‘We must always interrogate the wider political context within which debates take place.’
Today is the final day that anyone can fill in the consultation for the Gender Recognition Act. So let’s start with what the GenderRecognition Act actually is. If you want to change your gender in the UK, you need a gender recognition certificate. To obtain one, you need to have lived in your preferred gender for two years and get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (ie be treated as mentally ill) from two different doctors.
Trans people and a growing number of experts have long argued that this process is needlessly distressing and longwinded. In fact, Amnesty International UK responded to the GRA consultation by pointing out that the process constitutes a violation of human rights. In June 2018 the World Health Organisation declassified gender dysphoria as a mental illness.
The GRA proposes replacing the current archaic system with a simpler process, whereby trans people can instead self-identify as their preferred gender. The GRA consultation will, in part, work out exactly how this should happen, but around the world where self-identification has been introduced there have been no reports of problems so far, and trans people say they are happier. Perhaps we will adopt the same process as Ireland, where a person changing their gender must sign a certificate in front of a lawyer and confirm that they understand the gender change is a serious undertaking that will last for the rest of their lives.
The GRA changes will have a negligible effect on British society, because most gender-segregated spaces already rely on self-identification. That’s why no one has ever demanded to verify your gender – whatever that might entail – before you use a public toilet. Trans people have been using toilets, accessing domestic violence facilities, playing sports, using changing rooms, and generally trying to get on with their lives for as long as they have existed (which is about as long as all people have existed). This won’t change any of that. But it does mean that if a trans person wants to get married, they don’t have to choose between getting diagnosed with a mental illness and having their day ruined by the registrar writing the wrong gender on their wedding certificate.
Supporting the updated Gender Recognition Act is a necessity for anyone who calls themselves a feminist, and in fact most feminists do support it. Trans people are more likely to experience domestic violence, sexual assault, self harm and mental health problems than cis people. Anything that can be done to remedy that should be supported in full by feminists, including making the process of changing gender easier and less humiliating. What’s more, if the problems trans people encounter sound familiar, it is because they are: cis women are also more likely to experience domestic violence, self harm, sexual assault and mental health problems.
Why? Because both trans people and cis women live in a patriarchal culture which privileges men by keeping rigid and outdated ideas about gender in place. Trans people and cis women have a shared interest in confronting patriarchal norms, and promoting a more fluid understanding of gender. The sooner we can do that, the happier, freer and safer both groups will be.
But it’s not just about our self-interest as feminists. Modern feminism has long identified itself with the idea of intersectionality. This is the understanding that everyone has multiple identities – their gender, their race, social class and so on – and all of these mix together to form an overall experience of life. Modern feminists believe that it is important to fight for justice on all fronts, because we engage with the world with all of our identities at once. We also believe oppressed people know what they need to be liberated, and it is feminist to show them solidarity. Trans people are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world (the life expectancy of trans women of colour in the US is 35, for example, and we listen to them when they tell us what they need to end their oppression.
I don’t know why some people are trans and some people aren’t, and frankly I don’t care. That isn’t what this is about: the fact is, trans people suffer appalling discrimination, they say they need to be trans in order to be happy, and they are clear about what they need in order to live freely. I support them because I believe they deserve a chance of happiness, and I believe them when they talk about their life experiences.
Similarly, as a society we don’t really know what makes people attracted to people of the same gender, and we’ve concluded it doesn’t really matter – because they still deserve to be happy and free from persecution, and we believe them when they talk about their lives. That’s why the law has evolved over the years to reflect changing attitudes towards sexuality, and why the majority of people in this country were overjoyed when equal marriage was established.
Finally, as feminists, we must always interrogate the wider political context within which debates take place. In this case, opposition to trans rights has been led across the media by rightwing voices. Many of the arguments made against trans rights were first deployed in the US by the most hardcore Republicans. These arguments have been replicated in Britain by anti-trans activists who oppose the GRA changes.
It is clear that the predominant movement against trans rights is a reactionary one. As feminists, we have a duty to ourselves and other oppressed groups to ask whose voices we are amplifying, and what wider agendas we are serving.
The arguments against the GRA reform have been toxic and painful, not least for trans people themselves to witness, and occasionally drowned by legalese. But all of the toxicity and complexity only exists to obscure a simple fact: supporting trans people is a necessary part of being a feminist. It’s why most feminists support trans rights, and are proud of that fact. I am looking forward to the new GRA being enacted, and when it is, continuing conversations with trans people about how we can work together to build the happier and more liberated world we all believe in.
Rebekka Page 1175 at October 20, 2018 11:08 PM +06
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