that. Parents and their children need a space they can lay out a child to change a nappies or whatever it is you do with those things, so we built that. What is the different need that transgender people have that would require us being exiled into a purposefully built space?

None. There is none. There is no reason why we would need an extra bathroom for transgender people to be added to the list. The only reason this is being suggested is because some cisgender women have a prejudice or bias against transgender women and want them gone, a reason which I don’t find sufficient for justifying segregation like that. You don’t just get to turf people out because you don’t accept them, that’s horrific.

Worth mentioning here on this idea of third, fourth and fifth spaces is that as it stands disability access and baby changing facilities are lackluster to say the least. Disabled spaces are often horribly mismanaged and viewed as an afterthought with many parents of disabled people reporting having to crawl around on piss soaked floors in order to change their children in the able-bodied spaces due to lack of access to the disabled ones. I can’t remember the last time I saw a baby changing facility, so I don’t suppose that’s a particularly well supported space either. Can you guarantee that transgender spaces will be adequately provided and supported, or will we essentially be recreating all those pictures from apartheid with terrible facilities for the undesirables next to nicer facilities for the rest?

I agree with Stock’s position that the either/or of trans women being in men’s or women’s spaces isn’t the only argument to be had. I just find her third space nonsense to be disgustingly naive and the perspective of an overly privileged white academic who knows so much but also so damn little at the same time. My alternative solution to the spaces crisis is to knock them all down and build them all again as being fully designed with all people’s needs in mind. I’m talking floor to ceiling single occupancy cubicles with proper doors and locks, all of which designed to accommodate able-bodied people and disabled people, along with having facilities for helping change babies. The only barrier to achieving this is money and the corporations who would rather fob us off and put in the bare minimum of flimsy cubicles that don’t reach the floor. They’re the ones who ultimately decide what their spaces are like and who we should be focusing our energies on challenging, in my opinion.

Question 15; This one’s for Kathleen Stock. In your article “can you change your gender?” in relation to the word gender over history the word has come to be used in many different sense often referring to different things. This is part of the reason arguments become so toxic. Could you elaborate on this?

Stock lists off a bunch of ways the word gender is used in different contexts and yeah I mean. The word is pretty ambiguous and often just used interchangeably with sex; including in legal documents as Stock pointed out ie the GRA being a process of changing ones legal sex. Its not some big mystery like how she seems to paint it and you can usually work out what someone means when they say gender from context clues, for e.g if I say “ugh I got the wrong gender for the cable on my pc” its pretty clear to most people that what I mean is I either needed it to have a port in or out, but got the wrong one by mistake.

She uses this as a leaping off point to suggest that trans people can’t literally change sex, but regardless of whether you believe that or not its not really the question at all. The Government have already said that from a legal perspective trans people can change sex, the question is now whether we are going to make it easier and more accessible for us to do so. Or should we continue to artificially make it hard with no real evidence as to the efficacy of that in creating any desired effect, though none such has been specified as of yet. Which brings me back to the points being made before about debating with these people.

What debate can we have with someone who when asked their opinion on reforming the GRA says to just scrap it cos they don’t believe trans people can change sex? Like she just said she doesn’t accept transgender people are legitimately who we say we are, and we are expected to have to debate her on that position? Why? Why should I have to waste my time convincing every old bigoted fool that I am who I am and it has nothing to do with them?

Question 16; Do you think there needs to be a legal definition of gender?

Rosa comes in first suggesting to change the question slightly and says that we need legal definitions for transgender, gender identity and gender reassignment whilst expressing shock that noone has defined these things, not even at the UN. But I pose the question then, what’s the legal definition of “woman” in the UK? There is no strict or legal definition of such, not even having a female birth certificate or lackthereof is definitive. Nor is Rosa’s assertion that the legal definition is about biology. As demonstrated by the fact trans women are and have been considered to be women by UK society and government institutions even without a GRC as far back as the 70s. This is specifically notable as the 70s is when we lost our legal recognition in the UK and precedent set by Corbett v Corbett made it so we were legally recognised as men by default. Yet women like Stephanie Anne Booth who were trans were still housed in women’s prisons during this time.

I get that from a legal perspective it often helps to have clear and concise definitions for things because it makes the whole process of law easier. But human nature and our societies aren’t nice neat little boxes we can tidy everything away into like that. Its a messy, complicated and twisted knot of inconsistencies and counter intuitivity. Trying to create neat and strict definitions of things only makes more work for us to do later down the line when we have to unpick it all when we’ve realised we fucked up. We are literally in this mess because of that exact phenomenom and someone having attempted to strictly define transgender women as our assigned sex at birth. If not for that we would still likely just be asking our doctors to write us a letter and signing a statutory declaration to change our birth certificates, like we were in the 40s through to the 70s with absolutely no issue.

Again Rosa gets credit where its due here as the only person in this entire panel to have mentioned non-binary people. A group of transgender people whose legal recognition is still non-existent even with the proposed updates to the GRA. As the UK Government refuses to modify its system to allow anyone to be legally recognised as anything other than a man or a woman. For no reason, they just keep saying they don’t want to, even despite people repeatedly asking them to and if I’m not mistaken there’s perhaps been attempts at lawsuits that may still be ongoing?

Rosa says that if we want the legal definition of women to be changed it has to be done through a democratic process. But as I’ve already explained, no one is trying to change the legal definition of woman. The legal definition of woman simply doesn’t exist in the way she believes it to, it isn’t about biology, it isn’t about birth certificates. We’ve proven that. We don’t need to change the legal definition of woman to include transgender women and support transgender equality, it’s already inclusive if we just start including transgender women instead of trying to actively exclude them.

Stocks response had to be succint for scheduling reasons and on-stream shenanigans to ensue. But she essentially says that we need specific definitions of things because its so confusing otherwise. But as explained above we don’t and what’s important to note is that for people like Stock definitions are just opportunities for bigotry. If you’ve ever played a tabletop RPG you’ll probably know the term “rule lawyering”, if not look it up. Because that’s essentially what Stock et al want from specific definitions, they want to be able to know the rules and the language of the rules so that they can use that to push for the conclusions they want to see happen. They’ll spend hours arguing interpretation with you until you just give up from the exhaustion of constantly having to defend against their never ending onslaught of attempting to exclude transgender people from modern society.

The only way to win is not to play.

Question 17; I just wanted to go back to something you said Rosa about predatory males and how the same stats carry over to transgender women regarding the abuse of cisgender women. Do you have any statistics you can give us to prove that?

No she fucking doesn’t.

Rosa cites The Swedish study by name this time. So there’s no way to argue she wasn’t referencing that study and the misrepresentations of it that transphobes have pushed for years now. Thanks pal.

Stock made me laugh by jumping in on the end of this question to try and suggest the study was “good evidence”. That wasn’t the funny bit though, the funny bit was the bit where she said the lack of that evidence wouldn’t mean we just go ahead with it; by it she means birth certificate law because spaces already operate on the self ID basis she’s supposedly so afraid of.

I thought we would move on from this question now, but Rosa comes in swinging and calls it kafkaesque that she has to defend her opposition to transgender equality. Like she genuinely feels hard done by that she believes GRA reform is bad and is being asked to explain why, rather than people who are pro-GRA reform just magically alleviating all of her made up nonsense concerns without knowing what they are or if they really actually exist. Which by in large, they fucking don’t.

The Question Asker-er pushes Rosa on the fact that she hasn’t actually provided robust data but merely cited The Swedish Study without explaining what she believes that data says. To which Rosa gets flustered and says that she feels as though she’s being accused of lying, which uh… you are Rosa. You lied through your teeth and before this moment I could have chalked it up to a still crappy level of ignorance and refusal to check yourself before you wreck yourself. But now? Now I can’t help but think that you knew it was a lie and that the “robust data” and “good evidence” you and Stock are providing isn’t actually all that robust or good at all. You at very least had an inkling and you still decided to accuse me and my friends of being likely to be rapists.

Question 18; Could I just return to Alice in respect of part of her earlier evidence in regards to the consultations that Liz truss the equalities minister took into account in advance of the annoucnement. The implication from your comment was that womens groups were disadvantaged or ignored as opposed to the “trans lobby” for want of a better expression. Is it your view that the trans lobby was advantaged in Liz Truss’ announcement as a result of that?

Alice tries to make a distinction between “the trans lobby” and “the gender identity lobby” as if there’s any real functional difference between the two. Yes, some trans people she might know are transphobic too and don’t support the fight for their own equality. They even support their own segregation and subjugation under cissexist ideas. But they’re pretty rare and often just as uninformed or deliberately misinformed as most other transphobes are. I was once one of them even, it was wrong, bad and embarrassing now I know so much more.

Alice’s complaint however is basically that established groups like Stonewall have very good access to Government, by which she means they have contacts and are supported by MPs regularly. But groups like Women’s Place UK which are less than 5 years old and are set up as single issue anti-transgender groups specifically opposing GRA reform and other aspects of transgender inclusion don’t have as good access. And yeah no duh. You don’t just get access to government cos you branded your bigotry you dick heads.

This question is amazing because its the moment where you can see Alice realise that even despite Stonewall having such better access than WPUK et al, the result of the consultation did not go the way Stonewall wanted it to. So its pretty hard to suggest that Stonewall had any real advantage from its decades of established activism and therefore connections with government. The question askerer even reiterates this point but slower so it sinks in. I love it.

She tries to recover by suggesting that its still a problem because organisations have changed their rules ahead of time. Specifically she mentions that data on sex is collected on a self-ID basis which yeah no duh. If it wasn’t self-ID, as in you write down what you are on a form, then what else would it be? Someone comes round to your house and does an array of genetic sex tests to assign you a category for the purposes of the form? No you absolute spoon. Forms are and always have been self ID. Census data is and always has been self ID. There has never been ANY obligation for transgender people to write our assigned sexes in the boxes and if that’s a problem for data analysts then perhaps they should back specific questions on transgender people being included rather than write letters opposing them.

Alice claims that this is the makings of an ideology that says we cannot talk about sex and we cannot record data on sex. But we can and regularly do. The problem Alice has is that she wants to put trans women in the male camp because she’s a bigot, so she’s being told no and doesn’t like it. That’s what this argument amounts to, a pathetic whinge. If you want a sex question to be useful for capturing data on specifically cisgender women then all you need to do is add the question “are you transgender or cisgender” right next to it. That’s how fucking simple this ‘problem’ is to fix. That’s how pathetic this position is, let it sink in.

Question 19; Are trans women women, are trans men men? (I shit you not, this is the question he asked.)

Rosa first. She basically says ADULT HUMAN FEMALE!!!!!!!! and claims that this is how the law legally defines woman but it isn’t. So that’s a no, she doesn’t believe we’re women. Thanks for being honest.

Stock next. THERE ARE TWO SEXES!!!!!!! ADULT HUMAN FEMALE!!!! So another no. She goes on to say that it aids communication to have these strict terms but I dunno, it aids communication a lot more if you just stop being a bell end for no real reason.

and finally Alice; which is also no. She says the slogan trans women are women is really unhelpful and that mature grown up adults don’t speak in slogans. This from the side who at the time of this meeting being broadcast were trending with #SexNotGender on Twitter. Not to mention the countless #IStandWith_____ tags every time a bigot faces consequences for their bigotry, “the war on women”, “there are two sexes”, “adult human female” etc and so forth. This whole fucking thing is fought with slogans.

And on the phrase “trans women are women”; its usefulness lies in exposing and unmasking bigotry. If someone starts going full rules lawyering on it you can almost guarantee they are holding prejudices or biases against accepting transgender women as the women we are. So thanks for demonstrating that one ya spoon.

Question 20, the final question apparently; Alice we’ve spoken about the data quite a lot and you argue that data providers should collect sex on people’s sex as a distinct from gender identity is it possible for that to be done in a way that doesn’t undermine the GRA and those who have obtained a GRC?

Well first, it isn’t and hasn’t ever been an issue until transphobes thought it sounded cool and convincing. Second yes, just add a question that says are you transgender or cisgender and then you can easily identify who the cisgender women are if that’s the data you want to specifically view. This isn’t hard but I’m excited to see Alice try to push for transgender women to be recognised as male regardless of this very simple solution.

And she didn’t let me down, sort of. She cites a legal opinion or something that suggests asking a “what was your assigned sex at birth” question wouldn’t invalidate privacy or safety concerns as forms are usually anonymised. Which sure, is essentially the same thing I suggested above but instead of allowing us to identify as we actually do it forces us to explain the ways in which we don’t identify. Its a pointless cruelty of just trying to force trans people to identify ourselves via birth sex and the cruelty is the point of doing it, nothing else. Otherwise why not do it in the way I explained above which ahieves the same result but doesn’t try to make us feel like shit along the way?

Rosa jumps in on the end of the question and again, credit where its due. She cites the opinion I and perhaps some of our mutual friends told her. That the government having lists of transgender people via the GRC is probably a bad idea, in fact its the opinion I opened this article with. So its at least nice to at least see that one being aired in government and its kinda sad that it came from the anti side rather than the pro side.

and that’s the end, so here’s my conclusion;

These people didn’t have a fucking clue what they were talking about. Its actually been quite enlightening to see just how little they understand the position they’re taking or why they’re really taking it. From Rosa, a legal professor, falsely repeating that the GRA impacts access to spaces to Alice, a data expert claiming the inclusion of questions on transgender people would make it harder to collect data. I don’t know what Stock does or why she’s considered an expert in anything relevant here to make a similar sentence about her with, she’s just an absolute knob. Point being, its so blatantly clear that these people are, as panelists in the pro-trans panel said, in search of a problem that doesn’t really exist.

I don’t know about you, but I would be absolutely embarrassed to have been any one of those three people saying those awful and blatantly wrong things with the confidence they did. I already lie awake at night thinking about the time I called my Year 2 teacher Mum instead of Miss. Can you imagine how many sleepless nights I’d have if I’d just spewed absolute horseshit at the government for an hour and a half instead? Easily disprovable horseshit too, not even like… hard to debunk stuff. Just straight up the bottom of the barrel disinformation and blatant lies.

I genuinely hope recordings of this are saved and used as part of training materials in the future to explain how even the most respectable academics can be complete and utter fucking spanners. This needs to be archived and replayed to everyone in order to demonstrate how talking in a polite tone doesn’t automatically mean you’re not being a prick. Our country desperately needs it if its managed to get hoodwinked this far on so little already.