Transphobia in the UK
By: Sean Bennett
Tags: LGBTQ, Transphobia, Transgender, LGBT Rights, Civil Rights

Many of you may not know that we recently celebrated international Transgender Awareness Week, culminating on Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) on the 20th November. The event takes place close to the anniversary of the death of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was brutally murdered in her own home in 1998.

Observed annually, Transgender Awareness Week is a time to remember and honour those who have lost their lives in violent and horrendous transphobic hate-crimes and raise awareness for the plight of trans individuals in our society.

Trans issues may not be something that you think about very often and you may never have even met a transgender person or anyone who does not conform to the traditional perspectives of the gender binary. As such, the prevalence of transphobia and its associated hate-crimes may never have been apparent to you.

In the diverse LGBTQ+ community, trans individuals are, quite possibly, one of the most consistently oppressed and misunderstood minorities. It is not uncommon for public figures, such as Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, to publish openly anti-transgender opinions without even a fraction of the backlash that would be received for homophobic or sexist hate-speech. For some reason, the world’s media and large swathes of society simply do not seem to recognise transphobia as the urgent civil rights issue that it is.

WHY WE NEED TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

According to the BBC, transphobic hate crimes in the UK have quadrupled in the last five years, with trans individuals being verbally, physically and sexually abused just because of who they are. In England and Wales alone, from 2019 to 2020, almost two and a half thousand transphobic hate crimes were recorded, that that’s just the ones that were reported to the police.

A 2015 report by the Human Rights Commission and the University of Leicester found that many LGBTQ+ individuals would not report verbal hate crimes due to the normalisation of these experiences as ‘part of the parcel’ of being LBGTQ+. Furthermore, participants in the study expressed a fear that they would be wasting police time if they reported individual, non-violent incidents of abuse.

A further, and perhaps lest often though of, concern for some participants was being officially recorded by law enforcement as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. For individuals who are not out, or are only out to a select few people, the prospect of having their sexual or gender identity on an official record is daunting. This fear of information falling into the wrong hands is also indicative of a lack of trust between the LGBTQ+ community and the police.

In 2018, the government estimated that there were between 200,000 and 500,000 transgender individuals in the UK. In the same year, a Stonewall report found that 41% of trans people and 31% of non-binary people had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity within 12 months of the survey being taken. A further 28% of trans people had experienced domestic abuse from a partner in the preceding year, and 25% had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.

To put that into perspective, even taking the governments lowest estimate for the number of trans people in the UK, that means that at least 82,000 trans people had been the target of a hate crime. To put it another way, that is a group of people about twice the population of Dover, every single one of whom has been the victim of a hate crime, just during a 12 month period. And yet, a shocking 79% of trans individuals told Stonewall that they still would not, or have not, reported a hate-crime to the police.

And things don’t seem to be getting better. The National LGBT Survey, published in 2019, found that only 34% of trans men and 37% of trans women felt comfortable being LGBTQ+ in the UK. This number plummeted amongst young trans people aged under 25, of whom only 5% felt comfortable in the UK. For a nation that is supposed to be at the forefront of equality and civil rights, this is simply unacceptable.

The fact of the matter is that our society is simply not as equal as we all like to believe. Tens of thousands of trans people are abused and mistreated, and their plight is largely ignored by the wider population and the national media.

In fact, much of the UK’s mainstream media has not even bothered to report on Transgender Awareness Week, with the notable exception of Wales Online. However, as yet, major players like the BBC have neglected to so much as mention the fact that this event is currently underway.

TRANS RIGHTS ARE NOT A ‘DEBATE’

Clearly, transphobia is rife in the UK and beyond. The fact that the UK is still one of the safest places in the world for LGBTQ+ individuals, despite all of the statistics that appear in this article, is horrifying. It is unacceptable in a ‘civilised’ liberal democracy to have tens of thousands of people living in fear and being treated like second-class citizens just because of who they are and how they identify.

Key to the problem is the behaviour of public figures and the national media towards transgender individuals. J. K. Rowling’s infamous tweets are just the tip of the iceberg, with many news outlets and television shows still holding debates about LGBTQ+ issues in which they, in the name of ‘balance’, invite individuals with damaging and archaic opinions to speak to the nation.

To be clear, healthy debate is a vital part of any democracy, and it is the right of any individual to hold and defend any opinions they may have, however heinous or misguided they may seem. The issue here is not one of censorship, but one of responsibility. If someone wants to argue against transgenderism in a non-violent and rational manner, then that is their prerogative. Their opinion may be wrong, but it is their right to hold it and argue for it.

It is not their absolute right, however, to be given public platforms on which to espouse these views. It is the responsibility of TV shows and news outlets to deliver valuable information and insight whilst doing their utmost to avoid damaging or defaming any individual or group in society. In fact, journalists and presenters are bound by a whole collection of slander and defamation laws to avoid just that situation.

Why, then, is it acceptable for a show like Good Morning Britain, for example, to invite speakers onto their broadcast who, during the course of their debate, undermine and attack the identities and characters of trans individuals?

To reiterate, these people are entitled to their opinions, but must we give them such a public platform from which to preach intolerance and hate?

Private broadcasting institutions may, within the confines of the law, invite whoever they see fit onto their programmes. Again, this right is protected by free speech and the basic principles of liberal democracy.

However, I would argue that such institutions should utilise their right to freedom of the press only after having truly considered what affect their broadcasting or journalism may have on individuals or groups in society.

After all, what value, apart from views and paper sales, do bigoted contributors add to public content? Consumers who already disagree with bigotry are unlikely to be persuaded by any argument to the contrary, so there is little value gained there. People who agree with intolerant standpoints will gain vindication from such content and will therefore be more staunchly intolerant going forward, a net negative for society. And finally, the minority group being discussed, in this case transgender individuals, will likely feel attacked and oppressed by such content, lowering their quality of life and making them unlikely to support the purveyors of said content.

So, whilst outlets are fully within their rights to give a voice to anti-trans advocates, it is likely that they will lose moral authority and business from doing so, which seems like it might be a bad idea.

WE NEED CHANGE, NOW

Given all of this, Transgender Awareness Week is just an important now as it ever was. Though things may have improved somewhat since the late 90s, when the murder of Rita Hester sparked the movement that led us to the Transgender Day of Remembrance, the living situation of trans people in the UK is far from being acceptable.

The ridiculous thing is that many people have seen the small improvements that have been made and have convinced themselves that through those tiny steps forward, equality has been achieved.

It has not. Not even close.

There is so much work still to be done by charities like Stonewall, but also by individuals like you and me, to help lift the trans community out from under years of abuse and oppression. And we can start by taking time this week, during Transgender Awareness Week, to educate ourselves and make ourselves more aware of what is going on around us with regards to our trans neighbours, colleagues, friends and family.

A society cannot in good faith call itself free and equal until those adjectives apply to all of its citizens, without exception. As it stands, the UK is not a free and equal country. In fact, to my knowledge, there are as yet no truly free and equal countries in the world.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be the first?